Castle Dracula Wax
Museum/Dracula's Haunted Castle
Attraction Type: Haunted Attraction
Location: Niagara Falls, Ontario
Years Operational: 1974-1976 (Victoria Ave. location), 1977-Present (Clifton Hill location)
Designer(s): Waxattract, Gianfranco Avignoni
Cover of the original fold-out brochure for the attraction, mid-70's.
Castle Dracula needs no introduction. It's been an icon of the Niagara Falls tourism landscape for generations, but while it's impact in Niagara Falls is clear, it's impact on the greater amusement industry worldwide has been completely overlooked, until now.
In 1974, after the massive success of the House of Frankenstein locations, Robert Dunham, the creative genius behind the Waxattract company, wanted to do something much more scary than he already had: Castle Dracula. This attraction he would own, and to set it apart, it would have to be even more thematic and technologically advanced than Dunham's previous attractions. To say the least, it delivered. It was originally located on Victoria Ave. in an old Bell Telephone office building, which had since become a Canadian Corps building, and then been abandoned. This is the building Nightmares Fear Factory now occupies. Nightmares would have you believe the building used to be the "Cataract Coffin Factory", which (while great storytelling), isn't true, however being the former home of Dracula is the next best thing, and a pretty good story itself.
It opened on June 1st, 1974, to rave reviews. Very little was documented about this original location, but most of what was comes from a thankfully very detailed newspaper clipping about its opening week. According to the article, Castle Dracula was quite a spectacle to behold when it opened, and took the House of Frankenstein concept, and (to quote Spinal Tap), turned it up to 11.
Castle Dracula was themed floor to ceiling. The halls
were covered in stucco rock, made to look like twisting
caves between castle archways, and blacklight stalagmites
hung from the ceilings. It would use many of the same
sculpts as the figures in the House of Frankenstein locations,
and while containing many of the same scenes such as all the
classic movie monsters, "The Room of Rats", "The Attic
Ghost", the Medieval Torture Chamber, and more, the overall list of scenes would vary even more than the two House of Frankenstein locations varied from each other. The scenes were also usually presented in a much scarier way than in the House of Frankenstein locations. For example, The Room of Rats in both House of Frankenstein locations depicted a man lying in bed being devoured by rats, his chest slowly rising up and down. The Room of Rats scene in Castle Dracula however was an even more gruesome depiction: a dying man chained to the floor of a cell, being devoured by rats crawling up his body and on the the walls around him.
Former Bell Telephone building later home to the original Castle Dracula, early-70s.
The "Room of Rats" as it appeared in The House of Frankenstein (left), and as it appeared in Castle Dracula (right) at the later Panama City Beach, Florida location. While neither appear to be enjoying themselves, the victim in Castle Dracula doesn't have accommodations quite as nice as the one in The House of Frankenstein, and certainly isn't there of his volition.
In addition to scarier scenes and storytelling, it was also even more technologically advanced. The Seance room now had a projected recording of a talking face inside the crystal ball instead of a simple glowing light, but the projection technology wouldn't stop there. Many peoples' fondest memory of the Castle Dracula locations is the Lightshow room with Quadraphonic Surround Sound. The newspaper article interviews Dunham who talks about the Lightshow, which required an operator to control. He says that 50 projectors throw special effects on a 96 foot screen, the finale of the attraction. It was a massive room with a horseshoe shaped screen around three of the walls, with the pathway guests would walk along being akin to a line across the top of the horseshoe. Behind the screen was a lighting rig of various spotlights, projectors, moving lights (like fire or falling snowflake effects), and silhouettes. The operator would talk into a mic to the guests in horror characters' voices, able to actually interact with the guests in real time, and provide a customized show to each guest using the switchboard. The operator booth was behind a two-way mirror located behind the guests, facing out into the room so the operator could see how the show they were putting on looked, and adapt to guests' reactions better.
