CURSE OF DARKASTLE: The Chilling Tale of Busch Gardens’ Legendary Lost Dark Ride and the Rise of DarKoaster

Curse of DarKastle was a stunning, unthinkable headliner that a regional, seasonal theme park had no business featuring. With a cutting-edge technology that industry experts would never have thought to live outside Florida or California, the ride brilliantly re-utilized the SCOOP ride system in a whole new way… a haunted house! The ingenious new application to a 21st century ride system made DarKastle all the more brilliant.

But to hear guests tell it, one thing the ride lacked was thrills.

Especially marketed as a headlining E-Ticket meant to put Busch Gardens Williamsburg on a national map (and thus, earning multi-hour waits), DarKastle simply didn’t have the thrilling, heart-pounding, memorable, wild experience that Spider-Man proved the ride system capable of. Aside from a few discombobulating scenes and a simulated free-fall, DarKastle was mostly just a high-tech haunted house, which left guests wondering if the SCOOP was being used to its full potential…

And if you can believe it, Busch Gardens had prepared for just such an occasion.

Plot twists

Falcon’s Creative had placed a failsafe in DarKastle: the ability to wireless swap out scenes in the ride and reprogram its motion. Super 78 Studios returned to re-animate key scenes (ratcheting up the in-your-face “thrill”) while replacing other scenes entirely. Here’s just a sampling of what changed:

• The opening scene outside of the castle’s entry was reanimated from scratch. This time around, it more closely followed Spider-Man’s lead, with the stone wolf coming alive and leaping onto the hood of the sleigh, snapping and snarling at riders during Ludwig’s ominous, disembodied invitation (now rerecorded to sound angrier and more threatening) rather than just leaping toward the sleigh as it turned;

• In the dining room and kitchen, the relaxed Ludwig seated at the far end of the table was replaced with a more aggressive, angry king who throws the kitchen table, approaches the sleigh, and appears to slice off his own ghostly head.

• The tilted hallway before the library gained a new air blast effect to startle riders… as a result, though, the three portraits there (of Ludwig and his parents) were downplayed, minimizing the story… an unfortunate sacrifice that would continue in the reformatted ride…

And most notably: 

• The entire finale was reconfigured and the ballroom scene replaced. After spinning through the fireplace, riders would now find themselves flying across the castle’s roofs lead by the Queen, who implores us to follow her beyond the castle walls as towers collapse around us. This “high action” scene feels plucked right from Spider-Man.
  
  As the castle collapses, Ludwig catches the cart and pushes us back skyward as a snake slithers from his mouth, striking toward the car. (Cue Fozzie from Muppet*Vision: “Did someone say, ‘cheap 3D tricks?!’“) Ludwig then throws the car, spinning us to face “downward” into the unchanged “dangling” scene.

Admittedly, the recast finale and re-paced ride downplayed the exchange between Ludwig and his dearly departed mother (eliminating much of their back-and-forth dialogue, too), adding thrills at the expense of the ride’s lavish ballroom scene and its quietly brooding battle and growing tension between mother and son.

However, it did give the ride the added boost it needed to please those waiting in multi-hour lines. It’s a shame both finale scenes and both paced experienced couldn’t exist. But at the very least, the swap shows just how innovative the ride system could be. And of course, that DarKastle became the DarKastle, existing unchanged from 2006 onward. The more action-packed, well-balanced ride gave guests what they wanted, and further cemented the ride as a family headliner.

Of course, we have to include a video after the ride’s 2006 update, which closely resembles the ride in its final form. See what differences you can spot, and consider which version of the ride – especially its altered second act – you prefer:

For a truly unique view, you can watch a “SCOOP” vehicle perform its programmed motion profile while parked in the ride’s vehicle maintenance bay here. Synchronized to the point of view video, this unusual perspective reveals how its relatively mild profile felt much more intense synchronized with the ride’s effects, but kept the attraction accommodating to families.

Dark Decline

Curse of DarKastle may have been a cutting-edge dark ride… but that alone can be a double-edged sword.

Think about it. DarKastle – like Spider-Man! – relied on a highly sophisticated ride system, an army of projectors and film media & screens, and complex physical effects like moving sets, fog machines, theatrical lighting, and audio. That a regional, seasonal park was willing to pony up the cost of such an ambitious ride was a notable feather in the cap of Busch Entertainment – as well it should’ve been.

But as we learned in our equally in-depth tale of the similarly-seasonal Lost Legend: TOMB RAIDER – The Ride at Kings Island, installing such elaborate and ambitious effects is only half the battle. Like adopting a dog, a dark ride’s upfront investment is just the start of a lifetime commitment to cleaning up messes and paying for care. And unfortunately, especially once attractions are no longer the hot headliners they began as and settle into supporting rules, it becomes harder to find leaders energized about paying to repair “non-essential” effects, filling fog machines, or upgrading animation.

