On Ride DVDs - Should more rides get it?

[tomglazed]

Just thinking about the on ride DVD's which are now available on Thorpe's newest attractions. What do you think the possibilities are of more of the rides having the feature installed? I know that places such as Canada Wonderland and various USA based parks have installed the system where possible on their attractions.

Some of the rides which I think could have it installed:

• Colossus
• Nemesis Inferno
• Stealth
• Slammer
• Flying Fish? (good for the family but I appreciate that the cost of installing the feature may not be worth while)

Any ride I've listed above or haven't probably has each of their own limitations which may make it more difficult to install on certain attractions.

So what do people think about the ride DVD's? do you think it would be a worthwhile addition to role out on more attractions?

[Benin]

I would say that they're not extremely popular over here, the failure of Oblivion's trail on them is testament to that...

I dunno, it depends how many people would actually buy one, not as easy to show off as an On Ride Photo so it would only be worth the investment if people actually purchased them...

[pluk]

I'm sure they know what they're doing so I'm probably wrong, but surely they'd be much more popular if they knocked them out as email files for literally a quid or two. No overheads of disks (or staff if machines are used) so each sale is pure profit once the equipment is paid for. I'd imagine the uptake would be huge, who misses a quid or two? I know I'd but them regularly to laugh at when I got home.

They could still sell 'premium' physical dvd's too, with a documentary or whatever bolted on.

[tomglazed]

I like the email idea, a lot of people appear keen to post their DVD's onto Youtube anyway so posting them to an email address sounds good; not sure if there would be any limitations with regards to attachment size so maybe even have a system where you pay for your Onride video at the kiosk and have a window of about 30 days from the date of payment to download it from a link which is emailed to you?

I appreciate that Oblivion hasn't been an overwhelming success with on ride DVD's but personally I wouldn't buy one if I went on Oblivion as the on ride photo for me captures the entire ride experience anyway: picture of me beginning the drop, picture of me post drop, done (I have not seen current Oblivion on ride photos so I may be incorrect in thinking they still take pictures at the two points in the ride). The fact that Oblivion is so short in my opinion may be a big reason as to why it has not been a success, installed on Nemesis and I'd have thought it would have seen more uptake.

[dominoes]

It would be cool on Colossus because of the inline twists. Stealth as well. Are they getting it on Swarm?

[Flipper]

SWARM has it now; yet Picsolve, who do the DVDs, have withdrawn them from SAW (at present, the staff claim they're coming back but they've been saying that since March!)

[jjh123horry]

SWARM has it now;

So are they up and running now? I know I saw them on the back of the seats when I was there last, just werent sure when they were going live.

[Stokesyboy]

SWARM has it now; yet Picsolve, who do the DVDs, have withdrawn them from SAW (at present, the staff claim they're coming back but they've been saying that since March!)

They have been on and off of Saw, I've noticed on some visits they have been on but not working, others they aren't there at all!

[tomglazed]

It must be quite a complicated system to maintain: obviously it shouldn't really be an excuse as it should have been tried, tested and most issues should have been rectified by now. I'm guessing the complex part is when the train arrives back in the station is downloading the footage to computers which process it into the DVD package we get? Or does it work differently?

[Flipper]

So are they up and running now? I know I saw them on the back of the seats when I was there last, just werent sure when they were going live.

As far as I am aware they are now live, and I have seen them running.

They have been on and off of Saw, I've noticed on some visits they have been on but not working, others they aren't there at all!

Stokesyboy you're getting confused. There's about four cars that have the video cameras on them, and another four that don't, no idea why though.

[tomglazed]

There could be all kinds of reasons. Saw was the first ride in the park to get the on ride video system and maybe Picsolve and Thorpe came to an agreement that they did not want to invest money on the system which hadn't yet been tried or proven to generate a cash return yet. So as a taster, they installed cameras on half the cars and may at a later date, add cameras to the rest.

[Flipper]

There could be all kinds of reasons. Saw was the first ride in the park to get the on ride video system and maybe Picsolve and Thorpe came to an agreement that they did not want to invest money on the system which hadn't yet been tried or proven to generate a cash return yet. So as a taster, they installed cameras on half the cars and may at a later date, add cameras to the rest.

Oh no, I mean, I am convinced when the video did run it had cameras on all cars. The paints scraped from the rails where the cameras used to sit on the front rows of cars, but only four seem to still have the cameras there and four seem to have had the cameras removed.

[Ricky]

All cars where equipped with a DVD system. However only a few cars would be running the system on a daily basis. For obvious reasons if all 8 cars had cameras running in addition to the photos you would need 32 screens for the DVD's.

[Flipper]

All cars where equipped with a DVD system. However only a few cars would be running the system on a daily basis. For obvious reasons if all 8 cars had cameras running in addition to the photos you would need 32 screens for the DVD's.

... Err, there is 32 screens in total? 16 on the top for video, and 16 on the bottom for on-ride photos. And when the video ran, it used to show the drop clip of one half of a row, then flick to the other half... So please clarify how the ride didn't run the video for all cars? Cos, it did...

[TPJames]

I was gonna get a DVD for swarm but they stopped them for a while! They were running again for fright nights. I thinks the rides which should have onride DVDs are:

Colossus

Nemesis inferno

Saw(already has it)

Swarm(already has it)

Slammer

Vortex(ill explain this below)

The reason I didn't write stealth is because its so short! Why would anyone want a DVD of a ride that short?

