MOREY’S PIERS
REDEVELOPMENT PLAN
Wildwood, New Jersey, is home to Morey’s Piers – three separate pier parks connected across two miles by the Wildwood Boardwalk. The piers, boardwalk and town as a whole have a cluttered, chaotic appeal. In transforming their piers into a must-do destination, the owners of Morey’s Piers are taking great care to preserve their unique seaside ambiance.
They have considered a number of specific improvements.
Morey’s Doo-Wop Hotel will be a luxury resort near the Wildwood Boardwalk, a high-toned oasis in a city of chintzy motels which still retains their distinctive 1950s Space Age architecture.
The three piers (Surfside Pier, Mariner’s Pier, and Adventure Pier) are redesigned and rebranded.
Coney Island circa 1900 serves as the inspiration for Morey’s new look. Guests arriving from throughout the eastern seaboard should find this nostalgic approach an appealing look back at the region’s history. Attractions remain the same, but with a charming new Victorian aesthetic. The piers are rechristened
Luna Pier,
Dream Pier, and
Steeplechase Pier.
Lastly, a number of
new headlining attractions are added to serve as anchors to Morey’s existing roster of 100+ carnival rides. These new rides are inspired by long-lost Coney classics given modern twists.
Dragon’s Gorge reimagines a highly-themed switchback railway as a thrilling Intamin Blitz coaster.
A Trip to the Moon is a sci-fi fantasy suspended dark ride.
Drop the Dip is a Gravity Group wooden coaster paying homage to an early classic.
Electric Tower is a story-driven drop tower in an iconic edifice.
Fire & Flames is a shooter dark ride, with guests as firefighters battling Coney’s historic blazes. And
Steeplechase Race recreates the classic horse ride as a launched, racing Vekoma “motorbike” roller coaster.
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BUDGET BREAKDOWN
Morey’s Doo Wop Hotel - $75 million
- $50 million for rooms (250 rooms, $200,000 per upper midscale room)
- $10 million cost for a downtown city block in Wildwood
- $15 million cost for additional hotel features
General pier aesthetic improvements - $60 million
Dragon’s Gorge - $30 million
A Trip to the Moon - $25 million
Drop the Dip - $5 million
Electric Tower - $10 million
Steeplechase Race - $20 million
Fire & Flames - $20 million
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MOREY’S DOO-WOP HOTEL
The city of Wildwood is renowned for its 1950s and ‘60s Doo-Wop architecture. Its historic district is awash with Vegas-like neon signs, plastic palm trees, and starburst décor. Morey’s Doo-Wop Hotel channels that same playful Googie style, marrying it with an upscale mid-century Rat Pack lounge sensibility. Florida’s Fontainebleau Miami Beach, as famously seen in the film
Goldfinger, is a major reference point.
Hotel entry is under a sweeping Populuxe disc atop white concrete legs, like the LAX Theme Building. The lobby featured a central waterfall fountain tower and check-in desks recessed under magenta neon lighting. The central hotel tower forms a crescent around an open pool complex. A saucer-shaped ground level structure houses assorted hotel amenities, from fine-dining to bars to our gym.
Altogether there are 250 rooms. This includes 200 standard double bed suites, 40 family suites, 8 luxury suites and 2 penthouse suites. All rooms are decorated in a playful mid-century Googie fashion, and come equipped standard with wifi, television and refrigerator.
Hotel restaurants include:
Morey’s Steakhouse
Starburst Bar & Lounge
Cape May Buffet
Hotel recreation activities include our outdoor pool complex and a dedicated gym. Shopping is found near the lobby at Will & Jack’s, which sells everything needed for a day on the Jersey Shore. At night, the Starburst Bar & Lounge is home to crooning lounge acts inspired by the famed Copacabana. The venue’s clear-story windows looking out on a private pool are host to additional show elements from mermaid performers.
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REDEVELOPMENT PLAN FOR THE THREE PIERS
Altogether, the three piers at Morey’s boast around 100 rides and attractions. Most are small plug-n-play carnival rides. They create a fun overall atmosphere which is worth preserving, but little is individually a draw.