Lightshow operator Jesse Dodd at the switchboard of the Lightshow in the later Florida location, 1977. The Lightshow in the original Niagara Falls location would have used similar equipment. Notice the reel-to-reel tape at top left.
The technological improvements wouldn't stop at lighting and audio technology however, as the attraction featured yet another first, this time in the world of animatronics; the Monster Mash. The Monster Mash was a fully animatronic band of monsters singing Bobby Pickett's song "Monster Mash", with Frankenstein's Monster on vocals, The Wolfman on guitar, The Mummy on drums, and Dracula at the piano. It was also incredibly advanced in movement for the time, capable of movements not seen in other animatronics until the end of the decade. Unfortunately, it was in the dark hallways of the actual attraction, not the lobby or window, so photos or video have yet to surface of this historic band, and given camera quality at the time, likely never will.
Former location of the original Castle Dracula across Victoria Ave. from Maple Leaf Village, early-80's. The Dracula building is circled here in red. See the shorter building expansion next door to the right with "Frank's" painted on the roof.
The attraction was three floors. The building itself is located on a slight hill, so at the front along Victoria Ave., the first floor is level with the ground, whereas around the back of the building, the first floor would be a sort of underground basement, and the second floor would be level with the ground. The front half of the first floor was occupied by Frank's Steakhouse, a popular local restaurant (that would later expand out the side of the building), and the back half of the first floor was home to the lower level of Castle Dracula. You see, while you entered Castle Dracula through a door on Victoria Ave., you were immediately greeted with a stairs up to the lobby, gift shop and arcade on the second floor. An actor in a Dracula mask roamed on the sidewalk outside, a tried-and-true technique that had been drawing major crowds to Dunham's House of Frankenstein.
Just like the House of Frankenstein locations, the gift shop would be mostly horror themed selling Aurora Monster Models, monster merchandise, toys, collectables, and plenty of custom Castle Dracula merchandise. This included T-shirts, cups, pins, mugs, postcards, goblets, statues, coin banks and more. These items, especially the banks, fetch a high price now from both vintage monster memorabilia collectors and vintage amusement memorabilia collectors. Waxattract would also sell their masks and latex hands at the Castle Dracula locations, just as they had at the House of Frankenstein(s). These were made from the same molds as the figures in the attraction, meaning you could go home dressed as an authentic Castle Dracula monster.
A souvenir Dracula coin bank purchased from the attraction's gift shop in the mid-70's.
After you bought your ticket and started on your actual journey into the attraction, you immediately went down to the lower level behind the steakhouse. This lower level was an incredible feat of design that still hasn't been done in another haunted attraction to this day, not even the subsequent Castle Draculas. A pool company was brought in to reinforce all the walls of the foundation with sealed concrete, turning the entire basement into "The Swamp"; a massive watertight fish tank with a twisting hallway running through the middle. Along this hallway were huge windows into various underwater horror scenes, such as the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Davey Jones Locker. All the scenes in The Swamp were connected between each other, for the room's large fish population to freely swim around, including 3-foot long Carp.
"The Exorcist" scene after the attraction later moved to Clifton Hill. This image was taken in 2022 after the scene's animation and effects had long since been shut off, and the scene marker placed directly on the bed.
After guests' journey through The Swamp they would come back upstairs to the level at which they began, where most of the attraction was located (including The Monster Mash), and from there head up to the top floor containing a handful of scenes as well as the Lightshow. Afterwards they would come down a staircase into the lobby. Some of the new scenes not present in the previous House of Frankenstein locations would include "The Black Hole of Calcutta", "The Human Fly", "Dracula's Wine Cellar" (where a circulating pump poured fake blood out of a draining corpse into one of Dracula's wine barrels), and "The Exorcist", where a young girl would appear to sit up and begin levitating above her bed while a priest waved a cross in the air chanting "The power of Christ compells you!" to no avail. The face of the little girl was actually a cast of Dunham's youngest daughter Debbie's face, who was 8 years old at the time. The attraction was ahead of it's time and spectacular at every turn.
