Treasure Hunt: The Ride is a new attraction built exclusively for Cannery Row in Monterey, California, with a storyline based on the real pirate history of Monterey. During the experience, guests meet Hippolyte Bouchard and hear about the story of his pirate crew sacking Monterey in 1818.
Treasure Hunt: The Ride tells the rest of this swashbuckling story using an array of special effects and the kind of 360-degree immersive theming you’d expect to only see in a major theme park.
As the experience unfolds, guests search for lost treasure in a world they never imagined existed beneath their feet. After watching a short video, visitors enjoy an animatronic pre-show that takes them deep underground. Next, they board their cavern cars before being transported through a “newly discovered” cave system beneath Monterey’s historic Cannery Row. Guests compete for the highest score, battle a pirate skeleton crew, collect lost treasure, and ultimately must escape the mighty Kraken.
The ride is the result of a partnership between theme fabrication expert Daniels Wood Land and Sally Dark Rides, a leading creator of immersive attractions. In addition, Alterface was appointed to deliver multimedia interactivity and gameplay.
Working in partnership to bring the concept to life
When a space in the heart of Cannery Row became available, Daniels Wood Land saw it as an ideal opportunity to a create new world-class dark ride, as Ron Daniels, president of DWL, explains:
“We wanted to offer a great option for entertainment-craving visitors of Cannery Row. It wasn’t long after that we called Sally Dark Rides and formed a partnership to make it happen. Daniels Wood Land took on the role of both the customer and the scenic fabricator/general contractor for the project, while Sally Dark Rides focused on the ride, controls, hero animatronics, CG, lighting and special effects.”
“For both teams, it was one huge creative mashup. Treasure Hunt is a unique attraction, so much of the process involved figuring things out as we went. Daniels Wood Land worked over 57,000 man-hours on this project – and that does not include all the time our partners and subcontractors logged. That’s why you see jaw-dropping thrills and detail in every square inch of this incredible attraction.”
Rich Hill, chief creative officer at Sally Dark Rides, adds:
“This is the first time that we have worked together. While we’ve always been big fans of Daniels Wood Land, we’ve never had the perfect opportunity to collaborate until now. Together, we are a great fit because of the combination of their scenic abilities and creativity, and then Sally’s experience in dark rides.”
Sally Dark Rides also assembled a team of subcontractors, including Alterface, Gosetto, Pure Imagination Studios, TechniLux and Extreme Engineering
The story of Treasure Hunt: The Ride
The idea to create a pay-per-ride attraction in this location came from Daniels Wood Land.
“They found the space and they thought that it would make a perfect location for a dark ride,” says Hill. “Daniels Wood Land approached us to help them design the attraction, so we came and looked at it with their team, and we thought the same thing. It’s in a high-traffic area of Monterey Bay, right there on the boardwalk.”
“First, we started thinking about themes, and we all agreed that a pirate theme was interesting, because of the location. I was tasked with coming up with a story, so I started researching local legends and pirates. We had no idea until we started doing this research that Hippolyte Bouchard, the only pirate to ever take a town in the United States, came to shore right there on the beach in front of the attraction.”
Meet Captain Bouchard
Hill and his team used this as the basis for the storyline:
“I call it a fictional history; it is based on history, but it has a fictional slant. The real story is that Bouchard and his band came to shore, but the townspeople knew that they were coming, so they took off inland and they took all their valuables with them. Bouchard and his men came to shore and had control of the town for three days, but they didn’t make off with anything.”
“That doesn’t make for a very incredible story. So, we thought, wouldn’t it be cool if they did find some treasure? Our story is that Bouchard and his men hid their treasure in caves underneath Cannery Row. In reality, Bouchard only got away with the town drunk, who happened to not go inland with everybody else in the town. That’s part of the real story, he wandered onto the ship while they were sacking the town and ended up sailing with them for a couple of weeks before they realised.
“We thought that that character Molina, the town drunk, sounded like the perfect host for this experience, taking us down into these caverns with his sidekick Don Pedro, a fictional character, and helping us to hunt for the lost treasure of Hippolyte Bouchard.”
Things don’t go smoothly, however:
“We happen to get into a flood while we’re down in those caverns and we are swept into a part of the cave that we’re not supposed to go into. That’s where we encounter Hippolyte Bouchard’s ghost, his skeleton crew of the undead, and the Kraken that’s under his control.”
A unique interactive system
Sally Dark Rides appointed Alterface to deliver the multimedia interactivity and gameplay that help to bring the new experience to life. As guests embark on a pirate quest to find Bouchard’s lost treasure, they use their Treasure Collector device to interact with physical targets and real-time interactive media.
“Our shooting system is laser-based,” explains Stéphane Battaille, CEO of Alterface.
