SteveJ
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He he I think this advert is great. Quite witty and to the point, I think this is a much better tone for the ride and if the redesigned attraction turns out anything like this.. great! Let's wait and see
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The downfall of the Link is a prime example of how audio was treated at Thorpe for the last 10 years surely? Hundred-thousands of pounds wasted because of carelessness and not seeing enough value in maintaining audio. (not to say it's the fault of the park technicians, but where the money to maintain things comes from) And the ones I was on about looked suspiciously like spare speakers they had kicking around nailed to some posts. There's a lot of ill considered music about the place I feel and it creates a cluttered, random experience. That's what I'd focus on if I somehow had an opportunity to redesign the park's audio. Start with a fresh approach and see what audio works best (Nemesis Inferno surely) and what doesn't..
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I'm not some grumpy fart who has to ruin everything others like I honestly just think IMAscore have become very homogenous at the Merlin parks anyway. From a guest/enthusiast/technical perspective - it's a shame theres not more diversity and IMAscore has become a buzz term in some respect. Honestly is it not feasible that maybe their music isn't as automatically divine as most fans (its a lot more balanced on here) treat it as? For people who genuinly cant get enough of it, glad you like it, I'm not trying to ruin anyone's fun. I just think it doesnt work in the bigger park experience like enthusiasts think it does. And as I say I'm sure IMAscore are very talented and good producers, good salespeople. But they certainly know what 'sound' the UK parks want of them, and don't have much sense for melody or subtlety, just to smoosh the music in every guest's face as it seems to me.
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Audio at Thorpe, apart from say Nemesis Inferno, Colossus & Amity Cove, I feel has been treated flippantly for a long time, to the point at which it was a game of 'what's different this year?'. The chart music change was all done to be modern and 'rebranded' at the time too, and people said it would give the park a new identity. At least this time new tracks are actually being commissioned and hopefully a more robust approach, but 'upgrading' the entire park and filling every space with IMAscore would be too far in the other extreme. So that's why, even if just hypothetically for now, I speak out against such an idea. The flat rides have very often changed their music back and forth, most of them weren't composed for those rides either. The Lost City music has been continually chopped up and spread around different areas. And used kind of inappropriately in some cases, there were spare speakers mounted on wooden posts down a bare pathway between some bushes last I went, playing very dramatic Lost City music close to your ear, it was like a technician's lunchtime project and such things seemed so forced. Music is much better when used by design, not for the sake of music. I've witnessed this approach before backstage at a Merlin park, where there was an actual goal to make sure "every single path has background music" in coming years. No thought to using audio as a memorable highlight then? Just music absolutely everywhere you go - inescapable loops and sound bleed from one area to another all day. It's a crazy idea and sucks the speciality out of moments where music does really enhance. Thankfully Thorpe is yet to go that far, but seemed to be heading that way last I visited. I just hope theyre professional. "Different" does not automatically mean better. It will be an improvement in many places, but not all by any means. If perfectly great tracks are there already, or an area suited more to silence, then there's a better approach to take
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Ride identity is nothing to do with nostalgia. Just to make it clear - I'm not sentimental about this music, get rid of it and fiddle around with it if you want, but havnt we seen this over and over at Thorpe Park? It just turns the music into a subjective commodity to change at the will of whoever's running the park at the time, and not part of any real experience or attraction identity anymore. Like OlivusPrime says, you would be very destructive to go and swap out music in a film. These things work together to build quite a lot of the experience, without people necessarily realising just how much difference music makes - fiddle around with it and all a sudden it becomes just a commodity that can be flip flopped according to opinions. The same way Merlin seem to treat lighting, FX, scenic colours and everything. IMA score's music has been possibly the least original theme park music Ive heard for most their UK attractions. I believe they've mostly become so popular with parks and fans alike because they have a brand and a high production sound, otherwise I doubt they'd have done so well based on their product alone. Not that they are bad at all, they are excellent at producing music, but they know exactly how to get that superficial overblown 'trailer music' sound which park operators clearly love, despite the fact it fits these parks so poorly in my opinion and is really quite gimmicky. They've done better and they've done many different styles, but clearly they're being asked for the same product over and over from the UK parks. So the idea that the whole park can be 'upgraded' with IMAscore is completely impulsive and naive I think. "Acoustic theming" ha ha, oh dear oh dear. In regard to the speakers, not sure Ive heard the prominent pulsing bass for many years. The entrance also sounds thin compared to how it used to I'm sure. But I could be thinking of a while back when the sound system was bodged. Either way, all that would need to make the ride sound afresh is to improve the sound system and ensure it is the best it can be. We've been through about 5 similar 'music rebrands' at Alton Towers in the last 20 years too. It seems to be what new management teams do first to give the impression they're revolutionising the parks. And a new slogan too. I think it can be done a right way and a deconstructive, naive way.