The newspaper article also says that the opening weekend saw 500 visitors, and that the attraction took almost an hour to fully experience. An article discussing the opening of the later Myrtle Beach location in 1975 claims Dunham's Niagara location drew 200,000 guests it's first year, but apparently it wasn't enough. You see despite being incredibly well received, it wasn't without its issues, as the attraction's complexity would be a double-edged sword. The pool company who poured the concrete for The Swamp did a less than stellar job, and leaks were an issue from day one. This would cause the water (and fish) to eventually be removed halfway through the location's lifespan, being replaced with shimmering light effects to simulate water. The Monster Mash was also problematic, requiring constant maintenance
due to the amount of moving components and servos.
Robert Dunham's son Fred was usually the one to do
the painstaking maintenance on the band to keep it
running to its full potential.
There was also an issue with the attraction's location. Victoria Ave. between Clifton Hill and the Fallsview district is somewhat highly trafficked, but Victoria Ave. in the other direction, while still considered part of the Clifton Hill district until Bender St., gets much less foot traffic, even to this day. It still swells with people on a Summer weekend, but nowhere near the levels of the rest of the Clifton Hill area. With a fairly simple exterior and lack of visibility from down the street, the original Castle Dracula simply failed to pull tourists away from the other areas, despite the positive press and lasting effect on the wider amusement industry.
Photo of the City of Niagara Falls taken from atop the Oneida Tower in 1975, with the top of "Castle Dracula Museum" and Frank's Steakhouse visible along Victoria Ave. at the bottom left.
After the American locations of Castle Dracula were open and running smoothly by 1977, Dunham would move on from opening new Castle Dracula locations to work on other projects. Back in Niagara Falls, despite the version of the attraction there being the most advanced, it was still failing to pull people in the same way that the U.S. locations were due to it's distance from the Hill. Dunham sold the attraction in 1977, and it moved to its current home on Clifton Hill. This took up the entire plot of land formerly occupied by the historic Darling Motel, which contained the doomed Tower of London Wax Museum that had suffered a massive fire the previous year. What remained of the Motel's cabins were demolished, so all that was left was the two story circa-1950's motel building running along the back of the property, and the former wax museum, gift shop and offices building at the front of the property facing Clifton Hill. The front building was severely burnt out by the wax museum fire, and had sat abandoned for several months. It's unknown what the extent of the damage inside was, but the circa 1925 structure (which originally served as the offices, gift shop and restaurant of the motel) was apparently saveable.
The same building in the 1930's as the Darling Cabins (left), 1960's as the Darling Motel (center), and 2023 as Castle Dracula (right).
A new structure was built connecting the two in the middle, to create one long building running from the front to the back of the property. The charred castle turrets of the Tower of London Wax Museum were repurposed from the Queen's to Dracula's. Red glowing windows and gothic peaks were added to the towers, and the castle was now painted bright white. The top floor of this rebuilt and now conjoined structure became the actual walk through museum, with the first floor being the large gift shop and game room. The basement seems to have become some sort of additional gift shop/game room space. Its also not known if the attraction followed the same path in the building it does today, as it may have used part of the main floor or basement, or let out in either place. Currently, the whole attraction is upstairs with the exit being right next to the entrance in the lobby.
Newspaper clippings from the Niagara Falls Review showing the castle turrets being constructed around the pre-existing Darling Motel building for the Tower of London Wax Museum (left,1975), and the towers being remodeled into castle peaks for Castle Dracula (right,1977).
The fact that Castle Dracula is the bare bones of the old Darling Motel (and Reinhart's Riverhurst Inn before that) makes it the oldest structure on the Hill, dating to 1925, which much to my surprise is a fact seen nowhere on the internet. Looking at old construction photos or even the building on Google Maps however absolutely confirms this, as from above you can clearly see the shells of the old buildings at the front and back, connected by new structure in the middle. Take a ride on the Skywheel and look down, and this is even more apparent.
