According to that critically-acclaimed documentary on the subject*, Sam and Max hit the road, you’ll find the following inside a tunnel of love:
-A garden of Eden scene, with the fruit and the snake and everything.
-The janitor, who apparently died while working and his skeleton is still clotching his broom.
-A scene from the B-movie classic “Revenge of the Gill Guy”.
-A dangerously exposed fuse box.
-A scene where Henry the 8th is about to watch the executionar cut his wife’s head off.
Beyond that, I have no clue. I’ve never been in one. I’ve actually never seen one in real life, actually.
OK, Eden says Love, or at least Lust. But those others?? It’s a progression that ends with a verrry bad breakup scene. I wouldn’t try that ride on a first date if you want a second
*What?! * The “Old Mill” was a Tunnel of Love?! There was nothing about that in the Ride Safety Warning! I used to… um… that is, I used to *know * a person who had to shepherd his 8-year old brother through the Kennywood Park ride numerous times. It was like a haunted house! With skeletons and stuff! This does not compute. I demand that Kennywood Park immediately pony up for extensive therapy sessions. …On behalf of this other person, of course.
Anyway, if memory serves, there was nothing either particularly romantic nor frightening about Kennywood’s Old Mill, which had obviously seen better days. If anything, it was an intellectual challenge to figure out exactly what the original intent of each vignette had been before untold decades of cumulative erosion. *“Okay, there’s a plastic bone attached to a bolt that seems to be spinning around… so presumably at one point there was an arm there that was supposed to grab at us.” * Yeah, in theory it did provide a dark place to cuddle up, but then I’m guessing that the hedges behind the Whip ride would have been just as private and a lot more sanitary. The Old Mill’s one genuinely alarming feature was the water constantly leaking into the boats themselves, plus the undoubted presence of aggressive industrial-sized Pittsburgh rats from western Pennsylvania’s Steel Epoch. At least, that’s the impression I got from my repeated visits through the ride, with my female girlfriend of appropriate age who was in no way related to me.
Doing a quick search, I learn to my disappointment that Kennywood’s Old Mill was redesigned last year, and is now known as… dear Lord… “Garfield’s Nightmare.” So presumably it’s a whole lot scarier now. I hope that Universal Press Syndicate is treating the rats well. I also like the Post-Gazette’s little jab at the residents of Garfield, PA, who of course have been waging a two-front war against East Liberty and Central Lawrenceville for several years now.
