SteveJ

We can be almost certain Vampire is being given the "keep it broken so we can close it soon" treatment. Sad to see the station looking very ugly and bare, with appalling unprofessional lighting. And to be honest, Merlin have the money to restore it and make it better than 1990 tomorrow if only they chose to do it.

Excellent insightful review, thank you

Fixed for you. This happens with every redesigned ride ever, fully expected it with this one. Just like Charlie And the Chocolate Factory in 2006, the new ride hides a lack of substance behind good lighting and use of newish effects. Not that I think lighting is a method of disguise something, not at all, lighting makes all the difference and is a good thing. The new station looks fine as I keep saying, but its just the difference good lighting makes. I work with lighting and FX design by the way so not exactly talking out my bum I hope. Why was the BubbleWorks so brightly/badly lit in its final year then? Why was it changed to such a bland looking box in 2006? It could have (and did) look just as cozy and fun as this new one if it wasn't ruined. Ridiculous really. And so an arbitrary comparison. Trying making a comparison of your face lit by a camera flash close up to one lit properly. A decent family attraction, I'd like it if I were 5 - shame it's got no energy and no new ideas to the table, as you'd expect from a corporate deal like this. And so isn't as much a crazy all-round family ride as Prof Burp's BubbleWorks. But it's a good kids ride, thank god Imperial Leather BubbleWorks has bit the dust at last. Now where did I "nit pick" again?

No I'm not dear, I didnt even agree with your previous swathe of negativity on here (apart from the music being dull), which you've now so easily changed your tune from some pictures & videos. This is how I expected the ride to look and it looks just like a good, decent kiddie grotto. But nothing more really. I'm not being cynical, I'm being objective. Lights on the stairs is a very standard modern feature of attractions these days, and should have been done for BubbleWorks. Foliage on the ceiling and vinyl walls/flats, gobos on the floor is all very standard to. Nothing wrong with it at all, it's simply average and not pushing the boat out - because this is your standard commercial IP job. Same with the music and audio throughout, and all its scenes & animations. The only truly nice touch I believe is the mouse on its tail animation and the waterfall effect - nice touches. The previous Bubbleworks from last year is irrelevent since the park management made sure to keep it looking trash, broken and terribly lit for comparison's sake - which obviously works when you have fans putting up two photos together and basing their opinions off that. If we want to play the photo game, how about this beauitful lively set: Flat white walls where used to be 5 big, different animations. Or the whole ride plastered with vinyl prints Even better, a room of nothing but a white projection screen. My point is, the comparison photo game is arbitrary and meaningless. Judge by how much it entertains you in person, not by comparison or by photos.

I think it's lit very well, just like the station should have always been, but its very nice, I'd never say it was absolutely awesome. It's on par with a lot of decent children's walkthroughs and themed exhibits around the country. I don't think they've done anything remotely special here, and not "nit picking for the sake of it". It's that day when no one can tell the difference between "new", "fixed" or "good". I don't get this idea.. based on what? According to who? A new Prof Burp's would have been just as awful because it would have been built the same way as Merlin build all their rides. I havnt seen anyone judging this by comparison to the original. But what's clear to see is the original was about loud, all-round fun and energy & silliness; this one is a relaxing, quiet, very average sensory trip. Both are great, but they're quite different and I believe kids love energy and entertainment much more than adults give them credit for. I just hate comparisons like this. All I see is exactly the same kind of features, but one lit properly, another lit compeltely botched and amateaur. The top photo shows the station totally broken, way too bright and bastardised in the retheme. Why are you comparing the very worst of one thing to an opening day shot of a brand new ride? Of course the station last year looked utter crap! That's not the point is it?

Its because it costs less to do 'abandoned', both in maintenance and in sourcing materials for it. Just paint the existing 'warehouse', clad with scrap materials easily sourced, then leave it. People think it looks cool, even though it doesnt really entertain or provoke any excitement, and then you realise the entire park now looks like that and is a miserable place. Shame they insist on using it absolutely everywhere. One of my favourite real-life places is a huge abandoned factory in the woods near some family relatives of mine, incredible detailed surreal place. Amazing vaults and creepy corridors. If they went for THAT kind of "abandoned" it would be amazing. But they go for steel rectangular boxes painted dirty instead.