This proposal rethemes each pier with inspiration from Coney Island’s long-lost amusement parks. This creates a cohesive aesthetic across each individual pier, enough to unite the admittedly disparate and underthemed rides. This seems the most realistic solution to plussing the Piers while maintaining their rough-and-tumble seaside charm.
In addition, this proposal creates a number of must-do headliner attractions which will serve as anchors for this redevelopment.
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LUNA PIER
(formerly Surfside Pier)
Surfside Pier’s new visual design inspiration comes from Coney’s Luna Park. New décor has a Victorian Orientalist vibe, complete with popcorn bulbs, a red & white paint scheme, and detailed architectural finishings like spires and minarets and domes. All surviving attractions are redressed in this style, often with triumphal statues or other eye-catching marque decorations. Here and throughout the other piers, our design team adds vintage murals and posters and advertisements, all helping to create a unique nostalgic headspace.
Noteworthy decorative changes to the pier include:
Zoom Phloom takes on design inspirations from Luna Park’s Shoot the Chutes. The “Under the Boardwalk” dark ride scenes become an Old Mill “Tunnel of Love” presented with modern tongue-in-cheek humor.
The iconic
KONG flying scooters tower is redressed after Luna Park’s central iconic tower. The famed and iconic Kong figure becomes a limited-motion animatronic, improving Wildwood’s mascot for a new generation.
LUNA PIER HEADLINERS
Dragon’s Gorge
A major headlining roller coaster to replace The Great Nor’easter (a Vekoma SLC) and become Morey’s northern anchor attraction. Dragon’s Gorge will be an Intamin Blitz launch coaster, crisscrossing a compact space and interacting with heavy theming. The ride concept comes from a Luna Park scenic railway.
Guests rode an exotic dragon out from its lair and through an enchanted ice valley. Highly-detailed scenery is reminiscent of Phantasialand’s Taron, with a mixture of jagged ice formations and glacial waterfalls and elaborate Norse farmhouses. The dragon trains launch twice at 75 mph as they zigzag throughout this scenic compact course.
A Trip to the Moon
A highly-themed suspended dark ride to replace the Dante’s Dungeon spook house. Additional ride space is found by extending below the boardwalk, a common pier park technique used on the nearby Zoom Phloom log ride. The ride is a stylized space flight to the Moon, as first envisioned in George Melies’ 1902 film
A Trip to the Moon.
This ride uses Intamin’s suspended model (a cheaper, higher-capacity answer to Peter Pan’s Flight) as found on Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chace. Guests board their space blimps and blast off from a steampunk laboratory through a rocket gun. They fly
through the Man in the Moon, to a shimmering crystalline surface teeming in Selenite lunar royalty and strange moon insects. A simulated splashdown returns riders to Earth.
Drop the Dip
A Gravity Group junior wood coaster in the vein of Roar-O-Saurus or Oscar’s Wacky Taxi. This model appeals to very young children while also pleasing thrill-seekers. It is a compact ride which replaces Flitzer’s already-vacated spot and the nearby Doo Wopper. (The Doo Wopper wild mouse coaster relocates.) Theming and appearance come from Luna Park’s historic Drop the Dip wooden coaster, the first to feature lap bars.
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DREAM PIER
(formerly Mariner’s Pier)
Mariner’s Pier receives a Dreamland retheme. Aesthetically this means an elegant neo-classical Beaux Arts cityscape akin to Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, which also served as Dreamland’s inspiration. Finely-sculpted facades painted all in white contrast against Luna Pier’s garish chaos. Dancing fountains in faux marble complete the tasteful look.
As the boardwalk’s centrally-located pier, Dream Pier already possesses many of the best attractions at Morey’s. For that reason, it needs few new headliners. Extra funds are mostly focused on adding a Victorian patina to existing headliners:
The Giant Wheel, so beautiful at night with its neon light package, takes on the glittering spectacle of Chicago’s original Ferris Wheel.
