Six Flags Over Georgia’s Monster Mansion Ride (March 11, 1981)

Voiceover: A report on the technology used in Six Flags’ ride, Monster Mansion, which brings the monsters to life; interview with the engineer that built the monsters
Footage: The inside of a haunted house; the inside of the Monster Mansion; the monsters in the mansion (some natural sound); the engineer; the technology used; the tapes with the ride’s soundtracks.
Monster Mansion (formerly Monster Plantation and originally, Tales of the Okefenokee) is a mill chute ride at Six Flags Over Georgia located in Austell, Georgia. Aboard six-passenger boats, riders pass through nine scenes along the 700 foot-long flume, passing by over 107 original animatronic characters.
Tales of the Okefenokee (1967-1980)[edit source]
From the park's opening in 1967 until 1980, the building that currently houses Monster Mansion was home to one of the park's original attractions, a boat mill chute-type ride called Tales of the Okefenokee: The Old Plantation Legends, with theming inspired by the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris.[1] Six Flags owner Angus G. Wynne was reportedly unsatisfied with the animated figures in the 1967 season, saying they were "too small" and "looked like window displays". So for 1968, the original Tales of the Okefenokee attraction was redesigned by puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft,[2] whom Six Flags had worked with previously on puppet shows for both Six Flags Over Georgia[3] and Six Flags Over Texas.[4] Six Flags Over Georgia had opened with a 1,000 seat puppet theater hosting "The Krofft Circus" puppet show.[5][6] Most of the original sets from the previous iteration of the ride remained the same, with the Kroffts' focus being more on the animated figures, sound, and music. The attraction took inspiration from Walt Disney's 1946 film, Song of the South, and the Little Golden Books based on the film, with several elements mixed from the creations of Jay Ward, Hanna-Barbera, and Rankin/Bass Productions.
Voices for the 1968 version of the ride were provided by Lennie Weinrib, Joan Gerber, and Marty Krofft, who were also working on the Kroffts' television series H.R. Pufnstuf at the time.[7]
Little is known about the original 1967 version of the ride.[8]
The revised 1968 version is better documented.[1][8] After taking a seat inside of a fiberglass boat themed after an Indian craft made of animal skins, the boat moves on. Ahead, an entrance to the ride has two cutouts of anthropomorphic rabbits holding signs that read "Keep hands inside the boat" and "Do not feed the bunnies".
In an early-mid-1970s co-promotion, Tales of the Okefenokee was sponsored by Domino Sugar. Five-pound bags of Domino Sugar had a $1.00 Six Flags coupon printed on the package, and the Domino Sugar Bear made appearances at the ride. Advertisements for the promotion appeared in newspapers throughout the Southeast.
Deterioration
The humidity inside the building caused the fur on the robotic animals to dissolve at a very fast rate. Also, repeating the same movements over and over non-stop eventually caused mechanical problems with the ride, such as wearing down machinery and stripping gears.
Fire
During the ride's final season of operation, one of the singing carrots caught on fire, burning the entire scene. Watermelons from the ride's ending scene were used to fill the space. This, as well as the other mechanical issues with the ride, led to its 1980 closure.
Monster Plantation (1981-2008)
In 1980, Six Flags decided to create an updated successor to Tales of the Okefenokee and chose production supervisor Dave Gengenbach to lead the project.[15] Gengenbach, who had served as a Disney project engineer at Disney for 13 years,[16] turned to newly formed Goddard Productions (Gengenbach had worked at Disney with Goddard,[15] who left Disney in 1980 to form his own company[17]) to work on the new attraction for the 1981 season. Production team member Al Bertino, another Disney park alumnus and the inspiration for Big Al in the Country Bear Jamboree attraction,[18] later said that the idea for the attraction came to him while he was playing with his granddaughter, who was pretending to be a monster.Construction on the new ride began in September 1980, and details about the new ride were revealed at a gala held at the High Museum of Art on January 15, 1981.[22] The figures for the ride were built by AVG Productions.[21][23] The cost of the ride's redesign exceeded US$3 million.
In September 2008, Six Flags announced that the ride would close for a renovation.
Monster Mansion (2009-present)
The Goddard Group created the Glow in the Park Parade for several Six Flags locations in 2008.[25] Six Flags management approached designer Gary Goddard about the possibility of renewing the Monster Plantation ride at Six Flags Over Georgia. Over the fall and winter of 2008, Six Flags' Monster Plantation was completely overhauled by Goddard's company.