So went the radio jingle promoting the new ride. When Rocky Point opened the 1963 season on Easter Sunday, park-goers, expecting the familiar Crystal Maze, were in for quite a surprise. An ominous new structure rose above the main midway. The lively façade and vibrant colors of the maze had been replaced with dark towers and stone turrets. Days of laughing your way through the glass and mirror passages were gone, for Rocky Point was now home to the Castle of Terror. And true to carnival midway form, this eerie edifice stood squarely between a pizza joint and the R-O-C-K-Y bingo hall. The exterior structure of this attraction was noteworthy, with a "creepy" castle-themed motif. While the right front of the structure represented a typical, turreted castle, the left side conjured up more ominous images.

The architectural lines are somewhat distorted, as if the castle had gone through a meltdown. Patrons were left wondering "Was it due perhaps, to whatever was contained inside this Castle of Terror? Had some sinister presence, lurking within, caused the divergence?" This only added to the allure, as all the creepy adornments on this façade gave the riders plenty to consider while waiting in line. A stairway to nowhere ascended from the second floor balcony and was lost behind the dimly lit spires that rose over one of the two "pop-outs" over the midway. Years later, while taking a final tour of this dark ride with the lights on, it was plain to see that this ride was more than just your everyday plywood and papier-mâché creation. Cement and plaster coated metal construction netting was used to form the various turrets and passages - no painted plywood bally for this castle. This allowed the building designers to segue from the rigid, blocked structure you see at first glance to the creepy, cave-like openings that seemed to swallow the unsuspecting into the castle's darkest recesses. When you added it all up, it was something out of your wildest dreams - or nightmares. All the excess on the exterior couldn't be worth a

5-cent ride ticket if the Castle of Terror was anything less than - terrifying! Fear not, because the minute your little electric car takes that first jolt into darkness, the sensory overload begins. And those ride cars were works of art unto themselves. Each of the ten or so vehicles sported their own smaller artist's rendering of the castle's interior scenes, carefully painted with close attention to detail. For instance, the white car

featured the graveyard scene in detail on its back; the red car depicted the Mad Scientist in his laboratory. Of course, the Giant Bat, Count Dracula, and the Spider were all given their own renderings on these multi-colored vehicles. While some dark rides may have themed their cars to the occasion, with a Mardi Gras motif or a padded coffin on wheels, these cars were true

originals unique to this attraction. Once inside your vehicle, you found all the key features of a classic dark ride here; quick ninety-degree turns, plenty of wooden "crash" doors, black lights and day-glo paint galore. After barreling through the first series of plywood doors and an angry encounter with Dracula slamming his coffin door, you are yanked up the first chain-lift hill in the Castle's center room. Though there may have been double-decker dark rides before the Castle of Terror, no other

dark ride consisted of two chain-lift hills to take riders both up and down multiple levels. Also located in the castle's center room is a detailed mural of a sinister hilltop castle, surrounded by scores of bats and other assorted winged creatures.