The team behind Treasure Hunt: The Ride talks about the attraction’s success and recent upgrades
interview by Martin Palicki
A close partnership between animatronics/dark ride designer Sally Dark Rides (Sally) and design/fabrication firm Daniels Wood Land (DWL) resulted in the opening of the interactive attraction Treasure Hunt: The Ride in July 2023. Located in Cannery Row in Monterey, California, the attraction blends special effects, scenic props and media into a story-rich dark ride. Over the course of five days in May 2024, the team upgraded the attraction, based on guest feedback.
The ride has been honored with a TEA Recognition of Merit award, IAAPA Brass Ring Award, USA Today Reader’s Choice Award as well as a Golden Ticket nomination. We asked Rich Hill (Chief Creative Officer, Sally Dark Rides) and Ron Daniels (President, Daniels Wood Land) for an update on the attraction.
InPark Magazine: The attraction has been open for a year and a half. How has it been going?
Rich Hill: Our first year started off with a bang but tapered off as the busy tourism season ended. Our second year of operation has seen a sizeable increase in attendance.
Ron Daniels: People are loving it. We learned quickly that there was a desire for a longer ride experience. So we got together with the Sally team and adjusted the ride vehicle timing and added new effects. The results of that have been fantastic.
IPM: Tell us more about the changes you made.
Rich: We added 15 seconds to each of the scenes, increasing the duration from 3:45 to over 5 minutes. In each scene, we’ve added a ton of secondary show elements that help extend the primary story beats. Some of the major additions include a “Skeleton at the Wheel” animatronic character that comes to life, warning that danger is just around the corner. Additionally, our big “Kraken Attack” scene is now amplified with projection mapped tentacles extending out of the screen, and lightning bolts surround the ride car in a fantastical, thrilling moment.
Ron: We also added six 360-degree rotations of the vehicle along the track, giving guests the chance to enjoy more of the scenic elements and dive deeper into the storyline. We also better utilized the on-board audio system. In the first iteration of the ride, the audio was used for subtle sound effects, but during the update we added custom audio from the character Molina [see below] in transition areas to better set up what would happen in the next scene.
IPM: How do you plan to keep the attraction fresh and encourage repeat visits?
Ron: We have developed seasonal events that help drive repeat and new visitation. This year we created a Halloween event called Haunted Harbor on Cannery Row. During this event, the DWL crew installed a haunted overlay to rebrand the ride as Treasure Haunt: The Ride, and we added professional, live scare actors and costumed staff. The DWL shooting galleries next door also received Halloween overlays and they were rebranded as Carnival of Carnage and Dead Man’s Aim. The neighboring escape room made some modifications to become a walkthrough attraction called Pier of Fear. We bundled all four attractions into a single unlimited access ticket. It was extremely well received and provided an exciting Halloween seasonal attraction that drew guests from as far as 300 miles away. The neighboring businesses were very excited as well and expressed a desire to be part of next year’s event. Plans are now in motion to expand Haunted Harbor into a six-week event, starting on weekend evenings, and growing from there.
IPM: One of the notable elements of Treasure Hunt is that you are functioning as creative/vendor and also the operator. How has that dynamic played out since opening?
Rich: While we have had some experience with this arrangement in the past (we were partners in the Ghost Blasters ride at Mall of America for a time), Daniels Wood Land has been doing the heavy lifting from an operational standpoint. Sally Dark Rides is there for support and guidance, but the team at DWL have done an amazing job keeping the ride running like a clock. Those turnstiles keep on moving!
IPM: What have you learned from developing this project?
Ron: I learned the importance of having good partners – and I know we chose a great partner with Sally. While DWL has been in business for 26 years, we are a scenic and special effects company that has never built a ride before. By partnering with Sally we avoided a tremendous number of mistakes.
I also gained a new appreciation for how a team comes together. In the past, we have always been subcontractors on a project. For Treasure Hunt we had the role of assembling and managing different subcontractors – which was a fantastic learning experience. As we continue to work in that subcontractor role on other projects, I have a better understanding of how all these trades and services zipper together to create brilliant attractions like Treasure Hunt: The Ride. •
The story behind the Treasure Hunt
Excerpted from an article by Joe Kleiman
Guests to Treasure Hunt: The Ride are first greeted by an animatronic barker pirate and his parrot situated on a ship’s mast in the center of the Cannery Row marketplace, hawking the adventures that await inside. Once through the turnstiles, guests learn about the ride’s backstory. As the tale goes, pirate Hipólito Bouchard hid his fortune of plundered treasure hundreds of feet underground in recently discovered caverns, guarded by a kraken. Guests board an elevator, where video screens on the sides and top of the room create the illusion of being in a large elevator shaft. The elevator fails to operate and the attendant calls a maintenance mechanic to fix the problem. Seen through the overhead “windows,” the mechanic doesn’t quite accomplish the job and the elevator appears to fall hundreds of feet, crashing into the caverns below.
At this point, the far side of the elevator collapses and animatronic figures of the town drunk, Molina, and his trusted donkey can be seen in the caverns. Molina gives more of the backstory, warning guests that Bouchard’s ghost is lurking about. The queue continues through a mineshaft before arriving at the loading station. Here, guests can insert Power-up Tokens (available for an extra charge) that give them a competitive scoring advantage with the targeting system, supplied by Alterface.
Molina acts as onscreen guide throughout the ride, but inevitably, something always goes terribly wrong. In the first scene, Molina teaches guests how to fire their pistols and aim at targets. Errant shots from guests cause barrels of gunpowder to explode, creating a torrent of water projected not only on the screen but also on the floor of the room. A splash of water into the vehicle helps round out the 4D effect.
The water carries the guests to other caverns, where they are introduced to the ghost of Bouchard. Bouchard summons the kraken that has guarded the treasure for more than 200 years. Vehicles are sent down a corridor, shaped like the hull of a wrecked ship, with the animated tentacles of the kraken visible overhead, finally coming face to face with Bouchard, projected onto a mist screen. The final scene features a battle against Bouchard’s undead crew, with physical skeletons popping out from the ceiling just feet in front of guests, smoothly integrating physical props with the onscreen media.
