Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk to update Haunted Castle dark ride

The Haunted Castle at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk will close Aug. 23 for a major overhaul that will nearly double the size of the 36-year-old dark ride.

“That ride is in severe need of an update,” commented Terrauh Barrett on Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s official Facebook page.

(Cast your vote after the jump on the name of the new haunted dark ride.)

The new two-story attraction, which will expand under the boardwalk, reopens in June 2010.

Concept art shows a sequence of new scenes:

* A wine cellar overrun by drunken skeletons

* A scary rabbit stewing in a smoldering caldron

* A ghoul popping out of a coffin

* A crazed king in a haunted mirror

* An executioner manning a guillotine

Boardwalk officials are still trying to determine the gore level of the updated family attraction and plan to include existing elements of the 1970s-era Haunted Castle as a nostalgic nod in the new ride.

“It was a great make-out ride,” wrote Tami Smith Donnelly on the SCBB Facebook page.

Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk asked its more than 30,000 Facebook fans to vote whether to keep or change the Haunted Castle name. So far, the fans seem split on the name. A few fans suggestions: Creep-Out, Mayhem Manor, Dungeon of Darkness.

VOTE: Should Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk change the name of the updated Haunted Castle dark ride?

Find the latest amusement and theme park news at the Los Angeles Times Funland blog: www.latimes.com/funland. Follow Funland on Twitter and Facebook.

— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times staff writer

Images: Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 3:36 pm by Brady MacDonald and is filed under California, California's Central Coast, Family & Kids, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, Theme Parks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.