Looks exactly how expected for me, flat, sentimental and corporate. Only one quiet music track all the way round? However, its brilliant to see the lighting has been designed realy nicely, reminds me (ironically) a lot more of the original BubbleWorks and how it used to look - dark and colourful. The lighting should have never got so awful every year in 2006-2016. Those are some truly laughable sound effects and the finale is indistinguishable from the rest the attraction now, bar the remnants of the fountains, which have been reduced to just an 'effect' rather than a spectacle. Everything static and drawn out like they had a 5 minute ride to fill with a 2 minute walkthrough idea. Will be a decent modern ride experience for toddlers. Chessington now couldnt be further from the park that produced the original from-the-hip BubbleWorks and crazy 5th Dimension & Terror Tomb. I truly cannot see Vampire lasting much longer without the removal of its edge and theatricality too (oh wait that's already happened through sheer terrible maintenance!)

Yes, though it's quite different in the sense that Merlin give all the decision making power to their marketing departments - a process which always leads to medicore results, and poor upkeep of existing attractions. They can egg their advertising as much as they want, all promotion is going to create hype like you say, though it shouldn't be as manipulative as the company choose to do it I believe. The way Merlin works is everything has to be justified by marketing, even if its desperate investment needed on an existing classic attraction - money will only be given if it has a "killer new image" and "compelling proposition". It's an awful way to work, gives us 4 year flops all the time like Sub Terra, Saw Alive, Pandamonium, Ice Age 4D, Zufari, Swarm (although some moments of Swarm were fun). And it ensures that existing rides can never be maintained with the budget they need, unless theyre rebranded new. Everything now has to be an IP or a world's worst essentially. That is a policy they work to. So much development power is given to clueless marketing people, who should stick to real marketing - backing up proposed development plans with adequate research and market monitoring - not leading the way into commercialed trash, which is sadly where it's got to by and large. Derren Brown's Ghost Train was a novel, ambitious idea. But the very reason we had the poor-quality VR forced ineffectively on to the ride, at the cost of all its reliability, effeciency and original concept (when the ride could have been much better suited to motion simulation), is because of Merlin's marketing-led policies desperate to grab the VR trend. A real shame, and definitely not how a theme park design company should be run. Their constant flops, short termism and the disastrous opening year for Derren Brown proves that anyway. Though I realise I am talking way beyond that one video now!

But whether other big companies do it or not is nothing to do with what we were saying, so you keep coming back with "see that's the point I was making" when it adds nothing to the discussion about this promo for the Ghost Train? I don't think Merlin were the only ones to do it, but they're a big problem for the theme park industry. If anything that's more reason to point out that this video sets no "promises" for the new ghost train like people were saying from the teaser? Merlin introduced so many false claims and nonsense into the UK theme park industry. "World's first" now means nothing and you can no longer believe anything you see. It's a real shame to see them mislead people so easily all the time, that's my point. The ride just needs to be a great experience and then it will be enough of a success. Trying to manipulate people's thought the way Merlin do with such misleading claims - with all the pictures on the ride's webpage last year taken from PR shoots and stock photos, none of the actual ride, and all the hyperbole claims that it would "rewrite what a theme park can do" and all this. That needn't happen, you can advertise a ride much more truthfully than the way Merlin do it - or at least build good attractions to back up the expectation. This is a company that spends just as much on marketing and promotion as it does the rides themselves. So should we all put up with faulty, mediocre rides with loud, fake advertising claims for the rest the future because "that's just the world we live in"? Meanwhile all the parks without the huge money to spend on advertising (and the decency to be more truthful and creative with it usually!) can do good work yet never get the attention.

His music (and all the classic tracks) are brilliant, you're right. Brings back fantastic memories as does Graham Smart's. Can't beat good talent and letting people be creative - most ride music today is quite overproduced and composers micro managed by the client, so it never really takes off and is all quite generic/predictable.

You really don't like Legoland's music do you You mention it on every occasion

This is not the music used, I am pretty sure the music is being done by Pitstop who did Thirteen and the like for Merlin . I will laugh my bum off if that is the music replacing Graham Smart's BubbleWorks score (even the butchered 2006 version is more fun than that piece for a theme park ride).

It is a Merlin issue, and I am against this kind of hype wherever it appears - in all the super commercial powerful companies. Merlin overhype and dupe their staff just as much as they do it to the public. Does that mean it should just be accepted as a necessity and people shouldn't be encouraged to think for themselves? It was the smokescreen behind which Derren Brown's Ghost Train masqueraded last year, and now they're trying to do it again. Which is why I brought it up in this topic. You may remember how excited people were when the had Derren Brown claiming it would "Completely rewrite what a theme park can do" - when what they actually meant was they'd forced some VR for the sake of VR on to an attraction idea they already had going, thrown lots of money at it (in the wrong places) and never actually thought things through properly. This goes way back to ever since Merlin started their hyperbole PR style. So when will people realise they're just very very good at misleading guests? It's nothing to do with getting people excited the way I see it, it's all to do with hiding their mess and keeping fans loyal regardless of the poor new attractions, closed old attractions, etc..

