How Six Flags Over Georgia Got Its Legendary Dark Ride: Monster Mansion

Monster Plantation is Born

Introducing Six Flags’ soon-to-come attraction: Monster Plantation, featuring friendly creatures as well as frightening beasts. As the ride’s backstory went, the plantation was built in 1852 by Col. Beauregard “Mad Dog” Powell. After his death, the property was willed to his wife’s second cousin, who was on the monster side of the family. She opened up the plantation’s doors to the monster community, and it’s been a beastly bash ever since.

Years ago, the property was swamped in a great flash flood that has left the home submerged to this day. Fast-forward to 1981, a great-granddaughter, Mizzy Scarlett, now maintained the home and was a hospitable host for the countless humans visiting the former plantation where they were invited for a merry monster picnic.

With a $3 million price tag, the upcoming attraction was the most expensive in the park’s history up until that point. Given the scope of the work they were putting in, that high price point was clear in the results. They were making a quality attraction—a more-than-worthy replacement to such a beloved ride.

While Tales of the Okefenokee had a mostly playful tone, Monster Plantation would focus more on individual gags and over-the-top character design.

Monster Plantation would feature a massive cast of completely original characters. Illustrator Phil Mendez, who worked with Disney and Hanna-Barbera, made somewhere around 500 sketches of different monsters. About where he got the inspiration, Mendez said, “I created them based on people I know. Monsters are everywhere.”

With hundreds of character designs, some of the concepts were based on not only people Mendez knew, but also local public figures.

For example, his very own kids made it in as four sharp-toothed monsters reaching for a bee hive. A hostess named Mizzy Scarlett was meant to resemble Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind, a story that took place in and around Atlanta. A gargantuan monster in the marsh was called the Gengenbacher, named after the production supervisor, Dave Gengenbach. An easy-going monster named Buzby was created in honor of Georgia’s governor at the time, George Busbee. And, about the barbaric boat-eating monster aptly named the Boateater—well, Phil Mendez said, “That’s my mother-in-law.”

A Catchy Soundtrack

Much like the former Tales of the Okefenokee, Monster Plantation would have its own original soundtrack. Once the characters and storyboard were established, the team called composer Dick Hamilton to produce the ride’s music.

Hamilton wrote the lyrics as his daughters, son, niece, and wife sang them on the final track. Hamilton even added in some monster gibberish and other additional vocal parts. The infectious arrangement, featuring jazz instruments and synthesizer parts, laid down the foundation of the ride’s tone with its upbeat style.

The catchy melody and the music as a whole would play a major role throughout the attraction. The standout soundtrack changed styles as the ride progressed; it developed deeper into the ride to follow the story, characters, and setting.

“Once you get into the [marsh]…I was basically scoring a horror film. It’s real good to set up a contrast like that.”

— Dick Hamilton, composer of Monster Plantation, Nov. 22, 2022

Customized Animatronics

The music fit perfectly into the recipe the ride’s creators were cooking up. As the details were being finalized, Phil Mendez’s hundreds upon hundreds of character designs were eventually whittled down to about 130 outlandish characters that would take over the new attraction. That meant well over 100 monster animatronics had to be designed, developed, and programmed for the ride.

Monster Plantation would be a massive technical upgrade over the simple animated figures in Tales of the Okefenokee. Actually, it was going to be the first audio-animatronic dark ride of its kind outside of a Disney park—especially a ride of this magnitude. It would require highly qualified specialists to take on the animatronic demands of the audacious attraction.

Headed by a former Disney engineer, Alvaro Villa, the innovative AVG Productions team was hired to sculpt, fabricate, and engineer the mechanical figures. The animatronics were individually programmed for completely customized results.

“Everything we do is custom-made. Anytime you see a joint moving, it was custom designed for that figure. We don’t have any standard hardware because all of the characters are different in size and movements. That was most difficult in that we were really working on more than 100 different projects at once.”

— Alvaro Villa, president of AVG

AVG worked closely with Goddard’s creative team, and they were able to fabricate remarkable animatronics with radiating personalities. Many were impressive in scale too, with some reaching up to 11 feet high and others 15 feet wide. Illustrator Phil Mendez complimented the engineers’ work, humbly saying the animatronics looked better than his sketches.

About the ride’s frenzied and unhinged atmosphere, Mendez commented, “One day, I was sitting inside the ride just looking around, and I realized it’s full of all these things I’ve always seen…it’s like sitting inside my head.”

Synchronizing the Music to the Visuals

That suspension of disbelief was extended to the sound design as well and how it correlated to the visuals. The music for the animatronic bands was mixed specifically to give a directional effect where the individual sounds seemed like they came directly from each instrument riders would see. Also, the movements of the animatronic musicians were synchronized to accurately match the soundtrack’s rhythms. These visuals were fined-tuned by the composer himself, Dick Hamilton, using a process he developed. This was for the most authentic results that made it seem as if the monsters were actually the ones playing the music.

“We did a lot of stuff that was very collaborative because Alvaro [Villa] was that kind of guy. He would come up with ideas, and he surrounded himself with people who were geniuses at what they did.”

— Dick Hamilton, composer of Monster Plantation, Nov. 22, 2022

The Final Details

With the storyline and technical details in place, it was time to transform the old Okefenokee into the brand-new Monster Plantation.

Production professionals from G&K Design worked on the ride’s lighting and sound systems. Since the expansive sets were installed in such a small space, presentation was crucial as the lighting team took the approach that each scene was essentially its own theater stage. The ride was truly coming to life.

The facade was transformed into a Southern plantation as the interior was being prepared. Over 100 artists and technicians converted the ride in an unbelievably tight nine-month time frame, getting it ready just in time for the park’s opening day in March 1981.