Shot of Clifton Hill taken from the Skywheel showing the Castle Dracula building. The former office/restaurant building of the Darling Motel is highlighted in red, with the former motel room block at the back of the property highlighted in blue. Newer structure built in 1977 connects the two.
The castle design of the new building obviously took heavy
inspiration from the U.S. locations despite Waxattract having
no involvement. It's unknown what was brought over from the
Victoria Ave. location, but it's likely that the Lightshow and
The Monster Mash never made the transition, as their
mentions were dropped from subsequent brochures. It's also
not known what happened to the figures and scenery not
included in the sale. One Redditor remarked on one of my
history posts there that they were employed at the Victoria
Ave. Days Inn in the early 90s, which happens to be next door
to the location of the original Castle Dracula location. They
said a basement storage room just off the parking garage
contained a bunch of figures from "some old horror attraction"
that the hotel owners had acquired at some point, but never did anything with. It's unknown if these were infact the unnaccounted for Castle Dracula figures who didn't make it to Clifton Hill, but it's a likely possibility. With the vast amount of horror attractions or wax museum chambers of horror that have existed in The Falls over the years however, there's also a variety of other places they could have come from, including the "Haunted House" attraction that repurposed the Boris Karloff Wax Museum, or possibly Tussaud's, the House of Frankenstein, or Movieland, all of which underwent major renovations around that time
Entrance of the Clifton Hill location, 1979. The mystery display was located under the word "Chilling" on the sign above.
The newer Clifton Hill location also originally featured a small windowed area with windows on three sides. It faced Clifton Hill and contained a scene, although what exactly (an old news article about the attraction simply calls it a "window corpse") or if it was previously in a window facing Victoria Ave. in the original location, is unknown. There was also a lobby display of some sort above a bench near the attraction's entrance. A new scene remains there today, but the original display or if it too was displayed in the Victoria Ave. lobby is also a mystery. Outside the attraction, Bach's "Toccata and Fugue", known much better as Dracula's theme, played over loudspeaker, alternating between that and Bobby Pickett's "Monster's Mash Party", the B-side track to "Monster Mash". These may have been in place at the original location as well, and evidence points to at least "Toccata and Fugue" being played outside there, due to it also being played outside Dunham's other locations in the U.S. While significantly less impressive than the original, the attraction performed much better thanks to it's new Clifton Hill location, where it remains to this day.
The original exterior of the Clifton Hill location, 1977.
It was originally brought to Clifton Hill by three brothers named Mario, Victor and Cosmo Menechella, who purchased the attraction from Dunham. The Menechellas gave the attraction plenty of love, completing a $60,000 facade remodel in 1982 that saw the addition of the giant, iconic, vampire skull mouth in front of the lobby's entrance, the front display window area next to it being removed at this time (this is the open space to the right of the face today). It was designed by artist Gianfranco Avignoni, as were many of the other new monsters incorporated into the facade above. The original gift shop and games room was also replaced with The Hill Family Restaurant. They opened up the basement (whatever it contained) right to the street (instead of being accessed from inside), and the original staircase downstairs to the former Darling Motel's gift shop could now be entered from just outside the attraction's lobby. They also painted a stained glass window of Dracula on one of the castle towers.
The updated castle exterior in 1983. Notice the blood running down the walls, dripping out of the windows, along with the creature coming out of the wall above the former location of the window display. Both these short-lived features were removed the following year.
The original face entrance was much scarier than the current one. It seems it may have been scaring more people away than bringing them in, as just two years later in 1984, the face was completely overhauled by Avignoni to be less scary, as it remains today. It was when the face was remodeled that many more changes would come to the castle. A plywood box containing a light inside with the letters "Thriller" and Michael Jackson's face cut out of it was placed on the outside of the castle, covering the old stained glass painting. A Michael Jackson figure ended up being placed in one of the pre-existing scenes to create a "Thriller" scene. The entire castle was repainted dark grey, and the twisting tree trunks of the giant face now extended up the walls with twisting vines. A variety of fiberglass skeletons, skulls, and heads protruded from the facade (replacing the monsters), and a new, small exterior window was added up high on the wall, although what it contained (if anything) isn't clear. The Hill Family Restaurant was also replaced with a Howard Johnson's Restaurant franchise. Around this time, in the mid-late 80s, local voice actor Lyall Cousins provided a new dialogue recording dubbed over Bach's "Toccatta and Fugue" that had already played outside the attraction.