You compare Merlin to Universal and Disney, two other even bigger, more corporate and marketing led multinational companies. My post was nothing to do with stopping people being excited. I don't know why people have taken it personally, if you want to believe in Thorpe's latest video designed to make you excited of course you can. I'm not trying to be negative. Maybe people could let me express my perspective as well about how misleading and false this kind of advertising is. Disney's and Universal's is even more brainwashing if anything, except they create much better quality attractions regardless. (not commenting on how recently Disney is also going down the globalised IP route recently... sad to see) If you are confused by criticisms of Merlin then I recommend going to work for them or learn about how the company works. It's not a coincidence their parks are run by such a big company yet are so poorly maintained, poorly developed with 4-year lifespan commercial attractions (dressed up as "cutting edge" and "world first" all the time to blind people to their mediocre entertainment factor), and their staff/resources so underfunded. You compare it to Tussauds, it's well known that Tussauds was butchered in the 2000s exactly the same way that Merlin now is - by poor managements taking over, short term profit policies introduced and corporate shareholders taking over who don't care for anything but numbers and expansion. The Tussauds before this, however, was a totally different company that gave us amazing attractions, best known being Nemesis and Alton Towers in the 90s, old Chessington (when it was fantastic fun), and the beginnings of Thorpe Park as a thrill park.

There is if its based off misleading hype and no actual substance of the ride. That's exactly why people have found almost every recent Merlin project to be disappointing, because so much money is spent on misleading promotion and extreme exaggerations, to the point at which it doesnt matter the ride is medicore because people come anyway. They know this and do it deliberately. Much better to not be drawn in by this hype and come out pleasantly surprised by an entertaining attraction instead. All I mean is.. how many times do people need to be duped by Merlin's style of advertising, before they realise? I think it's a little sad Merlin continue to do it so easily, while having so much carelessness in the actual attractions they create. It's all front end and no substance with most their projects now. I hope the redesign corrects this and makes it great.

This shows nothing of the ride at all, so nothing can be inferred about the ride from promotions like this. This is purely PR noise and they're not exactly going to show people sitting there looking bored to advertise their new ride are they! It will only look promising when they actually show some of the ride itself, or when you're actually there on it. They could have made exactly the same video last year and it would have made no difference.

I really think it's a slippery slope to closure, excuses and very poor value for money the moment the park starts to fiddle with a design they didn't create, without professional input and without a professional budget. In the state it is, the ride may still have 'some' appeal and influence but it's pretty naff entertainment in the bigger picture, and will certainly appeal to a diminishing fractional audience the more these attractions are botched up and ruined. Their replacements, like Zufari and Madagascar, are usually flash-in-the-pan gimmicks that get reduced and cut within 5 years, so we end up with losing all quality attractions this way. I never rode the original Vampire either, but I remember vividly when the station was dark, loud, the original raw music and the way it sounded in the room, the sheltered walk through the crypt and dark flickering corridor, the imposing Gothic chandeliers and wall artwork (when it was actually lit properly, the scenic lights for the artwork all disappeared along with the chandeliers, so now they look flat and bland under those standard B&Q LEDs). Even all those creepy details have mostly gone in the last 5 years. I can only imagine it when it was brand new and there was even more substance to it. You can also look at it from the point of view that its simply what the guests deserve from the amount theyre spending. In 1990 guests would have got an infinitely greater experience for a fraction of the typical prices now, even with discounts. Merlin don't stipulate proper design or restoration though, instead they award their misled in-house teams who "have a go" at improving rides unprofessionally (sometimes without even paying them) - which give amateaur results that only look embarrassing, like the smashed up Abdabs plonked outdoors or the wooden sticks in the ground this year. Just be grateful these lame fiddles weren't promoted as "TLC". Merlin also bar any real capital being spent on scenic maintenance and refurbishment where it's desperately needed, unless there is a new marketing proposal and "compelling proposition" to accompany it. No Dragon Falls or BubbleWorks restoration then, despite millions of people going through these attractions in a terrible half-demolished limbo. Terrible practices for such a large, powerful company, and it all relies on the fact that guests don't know what they're missing, the difference between an excellent attraction and a broken down attraction.

