When Sally Corporation opened its newest spectacular interactive dark ride, Challenge of Tutankhamon, this past May at Six Flags Belgium, praise came from park visitors, media and industry insiders alike. For the team that comprises The Great American Dark Ride Company® it was the culmination of many years of hard work, experimentation, creative leaps, difficult learning curves, a series of ever-bigger challenges, and dreams: Dreams that began twenty-six years ago, when the company now known as Sally Corporation was founded in a garage by three people named John.

It sounds like a tall tale, but it’s true.

John Rob Holland, a dentist with an undergraduate degree in engineering, had created a talking head for a presentation while in dental school. The head sat in his Jacksonville garage, gathering dust, until one day a friend, John Fox, asked about the head. The idea that talking mannequins would make great retail marketing tools took shape.

Being young and fearless, the first two Johns decided this was worth pursuing and persuaded a third friend, John Wood, to leave his position with a well-established and financially secure company to join the fledgling venture as sales manager. “I did question my wisdom at times,” Wood says, “I didn’t draw a paycheck for nine months.” Today, John Wood is chairman and CEO of Sally Corporation, and there are no regrets.

Named for one of Holland’s classmates whose likeness was used for the company’s first talking head, Sally Industries incorporated in 1977. Sally’s entrepreneurial beginnings amounted to five moving, talking mannequin prototypes. Soon the group moved out of the garage, into a small building that offered real offices and limited manufacturing space. “A year later, we discovered the IAAPA convention and realized that entertainment was a lot more fun than decorating retail windows,” says Wood.

During the first few years, John Wood took to the road, driving thousands of miles to call on prospective clients—usually accompanied by a full-size animatronic character, human or animal, sitting in the front seat: “They certainly got me noticed,” he laughs. They also brought in business. The fledgling company built a number of human characters, including several Sallys and Santas, several Darth Vader-type extra-terrestrials, Buster and Tige for the Brown Shoe Company, even Ernie the Keebler elf. “We also made an Elvis figure in those early days, and a few other famous personalities, but mostly we created generic robots that could talk about anything,” says Wood.

The company continued in this manner for the next three years, achieving success in the retail market; and in the highly specialized market of dental offices with a sweet-faced tooth fairy who would “magically” appear in a mirror and teach children about good dental health. She was a hit.

And then came Chuck E.

As the ’80s began so did the popular family restaurant/entertainment center concept with its animatronic characters and bands. As the Chuck E. Cheese chain exploded across the country, the door opened and Sally seized the opportunity.

“The demand for animatronics from people who wanted to open similar restaurants, with pizza, games and animated bands, led us to create a variety of musical shows for clients,” Wood says. By the end of 1981, design and production were underway for a riverboat-themed show featuring Mark Twain and Daniel and the Dixie Diggers, a five-hound dog character band who told tall tales and played great Dixieland jazz. The company moved to a larger facility to accommodate the need for more manufacturing space, and brought Jan Sherman on board as creative director to write, direct and produce the shows. She has scripted and produced the soundtracks for Sally’s characters, shows and dark rides ever since.

“We used live musicians and recorded each and every piece of music used in these shows, so it didn’t sound ‘canned,’” Sherman says. “The jokes were mostly pretty corny, and frequently I’d keep an ad-lib in; this gave the shows a presence and spontaneity that people really seemed to enjoy.”

The most frustrating part of the show production process back then was programming the characters. “Our programming system in those early days allowed for no errors,” explains David Jones, chief programmer. “Each group of programming signals went directly onto one track of an eight-track audio tape. “You couldn’t stop and start or fix individual movements…each one affected everything else. So we would have a group of people, each trying to program three or four motions at a time, perfectly, for the duration of the show segment, usually around five minutes.” If one person made an error, the whole process had to be started over, with everyone having to reprogram their characters.

“We worked through the night on many occasions to make sure the characters performed as well as, or better than, any other piano-playing or guitar-strumming critters out there,” recalls Sherman. “Today, with our computerized programming, we can fix any little twitch at any point in a couple of seconds.”

