Renovated Six Flags ride ready to reopen.Attraction gets a name change and updates, but much is still there.
Available for the price of amusement park admission: 25,000-square-foot mansion. Fully renovated. Air-conditioned. All new sound system, lighting. Friendly, if furry, neighbors. Close to the marsh.
Metro Atlantaâs latest real estate makeover is the old Monster Plantation, Six Flags Over Georgiaâs outdated ride, beloved by kids, parents and teens whoâve long made it a junior high tunnel of love.
Itâs now Monster Mansion â- same building, same winding water trail, same cheery, impossibly stuck-in-your-head music â- but a new ride.
It opens Saturday. Till then, itâs more like Monster Construction Site or Monster Operating Room. Monday afternoon, workers in knee-high rubber boots waded through the stream to rewire furry bogeyman backsides and repaint googly eyeballs. Mizzy Scarlett, keeper of the plantation-turned-mansion, was there in all her monstrous, pneumatic glory, naked as the day some technician assembled her.
That was back in 1981, after a $3 million investment and a whirlwind nine months of building in the location that had housed Six Flagsâ Tales from the Okefenokee ride. Atlanta headlines at the time: Gunman holds hostages at federal building. Man suspected in dozens of child murders. The CDC recognizes a rare illness in five gay men in Los Angeles, one that hits only patients with weakened immune systems.
Monsters actually seemed kind of pleasant â- especially the animatronic kind. They lived on in the plantation for 27 years, until last summer, when the park dismantled their home for a much-needed makeover.
They called in Gary Goddard, the ex-Disney imagineer whose company first designed and built Monster Plantation. Since then, Goddard has done major amusement park rides and shows like âDeepoâs Undersea 3D Wondershowâ at the Georgia Aquarium.
Six Flags wouldnât give the price of the renovation, but Goddard said most of their handiwork held up over time; it just needed some modernization.
âThereâs not that much thatâs gone. We just added,â Goddard said. âThe eagle eyes will go, âOh, what about that one?â but I donât think anybodyâs going to miss anything.â
Since the ride closed last fall, more than 300 people have worked on its remake. Six Flags brags that it has more interactive â4-Dâ effects than any other â- those little touches that engage ridersâ senses in real life, not as a simulation on a computer screen.
For the amusement park geeks out there, consider this your spoiler alert.
Riders will sense heat from the monstersâ chili cook-off, an aroma of cinnamon and apples from the monstersâ pie-eating contest, bubbles at the entry and a few close brushes with water-spouting characters.
Riders can sing along or see a photo of themselves. And watch out at the end â- one monster has the sniffles.
Mizzy Scarlettâs house got new paint and shutters. Her 100 animatronic friends got 230 yards of new fur, new costumes and smaller, lighter parts to keep them moving for years to come.
The artificial turf is gone, in favor of textured paint. There are new music recordings, new backdrops, new audio system, new lights â- mood lights, maybe, for all those awkward first smooches the monsters will witness in the next 30 years.
âItâs like a whole new mansion,â Goddard said, knowing how tough it is to renovate a home people love.
âExcept we kept all the things we think people remember.â