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Unfortunately the park don't have a clue about the difference between LED and other lights, so old style light fittings and lighting effect circuits all now have LED bulbs stuck on them, meaning they either fail easily, don't flicker, strobe when they shouldnt, and are always way too bright. And let's not get into colour temperature making everything look like an office instead of an atmospheric warm low lit environment. If only they knew how teams spend months designing and fine tuning these things when the attractions were built, just for the atmosphere to be completely destroyed for every guest by some clueless people later, such a shame. LED designed properly can look great and be very flexible, but it's totally different to designing with traditional lighting. Just sticking LED bulbs on old style circuits is such a basic mistake, your average handyman wouldn't do that in your own home - but Merlin parks do for some reason, in a themed attraction of all places where lighting is so important. Whatever! All the Tomb sound system was ripped out unnecessarily and replaced with some cheap stuff in the so called "upgrade" in 2016. All the spot sound effects and timed SFX were never replaced and no one seemed to even notice. When it was pointed out, some SFX tracks were just put through the music speakers on a loop instead, and "that'll do". Clueless. BubbleWorks was a complete mess too but in their actual words "most people wouldn't notice" and "the problem does not exist". These people should not be in charge of maintaining a dark ride then.
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The dive stunts are not performed until later in the season because of weather conditions. Shame that the more punky & fun nature of the show has been toned down by the looks of it, and the Lego character can't really do much for a dive show if they're in a costume right?
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Chessington holds nothing of The 5th Dimension at all, all that's left of it in the ride that I ever saw when I worked in the building was an old fire alarm system still labelled with the 5th Dimension scenes and some rocky ravine scenery from the swamp that was kept as you enter the trommel. The stopping positions were changed - where the snake pit is now, this was Zappomatic's first scene, the train travels straight through now. The second stop is the same, where the ice scene was. In the swamp, it used to slow down to a crawl, instead the train now travels at normal speed through the fire pit. The final scene is the same. The queue line is the same interior clue where you walk past the souk windows today. The steps up to the operator console are the same, but are now behind a wall so it feels different. It was very clever how they turned that open plan, cattle pen space into its own themed walkthrough - which in the Terror Tomb days was brilliant and atmospheric (today it is awful, flooded with white LED light and pants). There is a small amount of 5D blue & silver queue space left hidden in the corner of the building behind a wall so they say
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Thats also true. Id agree it sounds most Ian Habgoody but cant recall it now and the only trace I can find of anyone being commisioned to do Inferno is from this Douglas guy. But anyway you get the idea, the existing piece was very well produced by a talented composer and sounded really effective for the ride. so saying "things can always be improved" when something is already very good often leads to arbitrary fiddling about, Id say the sound system needs redoing and thats improvement enough. It would sound fantastic
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IPs are favoured and theyre now using them more than any original concepts. Theyre not interested in original concepts because theyre so business rather than design led now, theyre very proud of each big IP they 'win' from other companies. But its already happened, most recent projects for the last 5 years have all been IPs (and just as flash in the pan as a result) Sadly, its what entertainment companies are like when they are driven by expansion and shareholders, rather than an actual will to be successful by being the best
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It was by Douglas Whates apparently, a successful classical composer and also a bassist. Funny because the bass was such a memorable part of Inferno, before the dispatch sequence got fiddled around with and the speakers broken. It was great fun when it set off.
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Merlin were nothing to do with Hex and Nemesis. This was done in house co-ordinated by Alton Towers' entertainments teams. In fact they denied the budget for restoring Nemesis for its 20th, even now the park are having to paint it over 4 winters just to get the money to complete it. Rumba has also just been painted brown by the park with an old Rangers prop stood against a fence. If anything Rumba is a clear example of how money just isn't given to restore rides without them being marketed and rebranded. The only refurbishments to existing 'classic' rides I can think of recently were Fairytale Brook at legoland and Tomb at Chessington - both of which were made considerably worse; Tomb was only done to enable it to actually open, otherwise it would have had to remain shut. Merlin have a policy that they will only grant capital expenditure on anything if there is a new "killer image" and "compelling proposition" and preferably utilises a popular IP or trend, and has to be to the liking of Nick Varney. It is a ridiculous system when rides are literally falling apart, or need proper care. It kills off any remaining classics too, because money is only spent on "new" Merlin friendly ideas. We are lucky that Alton Towers managed to restore Hex and knew mostly what they were doing with it. But really it should have had a professional commision and budget, and never got into that state in the first place.
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They almost certainly have plans to continue their rebranding of the rest the park. Expect Rameses to go as soon as next year, Tomb an IP /safari themed replacement, Vampire some IP and retheming, and Dragon Falls to do most likely go. Merlin have zero interest in restoring classic attractions they didn't make, only keeping them in a terrible state long enough to be easily replaced by their own brand.
