coasterverse
-
Posts
414 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
16
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Events
Posts posted by coasterverse
-
-
Sign is ready for installation! Still not sure what to make of it though…
-
47 minutes ago, Matt N said:
I wouldn’t expect a hugely elaborate theme for this. Very few hyper coasters are heavily themed; they’re such big rides that it’s quite hard to theme them effectively, and the expense of building the ride hardware alone is huge.
I’d expect something along the lines of Mako at SeaWorld, where it has a light theme and style and a couple of nice little items, but nothing overly elaborate. And to be honest, I’d be perfectly happy with that.
Yeah exactly, I wouldn't expect anything too big and glamourous (other than the coaster itself! 😍) as it simply just doesn't need it. The coaster is a statement in itself, it really doesn't need much else. Not saying that I think it would be a bad thing to have a massively themed hyper, quite the opposite in fact, but having the UK's tallest coaster will be enough of a crowd pleaser. The layout still leaves quite a lot to be desired (mostly because of its length), but what we do have on the layout is going to make for an immense coaster experience regardless.
-
33 minutes ago, ML27 said:
Just watched Jack latest video, where he basically confirms he knows the theme.
Throughout the video he mentions theming and theming pieces. Along with the fact there is a them (as he knows). It’s not going to be stylised, which is a massive relief to me, I didn’t want them to build a nature equivalent of a car park coaster.
I’d say the bench mark for theming will be between galaticas current theming and stealth level?
I think you're pretty spot on there to be honest - most of the expense is going towards building the UK's tallest rollercoaster, which will be enough of a selling point to most of the general public anyway, so not expecting masses of theming to be honest... but never say never! I'd like a fairly basic station, with some misc. theming structures scattered on the ground (like The Swarm, but obviously not a massive destroyed aircraft or anything like that)... and if it is an Egyptian theme, I wouldn't be opposed to some destroyed sphynx-like structures and things like that!
-
37 minutes ago, tactic said:
I seem to remember Jack saying that the bird was an old peice of theming left from loggers leap that has nothing to do with the theme of exodus. He could have been trying to keep the theme a secret but I don't believe he would have mentioned it they wanted that to be part of the theme and wanted it to be kept secret.
Whilst I do agree that that piece of theming specifically isn't directly related to Exodus, I really do feel like once the project is revealed and the theme is discovered, we'll look back on it and say "ahhh, so that's why they left it there for so long!". Thorpe love to put things right in your face from the start so you can look back and realise that all the information you needed was right there from the start.
I personally don't think it's any coincidence that the theming piece on the station building is pretty similar to the old Logger's Leap theming piece. Whilst I believe that it's technically nothing to do with Exodus (as it quite literally is just a piece of theming from the previous attraction), I also believe that it's intentionally been left there as a nod to what's to come.
-
2 minutes ago, JohnnyRocket said:
Egyptian themed would definitely be fun! And there's definitely plenty to hint at it being Egyptian.
I think I'll stand in the mountaineering theme camp for balance haha! Quite interesting that this bird-like statue that's been there way back since Canada Creek was still standing in Jack Silkstone's last update (2 weeks ago mind, so it may have gone now) - could it be a bit of inspo for a North American bird in a lake/wood/mountain setting?!
At this point though, it could still be literally anything! Quite fun not knowing still, we'd normally have quite detailed plans by this point!
I definitely feel like that theming piece is definitely still standing for a reason... if you take a look at the planning documents, you can see that there is a piece of theming on the station building that actually (now that you mention it!) very closely resembles that piece of theming... so I definitely think it's intentional:
-
Me again, back for another flip-flop!
Two posters in Trailers that originally had no meaning, both for X:\ODUS and Tutu's Revenge. X:\ODUS obviously we now know is the project name for this coaster, but Tutu's Revenge seemingly is still totally random, right..?
Here's the Project Exodus colour palette, now take a look at a better picture of the Tutu's Revenge poster:
Hmm... very interesting. The exact same colour scheme.
Contradicting my above post about Egypt being a desert and therefore the lake being a strange idea... take a look at the tagline for Tutu's Revenge... 'The Nile has a thousand eyes'. And what is the Nile? A river.
So now I'm back on trend for this being an egyptian themed coaster, and I'm even going as far as speculating that the name of the coaster will be Tutu's Revenge.
-
1 hour ago, JohnnyRocket said:
I'm not convinced it's Egyptian just yet, I still think it could be a mountain theme. The building is timber clad. The bird and the gold could be for a golden eagle - circling a mountain etc. It would suit the lake and forest setting well.
Definitely lots to speculate on though!
Good point - I was just about to hop on to say that I'm starting to doubt my prediction of an egyptian theme now (although don't get me wrong, I still think there's unlimited amounts of potential with such a concept and could be SO good if done right), mainly because the ride is obviously predominantly over the lake... doesn't quite fit the narrative of going for a desert theme does it.