The long hours paid off, because Daniel and the Dixie Diggers were followed by Gwen and the Magical Music Makers (otherwise known as The Dragon Show.), Bubba Bear and the Badland Band, Billy Jo and the Bluegrass Bears, and Ursula and the Oompapas. These fun-filled shows entertained (and in many cases are still entertaining) audiences at three Family Entertainment chains across the US, a resort in Hokkaido, Japan, and several amusement parks, including Adventureland, Riverside Park, Hersheypark, Dutch Wonderland and Yongin Farmland, now Everland, in South Korea.

During this time period, John Fox returned to his former career as a building contractor and John Wood played an ever-increasing role in the management of the company. In 1985, John Rob Holland, who had split his time between his dental practice and Sally decided to focus full-time on dentistry.

At this point, Sally Corporation President Howard Kelley, who had served on the board of directors for several years, joined the company. A graduate of the Harvard School of Business, Kelley brought with him extensive business and management expertise gained during twenty-five years in broadcasting. At the time he made the move into this very different branch of the entertainment and information industry, Kelley was vice-president and general manager for Channel 12 WTLV (NBC) in Jacksonville.

Also in 1985, Sally produced most of the animatronics for the short-lived Six Flags Power Plant, an indoor theme park, in Baltimore. This project allowed the company to expand their skills in such areas as set design, scenery design and production, special effects, complex animation and larger show elements.

These skills were soon utilized when Sally acquired the rights to the much-loved Care Bear characters, creating a musical/story show featuring six Care Bears who drove, slid, appeared and disappeared in and around their multi-story cloud castle. “The first show went to Jakarta,” notes Sherman, “where they were called honey bears, since no one knew what a Care Bear was.” The second became a big attraction for the youngest visitors at Dorney Park.

Into the Dark Side…

“We realized we needed to increase our services, to encompass the many art forms required for an effective show or ride attraction in today’s theme parks,” Wood recalls. Consequently, in 1985, the company expanded their facilities to incorporate a scenic division and examined the possibilities of designing and building a dark ride.

Dark rides seemed like the next logical avenue for Sally Corporation to pursue. There was a huge gap in the industry between the high-quality, story-based rides at the Disney parks and the self-contained animatronic shows in the smaller markets. Wood wanted to create something new: a highly themed, interactive dark ride with a strong story line that was affordable and interesting enough to foster repeat business. He set his sights on the original Ghostbusters property and, after much negotiation, Sally obtained the rights to create a Ghostbusters dark ride. A multi-million dollar concept featuring the familiar characters and storylines was developed, and a model was built and shown at IAAPA in 1986. But no one bought the ride. “We were ten or fifteen years ahead of our time,” Wood recalls with a smile. “I still think it’s the finest ride that has ever been designed and not built.”

Even though Ghostbusters was never built, it was the forerunner of Sally’s current dark rides, and began the process of the company’s transformation from being principally an animatronics company to becoming a full service dark ride company. Howard Kelley spearheaded efforts to establish Sally in overseas markets hungry for “Disney like” attractions they could not create in-house. “This new thrust brought us several dark ride redevelopment projects,” explains Wood. “Beginning with Around the World In 80 Days at Alton Towers in England, and The Mine of Lost Souls at Canobie Lake.” The company also did significant work on E.T.’s Adventure at Universal Studios Florida. This new direction also introduced the company to the world of Haunted Attractions with a contract to provide some “frightful” characters for Lagoon Amusement Park

The Sally designers discovered that all haunts are not created equal: “We found there are definite differences between characters and scenarios in different parts of the world,” says Wood. “In 1987, we were hired to handle a big job in Asia; a Korean Haunted House with no ‘traditional’ ghosts or characters as we know them. No Dracula or Frankenstein. There were Tao ghosts, monk ghosts and a King of Hell. This was a whole different genre of villains I’d never heard of. And, of course, the clients had never heard of Frankenstein.”

A brisk business in retail, trade show and corporate characters continued, with more than a dozen Elsie the Cow characters built for Borden’s over a three or four year span; each with her own barn and travel trailer. A sizable contract with FAO Schwarz saw Sally’s animatronic ‘stuffed’ animals appear in the toy stores throughout the country; and Cardi's, a major furniture store in New England, became home to a self-contained musical show featuring an old-timey craftsman, a singing toolbox, fiddle-playing mice, and a miniature pop-out oompa band.

