SteveJ

They did great work, but this is a good way to learn how disconnected the hype and promotion of an attraction is from the actual attraction. The design company that made these were hired by a PR company who were hired by Merlin PR. Nothing to do with the Merlin Studios team designing the ride, probably just a brief and the official imagery for the demon appearance were given. Then it was all shot in various locations. Of course we all found out eventually that firstly the demon isn't half as interesting in the ride as was seen in the PR stunt, and the dolls didn't feature at all and (not sure if they were even supposed to?). Yet on Thorpe's website there are no images of the actual attraction and they are almost all from this photoshoot. Just never associate the attraction with its PR, its so misleading and for most public it just completely lessens any enjoyment from the attraction.

It's going to be themed to the hills with Chessington's "adventure/African" branding and even have its own theme music to impress all the guests and fans. It's also a carousel. I hope that when the rest of the park inevitably falls down all that's left is this carousel as a symbol of the park management's approach to everything.

Kill or cure for the park? It will be a net carousel development of 0

The classic London Dungeon had many years of layering, style changes and fiddling about, so was a bit of a chaotic mess that had outgrown its space. It used to be quite a cool classy and full on gloomy experience, and entertaining. It went a lot further than most 'haunted' attractions in the UK into the plain freaky. The more branded it got with scenes disappearing to make way for gimmicks and shoehorned attractions it was a bit awkward. The new one however is thin on the ground, just doesn't have the substance and is very Merlinesque if that's a term now. It can be fun but it feels like a typical London tourist trap brand basically, very different from how the whole thing started and does not suit the original location like it used to at all. Rented space in County Hall compared to old, genuinly horrific arches deep under the station makes for a very different atmosphere! This is why the Castle one, though simpler, is so surpringly good as uses the space really well. Would be interested to visit Edinburgh dungeon as it too was an original one, also changed quite a lot though properly.

Any more staff being let go across the company, who were already paid a fraction of what their jobs were actually worth, and I don't know if their attractions would be able to function properly at all. I don't quite believe that Merlin have taken the right steps because they rarely are pragmatic at operational level and even their cost cutting has been randomly organised. I remember budgets for some other park departments were suddenly scaled up last season to impress guests for the summer, only to know be cut right down again for this coming season and firing long serving staff. Regardless, Merlin continue to spend huge amounts of money building new parks and their current goal to expand into India & other parts of Asia. The crash still affected Alton Towers' attendance badly so further budgeting was understandable, to be honest I'm more accepting of the closed things than most. Hex was in an awful state, Sub Terra should never have existed and had problems, Charlie was a rubbish project from the start - although out of these only Hex was closed for cost saving and the others would have shut anyway. I think it better to save thousands on closing a whole attraction that's in too poor a show-condition to keep going, one that can be brought back to life fairly simply, and then not skimp out on the rest of the offering; instead of slashing everything. Sad to hear though how it seems this year, across all Merlin parks, the slashing is now in full force. Within the company there are many places the costs could have been covered, without butchering the parks and their own reputation. Yet the company is determined to continue its growth rate and refuses to slow to recover from this difficult period, at the cost of all its quality and despite the fact its already damn enormous. I believe it was clearly all heading this way before The Smiler accident too, in fact The Smiler accident was a result of the company's increasingly awful bottom end control under such rapid expansion.

Not wanting to argue as this is besides the point, but I'm fairly well informed that it was to do with this and has not had the significant maintenance it's increasingly needed for many years. There may be other factors to its closure this year but its certainly been poorly maintained. Also maintenance in any Merlin park is horrendously cheaped out on costwise which Ive experienced first hand sadly. It's one of the company's biggest problems. The bare minimum is done to be passed off as certifiable and anything less the ride is just shut (Loggers, Tomb, Skyway) or has short term fixes. I don't see the relation between the other Mack flumes that have closed, Dragon Falls received new evac platforms and other things to help with evacs because of increasing breakdowns, and new lift mechanisms in recent years, hence why the thing is still open. The Flume was shut because of a combination of evac difficulty amidst increasing breakdowns too and the change of location for SW8, but unlike Loggers I'd argue the Flume wasnt worth keeping anymore so its justifiable. It's not a trait of Mack log flumes on the whole.

Its a small, great children's dark ride!

