Hethetheth

To be honest the preshow barely connects to the rest if the ride at all. Frankly, everything before you enter the carriage is essentially unrelated to the preshow and hanging train. Derren in the preshow: "And after it's all over talk to your friends you may find they perceived things diffferently" (something to that effect). How? The film on the VR is pretty much identical... For a ride supposed to have: A. Ghosts B. Illusions C. Trains It has literally only 2 of A and only 1 of B (the hanging carriage is an illusion, the rest is just a video on some goggles). Apart from the name and preshow it has sweet nothing to do with Derren or illusions at a basic level. It succeeds only in having trains, I'll give it that. I actually prefer the Dungeons.

If the ride needs guests to imagine that it is a better ride for it to be enjoyable then I think that says a lot. I was having a read through older pages if this thread when the ride opened. It's very interesting to chart the change of enthusiasts' opinions. From 2016 to 2017 there were generally positive responses and then reactions sour quickly in 2018. It really seems the mid section and the pacing of the ride really glued it all together. The ride experience is very fragile.

There was no demon projection or anything in the middle section. We literally just waited around in the corner before being ket on to the second train. I remember how theatrical the middle used to be with the actors, the great central set piece and the sense of urgency. All that is gone, and it shows how fragile the overall experience is. I loved Sub Terra and I miss it. That had the theatrics nailed down. Merlin, for all their sins, CAN do theatrics very well. Love them or not, the Dungeons achieve this very well. It is telling in general how atmosphere and pace is needed to keep an experience like this together. The lack of music in particular always bothered me. Why make 90 mins of music and use it only in the queue. Let's do a comparison for a second to a ride that does it right: Hex. To an extent they are similar experiences: they both involve several rooms and pre/mid shows and sit down 'ride' section(s). Hex has a flow to it. Each pre show section builds the tension AND story, and are excellently themed with a sumptuous musically score. Even if you end up waiting a bit to board the final ride, there is music around you as you wait. The ride on it's own would be ok and could stand alone, but really it's an experience that is more than the sum of its parts. Compare this to DBGT. The pre show does not really lead naturally into the hanging carriage and VR segments, and rather than waiting around in a themed area, instead you stall awkwardly with no music. The mid section is jarring now, and merely feels like stalling for time and adds nothing. Again, no music. The VR segments do not stand effectively on their own. I don't think the ride is beyond repair. I don't rate the tech that highly, but with new VR segments, increased theatricality and a story/tension-building preshow and mid section it could be saved.

I first rode Derren Brown's Ghost Train in 2017. I've made my feelings clear about the very muddled story in this thread before, but I ultimately did find it a flawed but generally enjoyable ride. Not worth a long queue or the money spent on it, but it was fine. Fast forward to Fright Nights 2019, and oh boy have my feelings changed. The queue for the ride was advertised as a 50 minute wait. Ok, that's fairly long but it was Fright Nights and everything was busy. 60 minutes later we were still not in the batching area. In the 30 minutes that followed, we saw only 3 batch groups enter. One every 10 minutes! Really?! I know this ride isn't great with capacity, but I cannot understand operations being this bad. The pre show was as boring and disconnected from the experience as usual, but at least it all worked. Once it ended we moved onto the next waiting area and waited. And waited. And waited. We were there for 5 minutes. Worsening the wait was that the room is lightly themed with no music (I thought IMA score made 90 mins of music, and yet it plays only in the queue, why?) and we were waiting with the worst actor / staff member they could find. This preemptively killed any momentum the pre show gave the experience. Despite the lengthy wait, when we did move into the hanging carriage room we were hurried through to board. This room is probably the only decent bit of the ride and yet we barely got to experience it. Genius move Thorpe. Genius. Once onboard we had VR segment one. It was fine, but very little happens really on reflection (it occurs to me that the whole VR segments contain 2 'ghosts' in total, which is ridiculously low). After the VR segment we were asked to wait on the train for a bit. At this point we all sat in the awkward and silent carriage. No music, nothing. People around us muttered "is that it?" and "that was s***". We eventually moved into the abysmal middle section. There were no sound effects or music. We all wandered around an empty set of cages and then (would you believe it) we reached the end and waited for ages. In silence....again. Eventually we went into the 2nd VR segment and saw the final of the two 'ghosts' of the experience. The segment was fine. Once over we went into the shop for the fake-out finally. We waited there for ages before anything (what a shocker). When it did begin we merely got a man in a t-shirt rather than a demon. Really?! This ride was ok at first but now it is utterly abysmal. There is NO sense of theatrics at all anymore. In 2017 there was a serious effort to keep the pace going and maintain some story. There was an energy from the actors and the middle section was seemingly the glue that held it all together. Now there were awkward silences, confusion and waiting it was an embarrassment and I struggle to see how anyone enjoys it in it's current state (if anyone does I'd love to know why). Judging from the people in my train the public seem to hate it.

