The Titanic. At the time, an unfathomable tragedy. Today, we have *multiple *Titanic: The Rides, Titanic: The Experience, numerous Titanic movies and countless other toys, trinkets, figurines, and other novelty items that, were it not 100 years later and endlessly romanticized, grotesque exploitations of an event that claimed the lives of over 1500 people.
So, 100 years from now, are we going to have 9/11: The Ride, complete with simulated collapsing World Trade Center towers, where you can “jump” out of a window or ride the 102nd floor down to the ground? Will we have an epic movie featuring Guy LeHandsome romancing Young Starlett as a replica Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building literally collapses around them?
Back when flight simulator programs were kind of new for PCs, a lot of us had absurd fun flying our airplanes into the ground, into buildings, into bridges, and so on. It was fun to try to fly under low bridges…and not always make it.
Flight sim programs, these days, have been sanitized (I’m told) and you can’t do a suicide smash into the Chrysler Building, no matter how much you might want to.
And, yeah, a drama set against these tragedies will get made eventually. Titanic and Pearl Harbor, right?
The long-gone Freedomland theme park in the Bronx in the early 1960s had quite a few disaster attractions. In the San Francisco Earthquake Ride you could have fun experiencing the horrors of that 1906 event. You could also help put out the Chicago Fire; I and my brothers got to man the hand-pump for the fire truck once. (There was also a jolly Tornado ride in the New Orleans section, not to mention a Civil War ride!)
The Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds, London features such lovely exhibits as Charles Manson, Guy Fawkes, and a freshly beheaded Marie Antoinette.
Precisely what I came in to post.
In addition, Cornelius Vanderbuilt Wood, the guy responsible for building Disneyland, Freedomland, and New England’s Pleasure Island, put a “Wreck of the Hesperus” ride at the latter. Not to mention a “Moby Dick” cruise*.
Heck, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean celebrates invasion, torture, and rape, arguably. And it’s still going strong at multiple locations.
*You used tio be able to get “Pirate’s Hook” hands at the end of the Pirates of the Casrtibbean ride. Maybe they could’ve sold Peg Legs at the Moby Dick ride.
I was severely disappointed at the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s, I have to admit. The Chamber of Horrors at Louis Tussaud’s* Wax Museum in Atlantic City used to be a darkened corridor opening onto scenes of a man suspended by a “Turkish Hook” through his belly, a settler being scalped in his cabin by an American Indian, People in Torture devices, and the like.
When I finally got to Madame Tussaud’s in London, it was a brightly-lit room that showed tweedy-looking murderers discreetly handcuffed and looking inoffensive. Maybe to the British, horror is your ordinary-looking neighbor who could conceivably kill people.
*Louis was Marie’s great grandson, and thus came by his name honestly, but he was clearly cruising on his more famous relative’s rep.
Freedomland also had a Buccaneers ride that probably influenced the ones by Disney.
Freedomland was a very dangerous place. Little Old New York featured a daylight robbery of the bank, and the Stagecoach Ride on the Great Plains ended with an attack by outlaws. The Old Southwest also featured a gunfight on the main street. On the Northwest Trappers ride, you were attacked by Indians. On the Civil War ride you rode through a cannon crossfire between the Union and Confederate lines, and on the Buccaneers Ride you sailed through another one between two ships. There was a Cavalry Shooting Gallery on the Great Plains and a Pirate Gun Gallery in New Orleans. There were at least 8 attractions where you could either get shot at, or shoot at something, in addition to the Chicago Fire, San Francisco Earthquake, and Tornado disasters.
At Cedar Point, they had Earthquake and Pirate rides and I always loved them. They were pretty cheesy compared to the ghost and pirate rides at Disney World but I love them, still.
The Earthquake ride was based on the San Francisco earthquake. You rode in a little four-person car while buildings fell down around you. It was no Wizarding World, I can tell you.
The Pirate ride was the same deal, only you saw piratical scenes, including one where you ride past “Tortuga” and another where you’re careening around in your little boat between two massive sailing ships that were shooting at each other. In the end, you “sank” and there was a massive octopus trying to snatch you.
