Six Flags Over Georgia’s Monster Mansion Ride (March 11, 1981)
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- Опубликовано: 5 сен 2024
- 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.
Since I was like 11-14 (I'm 24 now) I was obsessed with this dark ride and its history and I would always read comments about the bird that would fly out at passengers and I was always bummed that there was no footage of it. My only knowledge was of its concept art- so seeing what it actually looked like and how it moved makes me immensely happy! This is awesome
I like both of the rides that were housed in this building, Tales of the Okefenokee was such a fever dream of a ride which made it charming, the monster plantations ride music and whole concept is so enjoyable and such a gem to find at a six flags park, kinda a bummer that six flags doesn’t know how to properly maintain their original dark rides but at least they still give some attention to them
Wow, what a great video! Footage of that creepy bird creature attacking the boats (start of the video) is very rare as it was removed by 1985. I’ve been searching RUclips for years for the Monster Plantation TV commercial from 1981-hopefully it will show up one day.
By 1995 almost half of the original monsters were removed, too bad that in the 2009 revamp we only got 5 new ones which only one wasn’t used for the marsh
This is gold. Thanks for sharing!
This use to scare us
Those baby monster animatronics in the prams don’t work like they used to.
They print will soon there slowly updating all the animatronics with new fur and such
@@joshuacheshire5859 The baby monsters in their prams are supposed to rock back and forth while one sucks on a bottle of milk and the other a pacifier. The milk bottle is supposed to splash with fake milk inside as he drinks from it. They don’t do that anymore. Neither does the nanny monster rock them.
@@SplashSurfer216 she got a new outift recently
@@joshuacheshire5859 that’s just cosmetic. A lot of things they either changed unnecessarily like Mizzy Scarlett, or didn’t fix well. The Nanny is supposed to move her hand and rock the pram as the baby monster drinks his milk and a nearby one rocks back and forth while sucking on a pacifier. The Boat Eater also has a broken effect where it’s supposed to lean towards you as you approach it’s mouth. There’s even some you can’t hear properly like the mother monster comforting her little one who is wary of the humans visiting.
@@SplashSurfer216 maybe they get to fixing those eventually cause the company kinkaid character company is doing a great job
Why is it being referred to as monster mansion here? Wasn’t it called monster plantation until 2009?
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. He probably just made a mistake.
I noticed that too just goes to show how pointless changing the name was since they mean basically the same thing.
@@bloodaonadeline8346well plantations are associated with slavery so that probably why they changed it
The ride mentions it as a mansion throughout most of the ride so it’s a misunderstanding
@@SlushysSecret if anything it’s a meant to be mansion and a former plantation.