Editorials
The Stephen King Theme Park Rides That Never Were
Stuffed CUJOs are available in the gift shop.
Between IT, The Dark Tower, The Mist, “Castle Rock,” a new novel and a Creepshow reprint, 2017 is looking like the year of Stephen King. But even in this Redrum renaissance, we still won’t be getting that one experience we’ve so obviously been missing – a state-of-the-art dark ride based on the works of Stephen King at the Central Florida theme park of your choice.
But that’s not to say we didn’t come close. Twice.
On May 1st, 1989, Disney’s MGM-Studios opened in true Hollywood fashion, attended by the likes of Kevin Costner, Ernest and at least two Golden Girls. From day one, the park was designed as a half-day affair, with only six attractions and a sizable chunk of the real estate devoted to working production facilities. Disney never expected it to draw crowds like its other parks.
On opening day, guests lined up two hours in advance and MGM-Studios hit capacity in 45 minutes.
They needed to expand and fast, especially considering the rival combination theme park-movie studio up the road was gearing up to steal crowds in 1990. Plans were hatched quickly to add an extra land to the park with a state-of-the-art thrill ride as an anchor. Revolutionary attractions based on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Warren Beatty-starring Dick Tracy never made it past the drawing board. The direction, it was decided, would be horror – namely, a haunted hotel. It didn’t take long for Stephen King’s name to come up.
Very little about the potential ride is known since Disney quickly realized the writer of Pet Sematary might not mingle with the Mickey Mouse crowd. Later concepts focused on Vincent Price and Mel Brooks before settling on a broader inspiration. The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror would eventually open in 1994; the haunted hotel is still sending guests to the fifth dimension to this day.
After a notoriously shaky start, that rival down the road did start stealing crowds.
Universal Studios Florida was an experiment for the company – the first scratch-built theme park it had ever attempted. Its almost immediate success got the gears meshing for a second park and the unnamed addition was announced in 1993. By 1997, it had a name – Islands of Adventure – and Universal had a problem – the inevitable attendance hit its original park was about to take. The solution was to add a headlining attraction to the Studios as close as possible to the opening of Islands. Ideas included Universal’s second Ron Howard-based attraction, Apollo 13, a very different Simpsons experience than the one built years later, and, lo and behold, an elaborate dark ride themed to the works of Stephen King. This one came a lot closer to happening.
The only detail known about the attraction is its signature scene, and it’s a doozy.
Part-way through, riders would pull into the unload station and hear the usual instructions on how to exit without extensive bodily injury. But the restraints wouldn’t lift and the ride wasn’t over. A Shining-sized deluge of blood would flood out of the exit doors, Pennywise Itself would spring from the control room and riders would hurtle deeper into the nightmare/toward the gift shop.
The powers that be decided that an attraction requiring a devoted plumbing system for fake blood might not have the wide appeal they wanted, so Men in Black: Alien Attack was finally built in its place.
But in Stephen King novels and theme park design, true evil never dies. The would-be ride’s designer, John Murdy, went on to another project with horror in its blood, Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride; and smack in the middle of it there’s a scene that might seem familiar…
Jump to 4:17:
Rub your eyes until it all looks red, replace the overhead fire with balloons and you’re halfway home.
To date, no Stephen King stories or characters have made it to amusement parks. The author is famously cautious about his creations and has admitted little love for haunted houses. So we may never be menaced by murderous topiaries in the Overlook Hedge Maze of Madness or sit in the splash zone for the five-times-daily Carrie Stunt Show.
But rumors are flying that this year may be the first time a King property comes to Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights. It’s a slim chance, but the hints come from a reliable source – the Hollywood park’s Creative Director and former ride designer, John Murdy.
For now, we wait.
There’s a lot of reading left to do in 2026, between the glut of summer releases and the approach of fall, when horror titles get a special push from publishers, but this has already been an incredible year for horror literature.
Some of the biggest names in the genre have turned in outstanding work, rising stars have made their mark, and we’re only halfway through the year.
To celebrate the midway point of 2026, with plenty of horror books still to come, we’re taking a look back at the best horror books we’ve read this year so far, listed alphabetically by author.
If you missed any of these books earlier in the year, consider this your reminder to catch up.
Japanese Gothic by Kylie Lee Baker
A student running from a crime he may or may not have committed escapes to his father’s country home in Japan, only to find himself haunted by strange apparitions, while in the past, a young samurai tries to find salvation for her family and finds a door to the future instead. Kylie Lee Baker’s Japanese Gothic begins with this dialogue between past and present, and then blossoms into so much more, a cross-time ghost story about old wounds and what it really takes to finally heal them. I got so happily lost in this one that I would have read at least 200 more pages.