Scans of a 1980 brochure used for the majority of the Menechella years.
Updated, dark-grey facade in the late-80s. A skeleton sitting on the branch of the tree has replaced the monster coming out of the wall.
The lobby scene as seen in 1991. A large number of figures from elesewhere in the attraction seem to have already been displaced and dismembered shortly prior to this photograph.
The Menechellas went on to become big in the hotel industry in Niagara Falls, and shifting their focus, the attraction changed hands to its current owners sometime around 1991. At that time the lobby scene was a hunchbacked man leaning over a woman in a stockade vomiting recirculating water into a barrel. The figures definitely appear to be Waxattract originals, however if they were original to the lobby or relocated from elsewhere in the museum like the bits and pieces of other characters surrounding them is unknown. The owners who purchased the attraction from the Menechellas wouldn't update a thing for the entire tenure of their ownership from 1991-2023, but on the other hand, didn't maintain the original scenes either, leaving them to fall into disrepair. Noticeable problems began essentially immediately in the mid-90s, when the words "Wax Museum" on the sign were painted over and replaced with the words "Haunted Castle", as some of the scenes inside had been turned off or removed by that point. At that time the Howard Johnson's was replaced with a jewelry store named "Colonade", and the entrance to whatever was in the basement was sealed off and replaced with signage. The basement remains abandoned to this day. Eventually in 1997, the jewelry store became a generic gift shop, and the attraction's original sign would be replaced entirely with the one that remains today, renaming the attraction to "Dracula's Haunted Castle." The voiceover remained as well, but the other song that originally played outside, "Monsters' Mash Party", was replaced with a medley of horror movie themes. When the 1997 updates occurred, it seems things inside really started to go downhill, and by the 2010's, the attraction was quite literally a shell of it's former self.
Some of the few lit scenes which remained in the museum by the 2010's. Clockwise from bottom: "The Druids" although their victim's still-beating heart they once held has been replaced with a baseball bat, "Rosemary's Baby" (sans-rocking effect and dialogue), and "Dracula's Wine Cellar" with the circulating blood shut off.
Only 7 to 13 (depends which day you went) of the original 40 or so that made the move to Clifton Hill were still lit by the 2020's, and none of them were still functional. A majority of the old scenes were still sitting in complete darkness, and remained full of artwork, props, and usually the figures and animatronics. Some figures were relocated to the backgrounds of the few scenes that remained lit as well as to the lobby, with a female vampire in a coffin replacing the woman in the stockade in the early 2000's. Most of the scenes that were emptied out were repurposed for the attraction's one scare actor (plainclothes guy with a clapperboard, sometimes sitting in a Lazyboy) to jump out from. Since the attraction was in a similar state since consumer cameras became higher quality and readily available on smartphones in the late 2000's, it's made it very hard to document what the attraction would have looked like in its incredible glory days. No guide book for the Castle Dracula locations has surfaced like the one for the House of Frankenstein, and also unlike that attraction, the American counterparts to use as a reference are long gone.
"The Wax Workshop" (above) that was a bit of a running joke in the Waxattract attractions, as it appeared under flash photography in the early-90s. (Right) The same scene in 2023, the wax maker now missing his head like his victim.
Michael Jackson haunts a graveyard once home to an unkown scene amongst several other displaced ghouls from elsewhere in the attractiion. Could "B.F.D." on the old tombstone prop seen in the bottom-right be the initials of a member of the Dunham family?
