Just a short walk from Virginia Beach’s Nightmare Mansion Haunted Attraction (which I already reviewed here) is a Dark Ride owned by the same people called Captain Cline’s Pirate Ghost Ride. If you go to one of these you really should go to both.

There is a UFO embedded in the outside building because it used to be outer space themed. There is also a 3-eyed pirate inside at the end presumably for the same reason:

This ride is a ride-through Dark Ride in the classic style. We enjoyed it a lot. The ride has the brightly-colored props inside but it was done well. Halfway through the ride an actor actually comes out to mess with you a little bit which was quite unexpected. I have not seen that happen on another one of these ride-through rides before.

At the end you get “treasure”:

Unfortunately in my research for this post I see that this might be the end for this Dark Ride. It appears that it is being sold. This kind of sucks for me unless someone reading this kicks ass and can build a better ride with the parts.

If anyone knows if this ride is shutting down permanently or if they are just refreshing it – please let me know. I think losing another Dark Ride is a shame and would hurt Nightmare Mansion as a whole. The presence of this ride makes Nightmare Mansion more of a destination for haunt fans such that people like me can justify driving a significant distance. Without something else to do I feel that there is not much of an ecosystem to attract travelers from outside the area. Let’s hope that more things are on the way. 🙂

You can still catch this ride this fall on Fridays starting at 6PM and weekends starting at noon. The cost is $8. I felt it was worth it for Dark Ride fans but this is not worth a 7 hour drive. If you are local and are a dark ride fan it’s a decent bet.