'Not a rollercoaster' and 'experience' were slotted in pretty quick (we all know this, but he was really quick to correct Matt Baker when he said about him designing a rollercoaster for Thorpe Park).

I think we're never going to get investments to the £100s of millions a la Disney and Universal, instead, we should be looking at parks at a similar size to the likes of Thorpe/Towers/Chessie and doing comparisons there...

 

Would the UK ever get anything like Baron 1898 (€18m) or Taron? If not, why not?

 

More curious as to where the imagination ruled 90s vanished to really...

He really does come across extremely excited about this! Didn't give anything away (as expected) but when he was asked "will you be thrown about?" He replied with "I wouldnt say- I wouldn't quite.. Who knows?" I could sit and listen to him talk for ages!

Merlin simply can't be bothered here in the uk, because nothing as awe inspiring as, say, spiderman, forbidden journey, escape from gringotts, Transformers, tower of terror, hell, even pirates of the Caribbean, can be found here.

I think if Merlin had the money of Universal then they would have "bothered".

All of Merlin's park have miniscule attendance and funding compared to Universal. TBH anything could happen, even though most of what other people have said is unlikely.

I totally agree. Merlin have become repetitive in their marketing, and taking their past attractions into account, I can totally understand why there's a certain sense of doom surrounding this 'world first'.

Whilst we're all excited about it, we know that it will be of a Merlin standard, which isn't everything they make out to be.

See: Smilers 'projection mapping' and squirty water... Zufari, in its entirety.. Not to mention even those higher up were surprised how small the scorpion is at chessington, despite the plans showing it..

I bother because I have been on rides far superior to anything here in the uk.

We have a standard put before us for ride quality by the likes of Disney and Universal.

Merlin simply can't be bothered here in the uk, because nothing as awe inspiring as, say, spiderman, forbidden journey, escape from gringotts, Transformers, tower of terror, hell, even pirates of the Caribbean, can be found here.

Those are some examples of massively expensive, beautifully themed rides with care and attention to detail to give you the most immersive experience possible.

Merlin practically own the entire uk theme park industry, why would they bring that level of ride here, at that kind of money, when they simply don't have to?

it sucks but that's the reality.

 

One thing which always confuses me about the 'Merlin own the UK industry, so why would they bother with world quality stuff" argument is that Merlin own 2 theme parks in Europe, as well as several Legoland parks, and the quality isn't exactly much different.  Arguably, the likes of Towers and even Thorpe see some of the better, more original, investments compared to Heide and Gardaland.  And both of those parks have some pretty stiff competition nearby and so, theoretically, should be seeing some of the best investments across Merlin.

 

It's just a Merlin thing; they don't have the funds, and possibly the ability, to invest in that level of attraction experience for the most part.  Singling out the Merlin UK parks always just feels like a cheap shot.

 

Then again, with the rumoured budget for this being huge (the highest I've heard is £35 million...), it's not unreasonable to suggest that we could see something special all in all.

I'd say Merlin spending £18m on rides like Smiler (and whatever Swarm was) shows that they DO have the money...

 

It's just a case of how they spend it...

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.

 

You can still make a ride with 2p if you know how to do it and have good project directors.

Not one to call your bluff or anything, but... Prove it? 2p can't even buy a single sweet nowadays let alone a piece of machinery.

The whole 'most expensive investment yet' thing is kinda exciting until you see the size of the building, no matter how high the quality is I just don't see how anything that good and worthwhile will fit in there.. 

 

Gonna keep my hopes up though

^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"

Not one to call your bluff or anything, but... Prove it? 2p can't even buy a single sweet nowadays let alone a piece of machinery.

If it's one of those 1983 2p's, and Merlin happen to have a jar full, then they're worth a great deal more than their face value..... just saying

Hi. I'm new to TPM but I have read every comment since about page 20 on the old wc16 forum. I also watched yesterday's one show and what most intrigued me was that Derren said that there wouldn't be long queues because him and Merlin have it "all planned out". This could just mean heavily themed queues like those in hex or there could be some sort of interactive element to make you feel like your are in part of the ride but you are actually queueing.

'Merlin have it all figured out' huh? [shudders]

This 'world first' is sounding like a real game changer. OR as Benin has already touched on, a standard Merlin mirror maze perhaps?

No queue would mean no fastrack potential, and that ain't gonna happen!

Hopefully they do mean something along the lines of Hex; at what point could you say you are actually queuing for that? At no point once you are inside, arguably.

The queue lines marked on the plans suggest standard switchback queuing will happen.

I think the no queue thing was referring to RnR which looks like in the mean time it has been scrapped. It could also mean a ride with a high throughput. I don't think its a statement which should be read too much into.

I think the question was asked thinking it was going to let people in every 13 minutes as it's as long as the experience lasts, causing big queues. So with the preshow and the ride section etc. The queue would be moving quicker than that. I wouldn't read Into it too much...

Well it's not like he was ever going to answer 'yeah, fright night mazes usually hit 2 hour queues, my experience is going to be a glorified maze, so yes, of course you're going to spend more time queueing than inside the actual attraction you numbnut'.

I think the question was asked thinking it was going to let people in every 13 minutes as it's as long as the experience lasts, causing big queues. So with the preshow and the ride section etc. The queue would be moving quicker than that. I wouldn't read Into it too much...

 

Maybe it is going to be a rotational system like Hex. I know that HEX has a much bigger interior but I think that it will shorten the queue by a heck of an amount                                                  

Maybe it is going to be a rotational system like Hex. I know that HEX has a much bigger interior but I think that it will shorten the queue by a heck of an amount

If this thing is just a madhouse I will cry.

Well whatever this thing is, it's going to be the biggest investment Thorpe have made. In other words...expensive. Hopefully this'll be a groundbreaker!

Just a thought but surely if this is merlin's biggest investment yet then we must be getting some kind of awesome advanced ride system in there? I mean the building obviously didn't cost much and it's not on infilled land or anything so what else could this huge price tag be for? Unless the walls are gonna be made of golden bricks or they're genetically engineering a Derren clone to permenantly host the ride

I mean the building obviously didn't cost much and it's not on infilled land or anything so what else could this huge price tag be for? Unless the walls are gonna be made of golden bricks or they're genetically engineering a Derren clone to permenantly host the ride

Well god only knows how much money they probably chucked at Derren to get him to work with them.

Whatever happened to Vekoma and their Pandora's Box hardware? It basically looked like a poor mans robocoaster from the concepts. I know its not likely, but they could have revived this concept specially for Merlin?

Well god only knows how much money they probably chucked at Derren to get him to work with them.

He won't come cheap. I'm still confident this will be a good attraction.

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