Doesnt need to be dark and boring if they chose not to be, Gloomy Wood started out being fun and spooky. Unfortunately they only want to make grey and 'edgy' themes. Gloomy Wood could very cleverly be linked up via the old railway woodland route if they pulled their finger out too, creating a lovely 'woodland' journey to the attraction but then having the coaster sit in its own isolated site. Perfect for creating some mystery. Then build a relatively small structure to screen off most view of the ride from the Flume entrance so that guests aren't confused. But will they do that, or just leave the coaster weirdly on show and clumsily 'connected' to Gloomy Wood?

Well none of those are the correct original mix, although the second one you post there would still be a marked improvement (which is taken from Graham Smart's online posted version). Those mixes listed as '1990' or 'real' on YouTube are incorrect, but what do you expect, YouTube is a free-for-all for amateurs anyway and none of those people will be aware of how the ride opened or proper AV design. But this is not about some elite technical detail or fan thing, if it were done properly then it would be much to the benefit of everyone's guest experience. Rather than a shoddy broken state of affairs. I remember being amazed at the music and the atmosphere of the station as a very young child, compared to now as the whole room is boring and flat for everybody. Audio should be handled professonally and simply putting some YouTube videos next to each other is only an arbitrary comparison. The speaker system in the station needs a complete redesign by a professional. Ideally a good remaster of the 1990 original should be restored to the station and resynchronised to the animatronic, and the animatronic fully serviced. A different, simple outdoor ambient track should be commissioned to use in the queue, not the station theme.

No, the proper 1990 version cannot 'easily be found on YouTube', also I can guarantee the music did not sound as "loud and clear" as it should do - had you known the ride in its better years the difference would be great. It is like a cinema screening a pixelated download copy of a movie to guests paying full price, just because they 'lost the original' - pathetic and totally misunderstanding. The music currently does not loop (there is a gap of silence and it loops in the wrong place) and it lacks the bass & clarity it should have. Because it is literally the version in the video below, downloaded and played on a file. This is so unprofessional and makes the music sound pathetic in comparison. Audio is a much misunderstood thing. People get away with real shoddiness sometimes, but when done properly, everybody will enjoy it so much more. There is no reason why a track from 1990 can't sound as good today if it were played properly. There are currently so many broken speakers in the station too. Also, the music in the mix below (other than being sourced from a hissy old cassette tape), is not the true version of the music that used to play in the station for years. It misses sound effects and is a different track mix. The track was designed to synchronise to the animatronic organist's movements, again this has also been broken for a long time - and the animatronic seriously needs servicing. The guests pay enough to visit the park that the audio should be of best effect, not this shoddy and laim. It would take very little effort to restore for someone who knew what they were doing and had the right skill. But quite simply, the park don't care and say "most people wouldn't notice". Wrong attitude completely.

Most the speakers are still broken from what I hear, though could be wrong. The music does not even loop correctly. It's still playing the very poor cassette recording of the Vampire music, downloaded off ReRide.net and circulated on YouTube everywhere. It's so unprofessional and ignorant that a theme park would play a hissy recording of its own music that they got off the internet, instead of restoring the original mix or bothering to source the original. It apparently plays through the entire queue now, so that you'll get bored of this tinny music playing on a 2 minute loop before you even reach the station. The music should be Dramatic and Powerful sounding, not token and thin just 'because it's the Vampire music' and so seemingly any rubbish copy of the music 'will do'. That it took them a whole year just to turn the volume up speaks, um, VOLUMES of the park's sheer shoddiness.

It could get guest wet easily when it waved its trunk around, that short clip may not show it though. It was moved because an eating area was built over the other side I think, it was adapted quite shoddily, with its trunk shortened and painted up very badly. On the other side its too close to the track, so the scale is wrong and you can see how small it actually is... and it was turned off recently because it was a "H&S risk" by distracting riders from their boat bump ahead of them. It should never have been fiddled with and then it would all be fine.

Can't wait for Vampire's new theming made from more recycled wood and cheap props for 2018, 2019, 2020.. until someone decides to actually restore what got demolished and rebuild the queue properly with a quality new design. I mean... "Second to Disney"

The brake locks appear to not be working at all, giving that sound and the lack of hold.

Its a fantastically themed Disney rip off carousel. Kids will enjoy it, though if you ever needed to see a purer example of Merlin's attitude to fix a broken park - it would be to throw loads of money at a suped up carousel while spending no proper money on anything else. Seems that's the end of Creepy Caves and the Mexican restaurant too, now become vinyl signs. Glad to see nailing to scrap pieces of wood together and sticking them in the ground counts as 'theming' still and excites people, for some very odd reason. Vampire needs thousands spent on redesigning its queue and scenery, not £20 from the local joke shop and some skull heads. Some parts of the park look improved, again only piecemeal like every year. Hopefully Gruffalo is entertaining in the end.