First look inside Kings Island's new Phantom Theater

March 14, 2026, 11:26 PM · In 1972, Kings Island opened as the first true theme park in Ohio and, at the time, the largest in the Midwest. One of its premier attractions - and the most expensive ride in the park, at $2 million ($15.5 million in 2026) - was “The Enchanted Voyage.” The dark ride featured boats that carried visitors through a huge television screen and into the world of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, including The Flintstones, Banana Splits, Winnie Witch, The Wacky Races, Gulliver, and dozens more. Twelve years later (and due to changes in ownership of the park), the ride was reskinned and rethemed as “The Smurfs Enchanted Voyage,” with the same boats and ride layout but new animatronics and new theme music... and don’t blame me if the Smurf song is now lodged in your head!

In 1992, Kings Island removed the boats and water and “Phantom Theater” opened, with a new people-mover ride system, new layout, and new animatronics. The entrance was moved to a different location in the building, and a new indoor queue was installed. The next change came in 2003, when “Scooby Doo! and the Haunted Castle” replaced the Phantom Theater, with mostly flat scenery, lots of black light effects, and was now a shooting ride-through experience. Finally, in 2009, “Boo Blasters on Boo Hill” premiered. It used the same ride system, with the removal of all Scooby-Doo theming.

Now, for 2026, the old Enchanted Voyage building gets its newest tenant - and it is a callback to a previous one. Welcome to Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare.

What Is Changing

When it comes to major renovations, it’s important to know what stays the same before discussing what changes. For Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare, the building and location are the same, the ride track, layout, and the three-seater rotating clamshell vehicles from Boo Blasters are the same. For the most part, the show scenes are the same, but Sally Rides says they have reconfigured some of them.

What is gone, in particular, are all of the electronics in the vehicles from Boo Blasters and all of the scenery. Sally Rides did a complete teardown of the previous ride and is auctioning what they could salvage from it.

Fundamentally, Phantom Theater: Opening Nightmare is going to seem very familiar from a thousand-foot view. It is still a dark ride with electric vehicles that can turn to have riders face certain directions while shooting at targets. On top of that, it is using a what’s-old-is-new approach and recycling some characters from the original Phantom Theater ride.

At this point, you might be asking yourself: based on what we just reported, why should I rearrange my holiday schedule to include Kings Island?

Innovations / Things to Look Forward To

The flat cutouts used in Boo Blaster have all been retired and replaced with 37 new animatronics, including two in the pre-ride area. Sally Rides wanted to emphasize that the new ride will be family-friendly and whimsical, not scary. All of the electronics in the building and on the vehicles have been removed and replaced with a brand-new Sally shooter system that is making its world debut at Kings Island.

The new shooter-targeting system will be 100% projected, allowing Kings Island and Sally Rides to adjust the number of targets and making it easy to apply holiday overlays. In the debut version, the targets will be musical notes, but they said it would be easy for them to change them to Pumpkin Heads or Christmas Trees. The new projector system allows the ride to have hundreds of targets instead of just a few.

The vehicles will now go through the ride in pairs instead of one at a time.

Story

The new story for the ride is a different take on the old legend. Instead of merely experiencing the ride, riders are now participants in it. The setup is that the theater's organ is struck by lightning, unleashing musical ghost notes that fly everywhere. The guests are recruited as ushers to help capture the musical notes with specialized flashlights.

In addition to meeting The Maestro, No-Legs Larry, and Archie from the preshow, guests will find the six characters listed on the poster below during the ride.

What We Don’t Know

Kings Island only let us see the pre-show area, the loading area, and the first scene, so we haven’t seen the whole ride, and thus the overall story remains a mystery. One of the few things they told us about scenes later in the ride is that there will be a scoreboard at the end of the ride, so you know how well you performed.

When Does It Open?

Phantom Theater is currently on schedule to open with the park’s season opening on April 18.

Thank you to James Koehl for assisting in the reporting and writing of this post!

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