Scary Adventures and the Evolution of Disney’s Dark Rides Reviewed
The first couple chapters of the book offered a good glimpse of the history of dark rides. I did not learn anything new though. In fact there were a few things I was disappointed by. They do not mention some of the earliest dark rides which used donkeys to pull the carts. They discuss the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition ride A Trip to the Moon but there were dark rides before it. It also mentioned Blackpool’s Ghost Train as the first Ghost Train but Pratter also makes that claim. While I side with Blackpool since there is some debate the two should both be mentioned. We then learn about the Disney dark rides starting at Disneyland. Again I would have liked a little more information. For instance Mr Toad’s Wild Ride is only about a page long and did not include things like that it had originally been planned as a roller coaster. I was at first surprised how short some of the other major rides like the Haunted Mansion were but later found that was because they were covered in grea