In the late 1700s, the town of Sleepy Hollow was a prominent dairy provider within the newly formed colonies of the United States. While the dairy industry was booming, the town was still relatively isolated from the outside world thanks to being built within a valley with deep canyon walls on either side.

The status of the town shifted dramatically in 1789 with the discovery that the canyons surrounding the town were actually a massive collective of hot springs that had up until then sat dormant. The springs brought such an abundance of steam into the town that the esteemed schoolmaster Ichabod Crane…known for his eccentric inventions which pioneered the farming industry…set about to harness it in a way that would blast the quiet town of Sleepy Hollow into what is affectionately known as the Steam Age.

100 years on, Sleepy Hollow is holding a grand Centennial celebration on the anniversary of the discovery of the steam. In the 100 years the town’s history has been one of sheer innovation checkered with tragedy and an air of mystery.

 Ichabod managed to harness the steam to power the entire town and even create marvelous inventions such as steam powered horseless carriages and a new rapid transit railroad through the town’s thick forests.

Despite the rapid progress, darkness still loomed over the town. This was mostly caused by one incident in particular. Ichabod Crane’s brother Isaac Crane was an esteemed geologist in his own right, and for the first couple years of the Steam Age the two were inseparable and put their brilliant minds together to propel Sleepy Hollow into this exciting new era.

The unimaginable struck one fateful day when Isaac was examining a new series of hot springs just north of town in the deep forests within the upper canyon walls. Canyon walls which could only be properly traversed…on horseback.

There was a deep energy coming from one of the new springs, but no steam had been harnessed from it. At Ichabod’s insistence Isaac was sent to examine the hole in the Earth, knowing the steam from within would be enough to take the Age to the next level.

Isaac got to the spring, stuck his head down the hole…and the steam was no longer missing. A scream of sheer pain rang out across the valley, and a horrified Ichabod drew eyes on the headless and still standing body of his brother. The spot where Isaac’s head once sat was now a deep hole down the center of his shoulders, with leftover steam still billowing out.

The incident was the biggest trauma of Ichabod’s life, and feeling a profound sense of responsibility for his brother’s horrific death the school teacher drew himself further into his studies and deep into exile.

His looming, scarecrow-like frame was still seen occasionally in the town when he needed to feed his infamous appetite, and he still ran the town’s tavern out of his former school house to fund his further research. Despite the occasional public appearances, the presence of Ichabod Crane within the town was very much that of a ghost.

The isolated nature of Sleepy Hollow only got worse. The canyons surrounding the town mixed with the unorthodox nature of Crane’s inventions drew with it a pariah status among the colonies, especially since the initial dairy farming had long since been abandoned.

The advancements within the Steam Age extended to the medical field through the use of a steam powered heart valve that could extend one’s life for upwards of 50 years. Of course Ichabod Crane was the first one to get this, and his ghostly presence still loomed in the town as a decrepit old man as the centennial nears.

This is where our    story begins.

Land Layout:

Sleepy Hollow 1889 is laid out in a courtyard style with attractions, shops, and restaurants all spreading out from the central town square. With the Centennial celebration taking place in late October, there’s double the festive atmosphere with the anniversary and Halloween both taking prominence within the town’s decoration.

The steampunk elements within the town will be present but not overly focused on. Occasional gears, cogs, steam valves etc. will definitely line the town and backdrop, but it won’t be the focus of the land’s visual identity. The steampunk focus is more used within the storytelling and character development of the land.

Rock work surrounds the town square, with the signature E Ticket coaster divided from the rest of the land through the canyon wall and thick forests. Throughout the land town citizens are going about their business making preparations for the Centennial as well as various Halloween masquerades. Most cast members will be willing to engage in the backstory, but specific character actors are put in to really flesh out the story.

Meet the Cast

Ichabod Crane:

The decrepit 135 year old former school teacher has a startling lanky appearance and a ghoulish white face. Ichabod is part schoolteacher, part historian, part inventor. Taking inspiration from both Johnny Depp’s turn as the character as well as Disney’s classic version and giving him a slightly supernatural twist with his unnaturally old age, this Ichabod Crane is a perfectly creepy main character in our Steampunk Sleepy Hollow saga.

Brom Bones:

Brom Bones is literally 100 years younger than Crane, and ironically within the story represents a desire to push back against the technological innovations and return to a more simple way of life. Brom is the last descendant of the main dairy farming family who has long since held a grudge against Ichabod Crane for shifting the town’s economic focus away from his family’s trade.

