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As I said in WD thread, X with the budget of what WD had, it could have been a great original IP with some pretty epic lighting and sound thought the attraction. It's a shame the park has to be so invested in WD. Before WD, it was a pretty busy ride and had a queue all the time. With 500k, so many awesome things would have been done in the ride area too. Shame.

Actually, that could be their new slogan; "Alton Towers - it's better than nothing"

If all you care about is ride counts, just ride Duel for two hours.

I got the chance to ride "refurbed" Duel a couple days ago and I'm not that impressed at the moment, I just hope it's not finished yet. Please remember I'm a die hard fan of Duel, so I'm going to be more critical than most. I'm not digging the new music in Gloomy Wood, the old theme was fantastic at creating atmosphere, the new one sounds like generic Halloween music. That new jombie coming through the crypt outside looks so cheaply done it made me laugh. Those who replaced the haunting previous indoor queueline music with more generic sounding rubbish need to be sacrificed to the Wicker Man. Those cheap terrible looking LCD portraits look so bad. The onride music has nothing on the old track and harms the experience in my eyes, not to mention it gets really boring after a minute or 2. Also why has the "are you afraid of spiders?" audio vanished? While some parts of the ride do look a bit better (the screaming faces being the only one I remember), other bits look terrible. There's green spunk on the lunatics face, the bats on a stick are now clearly just bats on a stick, way too UV crap at play and some scenes are now so bright you can the ceiling and the behind the scenes stuff. For now, not impressed, I just hope when I next return things have improved.

I really was trying to see the good in BPB but I take back anythig positive I said the other day, they closed TWO HOURS earlier than the advertised time today! An absoloute disgrace to paying guests, and as season pass holders nothing is given to rectify the situation. We'd planned around the advertised 7pm closing time so visited the Tower attractions in the morning, only to head up to BPB for the afternoon to find it closing at 5pm. It was raining lightly but otherwise the weather was fine, The Big One and Flying Machines were operating so high winds clearly weren't an issue. The park was quiet but when you advertise an "earliest ride closing time" and sell wristbands/allow people to plan their visits around these times, you can't then go and cut two hours out of people's day. In addition their "word's best dark ride" is still in a horrible state and broken, didn't get a single bit of fire yesterday. And they demolished Wild Mouse. Sod them.

If they didn't shut Charlie, Ice Age, Sub Terra, Wobble World etc.... There would at least be some things to do in the poor weather!!!

I don't know whats more shameful, the way their Twitter team are replying to people or trying to get the Daily Mail's attention. Yep, its the Daily Mail call out that is really disgusting.

Correct. Slight waste of effort and money but hey, what can you do

I've got no problem admitting I was wrong and I'm very happy to report that I was most certainly wrong and too quick to cast judgement on Wicker Man. Never again will I doubt GCI, their track record is still perfect. Now while I still agree that Alton Towers could and should have done more with the UK's first modern wooden roller coaster, what we have ended up with is great. The Story: Wicker Man's story about the creepy cult of weirdos, worshipping the Wicker Man for years in the forest and bringing him sacrifices in return for one day him returning their favour and gifting them with freedom and safety, is simple, effective and quite unnerving, I like it. Theming & Effects: Those involved have done a great job with the theming. The Wicker Man himself, in person looks damn impressive. The sheer amount of fire, mist and smoke effects used (please keep these running for the life of the ride) is so overwhelming and surprising and really adds to the experience. Not only that but the buildings (preshow and station) inside and out are incredibly well done. As a package, as present, Wicker Man is probably the best themed roller coaster in the UK. Queueline: After a couple of switchbacks to begin with, the queue ends up becoming a nice swooping semi circle which provides great views of the coaster layout and really helps build excitement. This style of queue over the crap that is Smiler's queue anyday, much appreciated. Preshow: I really enjoyed this, it's creepy, gets you hyped for what's about to transpire and in all honesty is alot of fun to watch. The Coaster: This little GCI is great. Great laterals, a few pops of good airtime, 1 insane ejector moment, that perfect amount of out of control that all woodies need and a real sense of speed. Also to my surprise, it's alot longer than I was expecting, so you get a decent length ride out of it. If you're into ranking things, after 2 laps, I'd probably put Wicker Man above Wodan and Troy, just below Draak, which I feel is a stronger layout and the racing aspect adds so much fun to the experience. I really feel Wicker Man is going to do great things for Alton Towers and I really hope they can quickly improve the up time and maintain both the coaster and effects to the quality they were on opening.

Completely forgot somehow after trying it last week what I thought of these changes made to Duel, so here they are. Honestly, not much has changed inside since last year, really, it hasn’t. This is what I noticed: • The exterior building has been cleared of overgrown foliage along with a new soundtrack, which does suit the plaza better I think. • The indoor queue has a few new vertical-orientated screens used as moving portraits to cover the old CRT screens from before. • The first scene on the ride has been repainted with brighter UV paint. • Many audio effects for each scene have either been turned off or are too quiet now. • The flying heads are a lot brighter and colourful compared to before. • New audio throughout the entire building, including the queue line. Whilst it’s nice to see some of the smaller bits of theming being looked after and the main difference being they have been either repainted or given brighter colours, I must report that the UV lighting is still a massive problem with this ride despite being told it had been fixed and toned down. This is especially noticeable with the flying heads and bats just like previous years, so it’s still a major problem. But the biggest problem myself and I’m sure quite a few will have is this new audio. Whilst the exterior sounds better compared to before and has a statsictially longer track, the one used inside is almost the complete opposite. This new audio sounds incredibly repetitive and doesn’t suit the ride at all in my view. Hopefully one day Duel’s old audio will return inside because this new one sounds horrible and slow-paced. Mixed bag really. Some areas are nicer than before, but the UV lighting and new audio overshadows the improvements made in my view.

Few quick words from me. This is a great little coaster and will hopefully open the doors for smaller parks who were maybe thinking of getting a woodie and weren't sure if the hunger for one is there. It's great to see guests loving a ride like this, something that's accessible for all and full of great moments. For many UK people this will be their first modern wooden coaster and it really nails it. Great theme, great use of effects and really solid ride. Once the reliability is sorted out, I can't wait to get lots of rides on it as it's very enjoyable and the park is onto a winner.

It saddens me to bring this news to the forum. From his niece - Unfortunately over the last week, Adams health deteriorated quickly and so he made the decision to stay in a hospice to try and build up his strength. Unfortunately his health took a turn for the worse. On Monday, the doctor said his liver was deteriorating very quickly and that he was facing days. He had did family around him but sadly he passed away this morning. Adam was one of the most kind hearted people I had the fortune of meeting. His sister Kirsti would like me to pass this onto you. This has been a pretty awful morning, but he is suffering no more. Due to the speed of the deterioration, no arrangements have been made for the funeral but I will let you know as soon as I do, I'm not sure if any of the group would like to attend. With regards to the crowd funding page, Adam never got the time to make any memories and the money hasn't been touched. I know a lot of the group donated and I would like them to know the money is going to be put into ISA Accounts for his two little boys. For those who met him at the meets, will know he was a very kind, warm natured character who will be truly missed within the community. His big sister Kirsti has asked me that if anyone has any photos of him, doing what he loved to pass onto me, so I can pass onto her etc. My thoughts are with his family and friends and especially to his too little boys who have now lost a dad at just the ages of 4 and 6