“So, there is in the device a little infrared system which detects the user’s impact on the environment through high-speed detection cameras that are filming the entire set, meaning that riders can interact with whatever the camera sees, whether it is a projected image or a physical set piece.”
Because the interactive system is so small, the device that it is set within can take any shape.
“In this case, we provided the electronics to be installed inside the device and Sally Dark Rides was able to work on the design and production of the device itself, so they had full control of the creative side. Of course, the shape of a shooting device in a ride is essential; it must fit with the rest of the theme.”
Alterface and Sally Dark Rides
Speaking about why Alterface’s system was a good choice for Treasure Hunt: The Ride, Battaille says:
“For interactive rides with this mix of physical targets and media targets, our system is the only one that can achieve this result. We developed this technology because we believe that a good ride should have a mix of media content and physical sets that you can interact with. When you are shooting at just multimedia content, the experience can be cold. When you can aim at and interact with real objects, it feels alive, it feels more real.”
Hill adds:
“As a ride designer, I think it’s so important to take the action off the screen; you don’t want everything to be in this rectangular box. You want it to be all around you, and so when you’re hunting for all these different targets, both media-based and real-life, you have this 360-degree environment of gaming.
“We love working with Alterface. They have an excellent system for that type of guest experience. We have produced a lot of attractions with Alterface because they understand interactivity and how to relay that into a dark ride attraction.”
“We love to work with Sally Dark Rides because each time we do a project, we try to push a little bit further and add new features,” adds Battaille. “Sometimes, our team will say, ‘Hey, we have this new feature we think will work for this project’, or sometimes Sally will say, ‘Can we do this?’ and we’ll work on some R&D to make it happen.”
Power up your treasure hunt
One such new feature created for Treasure Hunt: The Ride is a unique Power-Up Token that can be purchased by visitors to boost their ability to collect points. This makes the Treasure Collector more powerful and gives guests an advantage when it comes to collecting the most treasure and scoring the most points.
Daniels says: “I called Sally Dark Rides one day and said, ‘Hey… I think we should develop an upgrade option for the ride and offer it as an upsell.’ I suggested it could take the form of a token that enhanced the performance of the treasure collectors. They collaborated with their team and together we developed a solution that guests love. Because of this teamwork approach, we hit a grand slam with this attraction!”
“The Power-Up is an RFID tag that the guests can use to improve their skill,” says Battaille. “In the game, they can activate their special skill with a wristband. This is an interesting feature to integrate because it allows for a personal experience. It means that different guests are having different experiences on the same ride, which opens interesting new ideas in the future.”
Interactivity
Increasingly, guests are expecting more interactivity from rides and attractions; they want to be part of the experience and to have the ability to impact the story.
“With all things being equal, adding interactivity to an attraction always makes a better guest experience,” says Daniels. “It also helps with getting people to ride more times. I think guests will continue to reward those that find creative and unique approaches to this concept.”
“We put a lot of focus on how we can make personalised experiences for riders but also keep that high throughput,” says Battaille. “On rides like this, we have many people doing the same thing or seeing the same thing, but we still want to find ways to make sure that they feel that what they do is unique. That’s extremely important for us and we’re always thinking about how we can use different tools to make it happen.
“People want more personal experiences, where the environment reacts to their presence or can react to their actions. We are now exploring all sorts of possibilities to be able to find different ways for people to interact without necessarily being completely active, so letting them be as involved as they want.”
The challenges in creating Treasure Hunt: The Ride
One of the key challenges in designing Treasure Hunt: The Ride was creating a ride to fit the confines of the existing space.
“This project is a remodel of a large basement in an old building,” explains Daniels. “Managing the space for material storage and work, designing around immovable parts of the building, making sure we don’t disrupt neighbouring tenants in the building, and moving material in and out of the space were all big logistical challenges. In the end, it’s amazing how big of a ride we put into that space; we maximized the use of every single cubic inch!”
“Trying to fit a ride system into that space was very challenging,” adds Hill. “There were several existing columns and facility walls that we had to work with. We cleared the space of everything that could be cleared and then started searching for a ride system that would work in that space.
“We’ve worked with Gosetto several times in the past, and we love their ride systems. They have a very compact four-passenger rotating system, which we laid into the space and found that it needed to be even more compact. So, we redesigned the cabin and came up with a system that did work in the space.”
Bringing an ambitious vision to life
One of the biggest challenges, says Daniels, was the team’s own ambition and creativity:
“As life-long scenic fabricators, we made a career out of telling stories with our scenic work. So, when we decided to work for ourselves, oh what stories we wanted to tell! We quickly learned how the challenges of an ambitious project reveal themselves when the rubber meets the road and have a newfound appreciation for all the owners we’ve worked for in the past!”