Museums also started contacting Sally, looking for high quality and total realism. This encouraged the company to expand and hire ever more experienced sculptors and artists. Today, Sally’s work can be seen in dozens of museums and historical attractions in such diverse locations as the Akshardham Cultural Center in Gujarat, India; Tower Bridge, London, England; The Costa Rica Children’s Museum; and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library and Museum in Austin, Texas, where a lifelike LBJ regales visitors with humorous anecdotes.

In 1990, “magic” and realism came together in a unique stage show, The Legend of Little Snail, a story that combines American Indian legends with a life lesson. The show was created for Western Village, a theme park in Japan. “Along with the theater presentation,” says Wood, “we provided half a dozen famous movie actors to ‘people’ various buildings in the old-west style town.” The Legend of Little Snail was the first of many Sally projects in Japan.

The following year, Sally was given the opportunity to design and build a major Haunted Castle type dark ride for Korakuen Park, part of the Tokyo Dome complex in the center of Tokyo. “This was what we had been working toward, Sally’s first complete ‘drawing-board to installation’ dark ride,” explains Wood. “The traditional Japanese underworld creatures and evildoers are different from ours, so there was a learning curve, which our design team took in stride.” From the drawing boards Zombie Paradise became an exciting, very scary ride adventure with a strong storyline. It contains 57 animatronic figures, extensively detailed sets and scenery plus special effects. “We used a ride system from Togo with great-looking hearse-style vehicles, and the response was great,” recalls Wood. “It’s still a very popular ride.”

Woozland, a park in Taiwan, selected Sally to design and build a large-scale stage show in 1992. The Magic Island is a musical, with colorful, personable birds enacting (in Chinese, of course) a dramatic story-with-a-message against a background of magnificent tropical flowers and trees. The company pulled out all the stops when it came to special effects. With its exploding volcano, talking tiki god, effects ‘windows’ surrounding the audience and sub-woofers placed throughout the theatre, “Audiences literally shake in their seats as they’re surrounded by torrential rain, lightning and thunder during the show’s typhoon sequence,” Jan Sherman describes. A few years later, the same attraction was recreated for a park in Mainland China.

Peter Dalsgaard, an award-winning designer with experience in animatronics, was hired at the time the Taiwan project was in design. He brought a new look to Sally characters and to the cartoon-style dark rides that would soon follow. The company’s growth had necessitated expansion into two additional nearby buildings, and when the opportunity arose to consolidate everything under one roof, there was no hesitation. The new 40,000 square foot facility would be a totally renovated building in an historic part of Jacksonville that was being revitalized. Consolidating all of Sally’s departments made production more efficient. The company is still in that building, but continued growth has pushed them to plan construction of a new building adjacent to their existing facilities.

“At the time of the move, we created our first, small cartoon-style interactive dark ride, The Great Pistolero Roundup, for Family Kingdom in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina,” recounts Wood. “A new, affordable, style of amusement park dark ride was born! The success of Pistolero led to the pirate themed Den of Lost Thieves, the Christmas themed North Pole Adventure and the black-light haunted, and very popular, Ghost Blasters.”

The design of Ghost Blasters was greatly influenced by Drew Edward Hunter (a.k.a. Dr. Blood see issue # 28 Haunted Attraction Magazine), who stepped into the newly created position of design director for Haunted Attractions in 1997. Hunter has a distinct artistic flair that incorporates stylized skulls and spooky trees, which was perfect for the Ghost Blasters attraction. “Drew’s extensive experience in the fright business has been a big asset in our expanding design requirements,” Wood says. “He headed up our dark ride re-design projects for the Haunted Hotel at Pavilion Amusement Park and Frankenstein’s Castle at Indiana Beach.” Hunter is presently the overall director of design for Sally Corporation.

Ghost Blasters (which carries the name Ghost Hunt at Lake Compounce) led directly to an on-going collaboration with Paramount Parks: “We had been wanting to do a Haunted House or dark ride for younger children for a long time,” says George Sells, director of Paramount Parks Design + Entertainment. “Then we heard about Sally’s Ghost Hunt at Lake Compounce…the concept was what we were looking for.” The Paramount team traveled to Lake Compounce to experience the frighteningly fun ride and the decision to work with Sally on an interactive Scooby-Doo ride was made. To date there are three Scooby-Doo themed black-light, interactive rides in Paramount Parks locations, with a fourth set to open at Paramount’s Kings Dominion next season. The success of the concept prompted Six Flags Corporation to contract Sally to design similar Scooby-Doo rides for two Six Flags parks.

