How exactly did the Popeye's queue work for houses?

[HHN Maddux]

Hello there! Some of you may know this (or figured it out) but I'm a huge fan + nerd buff when it comes to the history of HHN! I'm considered the historian in a HHN-dedicated server and I even keep an archive of every HHN year!

So as some of you may know, for HHN 12 and 13, the queue for Popeye's was used as a house location for the event when it was over at Islands, housing Scary Tales II and Ship of Screams. I never really go on Popeye that often, but I did for the first time recently in a long time and got sent through the full queue, and it just started making me wonder, how the actual hell did they put a house in here? There's lots of ramps and stairways, plus it just seems like there's so many props and mechanics in the queue that they'd have to work around.

If anyone with better knowledge than me, or even better, anyone who got to experience either house, could you possibly shed some light on this? Thank you for your time in advance!

 

[Legacy]

I’ll generally remember the how of it, but it worked “better” than you’d expect.

The queue was between Me Ship, the Olive and Popeye’s, and the house entrance was actually the exit stairs, with the facade at the bottom. The exit was under the trees to the west (I don’t remember if that’s actual queue entrance or an employee entrance).

I’m pretty sure the house was entirely in the northern part of the ride’s queue. Any open-air portions of the queue had walls and roofs built to enclose them.

This resulted in surprisingly clever layouts that bounced between claustrophobic corridors and very tall areas. They weren’t “good” houses, but they were fun, and worked extremely well for their time.

 

[grlhowl]

To question further- how did the queue work during the day? Was it just rerouted to go around the sections used by the house?

 

[Brian G.]

I believe the ride was closed during the run and they’d do maintenance. Gotta doublecheck.

 

[grlhowl]

I believe the ride was closed during the run and they’d do maintenance. Gotta doublecheck.

That would make perfect sense, and honestly I had never even considered that could be the case lol. But to be fair I've never ridden Popeye so I am not familiar with its queue layout at all.

 

[Mad Dog]

I've always used Express on Popeye. I had no idea the indoor queue was this extensive. Very interesting.

 

[Legacy]

To question further- how did the queue work during the day? Was it just rerouted to go around the sections used by the house?

I believe the ride was closed during the run and they’d do maintenance. Gotta doublecheck.

I think one of those years it was open, but it was basically going in and out the entrance with no actual use of the queue.

 

[Brian G.]

I think one of those years it was open, but it was basically going in and out the entrance with no actual use of the queue.

I wanna say 2003 it was closed because I remember seeing photo updates and Popeye was waterfree.

 

[HHN Maddux]

I’ll generally remember the how of it, but it worked “better” than you’d expect.

The queue was between Me Ship, the Olive and Popeye’s, and the house entrance was actually the exit stairs, with the facade at the bottom. The exit was under the trees to the west (I don’t remember if that’s actual queue entrance or an employee entrance).

I’m pretty sure the house was entirely in the northern part of the ride’s queue. Any open-air portions of the queue had walls and roofs built to enclose them.

This resulted in surprisingly clever layouts that bounced between claustrophobic corridors and very tall areas. They weren’t “good” houses, but they were fun, and worked extremely well for their time.

View attachment 21937

It really is insane just how big the extended queue is and yet I don't think I've ever seen it used in my 10+ years of being a passholder.

Thank you so much for this, it helped tremendously!!!

 

[Allison]

It really is insane just how big the extended queue is and yet I don't think I've ever seen it used in my 10+ years of being a passholder.

Thank you so much for this, it helped tremendously!!!

I vaguely remember during Thanksgiving trips as a child there were a whole lot of zig-zags and a whole lot of walking, but I very well could be misremembering as this was also the early 2000’s.

 

[ghostsarejerks]

This is the kind of stuff I live for, I would pay good money to see one of those layouts or blueprints.