They were all done in black light with fluorescent paint. Both rides were decommissioned years ago, but I keep hoping they’ll bring in something to replace them.
There’s also a train that runs through the park and on the South-going line, there’s a bunch of tableaux of animated skeletons. It involves a surprising amount of gun fire. Skeletons lead exciting lives. And there was also a steam boat ride that featured pioneers fighting the Indians. Scalps were flying! (“Better turn back if you want to keep your hair…”)
So, yeah, I fully expect that 9/11 will be a major entertainment source in another hundred years, including falling towers and Flight 93 rollercoasters. It’s inevitable.
I visited Freedomland three times as a kid, and was sorry that it closed. Like most of Cornelius Wood’s projects, it didn’t last long. Pleasure Island was one of the longest-lived, staying open for a decade north of Boston (the exit for it on route 129 is still marked “PLeasure Island Road”)
A lot of bits from Pleasure Island and Freedomland made their way to other amusement parks, particularly Lake George in NY and Clark’s Trading Postr in NH.
I just want to point out that this isn’t hyperbole on my part. The ride does feature pirates invading a town, dunking the mayor (who’s tied up) into the town well to persuade him to open the town treasury (as he’s lifted out, water squirts from his mouth). We also get scenes of pirates chasing after the town’s women, with, for a humorous turn, an overweight woman chasing one of the pirates. There are also plenty of scenes of cannons firing and gun- and sword-battles.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been on the PotC ride in both Disneyland CA* and in Florida, and liked it. There’s a totality of vision and attention to detail in Disney that makes it all fascinating. But I also realized that we were seeing a deodorized version of very unpleasant business.
*Just before the original PotC opened, they did a special Wonderful World of Disney show about how it was conceived, designed, and built. It not only filled a Sunday, it also functioned as an hour-long commercial for the ride (and for Disneyland itself). Ol’ Walt knew how to sell his stuff. One of his promos (not this one.IIRC) won an award for good TV.
You rode in what was supposed to be a war correspondents’ wagon between the enemy lines. My brochure says “You pass a blockhouse, a derailed train, a tentcamp, and burning houses. Suddenly you’re trapped by cannon cross-fire; blue and gray are slugging it out-and you’re caught in the middle! But you come through unscathed. You cross over a pontoon bridge, and drive past the house where General Lee shook hands with General Grant, to bring America’s most momentous war to an end.”
A century from now there may well be an amusement park ride re-creating Desert Storm.
After the place closed, I and my brothers used to sneak in and roam around the deserted park. We walked along the dry course of the Northwest Trappers ride, and went inside the Casa Loca (which was mostly intact) and the Mine Caverns ride (although the latter was mostly empty). Once we heard guard dogs barking in the distance and high-tailed it; we never went back after that.
Those were actually the San Francisco Earthquake and Buccaneers rides from Freedomland. After Freedomland closed, they moved those two attractions to Cedar Point.
My favorite tourist attraction lore is that, for something like a century, a scary mummy hung in a thrill museum in Niagara Falls as part of a “freak” exhibit - until it was discovered that the mummy used to scare the kiddies was, in fact, the actual mummy of the Egyptian king Ramses I!
He was repatriated from fun house of horror attraction, to Egyptian museum exhibit.
"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains … "
That’s a generous explanation. You might also say that Madame Tussaud’s is a shonky tourist trap that long since abandoned any showmanship more sophisticated than “put it in a costume and stand it vaguely upright”. After all, no-one’s going to visit twice anyhow.
Speaking of London tourist trap’s, the London Dungeon is - as you would guess - dedicated to the gorier side of the capital’s history. Which is fine, generally, but the part that stuck in my craw was the Jack the Ripper section, in which the brutal murder of five women was seen as nothing more than the basis of entertainment. An approach not so different to that of the “medieval torture” bit earlier, but because they gave the names and a potted history of each of the Ripper’s victims the sense of dignity being trampled on was palpable and frankly distasteful.
There currently is what is essentially a tornado ride at Universal Orlando. You stand in an observation area why a tornado does nasty things to a small town.