Frankly, the ride’s fate was probably sealed when, in the midst of the Great Recession of 2009, Anheuser-Busch joined countless companies in selling off “non-core assets” and withdrawing from extraneous side gigs, selling off its Busch Entertainment division to private equity firm Blackstone. The formation of the newly-independent “SeaWorld Parks” coalesced just as the 2013 documentary film Blackfish turned the brand into a cultural lightning rod, leading to years of financial cataclysm and the reorientation of SeaWorld and Busch Gardens around roller coasters.

The days of believing SeaWorld and Busch Gardens could compete on Disney and Universal’s playing field was long gone.

Given all that, it’s really no surprise that a ride like DarKastle spent the 2010s viewed internally as more of a liability than an asset. Here was a uniquely ambitious attraction that required more staffing, more continuous investment, and more costly maintenance than any other in the parks’ chain… And unsurprisingly, as its limelight faded, so did its focus.

By the mid-2010s, Curse of DarKastle was a very different ride than the one that had opened nearly a decade earlier. Operations teams had toggled the pre-show on-and-off, experimenting with seasons where it was integrated into the queue as looping, “optional” exposition rather than a batched, dimmed, quiet experience. As a result, most guests walked right through (above), and even those who wanted to absorb the ride’s essential backstory had to fight chattering crowds to hear it.

In the ride itself, the SCOOPs’ motion profiles underwent a radical reprogramming in the 2010s, noticeably reducing the ride’s intensity and eliminating any scenes with spinning. (For example, vehicles now entered the fireplace, turned 180°, and backed up slowly in the dark to maintain the pacing needed to separate riders from the next scene). Park representatives alluded to the change, suggesting that it was to limit the spilling of souvenir cups or based on guest feedback that the ride was too disorienting. That may have been partially true. But almost certainly, it’s that replacing the ride’s motion profile with mild taps and tugs would reduce maintenance requirements on the aging ride.

The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man (backed by the billion dollar power of Universal Orlando) received a multi-million-dollar refresh in 2011 when the ride’s film elements were completely reanimated from scratch, projectors were upgraded to 4KHD digital, and the ride itself was recalibrated with a fresh ride profile. Curse of DarKastle… did not.

Instead, over the years, flickered out effects were common. Physical, moving set pieces stopped moving, and such “non-essential” elements were simply not repaired. The signature library scene went some years without the fog that sold the fireplace illusion. It was disappointing, but not unexpected. A remnant of another time, another management, and another mindset, DarKastle was at a crossroads, clearly requiring either a substantial rebirth or to be put out of its misery. And under the guidance of SeaWorld Parks, the latter seemed the inevitable path forward.

In September 2017, Curse of DarKastle closed early for the season – an unlikely move and a bad omen given that the ride was one of few indoor, heated attractions in the park to serve chilly Howl-o-Scream and Christmas Town event crowds.

It all made sense when Busch Gardens announced that a new haunted house called “Frostbite” would take place inside of DarKastle. Utilizing the castle’s built-in icy aesthetic and some of Super 78’s animation, Frostbite directed guests to step down onto the showbuilding’s floor and follow the ride’s path on foot, repurposing its physical sets and 3D screens while challenging guests not to trip over the raised bus bar that would otherwise power the SCOOPs’ movement through the building.

Even once Howl-o-Scream concluded, DarKastle did not return for 2017’s Christmas Town. Our friends at BGWFans.com reached out to the park’s Vice President of Marketing, Dan Dipiazzo, in November of that year, who confirmed that – even post-haunted house – the ride was fully in-tact and operable… but that no decision had been made about its return.

That apparently changed quickly. On January 23, 2018, the park announced via Facebook that the attraction would never re-open. The Facebook post did offer fans one last ride… in the form of a point-of-view video. Yep, without knowing it, guests’ most recent rides on DarKastle would be their last. A “lucky” 13 years after it had introduced an epic, high-tech, industry-leading dark ride based on an original IP to a seasonal park audience, Curse of DarKastle was officially closed forever.

With “Frostbite” as a prototype, the interior of DarKastle’s showbuilding would be hollowed out, becoming a permanent flex-space able to house rotating experiences like haunted houses and meet-and-greets with Santa Claus as seasonal events rolled through. Busch Gardens did allow Facebook fans to vote in a poll to decide the event facility’s name, choosing from Gartensburg Castle, NewKastle, or Oktoberfest Palaste. (NewKastle won.)

And that, it seemed, would be that.

…Until mid-2021, when rumors began to circulate that clandestinely, something was stirring in the ruins of DarKastle… and that if all went according to plan, Ludwig’s fortress would soon gain a new attraction… Read on…