Benin

My niece-in-law is 10 and I can tell you she would love how dark and creepy Alty Mans is. Her younger sibling wouldn't. Some kids will love it, others won't. Much like many theme park attractions. It's clearly not a ride designed with a lot of humour in mind. Don't think that's necessarily a problem these days (massive difference in terms of expectations in theme parks these days after all compared to 30 years ago) as a lot of the humour in HH (lol what humour in Duel), seems to be overplayed as to how much there actually was. Nostalgia and the way it got spoken about in awed reverence often skews perception, especially to those who never rode it (see also original Bubbleworks). Sure for every parent moaning that it's "too scary" there'll be plenty of kids who love it. And if parents are that concerned there's plenty of evidence available for them to be VERY aware it's a darker themed ride.

Why market it when opening isn't confirmed? Towers didn't push their marketing for ages for Alty Mans considering when Duel closed. Patience is a virtue. And setting expectations highly for this is probably not the way to go about it considering the ride in question.

Europa have released a computer POV of VOLTRON COASTER. https://www.veejoy.de/de/filme/pov-onride-coaster-2024

My my.

Yes. It's probably also helped that he's also a goon (he's come a long way from his heady days in the RCT3 community). But as the new face of Merlin's attraction team he will get the main flood of praise (much like Wardley did). Also seems fairly active online and knows how to get the interest of goons. Always weird when people revere those in any industry mind. Can always backfire and lead to issues as we've seen before. But that's some weird trait of the modern world where because we can interact (directly and indirectly) with people many develop relationships that are completely non-existent. Hence how influencers and social media stars get an array of fans ready to throw hands if anything negative happens. I'm sure JohnB is lovely, though I feel he and others on the team went overboard with Easter eggs on Alty Mans. Which is a definite goon thing to do.

Single riders should be batched at loading area. Especially if going in before the bays as it fulfils the point of the queue in the first place. Method like Smiler could work as long as they had actually stopped people from just sneaking up the normal queue after bag drop.

Single rider usually is for single spaces. You might get lucky with 2s but not too often. It's very dependent on the implementation and location of the batching point though.

I dunno, Blackpool do sell old ride parts.

Throughput means it doesn't need one. Even on opening day the queue had gone to standard levels.

Same every year for all the parks to be fair. Never seem completely ready. And always hope its different but never seems to be.

The pre-show makes me think someone went to Movie Park Germany and liked the Van Helsing queue. I'm not sure what you really expected regarding a lot of the older props/ghosts. Few would make sense in terms of the new storyline (everyone has vanished, but the undertaker is still there for example) and in terms of budget I think they were essentially stuck reusing a lot of Duel mechanisms which were always cheap and somewhat off-putting. Based off POV viewing, there's a definite air of not quite completeness about it. 2 sections in complete darkness certainly doesn't make sense to me considering it's quite filled in everywhere else. Presumably timescales and priorities as with all projects. I'd imagine they'll tweak and edit things as they go. Much like the original Haunted House. From an initial standpoint though it looks a vast improvement over what Duel had turned into, and shows the difference 30 years makes.

RIP In Peace.

Easter Weekend in France if anyone fancies.

I doubt they'd be allowed to open the park if half of it was a construction site. This isn't continental Europe!

I don't really have an opinion on it. It's at least thematic to the ride but no one really pays attention to the names of shops. Towers have done their traditional spoilerific news story with ITV. Available via https://www.itv.com/news/central/2023-03-17/inside-alton-towers-newest-ride-the-curse-at-alton-manor

Park map says its changed.

Find out tomorrow. Presumably the duck rumour like with half of this ride will be a "wink wink" reference to a previous ride. Sure there'll be a full POV by half the vloggers by closing time.

BPB have announced "Technical Rehearsals" will be taking place for Valhalla in April. Completely forgot this still hadn't reopened.

It depends what happens regarding the Trommel scene. Likelihood is that the giant spider set piece will remain but different lighting/effects/etc. Probably a new recording of the "ARE YOU SCARED OF SPIDERS?" phrase added on. Based on the advert looks like the ghost corridor is getting a retheme, maybe old Bill to be replaced and additional effects added (or maybe they'll revisit the original concept for it). Beyond that in terms of big scenes just leaves the garden. Depends if it makes sense within the storyline and where things are placed sequentially. Personally I would've gutted the whole thing and started afresh.

Based upon the level of references seen so far its very unlikely that the music won't contain half of the old scores of HH and Duel. Probably contain music from other parts of the park at the rate they're going. (Yes I don't think the number of references to past and present Towers is a great thing. The sheer amount is kind of taking it too far for me and could potentially for many detract from the ride. Then again probably part of the marketing in the PR shots, but does concern me that the ride will have way too many nudges and winks to goons.)

TV ad. Seems to confirm 5 seats and spiders (urgh).

https://www.expressandstar.com/news/local-hubs/birmingham/2023/03/13/new-attraction-set-to-take-people-on-haunting-ride/ If you want to go in clean as it were, best batten down the social media hatches. The 'subtle' Easter eggs will be prevalent though.

Love people who say "I can't say anything" then proceed to blab out stuff.

Think a lot of their building practices is for budgetary/funding reasons or perhaps an elaborate money laundering scheme? More of those that involve RMCs please!

They'd have been making that animatronic for longer than 6 months. The park would've known about the development for around a year or so. Projects don't start when the previous ride closes. I'd imagine this would've been a refurbishment that snowballed into a full new attraction due to the way in which Merlin tend to operate. A standard maintenance budget? Not unless we can market it as new! Ghost Train redo is down to the loss of the IP. So different situation.