SteveJ

Why would the Smiler crashing miles away damage the Haunting In the Hollows props?

Scruffy Dog are subcontractors rather than the designers of this project.

Merlin Studios is (or perhaps at least was, before it was reshuffled as Merlin Magic Making department) actually a different company to Merlin Entertainments. As it used to be Tussauds Studios, the same that designed Nemesis, Oblivion, even The 5th Dimension. Merlin Studios were good but supposedly always terrible with budgeting, so something extremely simple for most studios would burn money yet look like it cost 2p. Very glad to see independents being used again, like the good old days, and we've already seen what a massive increase in creative designs this decision has resulted in. Scruffy Dog are getting very big with all their contracts from Merlin! I don't think they should be worshipped as something special, considering the UK actually has a very rich but not very well known history of AMAZING studios and creative theme industry, but I'm not trying to put a downer on a popular and growing studio like Scruffy.

Because they're the cheapest professional studio Merlin could find YAY!!

It was originally composed by PitStop for their Halloween Spooktacular c2010 I think. Then they used it now and then outside BubbleWorks (weirdly) - presumably without paying royalties so it was removed. Or maybe they own the track now, and the IMAscore from Mystery was costing them too much.

I don't know whether this is the worst hype PR ever or the best. Ride reveal via chocolate dusting and an Instagram photo of some clowns.

Yes, because it's what they want to wear .. not the record labels pushing behind them to have the widest image appeal no no.. How is his comment gross or misogynistic, if he is expressing support for a female singer who is extremely popular WITHOUT using sexualised imagery? Still the music industry might be beyond saving but whatever

Short preview of my upcoming documentary episode on the 1990 Prof Burp's BubbleWorks. The story behind the ride is a great one so I hope you enjoy when this video comes out in a week or so..

You win a million points I used to be infatuated with this character and pretend to be him. I was tennnnn

A million points if you know what or who Electric Bill is. Noe I didant nayme it after an electricity billlll

I don't think you should be getting so much criticism for voicing negative opinions, even if you always seem to constantly, I don't think you're over exaggerating ALL that much to be honest. There are some fans out there who really just com - plain unjustifiably and you're not really in that bag. A lot of your complaints are mildly put rather than angry, and just seem to come down to perception. But really, stop visiting if you have that much of a bad experience. Just stop visiting, If you then find that you actually miss the park, it means you do like it really.

They might have been fans of the Naked Gun? They probably didn't mean to sound rude, it's probably that they didn't want a crowd watching them.

Go to "Theme Park Collective" page, click 'unlike'/'block'. Magically the false information disappears

From the hatch we can deduce the vehicles are shaped like this:

Paperwork and moneeeeeey

Cooler outlet? Omg fridge: the ride

All dark rides have a large access point. Large pieces of equipment you wouldn't have expected and potentially vehicles have to go in and out of even your average dark ride. It's not a real indication, in fact judging from that photo (!!!! NB: don't judgee scale by anything you see on the internet!!) it looks relatively small.

You're welcome, glad it was a nice surprise for you how extensive the 5D was. It's actually not as easy as you'd think to compare the old scenes to what they are now, as the Tomb sets were much smaller (except the fire pit which goes much deeper than the old swamp set) and the space divided into different areas. 5D was a much longer ride time, it stopped 3 times instead of 2 and slowed down for the swamp scene. What you don't see in the video (because there's no footage of it actually working) is the full Snow Battle scene which was the second stopping point, Zap would race along in front of the cars as smoke explosions fired off all around. A spaceship or asteroid would also appear to land in the background. That's all where the weird laser mummy is now (spike room), which only uses about half the space the snow scene did. Zap's speech was at the top of the ramp where the broken snakes effects are now. The building is giant.

If you think Alton Towers can "build anything hey want" so long as it's not above trees, and that Chessington could also build such large rides but just choose not to, then you don't know how complicated the planning issues are. The council at Chessington are extremely strict and have been since it became a theme park. The one at Towers are usually quite helpful in working things out to suit everyone, from what I gather, but it's still hugely difficult. But they are 2 totally different sites and land

Hahaha how wonderfully written nonsense. And the strategically chosen all-smiles picture. What a stupid fault of humanity that these tabloid exist and get any profit.

Thanks again Mark, not only me who would enjoy reading that, I wish there was an easy way for the 5D team to see their work is well loved, even retrospectively. Knowing them I'm sure it would be really quite something after all the work they put in and how hard they pushed to make these rides great.

Preview: The past year I have been producing a documentary series on classic dark rides in the British theme park industry. Part 1 is now published, documenting the story of The 5th Dimension. Featuring new interviews and a lot of newly discovered archive material with the team that built it in 1987. All the original concept drawings were discovered, music, SFX & vocal tapes, and further archives were uncovered and restored as part of this project. Enjoy! Please watch via the link to watch the FULL video with best video & audio playback.

They're not concentrating any of their resources really, as the Curse is being built by an external studio. The same that did Big Top at Thorpe Park. This means it will likely be up to a much higher standard of scenic design. But the whole thing is something of an admittance that the park's own teams are unable or unwilling to challenge themselves this year.

I agree, and a lot of these decisions wouldn't come solely because of cost cutting. The operational departments must be having a very difficult time with so many rides and so few people. Much better to change times of rides that have so little ridership, than to simply close the whole park early Being at s theme park when there are so few people there but all the rides are open is a REALLY weird experience, if any of you have done it

This is not anything worth your thought or attention, this is not "horror" or really anything to do with scare attractions. It's simply sado-masochism and has been around for so long, why somebody is now trying to commercialise/brand it, and term it as a 'haunted house' experience is ridiculous. Some people in the world also do much worse things than this, seems they are going to keep pushing until the squeeze more and more shock out of people just to gain attention and satisfaction. ..Moving on...