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When conquering fear on a ride you will start to realise that the stuff you’re afraid of is the reason you ride the ride. As scary as it may be, that’s only a small part of it, the other part will be your body taking in the amazement of the experience. Over time that fear will become excitement and you will look forward to a ride which could be terrifying. You won’t need to think “well a ride I’ve ridden is more terrifying than this ride so I think I’ll be fine” and instead you’ll be thinking “now that’s a step up from anything I’ve ever done, sign me up!”. You will also get to a point where you embrace intensity, so rather than opting for the inside seat and least intense row, you end up going for a more adventurous row (back or front) and shotgunning the outside seat. That’s basically the main goal which even took me plenty of fear conquering. A way to maybe conquer your fear is to really think about the end result and how much more exciting your life as an enthusiast will be. At that point you can then go further, to theme parks in exotic places (gives a good excuse to travel the world) to rides in unusual locations.

FML.

To be fair, they had to stop using blood red water around Nemesis. It was built before water around rides had to be retained and treated separately, (Hence the pool filters around The Swarm) therefore the red water was seeping into the surrounding environment.

It’s not turned off, it’s broken, it will be fixed - but don’t let that get in the way of merlin bashing

This week I had my first ride on The Walking Dead Ride (or X version 3 (or 5/6)if you prefer). Queue line is pretty much completely outdoors and seems to be your standard ‘rundown’ cattlepen. At first this may sound somewhat of a bad thing. However given this potentially cleans up the queue distribution (Main,Fastrack,RAP etc.) and the theming/setting, this may be one of the better uses for a cattlepen. The bagroom is now just before the indoor part, which is around where the ole bagroom many years ago once was. There is a pre-show, which neither great or terrible, but does it’s job to setup the purpose of the safe zone. The former queue/walkways have been rethemed to like emergency corridors, with flashing lights and bits. There didn’t seem much noticeable from when it was X , at least as lighting is concerned. We arrive at the station, which is noticeably darker and gloomier. The new setup means there is almost no queue which is nice. The trains remain the same (the two person rule unfortunately remains, but they probably have little control over that). For the ride itself, gone is the upbeat vibe and replaced a dark apocalyptic one. There are numerous parts of theming representing zombies and other items. There are a few screens, but no noticeable animatronics, which is a shame really. The third stop has returned, which features new effects such. Whilst this makes the ride’s pacing a little strange, it somehow works as the last part of the ride feels like zombies chasing you. The action doesn’t finish on the exit corridor, which now features a few effects and darkened areas making it gloomy and misleading. It’s almost like a scaremaze in one sense. After passing the bagroom, we take a strange detour on a path leading us into the megastore. Whilst this is a good upselling tactic, the route feels long winded and deliberately out of the way. The back pathway appears to have been removed, although it would’ve been a dead-end anyway. In Summary, there are some things I really like about this retheme and some things not so much. I like that the park are trying to turn it more into an experience, there are some decent effects and this is one of the better ‘low investment’ year addictions. Most of which in the last 5-10 years have felt rather far-fetched. However, the attraction has resulted in ‘yet’ another dark apocalyptic theme, bringing that number now upto five, six if you include Tidal Wave (which is arguably a more upbeat theme). The park desperately more than ever needs more upbeat/mysterious themes and seems to have somewhat lost one through this retheme. I also think the ride doesn’t need to be a 1.4 and more like a 1.2 or 1.3. After all that, I haven’t decided whether I prefer X or TWD, but there are things I like about both attractions. The park have done quite well here, but now need to focus on more upbeat themes.