Father and son turn theme park dream into homemade dark ride

Countless kids and plenty of adults have dreamed of building their own theme park ride.

Even with an endless supply of creativity, hard work, ingenuity and determination, the dream remains a long-shot undertaking that few ever attempt and fewer still ever achieve.

Scott and Ashton D’Avanzo dreamed that dream after one fateful trip to Disneyland and turned it into reality, building a full-fledged theme park ride in the two-car garage of their family home.

The result is Mystic Motel, a truly amazing homemade dark ride and haunted maze that the father of six and his fifth-grade son built in their Southern California home.

“I really wanted a roller coaster, but you can do more with a dark ride,” Ashton said.

Tucked inside the garage and the enclosed courtyard of their suburban home, Mystic Motel is the last thing you’d expect to find in Ladera Ranch, a master planned bedroom community in an unincorporated part of Orange County near Mission Viejo.

D’Avanzo, a 39-year-old casino game designer, doesn’t consider himself a handyman, tech geek or automotive junkie -- making the accomplishment of Mystic Motel all the more stunning.

“For a home haunt, it’s really through the roof,” D’Avanzo said.

Mystic Motel has become a near-total obsession for D’Avanzo, who took time off from his job for several months to put in 16-hour days on what he considers his life’s calling. By his own estimate, he’s spent 1,500 hours and $15,000 on the project (including $2,500 raised through Kickstarter). On many days, D’Avanzo works until 4 a.m. on the dark ride pausing only to eat, sleep and go to church.

The D’Avanzos have six kids ranging in age from two months to 12 years old, making Mystic Motel a truly family affair. Ashton, 10, is the ride operator, loading all the passengers and reciting the safety spiel. Isabella, the oldest, applies makeup to the faces of the characters in the maze and ride. Emma, 8, plays a waitress in the diner scene, serving hot chocolate and treats to unsuspecting visitors. The rest of the kids - except for the baby - help out with construction to the extent they are able. D’Avanzo’s wife, Melissa, does her part: “I don’t kill him,” she said of her seemingly inexhaustible husband.

While working on Mystic Motel, Ashton sticks to his father like glue, retrieving tools, spotting problems, puzzling challenges and debating aesthetic decisions.

Hanging around with the two of them, it’s hard to tell if Scott is an older version of his son or if Ashton is a younger version of his father. Their voices even sound alike.

“We’re like the same person,” D’Avanzo said.

D’Avanzo has succeeded where other amateur ride makers have failed largely thanks to his can-do attitude, refusal to accept failure, willingness to ask for assistance and desire to help Ashton realize his dream of one day becoming a Disney Imagineer.

After four months of preparation, the dark ride portion of Mystic Motel debuted last Halloween to rousing reviews, attracting 1,500 people over several nights of operation.

“We finished it an hour before we opened,” D’Avanzo said. “It was the most stressful thing. Everytime we hit a milestone, there was another issue.”

Undaunted, the casino industry entrepreneur decided to double down and expand Mystic Motel this year with a walk-through maze prelude that fleshes out the back story of the homemade attraction.

Set in an abandoned 1955 desert motel along Route 66, Mystic Motel takes visitors through the decrepit interior of a deteriorating motor lodge and into its haunted basement. Along the way you peek into a once bustling casino, explore derelict motel rooms and step into a run-down diner for a refreshment. There’s even a TV news broadcast playing on a video screen that explains the haunted history of Mystic Motel.

Striving for Disneyland standards, D’Avanzo hopes “motel guests” will set their own pace in the haunted maze, jiggling doorknobs, looking behind shower curtains and hanging out in the eight scenes as long as they want to soak up the elaborate back story and detailed scenery.

“We try to take Disney to the nth degree,” D’Avanzo said. “We just go all out.”

After navigating the maze, visitors arrive at the compact but compelling dark ride parked in the family’s attached two-car garage. The 38-second ride manages to pack six scenes into a serpentine route that travels along a 60-foot track. That’s a lot of storytelling squeezed into a small amount of space and time.

In the motel’s haunted basement, you meet Charlie the cantankerous caretaker, avoid a collapsing ceiling, travel past an exploding boiler room and encounter a few guests who never checked out. D’Avanzo gears the entire experience to kids, eschewing blood, gore and torture.

“It’s still not that scary, but it’s scarier than last year,” Ashton said. “I like to hear people screaming.”

The dark ride vehicle (there’s only one) is a cleverly disguised mobility scooter, cloaked in a birchwood shell and complete with a lap bar. It comfortably seats one adult or two kids. A remote control starts and stops the scooter at the ride entrance.

The ride vehicle was one of the biggest challenges of the passion project. D’Avanzo went through three scooters before finding one that worked. He finally turned to a machine shop that raised the wheels to provide better clearance and added a swivel plate to the undercarriage that attaches to the track. Motion sensors throughout the ride trigger animated and special effects.

Based on online feedback from last year, D’Avanzo updated every scene in the dark ride, adding LED lighting, pinpoint spotlights, animatronic figures and even video screens. He spent a month working on a fiendish furnace that flings “fireballs” at riders. In total, he’s used 70 pieces of plywood, 90 two-by-fours and six boxes of screws -- getting to know the guys at Home Depot on a first-name basis over the course of the past 16 months.

“It’s so much work,” D’Avanzo said. “My neighbors think I’m a nut case.”

Even though the Halloween season isn’t over yet, the masterminds behind Mystic Motel are already looking ahead, plotting new scares for next year and eyeing a separate one-car garage for expansion (which is currently filled with all the junk expelled from the two-car garage).

“I want to go pro with it next year,” Ashton said. “I think we would hit bank with that. But we’d need an investor.”

Eventually, D’Avanzo hopes to move Mystic Motel from his garage to a small amusement park or family fun center. He’s pitched his dark ride ideas to theme parks, ride makers and part manufacturers, who to his surprise have taken his calls. Dreaming even bigger, D’Avanzo fantasizes about one day buying the former Santa’s Village in Lake Arrowhead, filling a notebook with designs for 20 rides he wants to build at the shuttered park.

Mystic Motel will be open to the public starting at 7 p.m. on Oct. 25, 30, 31 and Nov. 1. Portions of a $3 suggested donation will go to a charity supporting military families.

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