“But we decided when we started this project that we would hold the line with a stubborn unwillingness to compromise on the scenic work of this attraction. After more than 50,000 man-hours of painstaking attention to every square inch of the queue and ride envelope, we’re thrilled to see all the smiles, wows, gasps, and jaw drops as guests move through each space.
“The overarching challenge of this project was coordinating the work of subs from around the world. We had companies from Florida, including our partner, Sally Dark Rides, as well as Belgium, Italy, Los Angeles, Oklahoma, and Texas, not to mention several local subs. We had to formulate how all these trades would sort of zipper their work together on this unique project.
“Treasure Hunt: The Ride is the only California ride north of LA that has a preshow. The queue line, preshow, ride, and bonus exit scene provide about 20 minutes of entertainment as it transports guests through a world they never would have imagined existed just beneath their feet!”
A stand-alone attraction
On the benefits of this stand-alone attraction model, Daniels says:
“There are a lot of eyes on Treasure Hunt: The Ride because it’s a stand-alone attraction. Millions of tourists each year walk up and down Cannery Row. The main draw is the aquarium, which occupies around half of a day. We see that although they’re done with the aquarium, they’re not done with Cannery Row, and they’re looking for more things to do.
“So, Treasure Hunt fills a great niche by offering a thrilling experience for families and friends that makes an already great day a whole lot better! With the other big projects underway on Cannery Row, we think we’re on the leading edge of it transforming into a broader entertainment district.”
Hill believes the stand-alone concept will be a trend to watch:
“We’ve done a couple of these in the past, and it’s usually for a boardwalk scenario where you have lots of attractions, restaurants and shops that together create a tourist destination, but with different operators. This model just makes sense in that in that space. Instead of something like Coney Island where you have a gated entrance, having these individual experiences offers something new and interesting for visitors.”
Guests enjoy Treasure Hunt: The Ride
The interactive dark ride opened to guests on 22 July 2023, with a grand pirate-themed bash. Since then, it has proved to be a hit with visitors to Cannery Row:
“The reception has been fantastic,” says Hill. “We’ve been getting great reviews from all the main industry people, so all the industry fans seem to get what we’re trying to do, which is bringing an elevated experience to a more regional space.”
“We’ve also been getting good numbers and we are hoping to boost those next year through word of mouth. Once people start to realise the little jewel box that’s down in that basement, word is going to spread like wildfire. So far, we’ve been seeing good numbers, and what we projected is holding, so we’re really pleased with the results.”
Daniels adds:
“When I see kids waving at the pirates and guests laughing together as they spill out of the exit doors, it warms my heart and confirms we nailed it! I love standing in the elevator preshow when Molina makes an incredibly dramatic introduction… I hear 20 guests gasp in a breath of air, and then see a dozen or more phones pop up in the air to catch a video and a picture as they whisper, “This is like Universal!” or “It feels like we’re at Disneyland!
“What other observation or compliment could better confirm we created a world-class experience?”
What’s next?
All three companies are already hard at work on new projects. It has been a banner year for Sally Dark Rides, as Hill explains:
“We’ve opened three attractions already this year, including Uncharted at PortAventura. That was our first dark coaster, and we worked with Intamin and the team at PortAventura to design and build that. The ride has been getting good reviews and is a really fun experience.
“Then we also have the Whispering Pines Haunted Hotel at Funtown Splashtown in Saco, Maine which opened this year. Plus, we have the upcoming SpongeBob’s Crazy Carnival ride that’s opening at Circus Circus in Las Vegas at the end of this year. That has another big interactive gaming element, with lots of great characters and stories. Again, we are working with Alterface on the interactivity for that attraction, as well as working with Nickelodeon and Paramount.”
Battaille says the Alterface team also has several projects in the pipeline:
“A lot of our new projects are confidential, but we have very interesting rides coming up using a new type of interactivity. This uses our shooting system but instead of collecting items and scores, it’s more about using that device to make the world around you come alive. It’s nice because you’re still active but you can choose the amount of involvement that you want to have.”
Meanwhile, Daniels says:
“Daniels Wood Land is working on several projects with overlapping timelines for major clients, creating more things that we have never done before now. Most are under NDA so we can’t go into any details. And, of course, a big task we’re taking on is, now that we’ve built a world-class ride, we have to become world-class operators!”
Meet the teams
Sally Dark Rides and Alterface will be exhibiting at this year’s IAAPA Expo Europe. The event takes place from 25-28 September at the Messe Wien Exhibition & Congress Center in Vienna, Austria.
Meet Alterface at booth #A-280 and Sally Dark Rides at booth #A-1909.
