Leaderboard

Long time no see! First visit to Thorpe since 2019 yesterday, have a few thoughts about everyone's favourite ride. Anyone from here who knows me irl (That's 4 or 5 people) knows that I'm a little bit of a Ghost Train apologist, post-2016 and pre-Covid I was generally visiting the park around once a year, and have been lucky enough to avoid some of the catastrophic experiences others on here have had. Obviously, the ride has its faults but I have quite a soft spot for it. Didn't get the new opening spiel that others have mentioned here. capacity was apparently reduced yesterday so this could've been a reason for this, or it could've just been cut entirely. Probably for the best tbh. The first VR section is still good. I've always enjoyed this section, creepy and fun and generally gets people screaming during the big scare moment, however, the already dated in 2016 CG animation is looking especially ropey now, the dog looks like something out of an early generation PS3 game. Luckily a lot of this section is focused on real actors, so it makes it easier to overlook imo. Middle live section now. One thing jumped out to me here, the ride staff is absolutely giving it their all. This section has been cut down massively since 2017, but yesterday's ride was the first time since then where the staff was trying a more scripted sequence as opposed to a generic scare maze section. That being said, this section is still where the story begins to fall apart a bit. In 2016 and 17 this was the introduction of the demon to the storyline after having it foreshadowed by the dialogue in the first VR section, but since 2018 this section has focused more on the infected. Unfortunately, no amount of effort on the part of the team can make up for the fact that this section makes the following VR section kind of nonsensical. A real shame. Second VR section now, still the same campy fun it's been since 2017, but like the first section, it's looking pretty dated. I feel like the good grace of it being significantly better than its 2016 incarnation has well and truly worn off by now, parts of it look really goofy. There's a real tonal imbalance between the first VR section and the 2nd. The first section is genuinely quite creepy, but the second descends into pure B-Movie Schlock, this was more palatable when the middle live-action section built up the demon as the real antagonist, but without this it makes it seem like two different stories colliding with each other. Onto the fake shop - sigh... This section suffers from the demon costume no longer being a thing. Massive props to the actor for trying to make the infected jump scare work, but this makes the story of the ride more disjointed than ever. The plot is as follows - First VR section centres around the infected and does some light foreshadowing of there being something else going on, cool. Middle live-action section... focuses on the infected again, right, okay then. Second VR section now introduces the demon, but this feels like such a big jump from the infected stuff that came before. Now the shop scare is.. oh. It's the infected again. What exactly was the point of the demon then? Don't get me wrong, the plot has been disjointed for longer than this year alone, but the demon scare in the fake shop would kind of help with this because it's reinforcing the idea that the demon is the real antagonist, this not being the case anymore really lets the experience down. All in all, I enjoyed the ride as I always tend to and while this wasn't the worst experience I've had on this ride, it certainly made the least sense. I think this ride just makes me kind of sad. I know a lot of people on here are down on VR, but it's a seriously amazing technology when done well and has evolved so much in the last few years. I fundamentally disagree with the view of some people on here that the use of VR was a bad idea from the get-go, Merlin was the wrong company to attempt a ride based around VR as their reach always exceeds their grasp with things like this. Attempting a ride like this in 2016 was also a mistake, VR has evolved massively since 2016 and the current technology clearly can’t keep up with the demands of the experience. I genuinely believe that a team who cares with a decent budget could turn this into a world-class dark ride, but as it stands it’s just a bit of a mess, what a shame.