The Tunnel of Love is a type of amusement ride commonly found at carnivals and amusement parks. It is similar to a dark ride in that riders are taken (usually by boat) through dark passages, in this case in pairs. There are two major themes: a relaxing romantic ride encouraging the couple to cuddle, or a spooky horror ride encouraging the couple to cling to one another. The darkness provides a degree of privacy in which the couple can kiss or make out. The frightening variety also offered a socially acceptable "excuse" for the physical contact.
Although they were popular in the early 20th century, with the development of other socially acceptable opportunities and less stigma for unmarried couples to engage in physical contact, these rides have become less common. Gröna Lund park in Sweden still contains a Tunnel of Love ride.
In the 1928 film, The Crowd, a tunnel of love is featured in which the sides are voyeuristically pulled down at a place where couples are likely to be kissing.
The 1951 Alfred Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train features a tunnel of love ride that becomes the scene of a murder.[1]
The Tunnel of Love was a favorite source of amusing scenes in Hanna-Barbera television series such as The Flintstones, The Jetsons, and Scooby-Doo, among others.
MAD Magazine spoofed the Tunnel of Love in a 1989 issue detailing a fictional amusement park called "Gary Hart Land", with events such as "Dunk Ted Koppel" or a Monkey Business Tunnel of Love, where men could "ride into the Tunnel of Love on replicas of the Monkey Business with a Donna Rice look-a-like on your lap!"
The Tunnel of Love has also been used in Disney cartoons, mainly a jealous Donald Duck storming the tunnel by foot and ruining the ride for a rival suitor and Daisy Duck.
Bruce Springsteen recorded an album called Tunnel of Love in 1987 with a single of the same name.[2]
In 1980, Dire Straits released a single entitled Tunnel of Love from their album Making Movies.
The Tunnel of Love was also spoofed by Gary Larson in his The Far Side comic strip where he suggests there is also a Tunnel of Non-Communication, where couples act aloof throughout the whole ride, and a Tunnel of Mosquitoes.
References to the phrase "Tunnel of Love", as well as the actual rides, appear frequently in Batman comics, often in connection to The Joker.
The 1993 video game Sam & Max Hit the Road contains a tunnel of love which must be vandalised in order to access a secret room hidden part-way along the passage.
In The Simpsons, episode Love, Springfieldian Style, Marge and Homer get trapped in a tunnel of love and tell three parodies of Bonnie and Clyde, Lady and the Tramp and Sid and Nancy with Simpsons' characters playing the parts.
The 2009 apocalyptic survival video game Left 4 Dead 2 features a mission that takes place in a tunnel of love.
In Big Time Rush episode, Big Time Girlfriends, there is a carnival that has Tunnel of Love but instead you ride a car which Jo and Kendall go through and there is another tunnel called "Tunnel of Just Friends" which Logan and Camille go through though they emerge with Logan's face covered in lipstick and Camille smiling satisfactorily.