Ive not suggested that, even the most 'accomplished' parks leave major rides SBNO but usuaully always scheduled or discreet, and not as often as Merlin are now. For a company as large and profitable as Merlin to leave popular rides SBNO to save money (Alton Towers) or because they've cheaped out on maintenance for so long (Thorpe Park) is very telling of how they fund their parks and this kind of action will only run the parks increasingly into the ground. We are all here on a Thorpe Park forum because we have a passion for the place and theme parks surely - so of course people ought to speak out if they are seeing the park run hard into the ground. In a sense Merlin have a duty of care to the place, theyre the third operator to run it, but of course that idea won't gel with them as they just see it as a popular 'brand' in their UK empire. Which is a shame, because it means the solid, fun attractions die like this, while the new ones are the likes of I'm A Celebrity, Angry Birds Land and a flawed Derren Brown's Ghost Train. If their system of running the parks was working on the whole and things like Loggers shutting down was just a mistake then thats one thing, but it's clearly not, that's why I say people shouldn't be naively optimistic, that's all. Also their PR cloud of confusion and lies about the situation is concerning, they had no idea when Loggers closed if it were coming back or not and it certainly isn't currently being refurbished, and no plans to refurbish it existed at the time of its closure. So I disagree with what was said. Also Benin is spot on.

The Scorpion Express retheme was pushed through extremely late, and extremely rushed, largely because guests DID react badly to it being closed without explanation and sitting there not doing anything. It was also another example of the company knowing full well it needed work done but it was being left until the latest moment. The rethemed attraction would have been utterly awful, and was extremely under budget, had it not been for some very passionate people on the project from what I gather. From experience, these closures are never because they've got something planned. They're all left last minute and sounds like many of you would be very disappointed to learn how Merlin parks often organise these things, its not fair on the people who end up having to deal with it either. The company doesn't even have a refurbishment/maintenance budget system, everything significant spent on existing attractions usually comes through as a scheduled Merlin Magic Making refurbishment which has to be justified by marketing and new branding just to keep the ride from falling apart. The only exception that springs to mind as an exception to this (although it was still left to decline until it literally had to be decommissioned mid season) was Tomb Blaster - except its maintenance last winter ended up being awful, so that also doesn't fill with hope. This is very short sighted and based on singular opinion. And nothing to do with why it didnt open in 2016. Also the ride could possibly be considered more popular than most the major attractions on park today when you take into account how long its been there, the fame it had in the 90s (Diana etc, and a time when it was the biggest ride for years), it's also still an excellent attraction, with large appeal and long queues. I disagree with this blanket rule to be honest. That's certainly how Merlin work and up to their management, but not "how the industry works" by necessity. Considering how long theyve had to consider this (its well known the ride was in a poor state), I do find it unprofessional. And 5 years for a company as large as Merlin to not do anything is pretty poor, and I see absolutely no justification for why it should ever take so long. No point being optimistic and "sitting tight" when this is example number 10 of poor practice which wouldnt happen under a company that cared. Much better to go be interest in something else than to be pointless loyal to a company that doesn't care at the top. The ride didn't go from working order to suddenly broken for 5 years - that isnt how rides work. They could get it properly refurbished and reopen the ride next year if they actually saw the necessity to. But the company wont get any direct returns from that will they? It is a mess.

A good reason though? It really was left to rot with no refurbishment, and no replacement drawn up in time when they all knew it was coming. True the park can disclose whatever they want. If guests, including theme park enthusiasts (I'd actually argue there are more families and guests who love Loggers more than enthusiasts, especially as its been around so long), don't complain about its unexplained closure, then its a business case that the park can carry on shutting rides without consequence. These parks work wholly on consumer choice and profit-led business now. If guests do complain, score low on the surveys (a ridiculous method of feeback but its what Merlin attention to) and dont return in as big numbers because of all the rides they enjoy being unjustifiably closed, then the park have reason to improve. However, if guests are told not to complain, to keep supporting the park in their bad decisions, then they have no business case to ever change their behaviour, and will only carry on shutting good attractions, not maintaining them, not considering the long run, etc.. I'm sure many at the park want Loggers open as much as guests do but higher up company management lets consider here. If the company was less blindly market driven and focussed on maximising guest experience from the top down, then they'd be able to have pre empted Loggers closure and never let it get in such a condition. This is happening seriously across all Merlin-bought UK parks now. Years of decline and tarting up in the short term.

You know that the company can choose to fund a park project any time, the 'major investments' cycle is an investment structure, a structure for how to increase returns with new attractions based on a 4 year guest responsiveness (ie. they want to spread the money they spend on new projects just as much as it takes to keep guests coming back). Its always quoted by fans and staff but I wonder how many have really thought about why it has to be that way. Its essentially an often-flawed system Merlin created to spend as little necessary to get the biggest results, a model for new attractions considering them purely as monetary investments, because the company is now so ruled by shareholders and large that it apparently needs so much red tape to get things done. Loggers should have come under refurbishment and maintenance years ago. Merlin on the whole are a billion pound valued company and build entire visitor attractions in other continents quite regularly now and deal with big companies. They can get a log flume working. They can build an entirely new log flume if they wanted to. They just choose to budget in an extremely tight structure and focus on company shares and profit maximisation over guest experience. Also the investment cycle is technically per Merlin Magic Making attraction developments and not budgets for the park to refurbish existing rides, however 9 times out of 10 they will make a marketing led decision to keep existing rides in poor conditions for years until they get to the investment year and can then tart it up and call it something else. It's purely business and marketing-led decisions. Quite a shame this happens so often under Merlin and this is not what the best theme parks out there behave like.

