wraggster
January 28th, 2018, 21:19
Busch Gardens Williamsburg has confirmed that they have decided to pull the plug on their legendary dark ride, Curse of DarKastle after being open only a little over 12 years.
Opening in 2005, Busch Gardens Williamsburg wowed the amusement industry by creating what was essentially a clone of Universal’s mind blowing Adventures of Spider-Man dark ride system, but on a fraction of the budget. Even better, the experience added a really creepy haunted house style experience to the park that it was lacking. Without question, they had managed to create one of the finest high-tech dark ride experiences in the USA outside of a Disney or Universal theme park… something they should have taken immense pride in.
Sadly, we got word that Curse of DarKastle closed down to guests at the end of the summer of 2017. The initial explanation was that the building would be used to create a new winter themed haunted walk-through maze experience for Howl-O-Scream. Ok… not a bad idea, and they left the ride system intact to do it. Soon after the ride was repurposed into a Santa meet & greet area for the Christmas Town winter festivities, but that’s when the evil rumors started, claiming that chain wide budget cuts had slashed into the attraction so much that they felt they couldn’t keep it open without a major injection of capital in order to renovate and repair everything that had broken down and wore out.
Today the park confirmed on Facebook that the Curse of DarKastle was no more, the building would be gutted and transformed into a new special events venue, leaving the park dark-ride free once again.
Opening in 2005, Busch Gardens Williamsburg wowed the amusement industry by creating what was essentially a clone of Universal’s mind blowing Adventures of Spider-Man dark ride system, but on a fraction of the budget. Even better, the experience added a really creepy haunted house style experience to the park that it was lacking. Without question, they had managed to create one of the finest high-tech dark ride experiences in the USA outside of a Disney or Universal theme park… something they should have taken immense pride in.
Sadly, we got word that Curse of DarKastle closed down to guests at the end of the summer of 2017. The initial explanation was that the building would be used to create a new winter themed haunted walk-through maze experience for Howl-O-Scream. Ok… not a bad idea, and they left the ride system intact to do it. Soon after the ride was repurposed into a Santa meet & greet area for the Christmas Town winter festivities, but that’s when the evil rumors started, claiming that chain wide budget cuts had slashed into the attraction so much that they felt they couldn’t keep it open without a major injection of capital in order to renovate and repair everything that had broken down and wore out.
Today the park confirmed on Facebook that the Curse of DarKastle was no more, the building would be gutted and transformed into a new special events venue, leaving the park dark-ride free once again.