Onride photos:

I think vortex has the potential for onride photos/DVDs because you are facing other people! The cameras could be above the seats and they could be filming the row of 4 opposite to the ones you are sitting on! I think this would be great! I was gonna tell thorpe this but I forgot sending an email now...

[Tom]

The reason I didn't write stealth is because its so short! Why would anyone want a DVD of a ride that short?

People don't usually buy on-ride DVDs based on how much actual footage of you are on them. When I was younger I bought 2 YourDay videos from Alton Towers. Looking back I realise just how stupid that was as there are about 5 3 second clips of me going up lift hills, and I paid £10 (or something) for this!

The Saw - The Ride DVDs will have more footage than on Stealth but the whole experience is different. Plus offers like 'Buy 3 DVDs for the price of 2' or whatever would make you inclined to buy DVDs of any ride you actually manage to get on a Thorpe.

Plus Xcelerator at Knotts Berry Farm has on-ride video.

Edited November 27, 2012 by Tommy
Fred made me

[Fred]

Oh I wish I had mod actions - it's paid, not payed .

Don't think many people buy the DVDs, and they are seemingly a nightmare to install and run (Evidence?: They barely ever work). Waste of time!

[tomglazed]

I know I haven't been to Thorpe as much but on the times I have been I haven't seen the systems in such a state to say they barely even work. Even if the PicSolve system needs improving, there are other providers of the technology out there. CDride do all of Canada Wonderland. Even if Thorpe do have some kind of exclusivity deal with PicSolve then they could at least use other providers as leverage to say "hey, we want this, better systems are out there which we could use so sort your systems out."

And on the topic of Saw only having select cars active, I think that really does need a better approach as I have heard numerous people come off the ride to see they were not filmed as their entire car was not active. A solution I thought they could do is remove all cameras from the back rows and have only the front rows on every car fitted with cameras; having signs up telling riders if they want to be filmed then queue for the front row of the car. Or maybe even just have the back rows fitted with cameras so the back row is made more appealing.

[Flipper]

And on the topic of Saw only having select cars active, I think that really does need a better approach as I have heard numerous people come off the ride to see they were not filmed as their entire car was not active. A solution I thought they could do is remove all cameras from the back rows and have only the front rows on every car fitted with cameras; having signs up telling riders if they want to be filmed then queue for the front row of the car. Or maybe even just have the back rows fitted with cameras so the back row is made more appealing.

There's no separate queue for the front row on SAW, so lets not start encouraging that! And as far as I'm aware, SAW doesn't have it's cameras anymore. Picsolve had the facilities to have every car fitted with cameras, and for a fair while it did but the system doesn't work efficiently and now only select cars have cameras (and the rest have marks from where the cameras were) but non-operational on the video aspect.

[tomglazed]

I realise this. I was more pertaining towards having a specific row (either front or back) where all the cars have cameras for that row only and having some sort of signage where by people know that they can be filmed on that row of each car; no special new queue has to be setup for the purpose.

The current setup is the same as having an on ride photo camera which only manages to take photos of every other row of seats; people come off thinking that they had a picture taken when in fact they haven't.

[AdamcoasterLOFC]

I was going to buy a DVD of me and my friends on SAW but then when I saw how much they where I was like "f**k you Thorpe Park in your dreams!" and just ended up getting a photo instead. If they lower the prices then it could be a good idea but in the current economic times I think the asking price is abit cheeky and just another desperate money making ploy! DVD's on Colossus and Nemesis Inferno would be very worthwhile buying though Stealth would probably be the funniest to watch because of the wind and G-forces on your face when it launches but it's over too quick so why would you pay X amount of £'s for a DVD that only lasts about 10 seconds? lol

[Morgan]

The price of on-ride DVDs and photos is ridiculous now. As others have said, if they embraced digital media and offered them as downloads or email for a smaller fee (e.g. £2-3 for a photo & £4-5 for a video), they would make an absolute fortune. They are getting to the point now that they are going to price themselves out of the market. They have even started being a bit underhand with selling photos as well, I know at Towers they sometimes charge £10 for a ride photo, which is the physical photo plus digital download option, instead of offering the download as an extra.

Back to the videos though, I think if they did go down the cheaper download route, the amount of videos that would be posted on Facebook would provide a huge amount of coverage for the parks, it just seems like Picsolve are to near sighted on pushing their short-term margins than actually looking for a sustainable future.

[BigBobJones]

I've already had this discussion multiple times this year about the Picsolve/Merlin prices on photos and videos, good to hear others complaining about it. Picsolve have only made £6 out of me this year against a good £60 if they charged last years prices and gave you what you got last year (ie free digital downloads) for me I don't want the physical photos of DVDs, give it to me in a digital format.

[Guest]

I think a DVD would be very cool on Tidal wave and Loggers leap

Anyone agree with me?

[Fred]

Soo these appeared in 2009 first on SAW yes? With stealth intending to get it and never receiving it.

 

 

The one's at Alton just don't work - Air hasn't worked since almost beginning of year. The Smiler's DVD is rarely available too. Imagine the same issues at Thorpe.

 

Will they ever get a system which works properly?!