Went to Phantasialand for the first time in 5 years, and there's a reshuffle as a result: 1. Taron - Phantasialand 2. Baron 1898 - Efteling 3. Joris en de Draak - Efteling 4. Revenge of the Mummy - Universal Orlando 5. Blue Fire - Europa Park 6. Space Mountain - Disneyland Paris 7. Big Thunder Mountain - Disneyland Paris 8. Expedition Everest - Animal Kingdom 9. Wicker Man - Alton Towers 10. Stealth - Thorpe Park The rides on this list have been added for various reasons. Some are rudes I like because they are thrilling, others because I like the mix of theming and coaster, some I have a sense of nostalgia for and others I just find fun. It's a personal list and I fully acknowledge there are objectively 'better' that I lack a fondness for.

It feels wrong even saying it, but I feel like I might actually prefer the ride experience of Nemesis Inferno compared to Nemesis. I have, for the longest time, preferred Nemesis to Inferno. However, on my last visit to Towers I didnt enjoy it nearly as much. In fact I found the runaway highlight to be Wicker Man! I'm going to Thorpe Park for the first time in a year next month and I'll see how I feel about it then, but if you asked me this second which one I'd rather ride, it is Inferno. It's smoother and generally more comfortable. I suspect my change of heart is related to my gradually decreasing tolerance for intense forces. As I get older I find myself getting dizzier and nauseous more easily. This has resulted in my ride preferences trending towards airtime and speed over forces. I would call Black Mamba my favourite invert I think.

Just so you are aware, even if the ride did get 'Listed' heritage status their only obligation is to not tear it down. There is zero obligation to keep the ride actually running. You may remember that the Scenic Railway at Dreamland sat half burned down for years because it was listed and no one could afford to run it and no one was allowed to tear it down. It had its run, but now it is old and too costly to maintain. I'd rather a replacement that it sit there like Slammer does now!

I agree with what others gave said. After I've had lunch there's very little I can do that's fun and less intense.

I have to roll my eyes every time I see someone say "It looks good but not worth the queue". It's brand new and the queues won't remotely resemble that later. From what I've seen the ride looks great!

I find watching TV and playing board games fun too. Doesn't mean that I want to travel to Surrey to do that! I can just have 'fun' many places, there's only a few places I can gave fun riding rides and coasters! I'm not saying they can't mix things us with different experiences, but if I go to a major theme park I expect rides and attractions, and would be disappointed if that focus went.

Short review: I went in the dungeons last weekend and I enjoyed it. It felt worth the £5 I spent and I had fun. Long review: I'm conflicted to an extent with this attraction. It is a shame to have lost a 'free' ride for this paid experience, and it feel a bit poor to pay to do an attraction in a park I've already paid to go into. I'm not sure I was completely pleased to pay to take 45 minutes out of riding rides I'd paid for with the entrance fee. However, the £5 entry did feel about right for the length of time and quality of the experience. In terms of the actual experience (ignoring cost and the circumstances), it was actually very good. The black walls were noticeable, which is day was the only downside. I hope Merlin do improve this in time. However, in most scenes the black walls are behind you and unless you are looking for issues they are not that noticeable. It was really on the station for the boat ride and in corridors that I noticed it being an actual issue. The rest of the theming was pretty good really. Not the best of all the Dungeons though (that goes to York) but still well decorated. The biggest praise for me goes to the fantastic staff and actors. I mean it with the utmost sincerity that these actors really were the best I've had in a dungeons attraction. They were funny, scary and really putting a lot of effort into it. I wonder if it's because they're still fresh and new, but whatever the reason they really made the attraction exceed my expectations. I've done a fair few Dungeons, and I'd rank them best to least good as follows: York Alton Towers London Hamburg Amsterdam Alton really shot up on the strength of the acting and price-wise it felt more reasonable compared to the near £20 cost of the others. I think the big shame is that it's not an attraction outside the park (something to do after closing) and that the black walls feel bare in places. Other than that it was a good laugh really.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear. This feels quite cheap and tacky. It's a shame that, yet again, we are getting a temporary event rather than a new attraction. All the worse since over the last few years we seem to be losing attractions too (loggers, slammer).

What's Swayzak, you've not mentioned it before? In seriousness though, it really just wasn't imbued with much more story or depth than the general nod towards computers and viruses.

I think you might be missing my point. Whilst you enjoyed this program and it'd be 'ideal' for you, it's obviously not marketable to anyone else.

I would suggest that retheming the ride to a 16+ year old TV show that I've never heard of might age the ride considerably more than the original X:/.