Brom’s physical appearance and demeanor is very similar to Gaston, albeit slightly more serious and world weary but still with a sense of bravado.

Baltus Van Tassel:

The 85 year old Baltus Van Tassel is an old man in his own right, but a spring chicken compared to the half-dead specter that is Crane. Within the last decade, Baltus Van Tassel has stepped in to fund Ichabod’s further research with a keen eye towards inheriting the fortune that comes with it once the steam-powered valve inside Ichabod’s heart eventually fails.

Katrina Van Tassel:

The Van Tassel daughter has been tasked by her father to win the sympathy of Ichabod Crane through becoming his apprentice and putting the former schoolmaster in a father figure position. It is there that Baltus hopes to steal Ichabod’s fortune.

Katrina is torn, caught between her father’s wishes, the desires of fiance Brom Bones to take down the Steam Age entirely and the genuine affection she’s grown for Crane in the years serving as his apprentice and faux surrogate daughter. The distressed young woman is ready and willing to share her dilemma with anyone willing to lend an ear.

Hans Van Ripper:

Professional “Local Kook” Hans Van Ripper was once an esteemed colleague of Crane’s who has since fallen off the deep end spreading rumors of a mysterious headless horsed figure roaming the above forested canyons that surround the town. Van Ripper claims that steam bellows from where the horseman’s head should be, leading many to believe it to be Isaac Crane’s vengeful spirit.
Attractions

Board a steam powered horseless carriage for the ride of your (after)life on the premier E Ticket coaster of Sleepy Hollow 1889. In-universe, Hans Van Ripper serves as the main character this time around. The queue takes place on the old Bones family dairy farm, which Brom has lent out to Van Ripper as a place for him to conduct his Headless Ghost Tours which are slowly growing in infamy.

The outside queue has you winding through old cow pastures and cornfields, out past long abandoned scarecrows and piles of hay that have long since toppled over and become one with the farm's once thriving soil. Occasionally sharp-eyed guests can spot the rogue chicken or duckling (in very simple animatronic form) in various nooks and crannies of the farmland.

Heading into the farm house, guests get a tour of the Bones Family home which is very much a modest affair compared to the likes of Ichabod's Gothic laboratory abode or the Van Tassel manor. Within the farm house, various family portraits paint a picture of a once thriving clan of farmers who turned to darkness once Ichabod Crane and his new fangled Steam Age took all the attention off of the dairy farmers of Sleepy Hollow and basically made them obsolete.

On this tour, you'll be experiencing first hand one of Crane's most iconic inventions, and one that directly led to the death of his brother. The Steam Motorized Accelerated Rapid Transit System, or SMARTS for short, takes the concept of a rapid railroad to an absurd level. Using state of the art steel bending technology only dreamed up through the wonders of the Steam Age, SMARTS's railroad tracks are entirely unconventional, heading up and down and all around the canyon walls and forests that border the town.

Back when the Steam Age was first being established this system of rapid transit was critical for transporting the steam collected within the bordering hot springs back to the town center for Crane and his team to harness. Once the Steam Age hit a certain point in advancement, such a system was no longer needed and the miles of tracks found within the SMARTS system were left abandoned.

Never one to pass up a good business opportunity, Van Ripper got to work converting the long since abandoned Bones family farm into a station for a very one of a kind tour of the old SMARTS system. Partnering with Brom Bones, the two of them very much want to take Crane down a peg by exposing just how dangerous and unwieldy the system that gave birth to the Steam Age was to begin with. Maybe, just maybe, said exposure will bring Sleepy Hollow back to a more simple time where both men and their families thrived.

Heading into the main cow barn on the farm, guests get a brief explanation of the plot set up from an AA of Van Ripper himself before boarding a very Steampunk inspired coaster vehicle from the good folks at the Rocky Mountain Construction Company. The ride vehicles come complete with blasts of steam at the back when entering and exiting the stations, an effect ripped straight from the Expedition Everest playbook but even more pronounced here.

Since the farm land actually resides on the canyon wall of the town and the barn is about three stories tall in its own right, when you first drop out of the station you actually drop down a startling and VERY hidden 80 foot vertical drop right down the side of the barn and into the forested valley behind the town. From there it’s a rip roaring ride through the untamed wilderness behind the town with all the RMC airtime and unconventional inversion goodness that comes from their designs.

The attraction climaxes in one of two Headless Horseman encounters…a day time version set in a show building simulating a dark isolated thicket of trees the horseman is hiding in, and a night time version where a switch track reveals an alternate path that reveals the Horseman lurking just outside the barn/loading platform in an area just out of view of guests, waiting to make his strike.