Costa - generic branded global rip off for middle classes careless with money that don't know any different, suits Merlin perfectly

"even the general public are starting to notice the poor up keep of the place." I'm sure the vast majority of people who have been the ones paying to get in notice how poorly kept and tacky it is, and leave with a worse impression. The public don't see different things to fans. Its a question of whether they make a vocal opinion about it or judge to themselves whether its worth coming back again. You'd need a huge amount of people to stop returning to persuade the management to do anything about it (much more than already, complaints about closed rides and poor quality at Merlin Uk parks are already regular and daily in my experience).

Considering they spent some years designing it and had a team of designers whose job it was to come up with the look and design of the trains I should hope they did so lots of picture referencing and concept design! The finished train I had an inkling feeling was rather bland and not very memorable, its semi authentic but at the same time rather flat and undetailed. Seeing those pictures kind of takes the impact out of it as it suggests it just basically copied from a very basic period design. Out of all the concept art for it, looks like they went for the most 'normal' option. Still nothing wrong with it, just when you know whats possible with real art direction and production design, shame they didn't go further to create something more stylistic

No it was an actual article from 1995 before the ride opened that had been archived on a website somewhere, but I think it's disappeared now. It was from before the ride was named as "X No Way Out" interestingly and was very different to how it turned out (before the budget was cut!)

Does anybody recall an article that was rediscovered some years ago, about the ride as it was being planned in the mid 90s, which had all sorts of information on it about the original concept? About how guests were expected to spend 15 minutes inside the building experiencing each scene? I'd love to find it again. It was so similar to how Derren Brown was billed in its planning stages. Space Station Zero was very well known and very popular back in the day, when it was the park's most thrilling ride, lots of cool effects. Bear in mind Thorpe Park was a small family park at the time and big rollercoasters like what populate the park now didn't really exist in most European countries. X No Way Out's queue rooms weren't removed for any health and safety reasons and the building was legally built to the high fire/evac specifications of the day. It was shut because the ride was unpopular and a failure, relying on its "world first" "psychological" "innovative" & "revolutionary" tropes which were in fact very overhyped and under budgeted (as always happens in the UK to this day, no one really believes that a theme park ride is "the future" but they always promote them that way). As effects began to break they were just never fixed, leaving the ride empty and pointless, so the rooms were just closed off and by 2005 the ride was pretty awful and nonsensical. The building has been modified a number of times and the way it is staffed now it just wouldnt be practical to have the whole queueline indoors, as has been pointed out. However there's no law about this. They could if they wanted, but its not worth it when the building was designed for a completely different layout and operational format to the way its being used now. Imagine if Derren Brown had no staff ushering you through, had no effects working in its live scenes anymore, etc, and whole areas were just shut off and it was run like a bog standard ride. That's exactly what happened to X No Way Out.

Considering they are paid the same wages as if you were stood on a shop floor saying "have a nice afternoon" all day long, I firmly believe the rides hosts & operators should be paid more for these highly increasing stress levels, long training hours and constant pressure without much break. There'd be a large increase in quality of work that way too, and staff would be more experienced and positive. But it would cost them thousands extra per year so probably would never be considered.

Projections will feature in the ride somewhere. They'll probably try to make them the world's first high tech fountains that don't work 5 days a week but who knows. The water plant is next to the lift/chute so they can reprofile the channel in the finale room should they wish, but that will cost them.

On other terms I agree it is a timeless scene which generations deserve to experience. However it was very much a part of the original ride and a concept they invented for Prof Burp's Bubbleworks. It is just uncomfortable that it keeps being reused just because its there, while all other parts of the original ride have been hacked away for 15 odd years. Merlin should come up with a new ending and sever ties with the original ride rather than keep people's nostalgia falsely invested in them.

