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I still enjoy Thorpe Park to a extent but its crystal clear the park currently lacks a direction or much of a image.
I still have a bit of fun when I visit the park- Inferno has aged well, Swarm and Stealth are fun, but when you have so much crap being added into the park you start to feel like the place you once used to love is losing all its charm and character. When I visit the park presently its bitter-sweet, sure the rides are great, but all the little touches and details such as Swarm's station or Inferno's station feel like they are slowly peeling away and its depressing.
 
Its also sad that the last solid investment was 2013, and that was X.. 

Agreed! Far more of an investment compared to X in 2013...

Id also say that anyone who buys the parks off Merlin (if the resort theme parks are sold as people want them to, even me in the past) would probably only end up the same situation as Merlin. I'd much rather Merlin changed their attitude, change the way the parks are run and how theyre developed, how they market the parks' futures, than for Merlin to sell them off.

Or at least sell off their RTP division is a new company or something, than flog the parks to highest bidders. Look at what happened when Pearson sold Tussauds, it changed hands few more times, saw underwhelming investment and decine, and ended up with Merlin.

They look like they can't wait to see a fun and creative theme park industry in the future
 

Is this some shade at Thorpe? ?

Ok, we have reached the point of a joke. Nice early April fools Thorpe with that advert you would never let standards be that low . 
 
Oh hang on... Loggers mishandling, Old town/ghost town, Nemesis Inferno is filthy,  dbgtrotd is still the worst Merlin investment to ever be made, Rumba is in a sorry state, tidal wave shortcut removed, twd is still horribly out of place, Swarm is looking dreadful, the dome is boring and empty, poor quality food, appalling social media team and then there is Colossus where there are not enough words in the English language to describe the sorry state that structure of rust is in. 

Maybe it was her first day? Did you not have to learn on your first day at Thorpe? Also, suicide is no joke.

Or goat simulator is the highlight game of game fx... 

2019 advert is released... 
 
Wow... A truly dreadful advert like no other... 
 
 

Nah, Swarm's station looks DREADFUL. Not even just the beams, but everything else is peeling away, chipped, broken, and dire. Inferno's gum station, faded colours and supports aren't much better.
 
The dome is seems to split people 50/50. But to me currently it's just bare. Signage is nice enough, but it's such a mashup of themes and styles right now, that it just feels awkward. 

Unfortunately until Merlin get tough on just who is eligible for RAP this is how it’s always going to be. 
 
I assume they are too worried about getting Daily Mail stories such as “Merlin said I wasn’t disabled enough anymore” 

I can't blame people for taking hotdogs in flasks when Thorpe now charge obscene prices for them.
 
£12 for a hotdog and chips now.  In the same venue that used to sell an entire (amazing) BBQ meal for about £7.50.  And they had music.  A hotdog on its own was £7.00 and people wonder why they're considered a rip off.
 
On the whole my issues with Merlin aren't the frequency of the investments, but the overall quality that goes into the parks in terms of customer experience. 
 
Also, many of the investments that have been made were (IMO) not where the priorities should have been in terms of ensuring the parks offer a well rounded day out for visitors.
 
Wicker Man is an exception and it has clearly done very well for Alton, which is fantastic.

Small family park makes huge 'second in the world to Disney' multinational organisation look like amateurs.
 
This is the most exciting development in the UK as far as I care to remember. This century probably.
 
I adore everything about Paultons.

Hi all, went to paultons park today and had a lovely day, weather brilliant too and of course being the middle of the week, crowds were quite light.
thought I would post a brief construction update, wow I never realised this new land covered so much ground , it’s covering quite a big area that what I thought, I’m really excited to see what paultons are capable of achieving, if lost kingdom is anything to go by, I think we are in for an impressive treat 
constuction pics are hard to get, there is a bit construction fence all around the area with no peep holes, and no big high advantage points, I could have poked my phone over the fence but didn’t want to take advantage and faced being told off by staff, the only ride that kinda works getting any pics of the scope of the area is on windy castle which works when your car is stopped at the top so here is the best I could get
 