Out of a mountain theme or an ancient Egyptian theme, I would choose the Egyptian theme any day of the week - but the more I sit and think about it, I'm leaning more towards it being the former rather than the latter.
Don't get me wrong, a mountain theme could also be pretty immense, but can't help but feel like you're fairly limited by what you can do theming wise with such a theme versus ancient Egypt... you've got hieroglyphics, mummies, etc which would all make for incredible theming. Whereas mountains? You've got the height and that's pretty much it.
I know the station doesn't look like it'll host a preshow, but I'd really like there to be one. I'd love for Exodus to be a complete encapsulating experience from the queue, ride duration all the way back into the station. At the very least, on board audio would be amazing (and something Thorpe haven't done yet!)
-
My first thought with that style of colour scheme is perhaps ancient egypt? Could be very very wrong, but could be a sick theming concept imo
-
21 minutes ago, ML27 said:
That’s the new logo for sure, it’s been used on merch. Unfortunately, the logo would work much more with DBGT due to its Modern vibe and the VR.
If you’re trying to distance yourselves away from any VR type ride. It’s not helping. Again, it’s clear where the creative direction from the logo has came from.
I don’t know what this ride is trying to be, is it a take on the old style ghost train or is it meant to be a scare experience all year round? I suppose it does feature a train and ghosts so the name is correct, but can’t help but think it may mislead a few into thinking it’s a ride type everyone knows
I think it's just going to be the exact old ride experience, probably with the same motion platform configuration, minus the virtual reality. I'm super interested to see how the live actors are going to work - will the train be able to stop to pick up actors and let them off before you board/deboard the train? Surely if there's live actors trying to scare you on a tube train that nobody can enter or exit whilst in motion is going to make for a super awkward experience? It's not like there's lots of room inside of the train for there to be jumpscares that aren't ridiculously predictable.
Maybe they'll focus on screen-based, motion platform scares and the occasional ride host scare whilst on the train, and actor-led scares in the scenes outside of the train? Unless they're planning on severely toning down the amount of time you spend on the train itself, I can't see this being the option.
-
9 minutes ago, tactic said:
Is that the logo in the kind of block capitals with the middle bit of each letter cut out?
If so I totally agree, it seems like the logo for a modern tech brand almost not a ghost train at all.
Yeah, exactly that. Way too modern, doesn't even fit with the 'modern-ish' aesthetic they're going with the white and blue facade. That font style is like 2020 era, so way too modern even for that.
-
Hot take (possibly), but if the logo for Ghost Train is the one used on the initial teaser campaign, I'm not a fan. I actually really liked the Derren Brown logo and think it really works for a ghost train. The one used on the teaser video is too generic and does not, even in the slightest, represent a 'Ghost Train' to me.
-
I have way too much of an interest in this ride for what it was... noticed that there's never been any high resolution copies of the DBGT logo (especially none without that horrendous drop shadow thing!), so I did my best to recreate it. Managed to get a low resolution version of the logo, painstakingly removed the drop shadow, used Illustrator to trace it, turned it into a vector, imported to Photoshop and tried my best to replicate the blue glow thing 😪
Nobody will probably use it for anything ever and is probably just an annoyance me and only me has ever had, but I can finally rest at last!
Hey, at least if I ever need the logo for any content I've finally got something to use 😂
-
14 minutes ago, ML27 said:
Main thing is, the concept art released today was also produced by him.
I just had a feeling it would’ve been. Props to him though, it is VERY good! Makes you wonder how much creative input he’s had in this entire attraction… 🤔 because he must’ve sat in MMM meetings etc to gauge what to use for creative advertising, so wonder if he’s had any creative input
-
32 minutes ago, MattyMoo said:
They've been drilling too deep, that's why!
Does my eye look okay to you?
-
28 minutes ago, ML27 said:
I’m still surprised that there’s been no big show and dance about it.
Todays post could be easily lost in peoples feeds. It’s wordy, doesn’t get to the point and doesn’t say explicitly opening from 26th. Just looks part of the story like.
The picture attached isn’t an animation or video. It’s not a big flashy graphic with a date Nor does it show the attractions logo.
Especially because we had a teaser video to announce the rebrand but nothing else since. Unless they're planning on running a TV ad (which I think is highly unlikely), I think this is going to end up as a pretty lowkey thing. I bet they're not wanting to pump loads of money into advertising as they'll have to do exactly the same thing probably towards the end of this year/start of next year to advertise Exodus.
-
Could just be wishful thinking, but looks like you can see through the first window on the left, no? Obviously you can see the reflection of the carriage in the window, but to the veeeeeery right of the window you can see some light peeking through?