Its built fairly well and looks fine as props and studio work go, but it is relatively boring because Scruffy Dawwg are just Merlin puppets for their theme park division. They arent allowed to do anything outside what MMM stringently provides them. This isnt how attractions used to be produced, but theres neither the trust in craftspeople or a reliable team of contractors anymore. Animations are so developed these days, and the simple pretty ones arent that costly to do (theyve been done pretty nicely in the UK ever since the early 80s), its so bizarre Merlin have so rarely commisioned them - let's see if they turn up in the ride. There will be projections too but I dont have a source to show you.

CBeebies Land might end up being a good analogy for this considering they followed the same IP process, with plenty of backing out and backing in again of external properties when they werent happy with the proposals. Its also a basic chop and retheme job the same way. CBeebies land was alright at face value but is shoddily built under the hood, which I think comes through in the guest experience. It looks fairly cheap and garish compared to loads of other popular childrens areas built on that sort of scale. The original area, when it opened (before the usual decline into obscurity) was awesome with some genuinly great touches. The rides and themed features are thinly spread, especially the Night garden boat ride with its TV-in-a-box queue and sparse, clumsy animations. I can't judge for children but those over a certain age of awareness would probably be disappointed to see it in real life, compared to their experiences of watching it on TV. As for examples of Merlin's other mid-range investment attempts to create kids attractions out of old ones, I point people in the directions of: Pirate Falls: Abomination Blast - changed to cheaply produced off-the-shelf Lego models and a far more generic theme Fairytale Broken - made more generic and cheaply produced with the reduction of the ride's charm Heartlake City - an original area (which was also the park's 'classic' area) just painted over all pink with some "High tech" interactive exhibits that don't work well from the beginning. Ice Age 4D 'Madagascar Penguins and the ever-diminishing budget after the film proved to be a flop' Show The shows are on the list because even those were budgeted as medium scope plans somehow. "They can't get rid of Transylvania its a classic!" Unfortunately it was much more of a famed classic in the early 2000s and that didn't stop a big business barging in and ruining it then. Merlin don't have interest in areas and themes that aren't 'theirs'.

Anything is better than IL BubbleWorks, which should have closed before it even opened. But still I doubt it will be anything special for many many longstanding reasons. I dearly hope they dont try and add some fanservice 'tribute' to Prof Burp's Bubbleworks, it would be such a lie considering their real knowledge and opinion on it. Prof Burp's BubbleWorks embodied the very opposite culture of what Merlin sadly values today.

Really there are plenty of things that could be done, the possibilities with an attraction like this are only limited by whats practical. If people could just come up with the final idea on the internet, then that defeats the point of most entertainment - surprise and exceeding expectations! The issue is they dont believe in doing that, and are probably going to end up giving people the usual 'scare maze' or equivalent anyway. Everything about the company points to another let down instead of properly sorting it out in a professional, fresh manner. But its also good to point out haunted walkthroughs and scare mazes can be done brilliantly too, just Merlin's idea of a scare maze is usually an embarassment to be blunt. The best ones at their Halloween events, etc, are done in house or outsourced to independent studios

I agree the ending is what needed significant attention, and if they are in fact building something completely new and swallowing their pride then thats a big step forward. Reinvent the whole ending to the attraction, brilliant. However, I do find it easy to see how people are finding negatives, because of this team's pathetic track record of making decisions on pretty much every attraction theyve made ever. I fear the process was: Guests comment "wot that wasn't scary/ is that it?" Market 'research' (exit surveys) concludes 'guests don't find it scary enough'. MMM 'We need to make it scarier, let's add a shipping container scare maze ending' or something quick and basic. The scariness isn't the ride's problem. If it was entertaining enough and really hit the mark, then people would come out having experienced something really great and wouldn't be feeling disappointed. Many people probably went in thinking it was going to be "the scariest thing ever" not knowing what Derren Brown's brand of entertainment actually is or understanding the ghost train idea. Why would you want to dumb down the concept to appeal to this misunderstanding, when you could potentially surprise them in much more ingenious ways? Scaring people is easy to do. Its as easy as having some flashy lights in darkness, loud noises and an actor jumping out at you. Please please don't do a Sub Terra with that awful cop out ending tacked on. Please don't do actors that will inevitably get cut within 3 years. Please don't always make the most obvious, superficial response to market research.

What does that matter? It wasn't exactly representative of any culture associated with that time, its just been around a long time, and its original date of publication would never have come into consideration in choosing the IP. Its chosen because of the franchise potential and recognition value, just like everything is now. And because its on a downwards trajectory, after so many follow up books and other media based on it for years, and so they can get it cheaply. Its a space filler for the next 5 years, exactly like all the Madagascar stuff was before this. UK parks arent about culture and creative enterprise anymore, its about flash in the pan trends and keeping up the statistics for Merlin's big empire. Not particularly interesting once you're over the age of 6/7 and just a first world indulgence to be honest