How James Monroe Iglehart, Disney On Broadway's Genie, Helped Re-Ignite California’s Great America’s Classic Demon Coaster
After winning a Tony Award for his performance of Genie in Disney On Broadway’s Aladdin, James Monroe Iglehart leant his voice to California’s Great America to re-ignite one of their popular roller coasters.
Just after California’s Great America announced its official closing date, I can’t think of a better time to explore the history of the 50-year-old park. Surprisingly, the park has a fun Disney On Broadway connection that has fallen into theme park history obscurity.
One of the park’s opening day attractions was Turn of the Century, a custom Arrow Dynamics looping coaster that featured two airtime hills and two corkscrews. Just four years later, the park amped up the thrills of Turn of the Century, transforming it into Demon. The park replaced the airtime hills with vertical loops, painted the track black, added rockwork, and incorporated an iconic light-up tunnel in the reimagining of the coaster.
But the updates didn’t just come to the on-ride experience, with the addition of a 30-minute long queue soundtrack complete with fictional radio broadcasts, sound effects, and a theme song. And let me tell you, this theme song is a banger! Please listen below. (Note: Six Flags Great America was originally a Marriott park alongside California’s Great America and also received the re-theme)
Well, by the 1990s, many of the effects found throughout the attraction were slowly disabled and forgotten about. That was until 2017, when California’s Great America announced Demon: Re-Ignited, a special Halloween Haunt version of the attraction that would add and restore effects to the classic attraction.
Part of that announcement included a video of Broadway’s James Monroe Iglehart in the recording booth excitedly announcing that he would be voicing “The Demon,” re-recording the original theme song and bringing new pre-show and on-ride audio to the attraction.
James Monroe Iglehart originated the role of Genie in Disney’s Broadway production of Aladdin, a role he earned a Tony Award for. In the announcement clip, Iglehart shares that he “loves this ride” and is a “Bay Area boy to [his] soul.” He also recalls how the original theme song made him nervous to ride the attraction growing up, describing the opportunity to re-record the song (and re-ride the Demon) as “the awesomest, yet scariest thing in the world.”
When Halloween Haunt 2017 arrived, I made the drive up to California’s Great America specifically to hear Iglehart’s version of the theme. The attraction featured tons of added effects, including projections, bloody waterfalls, pyrotechnics, newly painted queue areas, and new queue and ride audio. However, I never heard Iglehart’s re-recorded version of the song. I remember hearing sound effects, some hardcore rock instrumentals, and even a Demon laugh on-board the ride (unmistakably Iglehart, as heard below), but not hearing that theme song still haunts me.
And even now, none of the videos I found online have a snippet of it. California's Great America's social media posts received numerous comments requesting that the park release the rerecording, but none received a response. Adding to the confusion, I haven’t been able to find any confirmation that anyone heard this song in the queue area loop. It's left me wondering whether the rerecording ever played at the park or if, for some reason, it was never implemented.
The only mention of the re-recording I could find beyond the original announcement was a trip report from Park Journey sharing that the song wasn’t ready for opening day. Park Journey indicated in the report they would return to the park and check it out, but made no mention of the re-record in their attraction review or October Halloween Haunt trip report.
Either way, the theme song for Demon is one of the best theme park songs of all time, it’s just a shame that this fun homage to the original attraction seems like lost media. Six Flags or James Monroe Iglehart, if you are somehow reading this, please release “The Demon!”
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