I really hope we don't just have black windows. At the very least I'd take mostly black screens with an occasional bit of fog rolling through. I just really can't see having no windows being immersive.
Loving the weathering effects in the carriage though! Almost looks like a real tube ripped from the central line 😂 but in all seriousness, it's looking ominous as all hell - loving the grim reaper figure!
I'd give anything for a behind the scenes video right about now - I'm dying to know what it looks like inside that building!!
-
Hot take, but I didn't actually mind The Smiler Takeover. Sure, it was horrendously cringe in X-Sector with these blatant 'we need to have some event specific entertainment so lets see what we can come up with' shoe-horned stages but some of the props that they used in the various queuelines were actually pretty cool - the one that comes to mind most significantly is the mannequin in the Th13teen queueline.
Granted, it doesn't really fit with the attractions - but I don't think it was ever meant to. I don't like the idea of the theme, nor do I like the idea of the event, but as far as actually executing the event is concerned... it kind of does what it says on the tin, right? It's the Smiler takeover and... well... it took over.
I just hope the random bits of theming chucked in the various queuelines are repurposed in the Smiler in some form once the event is finally done with, and I also hope that this year is the end of Festival of Thrills. It didn't work last year, it didn't work this year (although it worked slightly better this year than it did last imo), so I hope they just call it quits.
I think this year they just used any old excuse to have ANY event running at ANY point in the season, just to try to entice more return customers. Whether that ends up working for them or not is yet to be seen...
-
1 hour ago, ML27 said:
looks like there won’t be screens in the windows but utilising the existing screens above.
Will be very interesting to see how they execute this if this is actually the case. How will they explain that there's no windows? If this is the case, feels like it's going to break immersion straight away.
-
I know concept art isn't really anything to go by, but my oh my does that look incredible. Struggling to see how they would recreate such a scene inside that building though - perhaps the second station platform has had all of the walls demolished to open it up as one big room rather than the station, scare maze tunnel and where the infected used to appear on DBGT - but not sure how structually sound that would be 😂
I suppose the building is massive, but I'm not sure how much of the room is taken up by the ride system itself...
-
Some may also argue that they've plunged their usual advertising budget into the attraction itself... which in hindsight doesn't sound like a good decision if nobody knows the refurbishment is taking place other than those on social media and/or have visited the park 😂
To be fair, the park are fairly limited on what they can do with the attraction itself. Fundamentally, the transit system will remain exactly as it was and is the crux of the attraction - so regardless of what they do with the rest of the scenes, that's all just filler until you get onto the train.
Those expecting Duel to Alty Mans level of refurbishment I feel are going to be bitterly disappointed. As a rather generic style ghost train as opposed to Ghost Train at Thorpe Park, the options that Towers had for a refurbishment could've been endless - whereas Thorpe must maintain a transit system that's effectively just a stationary train (for the most part) on a motion platform.
I'd love for some more physical effects though. The fake train crash scene in the original iteration of DBGT was brilliant - but horrendously unrealiable for whatever reason.
More of that please, but make it reliable.
-
11 minutes ago, tactic said:
Just seen that too. Do you think that means they will announce the opening date tomorrow?
Yeah I'm like 99.9% sure that's what they mean
-
Thorpe have just announced that 'The next train to depart Platform 13 at Thorpe Junction will be announced tomorrow 👀" - some news, finally!
-
12 minutes ago, Glitch said:
Actors are starting training, I would say it will be a month or so, I putting my cards out there and saying this is the first project which Silkstone and team have been given full creative control on....
And I can't really see actors starting if there's no place for them to rehearse properly. Yeah, sure, there's probably rehearsal rooms tucked away in the Thorpe Park Backrooms, but I'd imagine the park will be wanting to rehearse everything fully with places to hide for optimal scares and they'll want everything as streamlined and optimal as possible. Therefore I've got a feeling that at least the very basic sets are in place and are just finetuning things at this point.
Feels like opening is not too far away now, but also very likely that something goes wrong and ends up getting delayed again.
I saw on Twitter too that it looks like the actors have been told a date - I saw somebody asking when it's due to open and they responded saying it's top secret or something along those lines. So I feel like there's definitely an internal target, but they're waiting for a couple of things to fall in place before they actually announce anything.
-
Would be very, very interesting to find out the budget for this refurb! I'd imagine after the millions they pumped into it only 7 years ago it's probably not going to be too much... which I hope doesn't hinder the quality of the finished product.
Ghost Train - NEW for 2023
in General Discussion
Posted
Big fan of the Thorpe Rail branding too, not sure I'm so much of a fan of the way 'Ghost Train' has been shoehorned into the signage. As always though I'll reserve my full judgement until its in place, but I do really like how deep they're going with the whole Thorpe Rail stuff - hopefully will lull you into a false sense of security.