Dark ride
A dark ride or ghost train is an indoor amusement ride on which passengers aboard guided vehicles travel through specially lit scenes that typically contain animation, sound, music and special effects. Appearing as early as the 19th century, such exhibits include tunnels of love, scary themes and interactive stories. Terminology In its most traditional form, the term dark ride refers to ride-through attractions with scenes that use black lights, whereby visible light is prevented from entering the space, and only show elements that fluoresce under ultraviolet radiation are seen by the riders. The size of each room containing a scene or scenes is thus concealed, and the set designer can use forced perspective, Pepper's ghost and other visual tricks to create the illusion of distance. Typically, these experiences also use a series of opaque doors between scenes to further control riders' views within a space-constrained building. Prominent examples include Disneyland's Snow White's Scary Adventures, Pinocchio's Daring Journey, Peter Pan's Flight, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and Alice in Wonderland, which all rely on the use of blacklights in almost every scene. History The first dark rides appeared in the late 19th century and were called "scenic railways" and "pleasure railways". A popular type of dark ride commonly referred to as an old mill or tunnel of love used small boats to carry riders through water-filled canals. A Trip to the Moon began operation at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Marvin Rempfer and Leon Cassidy of the Pretzel Amusement Ride Company patented the first single-rail electric dark ride in 1928. Historically notable dark rides include Futurama at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and Pirates of the Caribbean and The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Modern attractions in this genre vary widely in technical sophistication. Smaller-scale rides often feature the same sorts of simple animation and sounds used since the genre's early days, while more ambitious projects feature complex animatronics, special effects and ride vehicles utilizing cutting-edge technology. To improve the effect and give a sense of journey, passages in dark rides frequently change direction. Sudden curves give a sense of disorientation and allow new scenes to surprise the rider. The rides may also feature sudden ascents or descents to further the excitement. Empirical research Although ever increasing investments are made in dark rides, empirical research in this area is relatively scarce. Based on a systematic literature review, a team of researchers from the University of Liechtenstein developed a model that illustrates the underlying effect mechanism that attendees of Dark Rides experience. The model suggests that "Storytelling" in Dark Rides influences an attendee's "emotional attachment" to the ride through the mediator of "Immersion". It is assumed that a person's prior knowledge about the ride's story and a person's cultural background have moderating effects on the relationship between "storytelling" and "immersion". Variations Dark rides have a number of variations that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Ghost train In the United Kingdom, the United States, the Republic of Ireland, New Zealand, China and Australia, dark rides