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I seem to be convinced it was Merrell but could be wrong and can't find it on either his or Ian Habgood's websites now. I forgot how good and inventive Ian Habgood's music was too. I just said his entrance theme for Thorpe wouldnt gel with the nature of the park today, but listening to it again after a long time, it's so much more of a characteristic and individual track than the IMAscore one. Great attraction music composer.
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It will hopefully organise batching into the building far better and set up the experience more. I think the dumbest moment of Ghost Train last year was the confused baggage window and sausage-machine style 'pushed through a small door' method of getting you into the building. It put most the public around me in a right bitter mood. And what a big missed opportunity that lame curtained door was, entering the building should be one of the most atmospheric parts of a dark ride surely!
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The Bose bass cannons used to fascinate me.. Theyre pretty much pointless because you can get an excellent bass sound using high end speakers, without the need for enormous ceiling mounted 'cannon' sub woofers. They're such an odd unique system. I'm sure there was a reason Tussauds liked to use them for a couple years, and the bass did originally sound very cool in Inferno. But they're way over the top for what they do!
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Things can always be improved upon but homogenising the park's music to entirely IMA score (which is just a company favoured by parks, not some kind of musical divinity that instantly improves everything they touch, like they are often treated) will start to really deconstruct the rides' identity. Whose to say the soundtracks didn't have an enormous amount of effort put into them in the first place? The entrance theme previously used was well known but suited an older version of the area, and didn't nearly gel as well. So I can easily see why music was replaced there. Nemesis Inferno however, which actually has a very surprisngly well written theme, really sonically good, unique and a big part of the ride's identity - the idea that you can just "upgrade" it with the latest flavour of the day is something that has happened time and again with parks, it doesn't work. That just fiddles around with the ride's identity. Crispin Merrel (who also did Hex) wrote the Inferno music, and with its original sound system and set up, it sounded ace. No need to change it. It would be throwing away something special for the sake of the latest theme park fad. It needs a new sound system, not more easy money for IMAscore and their popular 'brand' of soundtrack. You just know IMA score would produce overblown swelling orchestral stabs and with no melody, stick some jungly sounds on it and amplify it to sound flash on YouTube. Because that's what theyre good at and always askd to do by UK parks for some reason. Do we really want the whole park to sound like that? If theyre going to change the music, change the whole ride theme too.
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The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure
SteveJ replied to Mattgwise's topic in Chessington World of Adventures
- I think people here have expressed themselves a lot more as to why they do or don't enjoy the attraction than just "it's Merlin"! Thats rather flippant to just say that. Merlin dominate the UK attraction industry and their product is deliberate. Are you surprised people are so disillusioned? You might not be and absolutely that's fine. But sometime people seem to have such low standard that they're surprised when Merlin create something average at best, or it "has theming" and they praise it, just because its a step up from the broken down rest of the parks, or is fresh feeling. But is it actually entertaining? If you find Gruffalo entertaining, fair enough! That's fine. Personally I don't because I feel opportunities continue to be missed, though I found the 2006 BubbleWorks much worse, and it's not because "its Merlin". I don't have some kind of agenda to hate everything they do. But it's just that same Merlin product in a different form. I could sit there and say "well it's better than before at least so I'm happy", or I could try and push for more creativeness & quality than your average kids river caves with whatever IP they can get. Which isn't a big ask really. I believe would be a lot more fun for every family and guest to come up with a great, off the wall, original dark ride full of surprises. But the benchmark for new dark rides in the UK is pretty low, after many years of neglect. Out in Europe for example you get such a better day out with fun ideas and surprises. Whereas here, Merlin own everything, and are the Radio 1 of theme parks playing the same generic tracks every day -
I'm not a VR expert but it was the back end control tech overheating all the time which caused the units to die, which is to do with the technical design for the ride rather than the headsets they're using. As in, someone should have come along and made sure there everything had been considered for maintenance and health of the system, and efficient cooling should have been WAY up there. For whatever reason, probably because (as always happens) someone thought they could save some £1000s by just not building a cooling system in, or it was a total oversight. Not sure which is worse! But the overheating problem was far from the only issue with the ride too. Like you say, the whole thing should have been much better thought through and tested, but rides are rushed out with so much pressure and short time span to capitalise on in-the-moment trends by the company these days, regrettably. I also think its a Heath Robinson kind of attraction. So many different parts to it just to squeeze out less fun than you could probably have in your living room with VR. The greatest part of the attraction, the moving train & simulation between locations, is criminally sidelined by the VR and so much blown on licencing Derren Brown only for him to appear in an average Pepper's Ghost rambling on. I just, personally, didn't see any entertainment factor in it, and I went in with neutral expectations. Dare I say, it seems like a lot of money and a lot of convoluted ideas thrown at something in a desperate attempt to be hipster and trendy?
