Guests entering Keystone Studios from Pike Road through the aforementioned black wrought iron with gold ornamental trim gates find themselves walking down Glendale Boulevard, a short but incredibly busy street lined with studio buildings, shops and food establishments for the hungry actors on their quick breaks in between takes. On the right side of the street (the southeast side) is the Keystone Food Patio, and just past it, on the same side of the street, is Studio A, home of Roll ‘em!- How to Make a Movie. Just beyond Studio A, wrapping around the corner of Glendale and Silver Oak Street is the counter-service restaurant Wings. On the left side of Glendale is Studio B, where the live special effects show Don’t Try This at Home is presented, and past it is the Studio Deli counter service restaurant.
Chaplin Square is the heart of Keystone Studios. Proceeding around the famous bronze statue of Making Movies, which stands in the center of the square, is the Keystone Commissary gift shop and the slightly run-down Mack Sennett Theater, possibly still haunted by The Phantom of the Wurlitzer. Tucked into the northwest corner of the square is Studio C2, the Cinema Heritage Gallery, a small exhibition hall featuring displays of historic props, costumes, etc. from the Golden Age of Movies (in other words, before 1927’s “The Jazz Singer”). The northeast side of Chaplin Square is occupied by Studio C1, where the film “The Keystone Cops in ‘Jail Breakers’” is shown in one of the most unusual theatre experiments ever attempted.
Having reached the southeast side of Chaplin Square, where Silver Oak Street meets Glendale Blvd, is one of the most thrilling attractions in Americana 1900- Speedy- The Car Chase Through New York. Continuing southeast on Silver Oak Street, guests find Studio D on their right and The Back Lot on their left. Studio D is a service building for Americana 1900, housing one of two fire and rescue squads for the park (the other is in a service building on Railroad Street), along with public restrooms. The Back Lot is the staging area for Americana 1900’s famous parades and is also not open to the public.
“THE KEYSTONE COPS IN ‘JAIL BREAKERS’” (AAP)
Studio C1 in Keystone Studios houses an experimental movie theater unlike anything else to be found anywhere in 1900. The "Kinetophotographicon Theater” (commonly called the "Sennettiscope Theater" by studio workers) is based on a series of proposals that Thomas Edison worked on as part of his Edison Studios enterprise. He wanted to add physical motion to his already-challenging attempts to unite sound and moving images on a screen, but repeated setbacks and some financial challenges convinced Edison that this idea was not one of his best, and he stopped work on the concept after a few months.
Mack Sennett had heard of Edison’s failed attempts and convinced himself that he could make the concept work. He purchased the patent from Edison for $25 and went to work on it. Studio C1 was available, so he assigned several of his workers to create a working movie theater based on Edison's concepts and preliminary attempts, a theater that would combine projected moving images and physical motion to enhance the movie experience. A new Keystone Cops film was just beginning to be filmed, and Mr. Sennett thought it would be the perfect vehicle to try out his new movie format. "The Keystone Cops in 'Jail Breakers'" was filmed to include all the special effects that the experimental theater in Studio C1 would provide- seats that could move and mimic the actions on the screen, air jets to make the viewers feel the wind on their faces when they were racing in a car chase, water jets to spray them gently at appropriate times, a theater floor that actually rotates to follow the action as it moves around the audience, and a movie screen that wrapped completely around the audience to make them feel like they were actually in the movie! They even accidentally solved a problem that they didn’t know they had. One of the workers, who was extremely near-sided and wore extremely thick glasses, accidentally left his sunglasses on while watching an early version of a test film, and thus were discovered 3D glasses, and shortly a fully-functional 3D movie theater (4D if you include the player piano in the corner) was created in Studio C1.
It worked incredibly well, with one small problem. The movie could only be shown in a theater built with all of these special- and very expensive- modifications, and Sennett could not find anyone willing to build a brand new theater just to show one movie. Like Edison, he gave up on the idea, but not wanting to throw away the investment he had made in this venture he decided to keep the specially built theater in Studio C1 open to the public for special showings of "Jail Breakers", and a visit to the Sennettiscope Theater in Studio C1 has become one of the most popular and enjoyable experiences of any visit to Keystone Studios.
"The Keystone Cops in ‘Jail Breakers’" features the famous movie comedy troupe the Keystone Cops. Guests enter Studio C1, the interior of which is not an elegant theater of the era but is obviously a former cavernous film studio with exposed ceiling trusses and no ornamentation other than what appears to be a strange chandelier-like contraption hanging over the center of the theater. This is the kinetophotographicon, the multi-lens, synchronized projector that makes the 360-degree projection of the movie possible. Audience members are given their 3D goggles, then proceed into a round chamber containing three hundred motion seats (limited-movement seats are available, although they do move with the rotating theater floor). The walls are white movie screens that surround the room on all sides. Movie-goers take their seats, put on their goggles, and begin a madcap movie experience with a group of robbers and the Keystone Cops, filmed entirely in Americana 1900.
The film starts in Courthouse Square. Across Davis Street from the Courthouse stands a solid three-story brick and stone structure with bars on the windows. A sign over the front door announces, "County Jail- Open 24 Hours". The action moves inside the jail, where a group of eight burglars, dressed identically in the traditional burglar outfits of black and white striped shirts and black eye masks, are being hauled into jail by the Keystone Cops and locked up in a cell with barred windows.
