Despite the cacophony, this was just another weekday lunch at California’s last Rainforest Cafe, tucked inside a fluorescent-lit Inland Empire mall, about an hour east of downtown Los Angeles.

The only Rainforest Cafe with a ride can be found in Galveston, Texas. Like the city itself, the ride is haunted, not by the ghost of the Great Storm of 1900, but by the ghosts of a misguided effort ...