The Sea Serpent boomerang coaster receives an intentionally fake-looking “mountain” structure akin to Coney’s Pike’s Peak or Great Divide or Mountain Torrents…the great many fake chicken wire mountains of days’ past.
The Raging Waters water park at the pier’s furthest point is rebranded as
Neptune’s Kingdom. This sub-park trades out its light pirate theming for an Atlantean look, complete with mermaid cast members and grand statuary, which nicely compliments the pier’s Neoclassical design.
DREAM PIER HEADLINER
Electric Tower
Replacing the Tea Cups in the pier’s central location is an iconic clock tower, complete with a steeple covered in Romanesque gargoyles. Within is a wholly enclosed drop tower ride with extensive storytelling. Story inspiration comes from Chicago’s infamous H. H. Holmes, whose “Murder Castle” skyscraper contained many deadly traps…including the Space Shot ride which is about to launch guests into the clock tower’s innards.
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STEEPLECHASE PIER
(formerly Adventure Pier)
As it stands, Adventure Pier is almost entirely barren with the exception of their highly worthwhile Great White wooden roller coaster. To revitalize the rest of this forgotten pier, Coney’s Steeplechase Park provides the inspiration. Contrasted to Dream Pier and Luna Pier, décor here is more subdued and industrial, albeit with the same whitewash & popcorn bulb style.
Two headliners will serve as anchors for Morey’s southernmost pier. In addition, Steeplechase Pier receives the relocated
Doo Wopper coaster, redecorated as a Virginia Reel.
The Great White, presently bare wood, is whitewashed and dressed in blinking lightbulbs. It receives Coney-style fiberglass shark statues which “swallow” the coaster trains at different parts of the ride.
With space on this pier still underutilized, a few additional low-budget flat rides are added. Rides such as
The Whip or
Scenic Spiral or
Human Roulette Wheel add great kinetic appeal while simultaneously harking back to Steeplechase Park’s 1907 heyday.
STEEPLECHASE PIER HEADLINERS
Steeplechase Race
Steeplechase Race is a racing launched Vekoma motorbike coaster, the first of its kind in the world. It is meant as a modern compliment to the original steeplechase ride. This replaces the up-charge Grand Prix Raceway go-kart track, with additional coaster layout intertwining with The Great White out over the sands.
Ride vehicles resemble horses, much like Knott’s Berry Farm's Pony Express. Steeplechase Race is not themed as a realistic horse race, but rather as a recreation of a vintage ride type complete with similar racecourse murals and fiberglass decorations. The ride begins with two parallel tracks pulling out from the faux-grandstand station and settling into the straightaway. Both horse trains launch at once, rushing over hills and helixes until a thrilling dash for the finish line!
Fire & Flames
Replacing Luna’s Lost Labyrinth (a wholly valueless walkthrough) is a headlining 4D interactive dark ride. The ride’s premise recruits guests as seaside firefighters, with inspiration coming from the many, many historic fires which plagued 1900s Coney Island. Guests queue in a recreation of Steeplechase Park’s Pavilion of Fun, which has been converted into a fire station. The barracks are full of vintage firefighting displays and interactive tools.
The ride, largely set below grade under the pier, has guests manning fire hose “guns,” blasting flames and saving the park. Scenery is a combination of practical and screen-based, with plenty of careful pyrotechnic effects. Sally Corp provides the ride design, and Oceaneering the ride vehicles. With an approach similar to Justice League: Battle for Metropolis, Fire & Flames accomplishes an exceptional dark experience on a limited budget.
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These Coney-inspired improvements to Morey’s Piers resurrects a part of East Coast seaside history thought long lost. Morey’s Piers does this without losing their vibrant modern appeal. New anchor attractions, comparable to the best regional parks in the U.S. and Europe, add to their appeal. A new luxury hotel helps to extend visitors’ stays. With all of these improvements, Morey’s Piers becomes a vacation destination for decades to come!
This could be a big local draw! Really embrace the Pirates’ history! Letting families play there in between shows sounds very “Kennywood,” especially in light of Steelers Country. 
