Sally Dark Rides brings controlled chaos to the Vegas Strip
by Joe Kleiman
Las Vegas is a city integrated with water. It was founded because of the Las Vegas Springs and is kept alive by the Colorado River. Throughout its history, Las Vegas resorts have been themed to tropical islands, featured live sea creatures, sported giant fountains, and even presented two competing pirate stunt shows at two different properties (simultaneously). Now, Vegas visitors can dive into a new water-themed adventure at a carnival taking place under the sea, a collaboration between Sally Dark Rides, Paramount Location-Based Entertainment & Experiences, Nickelodeon, and Circus Circus Las Vegas.
SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival Ride is a $6 million interactive dark ride located at the Circus Circus Resort, separate from the existing Adventuredome theme park and carnival midway. The attraction’s storyline begins in the queue where it’s discovered that instead of balls and rings needed to play carnival games, crates have arrived with ingredients for the mysterious “Krabby Patty” burger. Undeterred, SpongeBob and Patrick set out to make the carnival a hit, substituting Krabby Patty ingredients at each of the game stations. Along for the ride is Plankton, SpongeBob’s archnemesis, in his never-ending quest to obtain the Krabby Patty formula.
John Wood, Sally Chairman and President, and Rich Hill, the company’s Chief Creative Officer, both integral to the attraction’s development, shared with InPark seven secrets behind the ground-breaking new attraction.
1. For a high level of authenticity, the original voice actors reprised their roles from the hit television show.
Creating a successful SpongeBob attraction, especially one that would be the first dark ride for the franchise, required remaining faithful to the brand – its characters, stylizations, and humor. According to Hill, “We used the five core characters in the attraction, and each character was voiced by the original talent. That was very important to me, being a fan of the show.”
The first of those characters appears outside the attraction. An animatronic Mr. Krabs, owner of the Krusty Krab restaurant, acts as barker, inviting passersby into the carnival to play various games of chance. Inside the attraction, guests encounter Squidward, Plankton, Patrick, and SpongeBob. All but Patrick appear in both on-screen media and as animatronic figures.
“We’ve become experts at handling IP-based attractions,” says Wood. “We had an excellent amount of respect in our working relationship with Paramount and Nickelodeon on this attraction. They reviewed all the scripts and character renditions. Our design team worked closely with them to ensure authenticity and IP compliance.”
“The partnership and collaboration we shared with Sally Dark Rides and Circus Circus has been truly remarkable,” said Marie Marks, SVP, Themed Entertainment, Paramount. “From the very beginning we knew we were creating something special.”
2. Scents of cotton candy and grilled meats envelop guests during the ride.
“Our first major integration of scent into an attraction was thirty years ago at the Six Flags Power Plant in Baltimore,” shares Wood. “We delivered twenty different smells in the Power Plant’s Sensorium 4D theater. Scent can be a powerful addition. People aren’t expecting it, but they notice it and they talk about it.” At SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival Ride the vehicles pass a cotton candy machine and a grill, with the appropriate smells emanating.
Since the attraction is designed to be built in multiple locations (including one scheduled to open later in 2024 at Land of Legends in Antalya, Türkiye) there’s also opportunity for more immersive tweaks to the attraction. SpongeBob and Squidward animatronics will include eye movement to track the vehicle. “This is going to be an important feature when they’re delivering their lines – they’ll be speaking directly to you, instead of just looking in one direction like a mannequin,” says Hill.
3. The attraction utilizes a carnival Zapper in order to more closely align with the attraction story.
The ride is very much story driven, and an objective for the designers was to match storytelling with gameplay. “The game is fun, but it doesn’t overpower the story, and vice versa,” says Hill. Instead of utilizing a gun, Sally opted to use a wand-like device as a carnival game “Zapper,” emphasizing the attraction’s story as a series of games, rather than as a shooting gallery. “We first used the wand as a ‘Clue Collector’ for our Sesame Street attraction at PortAventura World,” says Wood. “We like it because it’s simplistic and feels like a TV or video game controller. There’s no finger fatigue on the trigger and it features a robust and reliable button. Placing the story in the carnival game setting made the connection deeper and more enjoyable to create.
4. It’s not just a dark ride, it’s a motion simulator too!
Each of the game stations utilize 4K laser projectors to generate the game imagery. During each game, Plankton appears on screen in an attempt to steal each ingredient. Towards the end, an animatronic Plankton appears with a fully completed Krabby Patty above his head, held in place by a robotic arm.