As soon as the cops leave, one of the robbers reaches into his pocket and pulls out a screwdriver. The other burglars form a human pyramid beneath the window and the one with the screwdriver climbs to the top, unscrews the bars from the window and tosses them to the floor. The audience feels the "bang!" through their seats as it hits the floor. He then climbs back down. The burglars grab the sheets off of the bunks and knot them together into a rope, tie one end to a bunk and toss the other end out the window (remember the bedsheet rope hanging out the window of the real County Jail in Courthouse Square?). All the burglars climb out the window. The movie then shifts to outside the jail, where the burglars are climbing down the bedsheet rope to freedom. As they attempt to sneak away, they sneak right past a window when one of the Keystone Cops happens to look outside, sees them and raises the alarm to the other cops. The burglars see that they've been spotted, jump into a car sitting on the street and take off, with the Keystone Cops scrambling into (and onto) their patrol car in hot pursuit of the bad guys.
Here the 4D motion seats start to perform movie magic unimaginable to anyone other than Mack Sennett, the director of the Keystone Cops (and perhaps Thomas Edison). As the cops chase the robbers through the streets of Americana, the floor of the theater begins to rotate, carrying the audience along as it tracks the speeding vehicles with their comical passengers. The robbers race out of Courthouse Square in their stolen car with the cops close behind. They speed through State Fair, make a hard left turn from State Fair Road onto Century Lane East and narrowly avoid tipping the car over. They proceed west on Century Lane, balanced on two wheels with the robbers holding on for dear life! The Keystone Cops make the same high-speed turn and also end up on two wheels! The seats of the audience tilt to match the tilt of the cars as they race westward, each on two wheels, until they pass the Americana Wonder Wheel, when gravity finally pulls them down to four-wheel driving.
The robbers try to outrun the cops by heading into Morrison Farm, then turning down into the farm lanes of the Farm Tour. Here complete pandemonium breaks out, as the cars lose each other in the maze of farm lanes, hidden from each other by the tall rows of corn and farm buildings. The pleasant smells of the fields- and the less-pleasant smells of the farm animals- permeates the theater. As the cops make a hard turn past a pigpen, one unlucky Keystone Cop loses his grip on the police car and is thrown into the pigpen, with a slight spritz of (clean) water hitting the audience as he splats into the mud. The cars barely miss running into each other as they drive blindly back and forth through the farm fields and muddy farm lanes.
The Keystone Cops decided to try something different. They park behind a barn, intending on waiting for the other car to drive past them, but - unknown to the cops- the robbers have decided to park on the other side of the barn! Neither knows about the other until they each decide to get out of their cars and sneak around the barn, looking for their foe. When they reach the other side of the barn and see the other car sitting empty, they know what happened and each jumps into the other car and take off, looking for their opponents! Now the cops are in the robbers’ stolen car and the robbers are in the Keystone Cops’ car! The high-speed race resumes, with the cops still in hot pursuit of the robbers, with each in the wrong car! They race back out of the farm lanes, back through Morrison Farm, then turn right onto Railroad Street, with the cops closing in on the robbers! They turn back into Courthouse Square, making hairpin turns (with the usual overly-dramatic comic actors trying not to get thrown out of their cars), and circle around the Courthouse.
The audience feels the wind blow in their face (from air jets in the seat ahead); it feels the patrol car lean left and right as it speeds around corners trying to keep up with the burglars; the bumping of the patrol car as it hits a pothole, and the sudden stop of the car as they watch the burglars crash into a fruit stand, sending apples, oranges and bunches of grapes flying everywhere, especially over the heads of the audience. The audience can actually smell the fruit as it virtually flies past them. The burglars pile out of the now-wrecked cop car and begin a madcap chase across the street to the Courthouse, where they race up the stairs with the cops in hot pursuit. The seats lean backward and forwards as the cops and robbers run up and down the stairs inside and out of the courthouse. The cops finally have the robbers cornered, but one of the robbers points behind the cops and says (using dialogue cards) :
All the cops turn and look, and the robbers use this diversion to make their escape out the door, across the street and into a bakery. The cops chase them into the bakery, and here begins the ultimate movie slapstick routine- the cream pie fight! Cream pies start to fly all over the place, especially over the heads of the audience. They can smell the lemon in the lemon pie, the breeze blowing on them as a cherry pie sails just over their heads, and even an occasional splat of something (water) as a pie meets a burglar's face.
Finally, though, the cops capture the burglars and haul the pie-covered criminals back to the County Jail, where they put them back in a cell- the very same cell they escaped from just a few minutes earlier! The burglars see the bed sheet rope still hanging out the open window, smile at each other, and it all starts over again!
"The Keystone Cops in 'Jail Breakers'" is one of the most enjoyable family attractions to be found in Americana 1900, and one of the wildest films shown in any theme park.
Visitors exiting Studio C1 can either return to Chaplin Square or can enter Studio C2, a gallery housing a priceless display of artifacts, scripts, props and costumes from some of the most famous and important films of the silent era.
