SteveJ

My last post was in response to the idea it could have easily last longer, but (without really knowing any detail about building materials, life expectancy) I think things like the wooden station building would have had to be entirely replaced by now for it to last longer anyway. Wood just rots and when you have it in a very damp environment, I'm not sure if there is anything else that could have been done. The actual ride hardware is very well built by Mack and probably fine, I'm not aware of any reliability issues. These aren't really the key reasons why the decision has been made. What gives it away is that it totally wouldn't take a whole year and 2 closed seasons to replace a wooden station and refurbish any parts. The last times I've known a ride to be SBNO for a year at a time was Runaway Train and Vampire, most of the time they were closed they were just deciding what on earth to do with them, if there was a chance they could be saved. Of course when something is left abandoned for a year, it decays about 10x as quickly. So there's always the chance they'll do something with Loggers. But a magical refurbishment with backwards sections, tunnels and a new layout there is no chance of happening. That is why I brought this up, as it is wrong for the park to let people down so hard by pretending its just maintenance - when Loggers Leap is a very well loved and historic ride.

"Log Flumes can last much longer than 30 years if they are looked after properly." No it really wasn't built to last this long, let's face it that RMC didn't have the budgets or experience to set out building an invincible log flume that can operate every single day for 30 years. Also, if the ride was the same today as when it opened, it would still be down for closure because of the way it is designed to old specifications.

Surely the mid term development plan is a document outlining all possibilities that they would ideally like to do, not what has to be done or what they are actually commiting themselves to doing? So for cases like this it is a bit meaningless and, yes they'll edit in whatever they want to. I have no idea at what level such a decision has been made. It's a bit strange they didn't outline the Loggers site for redevelopment in the first place. I remember Black Hole had money poured into it then they realised it would have to close anyway, and it sat there on the MTDP for ages before they got the chance to sort it. Will be interesting as it's a big area.

No it won't take years to recover from a terrorist attack unless everyone in the entire city is extremely weak willed and just give up, which they obviously aren't going to do.

I don't know the official reasoning, you'd have to ask Merlin that. But keep in mind these rides are all some of the oldest attractions in their respective parks. I wish they'd just announce the proper reason to be honest, as you say these are very popular rides and can't just be swept under the carpet

I don't knooooooow because that's a bit more complicated. But probably, I don't pretend to know about that one but it would make sense.

If it was Thorpe's decision, it would probably remain open. Likely the powers above already set out a new policy regarding all Mack log flumes and have recently imposed it on Thorpe hence the lack of notice that its going SBNO until removal? It's not a coincidence that The Flume at Towers will also be closed/removed next year. They don't have medium term plans for unexpected decisions like this and hoping for backwards sections, tunnels and a redesign will just disappoint sadly.

I.e. removing it altogether Not sure why the social media team have announced it is only closed for maintenance.

Ayop everyone, Logger's never reopening ever. Bye

Although, if you speak to the people who designed those rides, they will happily admit to reusing the same abandoned warehouse idea over and over as a start point. Because that's what it is already, a warehouse, so all you have to do is paint it rusty and it's the first idea that pops into people's heads. Having been into several real abandoned warehouses in my time, they're quite tense and lachrymose, not boring like always portrayed in theme parks. Maybe this will be the best abandoned warehouse theme ever, but it's still a missed opportunity again. Bahhh

Derren always uses very basic names for his shows, and "Derren Brown's Ghost Train" could be more of a curveball statement quite typical of Derren Brown. A supposedly psychologically intense ride masquerading as a ghost train. Or it could be totally made up/misinterpreted from the source.

Big companies are just as likely to abandon areas as small companies, in fact perhaps more likely. Alton Towers had been doing it for years, but usually with the still-themed, unused areas hidden out of sight. The big exception being the Black Hole that was obviously a big thing to hide. I think it's more interesting than demolishing an area and then not doing anything with it. It happens all over the place and not just theme parks, I suppose for lots of different reasons than just laziness as you might be thinking.

I was born 15 years after the 80s so not totally clued up, but doing some digging the blocks of buildings in the centre of the park was the imaginatively named 'central' area. It's actually more interesting than you think as all of those buildings once housed a lot of different things, and the facades once very eclectically decorated and diverse. Can anyone shed some more light on these old buildings...? KFC/arcade ("Amity Hotel") building was Space Station Zero & Carousel Kingdom once upon a time. There was also a fountain square out the back, where the path up behind Detonator is today, which is now gone. The building was about twice the length, going right across over the Detonator area and ending near the Nemesis Inferno entrance. This second half of the building housed Wicked Witches Haunt, it's kind of difficult to picture the exact footprint compared to today, unless you look at old aerial photos from before the 2000 fire. Then on the opposite side of the 'road' was the more European styled buildings, now the Pizza Hut, Burger King, toilets and 4D cinema. These were originally a theatre (now Angry Birds), the Thorpe Radio station, a set of restaurants and I'm not sure what's on the upper level. Obviously the facades on this building have been drastically altered from the old Central design, becoming 'calypso', 'pirates', 'Angry Birds' and 'Amity Cove' at one time or another. Most the exterior detail is gone, painted over multiple times and just all rather difficult to work out how it used to be.

