Funhouse - Carnival Fun Houses

Carnival Fun Houses

Traveling carnivals have long included small walk-through fun houses in addition to their thrill rides. The typical carnival fun house is built entirely in a semi-trailer, usually about 40 feet (12 m) long by 8 feet (2.4 m) wide, allowing limited space for elaborate scenes or effects. Common features are dark corridors, light-up skulls, gravity-powered tipping floors, and airjets at the exit. A few include motorized devices like moving floors and stairways or downscaled revolving barrels. A few attractions traveling on two or more trailers are more elaborate.

Beginning in the late 1980s a few American operators acquired European-built attractions that unfold into multi-storied walkthroughs with dozens of tricks. Such funhouses are ubiquitous in Europe, but the falling value of the U.S. dollar and the high cost of fuel to transport multiple trailers over the long distances carnivals travel in the United States has made them expensive to buy and operate, so they are seen only at the largest American fairs.