Description
Train ride travelling past dioramas. The ride featured a voice over narrating the story of the ride.
'Barlangvasut' is Hungarian for 'Caverns'.
History
The ride opened in 1912, but DRDB isn't able to list this opening year due to technical limitations. It was owned by the showman Court Meinhardt. The building housing the attraction featured a flat on the second floor, where the Court lived with his family.
Over the years the ride featured multiple themes. In the early days it featured dwarfs, fairy tales even Snow White at one point. Later in it's life, the ride was changed to feature a Hungarian tale named "Jánoz Vitéz".
In 2013, Vidámpark closed its doors for good. The neighbouring Zoo took over the property, but promised to keep the rides under monument protection standing and running. In the 2014 and 2015 seasons, they complied by this promise, and operated Barlangvasút (among other rides) as part of their temporary park named "Holnemvolt Park" (Once Upon a Time Park).
In 2015, Barlangvasút closed with Holnemvolt Park. Everyone thought it was a temporary closure until the Zoo finishes its new development on the site, however that turned out to not be the case.
The Zoo asked the local government to remove the ride's protection. Using arguments such as "the dragon locomotives are not original" (the casing was indeed replaced to a plastic one from the original iron one, but the underlying locomotive were original), "the theme is new and doesn't deserve protection" (while the theme was indeed new, it was still relatively old, and still featured original elements) and finally "the ride is in really bad condition". The government agreed to lift the protection of the ride, leading to its demolition in 2016.
Statistics
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Number of vehicles2 vehicles
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Seats (per vehicle/theatre)20 seats