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Derren Brown's Ghost Train: Rise of the Demon


Marc

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it saddens me that anybody not fortunate enough to ride Valhalla, has Hex as the bench mark for a UK dark ride.

 

Hex, or as I like to call it "pre show : the ride" is good when you finally get to the madhouse, but once you have experienced it, you never get that same sense of wonder again.

 

I hope this ride has serious re-rideability, something any decent dark ride MUST have.

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It saddens me that people think Valhalla is a good ride...

 

Hex has fantastic atmosphere, to a level that no other dark rides have, since none are set within some real ancient gothic ruins... That's where half your experience comes from, the immersion...

 

Not even Disney or Universal can create the same as Hex's atmosphere...

 

Besides, this is meant to be some psychological experience style ride, re-rideability is pretty unlikely... Once you know the trick, it never has the same effect...

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Re-rideability is my biggest concern, especially since it's something Derren has not really had to think about when designing his shows.

If the 'not being able to tell what is real and what is not' line holds true, then that will help in my opinion; even if it's not the main focus. But no doubt re-riding has something that's been considered a lot so hopefully it's not a problem.

(Also, Hex - and all madhouses in general really - is a fab little attraction).

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Once you know the trick, it never has the same effect...

 

Apparently, not according to Derren in an interview (which I'm struggling to find) where he said that even if you know what's going to happen, the power of suggestion takes you some-where else and you end up at the same result because there are loads of different paths that you can do down. It's apparently going to give every-one a different experience based on their own psychology, morals, fears and thought processing and a re-ride on it will give a whole new experience again

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"The GP" in other words "people" have been surprised, excited and amazed by dark rides for years. Only they've been way too botched or obscure for people to properly enjoy since the early 2000s. No wonder people have no confidence in them when the parks plainly don't know how to do them anymore.

Hex is a great experience but is an acquired taste and very up-it's-own, so is a terrible indicator of how an average guest can enjoy dark rides.

A lot of UK theme parks were established on the popularity and return-power of their dark rides alone, Chessington in particular (in fact is there any other reason why it survived through to now?). And unlike what people assume, guests were about as judgemental, thrill-demanding and clueless as to what "dark ride" really means as they are today.

The difference now is that you can much more easily travel to the US where, unlike the UK, they didn't give up on dark rides and actually perfected their show techniques, and happened to have millions to spend on new transit technology. But you certainly don't need vast budgets like that to just entertain people and create a good ride.

As long as this ride isn't as overly complex, abstract and arrogant as the hype is making out, then maybe it will feel really amazing and not need any gimmickry or existing knowledge of Derren Brown to pull off.

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it saddens me that anybody not fortunate enough to ride Valhalla, has Hex as the bench mark for a UK dark ride.

Hex, or as I like to call it "pre show : the ride" is good when you finally get to the madhouse, but once you have experienced it, you never get that same sense of wonder again.

I hope this ride has serious re-rideability, something any decent dark ride MUST have.

I just said Hex as I was talking about Towers, apparently Valhalla is vastly superior

Sent from my SM-G361F using Tapatalk

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The re-ride aspect is an important one here, especially for a park who will be gaining their first proper indoor experience attraction and a company that hasn't done one on this scale (bar Legoland) and take failure far too seriously.

Rides like Tower Of Terror & Ratatouille fulfill this quite well where heavy dialogue yet variation upon ride creates these to have a high enough re-ride factor in where I could do both multiple times but still enjoy them.

Another important thing is immersion, where the experience begins when you reach the entrance plaza and finishes in the gift shop and not just the ride itself. Things like Saw do not really do this which concerns me a little here. Space nay be an issue but cattle pens don't contribute much immersion, though some rides do it better than others.

This dark ride needs to be the perfect balance of everything. A story that's immersive yet justifies re-rides (to those who aren't just enthusiasts), something popular amongst a ride that sticks out.

If this ride is done right and is hopefully s massive success, it could trigger a renaissance of UK dark rides where parks such as Towers, Drayton, Blackpool and maybe even Chessington & Paultons could invest in a new one.

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That image will have nothing to do with WC16.  

 

Plans for the 'watchtower' piece of theming were submitted and it looks something like this:

 

2016revisedplazatheming.jpg

(Thanks to TTP)

 

The doors are also not in the right place compared to the plans, as seen in the top right image below.   :P

 

2.jpg

 

Scruffy Dog also work on a variety of non-theme park projects; they are quite a small and varied company still!  However, any picture they post will always get a lot of theme park hype, even if it's not for any park.  The giant ducks they posted a couple of months back weren't for theme parks, they were for product advertising outside train stations!

 

 

However, whilst we're on the subject of Scruffy's social media posts, there's one which I think might be related to this...

 

 

Posted back in June, it conveniently shows a character who's face is covered by an unnecessary drop down menu, and cuts off what he's holding (but could well be a pocket watch).  Shameless speculation on my part of course, and the style of the background doesn't seem to fit with what we currently know, but it could have some relation?

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The image on the right in the first picture lines up with the plans for the preshow room. The plans show 2 queue entrances next to each other with a third slightly further along which would be the main queue. Which also happens to be in that image a larger door than the other 2. It also has the preshow room in the place the plans would have it and a large door way leading to where the stairs would be. I suspect that tower is smaller than you think goes somewhere in that first room.

Then again I could be completely wrong.

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I'm almost certain that a ride that has been kept as secret as this will not be leaked by picks casually posted on Scruffy Dogs' Facebook. Merlin will no doubt have a confidentiality agreement with them not to reveal any information in any form on the ride and putting out images like the above could see them losing out on future work. 

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I'm almost certain that a ride that has been kept as secret as this will not be leaked by picks casually posted on Scruffy Dogs' Facebook. Merlin will no doubt have a confidentiality agreement with them not to reveal any information in any form on the ride and putting out images like the above could see them losing out on future work. 

Anyone working on this project - whether it's 3rd party or not has signed an agreement. Nothing will be leaked until TP want that info out there. It's much better this way I think.

 

Unlike The Swarm (or similar) where we knew what it was (roughly) a long time prior to opening (because of plans etc.), this keeps us intrigued and hyped - which will only benefit the park (even if we are disappointed once it opens). 

 

In other news, can't be much longer until the next clue now. can it?

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