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
In this tale of shut-ins, sex workers, artists, and the horrors they both summon and recoil from, Aoife Josie Clements weaves something that feels less like a story to be experienced and more like a psychic wound to be endured, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. Evocative in its prose and nightmarish in its imagery, Persona is a story of the masks we wear, and the understanding that not all of our masks are particularly pretty or even easy to breathe through. It’s a dense, literary, unnervingly vicious book, and while it’s already attracted an audience, it deserves a much bigger one.
Dead First by Johnny Compton
Johnny Compton’s latest novel opens with a throwing down of the gauntlet, a sequence that made me instantly think “How on Earth is he going to top this?” It’s a story that begins with a billionaire hiring a private investigator to determine why, despite trying in many brutal ways, he cannot die. That premise, and the scene which sets it all off, is so alluring and delightfully gruesome that you almost can’t believe it’s the way a book begins, and then Compton just keeps going, delivering a supernatural mystery that I could not put down.
Make Me Better by Sarah Gailey
A woman grieving for the life she wanted visits a mysterious island renowned for the healing salt its residents harvest and sell, seeking renewal and relief. What she finds instead is a strange cult with a twisted history with surprising resonance in her own life, and a people who are more than willing to grant the relief she wants, for a price. Laced with beautiful prose and moments of profound realization alongside folk and even cosmic horror, this is vintage Sarah Gailey.
Partially Devoured by Daniel Kraus
If you love horror film history and analysis, Partially Devoured is an essential. Written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Daniel Kraus, the book is a deep dive into his favorite movie of all time, George A. Romero‘s Night of the Living Dead, complete with exhaustive research into the making of the film and passages of deeply moving memoir woven in. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the eerie music that opens the film is called while also bursting into tears at how horror movies can save your life, this is a must-read.
Wretch by Eric LaRocca
Our reigning King of Extreme Horror, Eric LaRocca weaves books of uncommon beauty out of the most nightmarish parts of humanity, and Wretch is no exception. The story of a grieving man who longs for relief and searches for it amid a strange support group that might be a cult, Wretch is a brutal journey into the darkest part of us all, and explores what salvation we might find when we get to the rotten core of the world and peel back its layers. LaRocca’s on a tear of great work right now that few other genre writers can match.
Headlights by CJ Leede
A mystery, a serial killer horror show, a tribute to Stephen King‘s The Shining. All of these things describe CJ Leede’s Headlights, and yet they don’t begin to cover the full breadth of horror awaiting you in this novel. The story of a former FBI agent drawn back into the cold case that haunts him most, it’s a shocker brimming over with vivid moments that’ll live behind your eyes. CJ Leede has now published three novels, and they’re all bangers, so it’s time to get on board if you haven’t already.
It Came From Neverland by Cynthia Pelayo
Cynthia Pelayo has been one of our finest genre writers for years now, but It Came From Neverland is my favorite thing she’s written, and it’s not even close. A dark take on Peter Pan from the perspective of an adult Wendy Darling living in World War I-era London, Pelayo’s book works as both a satisfying horror narrative and a rich exploration of what it really means to never grow up. The horror never loses its potency, but it’s the search for the meaning behind the Peter Pan phenomenon in our own lives, and what we can do about it, that sticks with me most.
Filth Eaters by Ito Romo
Ito Romo’s Filth Eaters is a slim volume, one you can read in just a couple of hours if you’ve got the inclination, but it has the feel of a generation-spanning epic. The story of a breed of vampires born in Central America, the European vampires who encounter them, and the offspring they eventually produced, it spans centuries and packs loads of juicy lore into its pages while never losing its grip on character and narrative drive. I would read hundreds more pages of this world, but I’ll settle for this uncommonly grand-scale novella for now.
Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay
A former pro gamer gets a job at a tech company to pilot a brain-dead human body across the country, and so Paul Tremblay’s sci-fi-horror juggernaut begins. Indebted to Philip K. Dick, the primal snarl of Harlan Ellison, and the quirky comedy of The Big Lebowski, and yet wholly original, this is a towering and ambitious novel by one of horror’s most respected voices. What starts as a high-concept tech thriller soon becomes a startling meditation on the value of stories, who gets to tell them, and what happens when we cede too much control to machines we don’t understand. It’s a stunner.
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