Danse Macabre
Masquerade

Set within Ichabod Crane's eclectic and very Gothic mansion turned steam powered science lab, the Danse Macabre Masquerade is Crane's attempt to open his doors to the people of Sleepy Hollow among the growing whispers that the skeletal old scarecrow of a man is still actually among the living. The queue of the attraction winds its way through Ichabod's workshop where the most prominently Steampunk sets within the land can be found. HUGE gears, giant metal stacks pipping out billowing steam, clocks, gears, pulleys, switches, it's a virtual Steampunk wonderland from within the workshop.

​We then enter Crane's private study where we come face to face with perhaps the most scary Animatronic of the whole land, Ichabod himself. His appearance takes on an even more sinister and ghoulish tone in the damp red lighting of the room, albeit the way he speaks wistfully about his many past failures and how he hopes to correct the errors of his ways during the twilight days of his life. Opening up his mansion for a town-wide masquerade is just the first step in doing that.

Entering into the main dining hall where the attraction takes place, guests are instantly struck by the very dramatic "outdoor" courtyard that the large windows that fill the room open up out into. It is very much the stereotypical "dark and stormy night" outside as guests find their seats within the Hat Dance style spinning attraction. As the iconic "Danse Macabre" starts to play and guests start to spin in their seats, the scene outside slowly gets more sinister.

The climax comes when an AA of the Headless Horseman, full blown steam bellowing out of the horse's nostrils and the stump on the shoulders of the man himself. The horseman "Rides" around the perimeter of the mansion three times, each getting more and more animated and menacing. Finally it's too much for Ichabod to bare and giant curtains are drawn over the windows, leading to an abrupt halt to the evening's festivities. It certainly wasn't the social image rehabilitation Crane had initially hoped for.

DINING

Ichabod Crane’s Schoolhouse

Tavern

Ichabod Crane's School House Tavern is the smallest establishment in Sleepy Hollow, but the old schoolmaster still keeps it around for sentimental purposes. Inside is a very accurate brick by brick recreation of an old colonial schoolhouse, only with several different dining rooms being added onto the schoolhouse over the years which now serves as the restaurant's check in area.

Typical British Pub food and ales can be ordered from the Tavern as guests comb the walls for mementos left over from Crane's school teaching days. To say it feels like a lifetime ago to Ichabod would be an understatement, but regardless he still keeps the tavern in his possession to remind himself of his roots.

Van Tassel’s

Want to celebrate an old time aristocratic Halloween ball every night of the year? Van Tassel's is the place to do it. While The Legend is the signature E Ticket of the land, this is very much the heart of the storytelling. Every night, Van Tassel's will be PACKED with guests in elaborate and time period appropriate costumes. It will be difficult to pick out the main characters of the land, but they're all in attendance and waiting for YOU to influence the story.

While the LARPing elements will be much, MUCH lighter here than during Team Legend's previous Star Wars project, there's still a bit of LARPing fun to be had if you know where to look for it within Sleepy Hollow 1889. During the day the townspeople and "Main Characters" will be wondering the town, with the cast members essentially acting as NCPs (non-playable characters in video game terminology.)

It is here that guests will have the best chance of interacting with characters like Katrina, Ichabod, and Brom Bones and discovering for themselves the heart of the conflict. During the night the townspeople and "Main Characters" all descend upon the Van Tassel manor, with the land's guests also being invited to attend pending the "one drink per guest minimum" cover charge. (Don't worry kids, the drinks can be non-alcoholic!)

Those who want to splurge can also indulge in the five course pre-fix dinner service which exclusively takes place in the grand dining hall of the manor and offers its own unique theatrical moments throughout the night and even an encounter with the Horseman from a window you won't find anywhere else.

The main characters will all be in elaborate costumes during the actual Van Tassel Halloween Ball, and those costumes will rotate every night making it a challenge to keep track of them even for local guests who routinely engage with the experience.

Once you find one of them, you can really influence the events of the evening as they'll all be over-sharing their stories and what got them to that point, leading the guests to offer them up advice on how to solve their various conflicts.

This is where the hired improv troupe playing the Main Characters gets to stretch the muscles of their profession, as their job is literally to take the guest suggestions that they've heard throughout the evening and mold them into one final conflict, with each night having slightly different results that can range from anything to specific fight choreography to radically different story outcomes.

While guests won't have a whole points system to keep track of like a traditional RPG, the Van Tassel experience is a truly unique blend of dinner theater, character interaction, a truly immersive themed space, and some truly fine signature dining if you want to go the dinner service route.