Snow White's Enchanted Wish

Year: 1955 (as Snow White's Adventures)
Remodels: 1983 (into Snow White's Scary Adventures), 2021
Designer: W.E.D. (Walt Disney Imagineering)
Park: Disneyland, California, USA
Dark Ride Database Entry

For most of it's existence, this ride was one showdown after another with the Evil Queen. This veritable witch hunt (in the sense that you are being hunted by the witch) has been scaring park-goers for over 68 years now, albeit with some significant changes over the years. The 1955 version of ride, designed by some of the same artists who worked on the original 1937 movie, included no Snow White (the idea was that the guest was seeing things from her point of view), but did include scenes of woodland creatures, the dwarfs at the mine, and four different appearances from the Evil Queen.

During the New Fantasyland redevelopment in the early 80s, the attraction got a new queue, new figures and backdrops, and new scenes, including one at the beginning featuring the title character. The most recent iteration of the attraction debuted in 2021 and is very toned down in atmosphere, replacing the final third of the attraction to give the ride a happy ending modeled after the movie, removing two witch figures, and making the queue more cheerful.

While, in my opinion, the recent refurbishment to make the ride less scary also made the ride less interesting, the attraction is still full of beautiful black-lit sets, spooky scenes, special effects from across the decades, and something interesting to look at around each corner. It contains elements from all historical versions of the attraction in every park it has opened in, and is still one of the highlights of Disneyland's traditional dark ride collection.

You can find out more about the ride by following this Wayback link to KenNetti's old website tribute. It has sections on every version of the attraction, up through the early 2010s including the best article I've found about the 1955 original. The website also has a general Snow White page, and I recommend browsing Ken's home page, as well, for other theme park and horror-related fanpages.

Filmic Light is another blog that archives everything related to Disney's Snow White, including the ride.

I have like, this theory revolving dark rides and their evolution over time, and Snow White at Disneyland.

They originated as thrill rides. The very first Pretzels didn't initially rely on traditional horror imagry like skeletons, monsters, etc, but they were still meant to be scary, taking place in the pitch dark and using loud noises and even physical touch to scare riders. Horror scenes began to be used pretty quickly. They started to be themed after haunted houses and be called "spook-a-rama"s. Disney, with the exception of Peter Pan, continued this with their 50s dark rides: Snow White was a witch hunt, you die and go to hell on Mr. Toad, and the original Alice was far creepier than the Disney source material called for (see: that giant chesire cat jumpscare). American audiences would have expected dark rides, even those not themed explicitly around a haunted house, to be thrilling.

Dark rides in North America have been on the decline in most parks besides Disney/Universal since at least the 70s, with many of the old spook-a-ramas closing down for good. Modern Disney/Universal dark rides are relatively book-reportish, à la Pinocchio, Monster's Inc., Cat in the Hat, Little Mermaid, and Frozen. Even if they don't follow the source material exactly, they still focus on presenting the most iconic scenes/characters/songs from them. Why do you go on the Frozen ride? To see Elsa sing "Let it go." Since the older dark rides have been shutting down and becoming less popular, and their equivalents at Disney/Uni have been less scary, American expectations about what a dark ride contains changed.

These days, if a ride says "Snow White" in the title, they would expect it to be relatively lighthearted, featuring songs and characters from the movie in the spotlight. Instead, they got a single happy scene at the start, a short stint in the mine in the middle (with no dwarves), and a frightening witch chase for the remainder of the ride. Snow White appeared once, the dwarves twice, and the evil queen/witch 6 times! And that's probably why Disney felt they had to nerf it a few years ago. I personally miss the older, scarier incarnation, and find it part of the lamentable tendancy to use rides to support good IP, rather than IP to support good rides. But that's neither here-nor-there.

btw this is the chesire cat jump scare i refer to.
no,not the monstrosity on top of the cushion, but the upside down one popping out below.

(image found in this wdwmagic forum thread. guessing this isnt the origin, but both google reverse image search and tineye are failing me here)

I have like, this theory revolving dark rides and their evolution over time, and Snow White at Disneyland.

They originated as thrill rides. The very first Pretzels didn't initially rely on traditional horror imagry like skeletons, monsters, etc, but they were still meant to be scary, taking place in the pitch dark and using loud noises and even physical touch to scare riders. Horror scenes began to be used pretty quickly. They started to be themed after haunted houses and be called "spook-a-rama"s. Disney, with the exception of Peter Pan, continued this with their 50s dark rides: Snow White was a witch hunt, you die and go to hell on Mr. Toad, and the original Alice was far creepier than the Disney source material called for (see: that giant chesire cat jumpscare). American audiences would have expected dark rides, even those not themed explicitly around a haunted house, to be thrilling.

Dark rides in North America have been on the decline in most parks besides Disney/Universal since at least the 70s, with many of the old spook-a-ramas closing down for good. Modern Disney/Universal dark rides are relatively book-reportish, à la Pinocchio, Monster's Inc., Cat in the Hat, Little Mermaid, and Frozen. Even if they don't follow the source material exactly, they still focus on presenting the most iconic scenes/characters/songs from them. Why do you go on the Frozen ride? To see Elsa sing "Let it go." Since the older dark rides have been shutting down and becoming less popular, and their equivalents at Disney/Uni have been less scary, American expectations about what a dark ride contains changed.

These days, if a ride says "Snow White" in the title, they would expect it to be relatively lighthearted, featuring songs and characters from the movie in the spotlight. Instead, they got a single happy scene at the start, a short stint in the mine in the middle (with no dwarves), and a frightening witch chase for the remainder of the ride. Snow White appeared once, the dwarves twice, and the evil queen/witch 6 times! And that's probably why Disney felt they had to nerf it a few years ago. I personally miss the older, scarier incarnation, and find it part of the lamentable tendancy to use rides to support good IP, rather than IP to support good rides. But that's neither here-nor-there.

D r a c u l a ' s C a s t l e

Designer: Bill Tracy, Amusement Display Associates, Inc.
Park: Lagoon, Utah, USA
Year: 1974
Dark Ride Database Entry

Despite the castle-like façade featuring Dracula himself, and the animatronic owl in the queue warning you about the famous vampire, very little on the ride itself actually has anything to do with him. There are several blacklit scenes, pictured here, featuring skeletons, rats, and monsters, which are Bill Tracy designs. (It's one of only a few remaining Bill Tracy dark rides remaining operational in the US). One of my favorite scenes is skull rock, with giant bats swirling around it, but I've yet to manage a non-blurry photo. Other scenes and stunts were provided by the park itself. One that deserves special mention is the gorilla which leans foward, threatening guests. It originates from the park's defunct fun house, and is based on a mold that had been used for mechanical gorillas since the 30s.

You can find out more about the ride by following this link to the Lagoon History Project. They also have a page dedicated to the gorilla.

The Bill Tracy Project has more information about the designer.