so things we know for sure or rumoured
 
name tornado springs(confirmed)
at least 5-6 new rides according to gossip heard (only rumoured to the exact count but we know there will be a few, another new coaster maybe??)
rio grande WILL return and will be extended to run through or around the new area(confirmed as the park have said will return in 2020)
wave runner WILL feature in the new area and be rethemed to fit in the new area(confirmed as the park was doing work all around the ride putting up timber sheets around the outside of ride.
New area opening may 2020(confirmed as the board around the area says so)
RIP panning for gold and mini golf attraction which is making room for the new area, it’s all gone
 
Super excited to keep up with construction on this, can’t wait to see how it looks 
 

By jamming a (pretty overblown) theme down your throat and trying very hard to be dramatic as you walk down a concrete path to nowhere. Honestly the old music had more character at the end of the day.
 
The amount of times a new park marketing director (or whoever) comes in and says, 'you know what will turn around this park? New font, new catchphrase and new music!'

It's just papering over massive cracks at the moment.

In all fairness, I myself am also highly fed up with M£rlin right now to the point where I’ve decided to vote with my feet when my annual pass expires this December. I simply do not want to be one of these people that constantly make out that M£rlin are the second coming of Satan but then continuously pump more money into their pockets and visit their attractions pretty much multiple times a month. There are plenty of great parks to visit across Europe and indeed America where you will see parks operated to their full potential with some real top quality attractions,great operations,great opening hours and in general just blow our parks clean out the water. Failing that then parks like Pleasure Beach and Paultons Park could also be worth a visit as an alternative 

I could see why you wouldn't want to visit in the current Merlin Monopoly..
If I was closer to Paultons or BPB  I would honestly just live there, Merlin Parks are either starting to lose their magic or have lost their magic (Thorpe Park)..
There has been glimmers of hope like Icon and Wickerman, but overall I do feel when I visit Thorpe Park these days the park has no immersion or magic at all.
There is no soul, there is no immersion. Alton Towers I would say is probably the the park with the most soul but The Dungeons certainly re-affirms Alton is still a Merlin Park..
 
Oh well, at least we're not in Spain. Merlin Parks are run like crap but I would take Merlin's crap over Portaventura's any day of the damn week.

Alright, I've had a day to think over what these dungeons are like after experiencing it last Sunday and are going to be brutally honest with it now after the experience I had and will present my opinion of it as a paying customer who dedicated nearly an hour of their 10am - 5pm day on this thing; not as a theme park blogger who is in Merlin/Alton's good graces and paid zilch to experience it.
 
Contrary to all the positive reviews that are going around right now for it from all the theme park bloggers/vloggers/YouTube "celebrities", I'm sorry, but this is without a doubt the worst Dungeon I have done and I would go as far to say the worst attraction Alton Towers have ever given us in the 21 years I have been visiting this place year-on-year since 1998, and that's saying something. It goes almost entirely against what makes all the other Dungeons enjoyable attractions and it falls flat on delivering a comprehensive experience for guests with no proper thought or imagination put into the product and here's why.
 
All the other Dungeons I have experienced immerse you properly into each scene with details and theming across every corner, from the flooring, walls, scenery and the actors. Despite many of them having bare roofing such as the London one for example, you tend to forget about it all with every scene and focus your attention on the actor and surroundings, as per you should, so this missing detail never really posed a problem for me with the others. With the Alton Towers one however, the very opposite occurs.
 
For every scene you go through, I kid you not, there are flat black walls literally everywhere you look from the sides, behind you, the ceiling and even amongst the theming where the actor stands. It look horrendous and every room made you feel like you were in a big black box that had been assembled quickly and cheaply with timber wall panels. There was no texture to any of them, no deformation and no disguising of the walls in any room to make you feel as though you are in a dungeon. It just looks incredibly lazy and cheap and no attempt whatsoever was done to immerse guests 360 degrees unlike all the other Dungeons.
 