At this point, the attraction pivots from carnival games to an immersive simulator-based chase sequence as SpongeBob, Patrick, and the guests pursue Plankton through the undersea community of Bikini Bottom to his laboratory lair. “We use a cylindrical LED screen for the chase sequence, which we can turn completely black after the segment is completed,” says Hill. “We also utilize side-to-side motion in the vehicle and supplemental in-car audio with bass rumbles and hits. It makes for an exciting finale.”
5. In order to make a more attractive ocean floor, there’s no track for the ride.
SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival Ride uses trackless ride vehicles for several reasons. “We’ve been using trackless vehicles for over twenty years,” says Wood. “Trackless is smarter and more flexible.” Vehicles are able to cross over a previously traversed path, something that could not be done on a tracked course, and are able to pause in one space and linger, rather than continuously move. This allows for additional scenes to be integrated into a compact space, extending the length of the ride.
“Aesthetics also played a key role,” explains Hill. “It was important for the ride floor to look like a sandy beach bottom. A track would take that out of the experience, and out of Bikini Bottom!”
6. During gameplay, virtual food elements follow the physics of real food.
The different Krabby Patty ingredients guests use to play each of the carnival games do not move on the screens in a straight line. “It’s a little bit of a different way to approach gameplay,” points out Hill. “In order to achieve the proper arc trajectories in the game, we had to assign weight and gravity to items being thrown at targets. For example, when tossing tomatoes, you have to aim higher because they weigh more. Lighter elements like buns and onions act differently in the game engine.”
7. The ride includes Easter eggs everywhere, including SpongeBob lore and insider nods to Vegas and the production team.
Easter eggs are found throughout the attraction, in both gaming elements and physical props. SpongeBob’s pet snail Gary makes a surprise appearance in each of the games, and those who successfully hit him receive a bonus powerup. “Hitting a hidden Gary doubles your points for ten seconds,” says Hill.
One of Hill’s favorite Easter eggs plays on the fact that creator Stephen Hillenburg based the SpongeBob show on Ween’s album The Mollusk. “Not many people know that,” says Hill. “We honor that in the ring toss game, where there’s a life preserver with ‘The Mollusk’ written on it.”
The carnival’s ticket booth is loaded with Easter eggs that only the designers would recognize. A calendar on the wall is full of appointments with various members of the design and installation team. The wall also features an Employee of the Month banner with a SpongeBob pin attached. “I purchased it from a guy selling pins on Fremont Street,” says Hill. “It’s a small piece of Vegas in the attraction.”
One Easter egg that is readily visible, but may not be recognized by even die-hard fans, is the final scene where the scores for each guest are revealed. In the style of the show, which often uses cards to tell the passage of time, the screen begins with a card that says “11 minutes later.” It’s the ultimate sarcastic SpongeBob ending to a seven-minute ride. •
The lighting secrets of SpongeBob’s dark ride
Principal, Lightswitch.
Photo by Lightswitch
For Lightswitch’s Warren Kong, lighting designer for SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival Ride, lighting and color became both a pleasure and a challenge.
Throughout the ride, various shades of light were used to illuminate posters along the wall, creating not only a sense of being underwater, but giving the posters a three-dimensional, almost animated feel. “We switch between dull colors and vibrant colors, and, as we do that,” Kong shares, “it makes the whole poster come alive.”
Kong points out one particular poster effect that he’s proud of. “It’s kind of a hypnosis effect with Gary. When we add a little bit of red to it, his eyes just glow and they pierce into you, but when we switch to the dull color, it looks like Gary has moved farther back, which is really fun. We used color and light to really make the attraction come alive.”
One of the challenges Kong encountered involved canopies above the game stations, hiding the 4K projection housings. Typically, an attraction such as this would utilize close- proximity lighting around the sets, but much of the lighting was ceiling-mounted, which often involves brighter output due to the distance.
To add directed illumination close to the screens, Kong employed fixtures from Gantom Lighting, a manufacturer of special-effects lighting equipment catering to the themed attraction industry. Gantom specializes in illumination of low-light and space-constrained environments where traditional theatrical luminaires aren’t suitable.
“The flexibility of the Gantom fixtures allowed us to add lights on site within the set to get the perfect angle, while keeping those fixtures out of view of the riders,” says Kong.
