Yeah he's from Trek and has a huge following.

A link to the above interview, which was also with Merlin's Creative Director: http://www.t3.com/features/derren-brown-wants-to-take-your-mind-on-a-rollercoaster-ride

A walk down a rainy Monks Walk reveals that the building's walls are now up, and much of the brickwork fascia is there. Looks good, if a little "fake" at this stage. Note also how the nice cream brickwork fades into a yucky brown colour towards the right hand side of this photo...
 
But is any of the ride hardware already contained inside...?
 

 
More snaps at Total Thorpe Park

Building looks quite nice from the angle, hopefully the themed facade will be used on a lot of the building considering it's central location.

that could just be the base layer of plaster for the exterior. It tends to be that colour?

I believe that is the intended colour as the 'brickwork' appears to be a textured vinyl-y layer that can likely be made to any colour, rather than painted. They've already cladded the whole thing and roofed over the tops of it, so it would be impractical if they were then wanting to paint it. A nice homogeneous shade of ugly. Please do better big cool sets inside thanks bye

Well at least it doesn't look like Saw's abandoned warehouse. Abandoned warehouse variation. Woah, Thorpe go wild! :-)

Guessing using actual bricks would be too much effort and cost to bother with?

Guessing using actual bricks would be too much effort and cost to bother with?

Looks impressive but no way will it have the beauty of Baron 1898's station building

Featureless brick (that isn't even bricks) doesn't exactly scream out "world-class dark ride", hopefully there's more theming to come.

It doesn't have to be real brick to look good. It just has to have some slight creativity in it so that it looks like an actually characteristic facade, not just wall-fodder or 'theeminnggg''.

 

Inside I'm sure it's better looking at least.

At a quick glance, I thought the bricks were real (even despite knowing it wouldn't be, since that's what is mentioned in the plans).  

 

Given it's not finished yet, it's hard to judge straight away.  The plans seemed to make out that the exterior would be a bit of a darker shade than what's there so far.  So who knows? 

One can always exaggerate and overanalyse that it's a terrible exterior, just as much as one can make endless excuses as to why it's good. But forget all the enthusiast logic, familiarity, plans, theme and expectations.. Think for a moment, is a flat wall of grey bricks exciting to anyone? Of course not.

 

Now the building is certainly a work in progress, and the exterior of a dark ride is ultimately pretty irrelevant to whatever is inside. But you can already see how indifferent people will be to the exterior of the ride, because it doesn't look interesting.

 

My main problem with this modern uk idea of theme design is that they don't have the guts or perhaps awareness to build anything genuinely effective, it's always so fiddly and thinly spread. I mean, we're here theorising over the quality of the brick lining and its colour, when there should at least be the foundations of something pretty unexpected and wonderful looking coming together by now. Even if they had just a few thousands to spend on the outside, there's always a way.

I don't disagree with anything that you're saying, far from it.  But sometimes it feels like people jump the gun a bit too much, a draw conclusions too quickly.  

 

For me, I'm not judging it yet when it's not necessarily finished, out of context with the attraction, etc.  Of course, I'd love it to already be great without the context or being finished, but there we go.  

It's a little early for the critics! They will most probably apply after effects to the outside to age it and theme it! I remember when CATCF when up at Alton Towers. The moaners where out in force as soon as the initial facade went up, but once the imagineers had finished with it, it looked fab and they found the inside to moan about.

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Charlie's facade has NEVER looked fab...

 

Bland 2d facades always look dreadful though, even with a magical 3d chimney (which doesn't even emit smoke!)...

Now all we need is a yellow pipe and I guess we can call it themed?

Seriously though we are still atleast 3 months from it being open I think nows a bit early to judge the exterior.

I hope it is drastically improved before March (and I'm sure it will be), because at the moment the frontage to Hobs Pit is more impressive.

I honestly think it would be for the best if Thorpe Park built high walls and blew up Monk's Walk because people should never really see a work in progress of any creative project .

And then the ride can severely disappoint or pleasantly surprise on the day, having met people's overly optimistic or low expectations.

Monk's walk is great. No explanation needed.

If you look at the below pic, they have started the aging process on some of the bricks to the right. That smudgy gray is the first layer of aging. They start with new loking bricks, then coat over with a base layer and then add detail. So we will get the grayness and then probably some other colours washed over like green for mould etc. I am sure I remmeber seeing that they did similar on Saw.

COR look at dat, I mean it's still boring and flat but looks much better. See I said not to judge.

 

*Runs away quickly.*

 

if you think thats beautiful wait for my update later  

It looks amazing in person! Photos don't give this project justice. Cant wait to see how this turns out... loads of photos at the usual place! 

http://www.themeparkguide.biz/news/monks-walk-december-2015

 

Happy Late Christmas