The entrance to the attraction I still hold the view looks disgustingly ugly and cheap. Whilst in-person it looks a little better than through a screen, you can tell it was built on a budget with the randomly placed barrels and crates outside the entrance, along with the temporary fire torches fenced off. Most unforgiving of all is there is still an entire section of the entrance to the left in front of the lift towers with nothing but a giant 30ft black wall. Clearly the park ran out of wooden supports to cover this up properly during construction, so their solution to this problem was to pop down to the local B&Q and buy 50L of Dulux EasyCare Rich Black paint to cover up the shadows of the deceased Oompa Loompas peeking through the 2D windows. I'm guessing with the amount of black walls inside the attraction they had plenty to spare to cover this up too...
 
Take a look here at what I mean. Taken on Sunday 24th March. It's so revolting to look at:


 
As for the Black River boat ride, it's the same story - paint every wall black and leave it. The ride follows through the same route as Charlie, but believe it or not, it's now even barer than before with very little decoration or theming present in any portion. There are a few projectors on flat walls as you go round showing the shadows of victims being tortured, a couple of water jets to get you wet, a single animatronic which just bobs up and down ever so slightly in a cauldron, a single projector on a mannequin head and a single oddly-placed smoke machine. That is quite literally it for 4 minutes straight. There are no proper special effects anywhere inside, many zones had no audio playing, there are just black walls and tunnels for 80% of it and most unforgivable is the park were too lazy to remove the old theming from Charlie such as the water wheel in the station and the mirrored section towards the end where Sonic used to be on Toyland Tours. There is so much empty space and wasted area on this ride now that it makes Charlie look like a masterpiece compared to "Black Walls - The Ride". It's so, so bad.
 
From here, it's pretty much your bog standard Dungeon attraction where there are various scenes stolen copied from other existing ones. Each scene did have its little twist added to the script referencing Alton Towers instead, but 95% of it was exactly the same as all the others. The Plague Doctor was 100% the same as the London one (though with very few effects) and so was The Torturer. The Judge scene was a little different but followed the same procedure - 3 people chosen, 1 found guilty after just saying where they were from. The Highwayman was identical to Ms. Lovett's pie shop mixed with Sweeney Todd at London where it used identical sound effects and audio and had the moving chairs with prodders. Lastly, the Haunting for the last scene was pretty good overall I will admit with some nice use of lighting and sound effects, similar to Witches of Warwick. Was a decent finale.
 
As for the acting though, I've gotta hand it to those in there, they did a fantastic job in every scene. The actors performed brilliantly with plenty of adult humour which I liked and were interacting with guests very well. In fact, I would go as far to say the actors Alton have for this Dungeon are better than any other I have done before, so well done for hiring the right people!

But that all aside, even though the acting was brilliant, the rest of it was a total mess. The biggest problem I have is the fact so many areas of the attraction consist of nothing but black walls everywhere in every scene and it's the dominating and most noticeable feature of every room. Each scene I would say is 70:30 in favour of black walls to theming and it looks really rushed in many areas, especially the transitions between each scene which once again are just black walls with no theming or detail put into them either. It is quite literally one giant yet claustrophobic rectangular black box one after the other for the majority of the experience. With the other dungeons, you at least have stuff to see, hear and feel which the London one is especially good at. But for the Alton Towers one? The only thing you can smell is the fumes of freshly coated black Dulux paint mixed with touching the sloppily finished un-sanded walls, and flooring which still has outlines of Charlie's theming and fencing present. It really is genuinely like this inside.
 
The thing to bear in mind is that this is an attraction every guest unless you are an AT Premium Pass Holder will need to pay £5 for in order to experience, and I am telling you right now, I was really cheesed off my money went on this experience after finishing. There is no way in hell this is worth the upcharge the park is enforcing, because you can get a much better Dungeon experience across any other corner of the country for free compared to this if you are a MAP. It's completely unjustifiable in my view given there is a serious lack of quality and finish present in this version and you are frankly better off getting two medium Costa cappuccinos in Forbidden Valley for your fiver.
 
