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Dark Ride Sunday

My girlfriend just took me for a nice day trip to the ocean. Or oceans, would be more specific. Well beaches, same ocean. Lol anyway...

We headed down to Ocean City, Maryland first, to visit Trimper's Haunted House. This dark ride has been here on the boardwalk for a long time, since 1964! I think the first time I rode it was in 1991.

Throughout the years I kinda laughed at the Haunted House, thinking it was something strange and old, a relic of the '70s or '80s! But today, that is precisely what makes these two rides so special! They are lovingly maintained for generations and remain a testament to how much fun these family-friendly dark rides are!

Inside the House one of the props turned out to be a human who scared the crap out of both of us. After that, T was done, eyes pulled down behind her baseball cap.

One thing I loved about this place was that it had it's own gift shop, called Ghoulish Things. This place was crammed with cool stuff. 

Next, we headed up north about an hour to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware for Funland's Haunted Mansion. Not quite as old as Trimper's, the Funland dark ride has been here since 1979.

The Mansion is closing for next summer as it goes through renovations, so the line was extraordinarily long. It took us nearly an hour to get to the front, but that wasn't much of a problem. The evening weather was perfect, the people were friendly and talkative, and here's the best thing about this line: hardly anyone had their face buried in their phone! People were being personable and looking around, enjoying the moment. It was quite rewarding of an experience. 

Getting to the ride, which unlike the Trimper's Haunted House, has an over-hanging cart (which I think is one of the main changes the Mansion will replace) and looks cool as hell. Apparently replacement parts for the track are getting nigh-impossible to find, so they will rebuild it with a more standard ground track.

T once again was scared as soon as it got dark, burying her head in my arm with every noise. Me, I was having a blast. I felt like a kid again, in a timeless world without the craziness of the world out there... Just me and my scares. 


Both rides were a lot of fun. With Halloween less than 60 days away, I was ready for this. T and I had a perfect little day trip. And I was grateful to see the Haunted Mansion for the first time before it is renovated into whatever else it may become. I was happy that I got to see it in its original (for the most part) form. 

There's a part of me that's really sad that the Haunted Mansion is being redone. One of the best reasons these rides have survived is the nostalgia they are dripping with from generation to generation. But I was happy to have shared these rides with so many people today, and over the decades! And here's to whatever comes next!

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