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I see what you mean but this isn't really how the VR gear is built, it doesn't rely on the headgear like domestically and isn't anything to do with HTC or how long the headsets last. When a headset dies, it's like when a light bulb blows or a screen dies - a replacement can be bought and installed, as a standard part. The headsets themselves aren't what are causing the problem That's the 'front end' tech. In a theme park ride there's front end and back end. The back end design (which is all prototype and custom, done all by Figment and the other contractors I believe) is where the problems lie. Its all complicated but should have been far better considered & installed than it was. Also, there were some fundamental flaws in the technical principles of the ride working with VR on board, which means they had a real head scratcher in trying to get the whole thing to even work as a functioning ride. But I don't know the entire ins and outs. The flaws really should have been picked up way before construction, but Merlin were adamant on using VR just for the sake of VR while it was a hot trend. And so it was thrown together. Also they should have used higher grade contractors, or at least ensured more back end quality. Merlin are all about the front end though, they'd much rather show off their expensive HTC headsets than build a good VR control system that works behind the scenes.
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To best honest, does the classic Vampire belong at modern day Chessington though? If only it could be picked up and put somewhere else, where creative and eccentric entertainment is encouraged. Chessington today is a very different place that just wants to be a pricey, pretty tacky commercial resort appealing as superficially as possible to any family with the cash. The park has seriously changed for the worse and I feel it's too late now, so there's no point going back to the park to relive what it was like before. I wouldnt be at all surprised if plans were made to change Vampire a long time back, as they were with BubbleWorks instead of giving that the restoration it really deserved too. Merlin don't do restorations anyway, even if they try to make it look like they do with UV Tan Blaster.
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The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure
SteveJ replied to Mattgwise's topic in Chessington World of Adventures
Have yes And it's still a decent grotto-type attraction, you can never feel the scale or sense from a video, but in my opinion not something to get so excited about just simply it's much better than the corpse of BubbleWorks that it replaced. If anything I felt the much-praised station was cheaper feeling than it looks in photos, much flatter and featureless than BubbleWorks had been (apart from the nice ceiling). The rest of the ride is a cozy, relaxed sensory experience - even though it runs out of ideas in the middle. It's middle of the road and kiddie orientated so not my cup of tea, whether its new or not. But thank goodness it's much better than the 2006 BubbleWorks which I hope is quickly forgotten as the corporate trash it was. Young kids will like it also, but sad to see the whole of Chessington homogenised under the thumb of Merlin. Not a trace of the gutsy fun and imagination that the park used to be. But I wont keep going on about it, its not going to stop. This is all part of their plan for the park's commercialised, mainstream image now. Vampire & Tomb likely to keep being run down until they're the next to change, and more Resortiness and cardboard theming dotted around in the meantime. And so I've not paid for a visit for years, and long since lost interest in being a guest at my formerly favourite park. -
The ride gets new props in the queue every single year, new gravestones made of cardboard or polystyrene on a tiny budget from the park's in house team. They like decent at best, for a couple months and then fall apart or get tatty. They really need to get a real studio to restore the whole thing with a complete design, not bits and bobs on a school play budget, even if their in house teams are "trying their best". Things should be done the proper way, if only Merlin would give the budget and grant restorations for their inherited classic attractions. Same with the parks' audio and effects throughout. Need to be done professionally, it's what guests pay for after all
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I meant the station being pulled out and redone with a softer theme than the original horror (or a Gruffalo related IP as rumoured), when what every guest really deserves is the ride restored professionally, to be awesome, dark and fun again The large window light box (which has been empty for years) could suit a kind of projection effect similar to what used to be there too, and brand new lighting. Unfortunately under Merlin, money wont be granted to improve an old ride unless it is rebranded as a new ride. This is a policy of theirs. And the park don't have the money (or care) to scrape together a proper budget themselves, like Hex at Alton Towers this winter.
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The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure
SteveJ replied to Mattgwise's topic in Chessington World of Adventures
Well in response to the "its for children" idea... I think this is exactly the ride Chessington needed. This isn't the eccentric, left-of-field Chessington full of ideas and silliness we knew from years ago, and hasn't been for 20 years, unfortunately. The 2006 BubbleWorks needed to close to stop people conflating the original ride that the park made its name with (along with Vampire), with an awful primary coloured one that was different. Merlin run the park as your middle of the road, pricey, middle class -aimed kiddie resort now. And so Gruffalo suits it to a tee. Not my cup of tea, and definitely wouldnt have liked it when I was a youngster into more energetic things either, but the very young children will love it I'm sure. So there you go. I'm just hoping to see a more creative and exciting family dark ride return to the UK soon, and I dont believe it will be from Merlin.