Now, you might say "it's not finished yet hence the black walls", but I would then question why the heck are the park charging customers for a half-baked product if it's evidently not ready? Either open it when it's 100% right (yeah, just like DBGT remember...), or have some decency and not charge guests at all for it until it is fully completed.
 
Lastly, I want to emphasise on a point @Martin Doyle made above a few posts ago. You might be reading and hearing many great reviews out there for the Alton Towers Dungeon right now from all the big and famous theme park fans out there with a massive following, but please take what you hear from them with a massive grain of salt. These are the same groups of people that praised Thorpe Park's Fright Nights last year with some going as far to say it was the "best Fright Nights yet", so it's obviously evident some of them are in Merlin's good graces when writing their reviews and are restricted on what they really think about it.
 
Instead, I implore you to focus your attention and effort on those who have actually paid the £5 admission for this attraction and dedicated an hour of their time in the park for it. These reviews are far more credible and realistic through my eyes as they tend to speak their mind properly with no filters in place and aren't towing the company's line of being overly-positive about everything Merlin creates.
 
To summarise my experience of the attraction, it would be this - a lacklustre, short-sighted and rushed mess that made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory look phenomenal in comparison.
 
Still, it is better than nothing right?............Oh wait, black walls are nothing............
 
Alton Towers Dungeon - 3/10

If it wasn't durable to last then should have been replaced, but I doubt they got granted the money to do that.

The Swarm, now that your PR value has gone, welcome to the list of rides Merlin no longer consider worth maintaining!

It was a shame to see that despite all of the park's winter maintenance videos, there was still plenty of old litter and gum around the park from last season (or even older). The indoor part of Saw's queueline was full of dust bunnies and pigeon poo, and Nemesis Inferno's volcano was a disgrace! Could they really not find the time to get someone onto that with a scraper during the closed season?

Yeah Swarm's station looked horrendous.  No ambient audio either, just the poor announcement that was recently added.
 
Actually I'd say that the whole Swarm area was a bit of a mess in all honesty.

What I find more shocking is if it’s not finished then why is it open and why are they charging money for it? 

Perhaps you missed the part where I said I’m “actually a big fan of the dungeons” (matter of fact, Edinburgh and Amsterdam are my two favourite M£rlin attractions) so yeah I think it’s safe to say I gave this every chance possible and wanted it to succeed.
 
For the record, I DID focus on what the show lights wanted me to see... however when the lack of theming in the walls and roofs stick out like a sore thumb (you don’t really have to be Sherlock Holmes to spot them!!) it is quite difficult to turn a blind eye to it ESPECIALLY for somebody who as he has just said, has done every other UK dungeon plus Amsterdam so I would like to think I have a rough idea of what the dungeons are capable of as thematic experiences. I went into this with an open mind hoping for it to be good however I’m sorry but on this visit, it fell flat. I don’t care if “other opinions are positive”, this is MY opinion which I feel I’m entitled to regardless if it differs from the majority or not  

Having now done all the UK dungeon attractions aswell as Amsterdam and being somebody who is actually quite a big fan of the dungeons, I can quite categorically say that this is easily the worst of the dungeons by a mile. First off I will start with the positives and say the acting quality was strong as was the final scene with the haunting. HOWEVER and without given much away,I find the amount of black walls and blank corridors between the scenes to be absolutely horrendous. Half the joy of the other dungeons in the UK (which gentle reminder, premium pass holders get FOR FREE!!) is the level of detail and immersion that guests get. This dungeon however I can honestly say that when it comes to detail, it makes Charlie and the chocolate factory look like Pirates of the carribean and I am not even close to joking. In terms of the whole “it’s not finished” malarkey I have heard, well if it’s not finished then don’t have the cheek to open it unfinished and then have the nerve to charge extra for what frankly is a very half heartedly executed experience. Again I reiterate that there ARE positives with the acting ability on display as well as the finale. However that does not save an otherwise lacklustre and needless addition to Alton Towers.
 
Honestly I know I could say “it’s better than nothing”, but in this instance I genuinely think I would prefer literally nothing.