Plot
Egon and Janine are out on a date in Brooklyn, walking past places from Janine's childhood. She points out her grade school, P.S. 47, and a park where a mounted police officer used to let her ride his horse on Saturday afternoons. Asked what he did as a child, Egon says he had the largest ant farm in Ohio and that he earned a college degree while still in grade school. Janine leads him toward an old teenage hangout, Spinelli's malt shop, where she used to go for sodas and to play the jukebox, but where the malt shop once stood there is now an amusement park called Cheap Thrills.
Inside, the pair find a ride billed as "Rollerghoster, the Ghostbusters Ride." It is modeled on Ecto-1, with cardboard cutouts of the Ghostbusters and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man lining the track. Egon confronts the supervisor, Arnie, and then the manager, Ray Cooger, demanding a refund and threatening to sue. Cooger has his men escort the couple out.
Back at the firehouse, Egon tells the others about the coaster. Peter Venkman and Winston Zeddemore are skeptical that a lawsuit is worth the trouble, reasoning that most carnivals fold on their own and that litigation can drag on for years, so they decide to ignore the Rollerghoster.
At Cheap Thrills, the ride stalls in its Ghost Tunnel and animal spirits manifest in front of the riders. Cooger inspects the tunnel, confirms it is haunted, and phones the Ghostbusters, but Peter turns him down as a cheap publicity stunt. Arnie, who always said the ride should be shut down, looks on with dread. Cooger reopens the coaster with a new pitch, a ride even the Ghostbusters fear, and the spirits take the new riders hostage and warp the track into a brontosaurus-shaped construct.
Janine spreads out a map from the County Hall of Records. Her Aunt Bella told her the buildings that replaced the malt shop went up in 1948 during a postwar construction boom, on lots where tenements had been torn down in 1942. In 1944, Janine explains, the Matchstick and Butterworth Circus, a large traveling show, burned down on that site. No people were killed, but many animals died in the fire. The lot is haunted by the animal spirits.
The team arrives to find police holding back crowds and news crews. Cooger says the spirits hold ten hostages. Ray Stantz removes his proton pack and climbs onto the coaster to negotiate, only to be grabbed and added to the captives in the Ghost Tunnel. He throws down a boot with a note inside telling the others to send in the Marines. Winston tries to hook the structure in place, but it sheds the track like a lizard. Peter, who worked carnivals during high school summers, calls a contact named Chuck at a theatrical supply house and asks for 1,200 yards of Mylar.
Police unfurl the Mylar from a nearby rooftop to form a crude reflective surface, and Peter helps Egon and Winston pile gasoline-soaked debris at its base. The theory is that if the ghosts see a large fire reflected around them they will flee the coaster. The fire is lit, the spirits abandon the ride, and the structure collapses. Ray leads the hostages clear while the others open fire and disperse the ghosts. With Cheap Thrills in ruins, Peter muses that an official ride might not be such a bad idea, and the rest of the team drives off without him.
Ghosts
The antagonists are the animal spirits of the Matchstick and Butterworth Circus, which perished in a fire on a Brooklyn lot in 1944. Egon Spengler classifies them as Class 6 Focused Apparitions, meaning they are bound to the location of their deaths and cannot leave it. The spirits consist of an elephant, a horse, a bear, a snake, a monkey, and a gorilla; Frank Welker voiced the elephant form and Arsenio Hall voiced the snake form, with the remaining monster voices shared among Townsend Coleman, Louise Vallance, Jay Yarnell, and Lorenzo Music.
When the spirits animate the roller coaster en masse they form a large dinosaur-shaped construct. Their Focused classification turns out to be the key to the Ghostbusters' solution: because the spirits cannot move off the haunted lot, Peter is able to exploit their immobility by staging a fake fire, which triggers a memory of their 1944 deaths and drives them out of the ride entirely before the team can blast them.
Production
Writer Richard Mueller has said he was inspired by the ending of the 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which climaxes in a burning roller coaster.1 The characters Moose and Rocco are named for figures of the same name in the 1980 film Caddyshack, which was co-written by Harold Ramis and featured Bill Murray.
The episode is one of the few to put Egon and Janine together on what looks like a date, though Egon insists it was not one. It also fills in early biographical details for both characters, including Janine's grade school P.S. 47 and old hangout Spinelli's malt shop, and Egon's Ohio ant farm and precocious college degree.1 In the same episode Winston notes that Egon once insulted Janine badly enough that she quit her job, providing background context for the tension between the two characters. Peter refers to Egon as "kimosabe," the expression coined by the character Tonto on The Lone Ranger meaning "faithful friend," and jokes about getting Egon on the David Letterman Show.
The Cheap Thrills Amusement Park set earned a non-canon cameo in IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters comic series: the park sign appears on page 10 of Issue #6 and page 2 of Issue #7 as part of a background joke, and the roller coaster itself makes a non-canon cameo in Ghostbusters Issue #5. A Cheap Thrills popcorn bag also appears on page 18 of Ghostbusters Crossing Over Issue #5.
Marvel UK adaptation
A separate "Rollerghoster!" story was published in the Marvel Comics Annual 1990 for The Real Ghostbusters (Marvel UK). The plot is unrelated to the animated episode: Peter Venkman takes a group of children on a roller coaster ride when a "Fungeist," described as a phantom from the funless dimensions, possesses the coaster. Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, and Winston Zeddemore fire their proton packs at the ride's girders, causing a full protonic reversal that disperses the spirit.
References
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 22. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Rollerghoster" (1986).
