Had my first experience of an evac on Ghost Train yesterday. It was interesting!
The actors were doing their sequence, and then suddenly the onboard audio started to play a news report. At this point I knew something was up.
(I’m not a big fan of the use of believer by imagine dragons, I’ll come back to this later)
The actors stood by the doors basically motionless while these tracks were playing. There was a bit in the breakdown audio were it sounded like they were being possessed. This is when they’d act like they were.
The track played two more times, people were starting to chat because they thought they heard it already. In which they did, people were panicking because of claustrophobia. In which an person fainted. There was no announcement that we had broken down, other than the actors not saying anything and the music going off. We were in there so long it was obvious but the lack of communication was poor.
The train broke down in the middle of the two stations. They eventually opened the doors and allowed us off. It was quite cool seeing the OP booth for the ride. We got fast tracks for one of the coasters, not ghost train. Which was really disappointing for my group which hadn’t ridden it before. We had 25% of the experience, got stuck and then if we wanted to do it again. We had to join that painful queue.
I’d always thought that it could be quite awkward for the actors to cope if the train broke down and I understand that the performance had to end.
Improvements I would make:
- Actors need to communicate quickly with the ride hosts. Tell us immediately when it’s known that the ride has paused that there’s a stop in the track and let us chat.
- Operations need to get people off sooner, evac times should not be as long as we experienced
- Take some pressure off the actors by using the overhead screens. I’m sure if it was a temporary delay and there was the fake TV channel on the screen. It would prevent people from getting distressed. If you use it throughout the whole experience then people won’t know that the ride has stopped.
I was saying earlier how I hated the use of believer by imagine dragons. I hate it because it ruins the atmosphere, you have this scary experience then they play that song. It’s the same with the hold area before you board, the TV channel is just too happy and makes you feel at ease.
DBGT made you nervous throughout the whole experience. This attraction feels quite light hearted in comparison. When people say it’s not scary, I can see why.