Mad House
A Mad House/Haunted Swing is typically manufactured by Vekoma or Mack, and depicts a pre show, then another room, then the actual ride with a typical storyline in order to make the actual ride make (some) sense before releasing the visitors back into the wild of the theme park with some sort of satisfied, confused or annoyed mood.
The Ride
A MH/HS ride is where you sit on a bench with the lapbar lowered and you slightly tilt back and forth whilst the drum on the outside just randomly rolls in any direction. These rides are usually quite well themed with quite good plots to explain why you're being spun like this. The only exception is the one at Mandyland. Don't ride it. It's not worth it.
There are only a few problems with MH/HS rides, and thats mainly to do with the SFX (Music, lighting, sparkly stuff) that is usually placed on the ride in either the pre show, the other room or the actual ride. Or all three. Very rarely do all the effects work.
Examples
- Hex: The Legend of The Towers at Alton Towers
- Villa Volta at Efteling
- Flusche de Kassandra at Europa Park
- Feng Ju Palace at Phantasialand
- Le Defi du Caesar at Parc Asterix
- Magic House at Gardalalalalalaland
- The Haunting at Drayton Manor
- That one at Mandyland. Don't ride it.
Yeah... That's a lot of examples. There are some more but they're not as good/well known/bad as some on that list.
Alternatively, if you cannot be bothered to visit a quality European theme park and ride their Mad House, you could try drinking 8 pints of lager and lying perfectly horizontally on your bed, in the dark. The effects are surprisingly similar.