This was tragic considering the amount of artwork and history still contained within the building, not to mention the countless secrets behind what was originally where, how things worked or were constructed. These were all important parts of Niagara's amusement history as well as wider amusement history as a whole. These deserved to be seen and enjoyed by regular guests and enthusiasts alike, not to mention experienced as they were meant to. Worst of all, by 2023, there were spots where you could see through the wall to the daylight and leaks in the roof, especially in the nearly century old front section of the structure that was formerly the Darling Motel offices. Using a flashlight it was easy to see open backstage areas formerly used for the animatronic control centres, and unlit former scenes full of garbage with signs of mold. Without a flashlight, it was actually hard not to stumble into these areas in the pitch darkness. The building was becoming a serious hazard not just to guests, but to itself, as it was becoming a major fire risk.
A figure dressed as Santa Claus that somehow wound up inhabiting the attraction's first scene by the late 90's.
(Above): An old scene, walled off on one of it's two sides, decayed beyond recognition and full of garbage. The artwork to the right is where the scene was walled off on one side using an old artwork panel from another scene flipped to face inward. It's unknown if all these figures were original to this scene or moved here for storage. This was located directly after the small set of steps where you leave then section housed in the former Darling Motel offices and enter the structure built in 1977. (Top right): an emptied out former scene featuring a never-ending hallway background. (Bottom right): The former Mummy scene emptied out and home to nothing but a mop bucket. Notice the old employee access connection to the former never-ending hallway scene on the left. These scenes were located in the hallway running along the side of building adjacent to the Thriftlodge.
And then, miraculously, eagle-eyed visitors to Clifton Hill in 2024 would notice something, the giant, faded sign high above the building would be repainted for the first time in nearly 50 years. Castle Dracula had new owners. The attraction received it's first updates of any kind since the 1997 updates to the exterior, and the first interior remodel in the attraction's history. Unfortunately, filming and photography is not allowed, so if you want to see the updates to the attraction, you'll have to make a voyage to Niagara Falls, or if you're not able to, watch the low quality footage in this video recorded by a YouTube channel which is unaffiliated with this website. A rundown however is as follows: the effects this remodel has had on the attraction, although majorly positive, are a bit conflicting.
Updated facade and repainted sign in 2024. This bold sign stands out more than anything on the Hill except perhaps the Skywheel.
On one hand, the new owners obviously care very deeply about this place, that's plain to see. They obviously sunk some serious cash in to the structural work on the building alone. Gone is the daylight and rain coming in through the roof, it now feels more solid and put together, as if the place could easily last another 50 years, which couldn't be said before. The remodel is gorgeous, the place is now as spotless and professional as it would have been on opening day. On the other hand about 90% of those original figures, scenes, props, animatronics equipment and more that had been sitting in darkness for 30 years were completely removed. Now to be fair, as you've seen from the images above, there wasn't much left of many of these props to begin with, as over 30 years of neglect had not been kind to their sculpted faces, peering at visitors from the pitch darkness who were unaware they were even still there. Despite that, these were genuine works of art and pieces of amusement history, decayed and dusty the same way an artifact from a tomb would be, but of value nonetheless. What happened to the figures that were removed is currently unknown, but if you know where to look and what to look for, you'll find plenty of original elements still hanging around. Make no mistake, the presence of the Dunham and Menechella families can still be felt throughout these halls.
Almost entirely unchanged is the lobby, save for a new zombie display above the bench replacing the hunchback and vampire bride (more on them later.) Outside the attraction, the iconic horror movie themes that have been a staple sound of Clifton Hill for 25 years remain, however Mr. Cousins' late-80's Dracula dialogue set to "Toccata and Fugue" beckoning you inside has been replaced with a new Dracula script. The new script is as bold and commanding as the old one had once been back when the recording was new, and does a fantastic job of demanding attention. Sadly however, Toccata and Fugue is absent from the new recording, marking the first time in the attraction's history since 1974 that Dracula's music isn't present at his own attraction. The long-painted-over Michael Jackson "Thriller" lightbox has also been removed, for a plethora of understandable reasons. Inside the actual halls of the attraction, the changes are even more apparent.
