Dark rides, bright future: How Sally Dark Rides kept afloat during the pandemic and is poised for even greater success (Courtesy of the Jacksonville Business Journal) — Since emerging from pandemic-related shutdowns, Jacksonville-based Sally Dark Rides has been going from strength to strength, winning awards and designing new attractions.
The indoor amusement park attraction designer was on the precipice during the height of Covid-19 as their life-blood — amusement park operators — remained shuttered with uncertainty about reopening and finances. Future business deals were put on hold, and several existing contracts were canceled.
But as time wore on, dedication persisted and a few business deals went their way, Sally was able to stay afloat during turbulent times. It has since emerged even stronger.
“It was a scary time,” Sally’s President John Wood told the Business Journal recently. “We had huge projects on the books [in 2020] and plans for several rides. Then, it all went away.”
Remembering back to early March 2020, Wood said several amusement park operators and industry insiders were in Los Angeles to work on a deal and show off one of Sally’s most prestigious rides, the 2017 Justice League dark ride at Six Flags Magic Mountain. He said his group were the last through Disney Land before they shuttered their gates and the team wss even denied entry into Six Flags due to their large international group.
Then silence.
“I came in the office just about every day [during the pandemic] in hopes that the phone would ring,” Wood said. “We pursued every opportunity that came through the door.”
Fortunately, one amusement park in Waterloo, Iowa, decided to continue with its contract, helping Sally stay afloat in 2021-2022. The Waterloo ride, Volkanu: Quest for the Golden Idol, opened in 2022 and was Sally’s first new attraction since 2020. The dearth of new rides in 2020-2022 was an anomaly for the company that was used to creating between three and four attractions annually.
“I always felt like we had our hands tied to a certain degree during … we knew what parks were going through,” Wood said.
Fortunately, more work began flowing into Sally throughout 2022. But the company wasn’t out of the woods yet. To ensure stability, Sally was forced to take on smaller-scale projects and attraction types they have moved away from over the years. Wood said there were jobs they took on simply because they needed the work.
“[One of the rides completed in 2023] we took on because we were slow, and at the peak of the pandemic, we needed to keep our people busy even though it was not a profitable decision,” Wood said. “It was simply a business decision. Luckily we able to do that work and keep our skills honed.”
One of the most important decisions to take on the project was for visibility. Sally considered it an asset few of its competitors were able to accomplish: showing off newly created and developed attractions during the pandemic.
Building off a solid base
Sally was firing on all cylinders as it ended 2019. The company had just earned its third Thea, an industry award that recognizes innovation, for a Sesame Street attraction constructed in Spain.
It was the first time Sally worked directly with Jim Henson Studios for a project and it was also the first time that Sesame Street characters in CGI were used.
The near six-minute long dark ride attraction is housed in a 14,000-square-foot building and features a 11 minute pre-show, the first of its size created by Sally.
“Dark rides” is an industry term of art that refers to attractions that are built inside a building, as compared to something like a traditional outdoor roller coaster.
For the Spanish amuseument park, the company created an attraction in which riders help Sesame Street’s Grover solve the mystery of a missing cookie.
This ride, VP of Marketing Lauren Weaver said, was the pinnacle of everything the company has been creating since it was founded in 1978 in a Jacksonville garage.
The ride was such a success, the PortAventura World theme park in Spain saw a 50% increase in ticket sales related to the newest attraction.
But even before Sesame Street, Sally was on the upswing throughout the 2010s.
In 2015, the company debuted its Justice League attraction to the first of seven Six Flags parks throughout the country. Although it wasn’t their first third-party IP, it certainly was their largest and most successful since working on a Scooby-Doo ride in the early 2000s.
Returning to growth
The success of Sesame Street didn’t go unnoticed to PortAventura when the park resume activities and began looking for new attractions.
Sally was one of their first calls to sign a deal for what would become Sally’s first actually dark, dark ride in 2023.
Sally partnered with Sony to develop a ride based on their video game and movie franchise, Uncharted. Much like Sesame Street, Uncharted built upon years of innovation, including new tips and tricks learned a long the way.
“Our reputation coming out of the pandemic was in a good spot,” Wood said. “We knew our business would bounce back. We just had to survive a few years and then eventually we would start receiving calls again.”
Since Volkanu in 2022, the company has opened three rides, the Haunted Hotel in Maine, Uncharted in Spain and Treasure Hunt in California.
Both the Haunted Hotel and Treasure Hunt opened in small, regional parks but has given the theme parks visibility as both rides made a top 10 list of new attractions from USA Today.
“Regional parks are our bread and butter,” Weaver said.
She added that the company takes pride in its ability to provide smaller or regional parks with attractions similiar to those that places like Disney and Universal Studios have.
Looking to the future
In the wake of those successes, the company isn’t resting on its laurels.
Sally celebrated its first opening of 2024 in Las Vegas on March 1 with the opening of a SpongeBob SquarePants attraction in Circus Circus.
The $6 million “SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival Ride” attraction was inspired by Nickelodeon’s hit animated series.
The immersive ride utilizes vibrant sets, special effects, animatronics and vivid integrated projections to bring Bikini Bottom and its characters to life. SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival Ride begins when Mr. Krabs invites guests to play his ride-through carnival midway games, prompting his enemy Plankton to devise an evil plan to steal the Krabby Patty secret formula.
Each vehicle seats five people, each of whom will experience the sensory-engaging journey through SpongeBob’s world.
“We couldn’t be more excited about our collaboration with Circus Circus Las Vegas to bring the first-ever interactive SpongeBob SquarePants dark ride to life,” said Marie Marks, SVP, Themed Entertainment, Paramount.