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Oooooh, I think I get the honour of writing the first full Black Mirror Labyrinth review online. What an exclusive! I should start by giving a disclaimer: Yes, I attended a preview event which invites celebrities and influencers, and the intention of these events is for such people to share positive thoughts about the experience. If you want to see that stuff, check out TPM's social pages, and a review will be live on our website later. What follows is a balanced reflection of my genuine thoughts of the experience. As always, whenever I attend these events, I try to give my feedback to staff/managers/creators too, good, bad, or ugly... Slight spoilers follow. --- "It's...interesting" That was my immediate reaction. It doesn't sound very positive, but it's also not very negative either. I guess a good way of describing it is a grown up Hocus Pocus Hall. And that's not a bad thing. It's a multi-route experience, with dead ends and multiple special effects. There is a mirror maze in there, yes, but that is just one part of the experience. Your name and face is used at a couple of points too. The story is that the Labyrinth is an AI creation which has become self aware. It's stolen all its information about you, and now wants to 'delete' you. So the premise is original, but slightly Black Mirror in tone. It's a fun experience with some quirky moments. We got lost a few times. We became disoriented. There were some moments which were a bit of a surprise. There's nothing special, but it all works and flows pretty nicely. After having done the experience twice, though, I'm not clambering to do it again any time soon. That's just the nature of this experience - there's not enough multiple routes to keep it completely fresh each time, and it is kind of 'one and done'. That's not a bad thing really, as it is an enjoyable enough experience in its own right, but I don't think it's what Thorpe need right now. Some assorted Q&As: -Is it scary? No. And I wonder if that will lead to complaints with people expecting a FN like maze... -What is batching like? You're batched in your household group exclusively. And it seems like it will be a group every 90 seconds. -What would batching be like without Covid? It seems like there's space for 12 people per group normally. That would give a throughput of 480pph in theory. Bog standard for a Merlin maze really. -What are Covid rules like? This is a weird one. You have to remove your mask whilst your photo is taken (this is for a special effect). And inside you naturally end up touching things as you find your way round, and you may come into close contact with people due to the non-linear route. I expect this may make some people feel uncomfortable. Some fun facts: -Figment Productions have been involved with parts of the experience -The experience was rethought and had extra money put into it last year, since they had extra time -Though nowhere near as much was invested as in a new ride, a lot more was invested in this compared to a Fright Nights maze (about 7-10 times the budget of a maze I believe) -There's a couple of little Easter eggs about (and some I probably missed) There's a couple of photos on TPM's Facebook, I won't post them here because effort. So all in all, the premise of the experience is interesting. As I say, it's not something I'm itching to get back to doing again, but it's a fun experience. It's another indoor experience for the park, which is needed, but ultimately it is very much a 'one..possibly two... and done' type thing, which is perhaps not what the park needed. I'm very much worried about how this will cope with the crowds. It seems like an operational headache. However, given it's going to be Timed Tickets for a while, and it should be pretty reliable, hopefully it means physical wait times are minimal for now, if done right. So definitely worth giving it a crack when you're next on park.

My first thoughts (from POV, I'm no VIP) is that if this sort of set up was used as the entrance and exit of X, with effects of comparable quality during the ride, that would make one complete, excellent attraction rather than two slightly lacking ones we now have.

I too hate it when people enjoy things.

Oh my, this thing. I rode it today, and I think for the first time, I really regretted it. Timed tickets I don't know what happened earlier, but they didn't seem to work. We had 2-2.30pm entry, got in the queue at 2.30, and weren't on the ride till 3pm. People with 2.30-3pm time slots weren't being let in until almost 3pm, for reasons I will never understand. Operations It seems to be 10-15 people per train (a far cry from the 58 capacity) Pre show It's nice to experience this without being smashed in with 50 other people. Audio seemed a bit clearer too. Pre show 2 Before going into the Hanging Carriage scene, there's a spiel from an actor. It's pretty bad, as it feels like it was written by someone in a minute who was told to try and tie up all the plot holes. It ham-fists an explanation for the Victorian-tube carriage transition, the need for the VR and loads of other stuff. But it's just awkward. Scene 1 The usual Scene 2 Audio seemed better and louder (felt particularly strong from behind the train fronts), but the new script trying to tie everything together feels awkward again. Asking people for a code to escape (given in pre show 2) just feels bad. Scene 3 We seemed to be in some sort of short shutdown / delay. This would usually be manageable with the holding sequence, but it seemed to be shortened down? I swear in the holding sequence, a demon would pick up loads of the characters you can see and drag them away. Ended up waiting for a while, even getting a 'please remove your headset' message for a while, before setting off again. The motion base wasn't working, so no fun gentle rocking as we fell to oblivion. The video message from Derren played on the screens afterwards, but no audio. Scene 4 This is incredibly awkward now. With no Picsolve green screen photo point in the queue, it makes no sense why we're looking at photos. The new story means the actor says something about a finalising some parts of our experience to make sure we're all okay or something. There's no effort to get people to look at the ouija board. The demon scene happens (yay, at least that's there!), but it feels awkward when everyone is away from it and not invested in it. Oh, and the floorboards don't shake. Obviously I had a bit of a bad run with a shutdown and broken effects. And it's nice to see they've tried something, and improved some audio. But the new story doesn't work and it feels like a dreadful attempt at trying to be clever, when really all it does is make you cringe. It's a shame as there has always been so much potential with this, and this is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion. A good point to raise though: all the staff throughout the attraction were good. They were doing the best they could with the tools they have. The script and story is dodgy, but the actors do what they can with it. The ride hosts seemed friendly. Whether this is because the attraction being open is still a novelty and it's like 'new ride vibes' is hard to tell. But for now, credit where it's due, fair play to them for that. Really and truthfully, I do think they should have taken the hit with this. Kept it closed forever more, blamed Covid, paid off the rest of the contract with Derren and just taken the loss. I'd rather it sit dormant for a while and be an elephant in the room, than give people the half hearted, shell of an idea, experience it's giving now.

I get the viewpoint, I just disagree with it completely. There's no way the Smiler and the Wicker Man soundtracks for example blend into one just because they use ITHOTMK briefly. I don't think there's an argument you could use to make me believe those two rides are bland with no identity. I just quite like the use of the park theme in the attraction soundtracks. The island like no other theme is actually really nice to listen to in general and I weirdly prefer it in that Black Mirror snippet then the entrance one.

I Disagree.... long rain HOTMK Side note, it's a shame that Alton Towers can't play this mix at 9:30 AM every morning before gates opening to get everyone to dance along too and hype everyone up for a day full of adventures. It also works as excellent marketing, in the UK at least if you hear HOTMK what is the first thing you think of?

Closed by 2023 is all I could think of to be honest.