Yeh I think you're right, they are supposed to be roads with pavements as part of the park's original design. Not to suit any particular theme as such, it's just another remnant of the rather plain or dated way the park was originally planned/built. This was well before the idea that even the paths and buildings are part of a total experience came about properly in the UK, at a time when most UK parks were very geometrically planned and quaint looking. I'm thinking mostly of the old 80s 'central' area which kind of 80% still exists under the surface. Of course they all function as real roads most the time when visitors aren't on park.

I'm not quoting you, I'm referring to the comments that happened beforehand. And yes all technical details are listed in all the ride manuals, there's a lot more to know about the rides than that though. Talk to any engineers about it if they're not busy, they might be interested that others also think about that kind of thing. Or just weirded out (depending on which one)!

Most customer-facing rides staff know a lot more detail about the daily operation and functioning of the rides they work on, to the point at which trivia and facts like knowing the manufacturer, etc, becomes the most pointless thing to know. Why does knowing the manufacturer matter when you have to deal with the ride's operation every minute? Such things seem to only matter if you're trying to qualify as a theme park geek (or if you're an engineer actually having to contact and liaise with said manufacturer). And if you do try ask them any details about the functioning of a ride they're probably not allowed to tell you. I've seen that all the casual staff this year have had a very difficult job, and had to put up with a huge amount of extra stress and longer hours without needing to be slagged off because they supposedly "don't know as much as you" about rides.

Good.

That's a pretty arrogant remark isn't it? Especially when it certainly depends who you ask, as a large amount of the staff load will know a great deal more than you will, but they are not necessarily the ones customer facing. The staffing team on the whole do a very good job, considering some of the circumstances they've had to deal with this year. Most staff you'll bump into on rides, etc won't have a clue about geekery stuff and that's not depressing, it's normal.

Hocus Pocus Hall was actually a recycled attraction idea originally planned by John Wardley in the 1990s. Here is a collection of the concept art for the original plans, featuring Lord Chessington (then renamed Dr Chessington for the adverts). A later revision is with Count Limburger, a vampire mouse.

It's a shame really that the ride was in a very poor state by 2005 and far from its prime. Many animations and animatronics looking terrible (Prof Burp with wonky face and a big hole in his neck was a bit weird). It was still a lot of fun but even when I was 10ish years old I could see how fairly worn out it was. In 2006 it was just a botch job. It's hard to describe really if you didn't know the original. The new version was really scrubbed up, cleaned and stripped down, yet so wrong and lifeless. I think of it like an old friend getting excessively botoxed until they look like plastic. Removing 80% of the animations was also a deliberate decision to save having to maintain them. The audio-visual system was also royally botched, I actually have no idea how they could have got the audio tracks so so wrong. Obviously they were edited to have ducks quacking, but you have weird anomalies like only half the track was transferred off the original hard-written sound system - looped incorrectly and even the quacking isn't in proper rhythm. One of the weirdest parts is the ruined sound effects. To this day you can hear the end of Prof Burp's voice shouting "-it's hard work" over and over at the base of the lift, it somehow leaked on to the new SFX loop in that area and couldn't have been deliberate. Unless they wanted it to be an echo of Prof Burp's ghost looping quietly in that area? Well they did paint a moustache on his face on the posters before pasting over with the new one. It's great you remember the finale fondly Matt, but to be honest it too was also extremely botched in 2006. The lighting was amazing even in 2005, then by 2006 it was suddenly totally weak, out of sequence and the strobes did not have any stroboscopic effect. There were no mirrors at all in 2006, just blue painted walls with ducks. It's actually much better now I would say, at least with a black wall it's less distracting and the newer LED lights at least have a colour sequence. It's not a patch on the original though.

Preview video: Part 2 of a video project I'm producing is now published, documentary on the creation of the 1990 BubbleWorks with new interviews from the team behind it. This was a really special video to make so I hope you enjoy watching. A lot of questions will be answered! You can watch for free on Vimeo via this link

^You can also make an amazing attraction with just a bunch of square metres so the size of the building - which is fairly adequate for a dark ride anyway - also not an indication of it being good or bad 2p is my go-to exaggerated phrase for when I need to describe how cheap something is. "How much did they spend on that?" "Looks like 2p" "Ahh"

Money really doesn't matter nearly as much as everyone thinks. We don't even know how the budget is broken down. There's a reason Merlin always announce their budget and go on about it in promotional material, it's because claiming big multi million budget sounds exciting and is now part of the advertising for any new ride. "It's damn expensive so it must be amazing" says the public. It's something picked up from the movie industry where they exaggerate figures to sound good, when VERY often like half the named budget is actually spent on things like marketing and advertising. 20 years ago they were making rides with a relative budget of about 2p and they are the ones usually well thought of as the height of creativity and quality in UK theme parks. Even internationally regarded project like Nemesis were either less or near to this, and that really is thought as one of the best attractions ever. Merlin have access to adequate budgets to do whatever they want. Not as big budgets as Universal or Disney, but why the heck would you need budgets as vast as that anyway? You can still make a ride with 2p if you know how to do it and have good project directors. So there's no point pre judging this ride based on its budget.

Ok I see, in that case

No, it's not.. I don't think I or anyone was suggesting anything like that or calling you out on anything. But Ben is talking literally - the sets were apparently damaged in storage - so it's nothing to do with budgets or The Smiler at all