The storyline for each ride follows a typical Scooby-Doo cartoon episode, but with the children participating in the outcome. Patrons travel in mini-Mystery Machines with on-board scoring consoles, and use “Fright Lights” to scare off ghosts and villains and help save Scooby and Shaggy. Each of the present six Scooby-Doo attractions have seventeen scenes or less.

“One of the great pluses of this type of ride is that the scenes can be re-configured to fit the parameters of existing buildings with relative ease,” Wood continues. “While there are new challenges with every space, dark rides are flexible attractions.” Sally’s ingenious use of both two dimensional and three dimensional characters and scenic pieces, along with the inherent savings of having basic design work, character patterns, schematics, lighting and audio specifications already developed, gives Sally the ability to keep the costs of the attraction quite affordable.

In 2000, Sally combined efforts with Global Estudios in Spain to create Labyrinth of the Minotaur, the most popular ride at Terra Mítica, Spain’s newest theme park. “This ride took our technology full circle,” says Wood. “We had the opportunity to create a major attraction with over seventy fully animated figures—hydras, dragons, centaurs, Minotaurs and a variety of other equally exotic figures.” The ride was designed with a high capacity, similar to the original specifications for the Ghostbusters attraction. Patrons travel through a maze of caves filled with these mythological creatures. Each of the automatically guided vehicles carries six people and is equipped with six crossbow-like laser guns. The challenge is to extinguish all the targets in each scene and thus fulfill their quest to find and defeat the Minotaur. There are two points in the ride where the vehicle can be ejected because patrons do not achieve sufficiently high scores. Thus keeping them from seeing the rest of the attraction and confronting the Minotaur.

Labyrinth was a special challenge for the Sally electronics department, which had been growing in both size and capability over the years. Ray Dominey was moved from electronics supervisor into the new position of technical director, where one of his primary responsibilities is the design and development of the company’s interactive ride systems. “Ray oversees all our electronics systems, including control, lighting, audio and special effects, production and interface,” explains Wood.

Another significant change made during this period was creating a dedicated position of full-time project manager. “Donna Gentry, our vice-president-projects, works with clients, architects, and sub-contractors on all interface issues, and helps co-ordinate Sally install teams,” says Wood. “She was on-site in Belgium for three months prior to and during the installation of Challenge of Tutankhamon.” Another key development was the institution of private web sites for clients to track the progress of each project.

The Challenge

Following Labyrinth of the Minotaur, Sally Corporation was positioned to create its own large-scale design/build interactive dark rides. Examining the market, Wood concluded that a sixteen to seventeen thousand square foot ride would be cost effective for larger parks and, in 2001, design work began on Challenge of Tutankhamon. Drew Hunter headed the design team for the Ancient Egyptian-themed attraction, and in May of 2003, the ride, combining history and mythology with a large dose of fantasy and excitement, opened to rave reviews at Six Flags Belgium.

Challenge of Tutankhamon is designed with surprises around every turn. Patrons of all ages enjoy the experience for the challenge of the quest, the many multi-sensory effects, the scare factor, and the strong competition element. Not to mention the fact that the ride experience is different for each trip through the attraction, depending on which targets are hit or missed.

The Future

“We have been working for the past twenty years to breathe new life into the traditional dark ride attraction for theme parks,” says John Wood. “It was essential that we create attractions with a broad-based appeal; rides that are marketable to our client base and have sufficient capacity to meet the demands of a one-price park.” Sally’s major focus in creating dark rides continues to be the show and entertainment value offered to the park visitor. The theme and the story come first rather than the technology, which will follow.

Looking back to the never-produced Ghostbusters project, Wood comments: “It took us more than twenty success stories before we had the chance to create our own large-scale dark ride that would compete with any ride of any type anywhere.” Learning from each installation and each different customer, Sally develops approaches to make each attraction better than the one before. “I am convinced that Sally will be designing and producing dark rides for decades to come,” explains Wood.

Two years ago, Sally Corporation acquired the trademark “The Great American Dark Ride Company.” “That’s the standard we have set for ourselves,” smiles Wood, “We plan to continue to live up to that name.”

Anna Jackson is a Jacksonville, Florida-based freelance writer specializing in art and entertainment.