New zombie display in the lobby. This figure is a great example of the detiail on the new props.
While the attraction follows roughly the same path that it has since it moved to Clifton Hill in 1977, several walls have been knocked out or removed. While this has completely eliminated the locations of certain former scenes, it's also opened up certain scenes that haven't seen the light of day since the mid-90's, along with limited elements of their original artwork and scenery. Both the front hallway and the hallway that formerly ran along the back of the building have been majorly overhauled. Whereas the back hallway was formerly straight with scenes on each side, the hallway now zigzags through the space formerly occupied by the scenes on the left, with scenes only on the right hand side. One cool little easter egg is a giant Dracula face painted on the wall of this hallway that was formerly the background of one of the removed scenes. This old depiction of The Count matches the one found on the original sign that was removed in 1997. The infamous squishy floor room, which hadn't had it's foam flooring replaced since 80's and was more akin to a carpet placed over a hole in the floor, has also had the floor boarded over. The attraction is filled with several elements noticeably absent from it for 30 years including a variety of torture chambers, a mirror maze, and a live actor who's actually both in costume and dedicated to their role. The hunchback, vampire bride, and the guards retrofitted with the Halloween masks from the lobby display have been relocated inside the attraction again as they originally were, whereas the barrels from the former "Dracula's Wine Cellar" scene appear to have been repurposed in a scene depicting a pirate ship. A small handful of other long-lost props are visible again, sometimes in the backgrounds of larger scenes.
The iconic exit staircase still remains.
Highlights include two formerly walled off scenes that have been opened up and turned into a walk through a haunted forest, a circular torture chamber area that is now visible again albeit occupied by Dracula's Bride, and most of all, the retention of the beautiful exit staircase through the blacklight rock cave. There's much to be said for the new props however as well. While the original props were incredibly advanced for their time and would likely still resonate with visitors even today, they were also the first of their kind, and restoring half-a-century old animatronics running on 1974 wiring and technology that had been neglected for 30 years certainly wouldn't be a cheap or easy task. It's pretty easy to see why the new ownership opted for mostly new animatronic props, and the ones they chose certainly fit the bill. One thing that struck me as an enthusiast, is apart from one or two more popular offerings from the legendary Distortions Unlimited, several of these props look to be either unique or at the very least not often seen in other haunted attractions. Everything you'd expect is here: a werewolf, bat-winged vampires, screaming torture victims, an executioner with his axe, and an inmate in an asylum; all things you also would have encountered in the attraction back in 1974, all animatronics which this attraction grandfathered over 50 years ago. It's fitting then, that on that anniversary, this technology comes home to one of the places it began.
Castle Dracula now joins The House of Frankenstein as being an evolved version of it's former self, once again the lively home of it's titular monster, and no longer it's tomb. Castle Dracula can currently be compared to where The House of Frankenstein was in the early 2000's: heavily remodeled, with just enough original elements preserved to retain the spirit of the original. In fact, despite the mass exodus of original scenery, one could argue the Castle Dracula that exists now is more true to the spirit of the original than the decrepit state it was formerly in, regardless of what original elements may have existed behind walls. The same can't really be said anymore for The House of Frankenstein. Following the most recent remodel removing the majority of the remaining original props there, and the immersion break caused by the entrance to the new rooftop Frankencoaster overtaking the old start of the attraction, it's somewhat of a different concept from it's original state save for increasingly few elements. It's still a fantastic attraction nonetheless, but if you want Niagara's closest experience to a preserved, maintained and evolved version of a classic and historic attraction, look no further than Castle Dracula. With the American Castle Dracula locations long gone, it appears much like Dracula himself, the castle can only survive as long as it has it's home soil, and it looks like it has risen from the dead and isn't going anywhere soon. The Count has reclaimed the right to the neon saying on the front of the building: "This is THE ONE!"
