The editor team is working tirelesly to add more rides. How far are they?
We are almost there, we finished up the ride page design. Symbolica has always been our “home” when it comes to showing and testing the ride page. Over the last few weeks some of our friends have tested the site and we tried to use their input to better the information on the page. This had a few results:
Of course we still have a lot of work left, but I think we will be alright!
Thanks again for following our progress, we love a the feedback and support we received so far.
It has been quiete from our side the last month. Luckly that doesn’t mean that we sat still! The last month we started working on finishing up the site. We stopped adding new ideas and spent most of our time optimizing the content on the site. This led to a few visible changes from the older version:
– We’ve split the news section between news and specials (yes we have those!);
– The headerbar has been changed to separate news and specials. We also added this making of;
– We’ve made the header image slightly smaller;
Behind the screens more happened on the site:
– We made the site a whole lot faster by optimizing the images of the site. This will be an ongoing process since we have to juggle between the quality of the image and the speed of the site;
– We’ve changed the icons on the map view. While this may seem small it works so much better this way;
One of the most important pages we added however is the submit a listing/ride page:
Most of the changes have been made after feedback we received from a small testgroup.The first page is a submission agreement. The reason we have this is because we want to ensure that all submitted information can be used in the future. While we respect the copyright of all submission we need the information to be ours to use for the site to run properly the next fews years.
Another change we made from the tests is the separation between adding information or just photos. We want to make it as easy as possible to add new information so everything we can fill in is available for you. Once submitted our editors team will try to let you know as soon as possible what they will do with your submission.
With only about ten days to go we still have a lot of work to do behind the scenes, but we are quite sure we will make it!
The single most important page of our website is the page on which a ride is displayed. Because of this a great amount of care was given to the design of the page. We were looking to do something different than RCDB. While we all love the amount of data you can find of RCDB we also wanted something a bit more modern and sleek in terms of design. We opted for a responsive design which could be viewed on all sorts of devices. Every block on the page has its own use. If there is no information available no block will be shown. This way only relevant information will be displayed.
In our first post we spoke about the search options we offer. The same information that can be searched on is available on the ride page. We also reserved space for photos and onride videos (youtube only). Because not all information can be placed under a certain category or statistic we also have space available for general information and the history of the ride. Also we aim to have a simple information clickable to start a new search, for example to check every other ride by KumbaK.
An example of the ride page can be found under need. Spoorwegmuseum’s “Stalen Monsters” was one of the first rides to be added to the database. (Can you guess which one was the first?)
In the Dark Ride Database we gather all information that we can find about Dark Rides, Semi-Dark Rides and Show Rides and create an overview for all interested visitors of our website. Visitors (or users) can easily notify the editors of the website when they have additional information about a database listed ride or even come across a new ride that qualifies for a listing.
Besides creating an overview, we also want to focus on news items and specials about rides and manufacturers. Through blogs on our main page we will keep you updated on all the dark ride entries on our website.
At last, we also provide a message board for the users of our website to discuss the variety of rides on our database.
In this update we want to talk about the way we divide dark rides. We have chosen to sort the rides into three categories. Within the categories we’ve made a separation by type. Types can be the same across different categories, think about boat rides such as Merlin’s Quest in Toverland and Pirates of the Caribbean in Disneyland Paris. Both are boat rides, but one is mostly outside and the other is entirely indoors.
To start off with the categories, we separate rides in three:
Within these categories we also divided several types of rides. For (semi) Dark Rides these are the same and Show Rides are a category of itself:
Welcome visitor, welcome to the Dark Ride Database!
Theme parks are known for a variety of rides, such as rollercoasters, water rides and carousels. Another popular type of theme park rides are dark rides. These are rides that consist of a transportation system that takes rides through a building with a number of scenes. Dark rides are often highly immersive rides and contain a lot of theming. The purpose of the website is to create an overview of all dark rides and collect as much information as possible about the ride system, theming, manufacturer and much more. Apart from dark rides, the website will collect semi-dark rides (open air transportation systems that enter an enclosed building with scenes at one point) and a category of rides that we dubbed ‘show rides’. Madhouses, simulators and flying theatre-rides will be among this category.
Opening
This new website will launch on April 1st 2020 (that’s not a joke!). We will open the website in phases. For the time being, we will only focus on exsisting dark rides in Europe. Future phases of the Dark Ride Database will focus on an archive of defunct/removed dark rides and on other continents. Besides the database, the website will focus on news and specials about database noted rides and will contain a message board for the users.
Who are we?
The Dark Ride Database was founded by three friends The Netherlands: Johan, Erik and Luc. After philosophizing with the idea for quite some time, works on the website began in the fall of 2019 with the intention to open the website at the beginning of the 2020 season. A lot of information about dark rides all over Europe have been gathered in the last 6 months, however a lot is still unknown. After the opening of the Dark Ride Data Base, the website relies on the users to collect information about the listed rides. Users can add rides, photos and information, which (after being reviewed by our editors) will be published online.
We hope to see you all after our opening on April 1st 2020! Right in time for the beginning of the new theme park season in Europe.
Greetings,
DRDB Team.
Welcome all,
The next few weeks we want to take you on a journey through our database system. This first blog will look at the different options we offer to search through the database. To ensure that finding the ride you are looking for is easy we have setup a wide variety of information to filter on.
The search engine uses a map as the primary way of searching. The current map is shown below. 200 entries can be displayed at a time (this is to ensure short loading times). This is shown below.
Since mobile internet consumption has risen above desktop and laptop internet consumption, we designed the site with the mobile users in mind. We think it is important to offer the mobile users the same range of functions as the desktop users. For this reason, the mobile search screen is separated into three tabs.
The coming weeks will be spent optimizing and adding a lot of new rides into the database. As said, we will be open on April 1st 2020.
Greetings
DRDB Team