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Duel: The Haunted House Actually Strikes Back - Refurb Incoming

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WillPS said:
I think you might need to dial down your expectations a tad. The park did more maintenance than they usually would (I refuse to use the three letter acronym they market this as) a few closed seasons back.

The only thing I can see changing, is the blasters - either they will be fixed or entirely removed one would expect. No big deal either way.
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Not hearing blasters throughout Sinister Gardens will be good enough for me XD, they're so annoying in that area it just stops you from enjoying it's atmosphere.
 
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Matt.GC said:
You have a point there. I've been very pleased with the events, entertainment and opening hours improvements, all of which have taken me by surprise. But then I think of the rest.

Walliams World has to be the worst "retheme" Merlin have ever done, even worse than whatever they did to Transylvania at Chessington. The accommodation has never been so bad. The whole park has never looked as tatty and broken as it does now. Food outlets not only remain closed but even more have been removed for cheap garish Coke refill stations.

Nothing will happen to Duel next year. There will be no celebrations as that would draw attention to it. It'll limp on getting worse and worse until the whole thing is ripped out and replaced with awful TV screens like Ninjago.
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Im not expecting any change to come from the Lego family buyout of Merlin but I suspect Walliams was done before the purchased the group and then we had a pandemic. I remain a skeptic on whether we will see any change for the better but it’s too soon to know.

As for Duel the public like the blasters and would complain if they went, so I suspect they would only go if it was extensively re-themed. If they are going to spend big on a re-theme then they would have to also spend big on the ride system to extend its life. Basically nothing is cheap when it comes to Duel.
 
Dave said:
Basically nothing is cheap when it comes to Duel.
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Hence why nothing's been done for so long. The budget required to do almost anything major to duel would be really high and there's no evidence it would increase attendance or anything like that. It's just not very easy to market in this country.
 
JAperson said:
Hence why nothing's been done for so long. The budget required to do almost anything major to duel would be really high and there's no evidence it would increase attendance or anything like that. It's just not very easy to market in this country.
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Exactly. Not sure how much the Haunted House cost to construct, but a ride of that scale in today's money would be millions of pounds.
 
Skyscraper said:
Exactly. Not sure how much the Haunted House cost to construct, but a ride of that scale in today's money would be millions of pounds.
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Okay, so I just did some research, I remember watching a Documentry with John Wardley in 1991, during the construction of Runaway Mine Train and Gloomy Wood, he said somewhere around 6 million. So, if we split that down the middle, HH and Runaway Mine Train both costing 3 million to construct in 1991 currency, if we put that into today's currency, we'd get £6,700,000.
That's actually really good for what they managed to make with it.

So, assuming if Merlin wanted To Celebrate THE HHs 30th anniversary, to get it back into shape I'd say that would probably spend around 1-2.5 million pound sterling, since changing it to Duel back in 2003 was just below 1 million.
 
Matt N said:
According to TS's fact file, the Haunted House cost £3million: https://towersstreet.com/theme-park/ride/duel/#factfile

And according to this inflation calculator, £3million in 1992 is worth £5,408,538.86 in today's money: https://www.inflationtool.com/british-pound/1992-to-present-value?amount=3000000

I'll admit that's a lot less than I was expecting!
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It's hard to compare numbers. In the 90s the number quoted was related to the hardware, construction etc, at some point (possibly Rita?) the number changed to represent the total investment including stuff like marketing.

Like Blackpool's attendance figures, there's no way to really determine how these figures are compiled so you should treat them all with a pinch of salt.
 
I'm curious as to why anyone thinks that Duel limping on in it's current depressing state is worth a 30 year celebration? It's like celebrating the existence of a rusted Lotus Esprit retrofitted with a Morris Marina engine, as if the fact it's still parked on some geezers driveway is some sort of achievement?
 
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Matt.GC said:
I'm curious as to why anyone thinks that Duel limping on in it's current depressing state is worth a 30 year celebration? It's like celebrating the existence of a rusted Lotus Esprit retrofitted with a Morris Marina engine, as if the fact it's still parked on some geezers driveway is some sort of achievement?
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If you've got nothing good to say, don't say anything. Plus, I've seen rides in much worse states than Duel is in right now, take Journey into Imagination with Figment for example. Its so cheesy and outdated more than Duel by a long shot, the screen quality is poor, it has some good set design though, I'll give it that, but it's version of 'One little spark' is anything but straight out annoying with Figment singing it, with him being annoying enough already to add that. And let's not forget, the man on the moon, that face....

Back onto the forums topic though, all I have to say is just appreciated what we have instead of trashing on it. Does it need major upgrades? Yes, by a long shot. Is it a bad ride? Personally, No. For what it is and what its trying to execute, it's a nice 4 minutes experience with good scenery and animatronics, nothing special, but it has potential. Though the lighting is just abysmal, even I can see that, you can literally see the walls of the warehouse. Should've just painted the interior wall with vantablack.

Calling it a Dperessed, Rusty old Car is a little Over The Top, more like a 25 year old 2 seater that still runs but it's just lacking maintenance if I had to sum it up in one go.
 
Trooper Looper said:
If you've got nothing good to say, don't say anything. Plus, I've seen rides in much worse states than Duel is in right now, take Journey into Imagination with Figment for example. Its so cheesy and outdated more than Duel by a long shot, the screen quality is poor, it has some good set design though, I'll give it that, but it's version of 'One little spark' is anything but straight out annoying with Figment singing it, with him being annoying enough already to add that. And let's not forget, the man on the moon, that face....

Back onto the forums topic though, all I have to say is just appreciated what we have instead of trashing on it. Does it need major upgrades? Yes, by a long shot. Is it a bad ride? Personally, No. For what it is and what its trying to execute, it's a nice 4 minutes experience with good scenery and animatronics, nothing special, but it has potential. Though the lighting is just abysmal, even I can see that, you can literally see the walls of the warehouse. Should've just painted the interior wall with vantablack.

Calling it a Dperessed, Rusty old Car is a little Over The Top, more like a 25 year old 2 seater that still runs but it's just lacking maintenance if I had to sum it up in one go.
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Despite your demand, I think I'll decline thank you and continue to express my opinions. May I suggest China if anything but one sided debate upsets you so much?

I trash it because I think it is trash. I think it's totally unacceptable to have a haunted house laden with effects that don't work for guests as intended because all the mechanisms are lit up. What's the point in seeing plastic bats and Halloween masks on sticks? Surely the point in a dark ride is to be immersed and entertained? Not to point a blaster at LED's in what feels like a behind the scenes tour of a corrugated warehouse bathed in bright purple light.

What is there to be celebrated? I agree there's worse rides out there, so we're to celebrate the fact it's not as bad as them? How bad have things got at Towers if they were to get the party poppers and champers out over the fact that Duel hasn't been mothballed or replaced with TV screens after 30 years? That sounds like a race to the bottom to me
 
Got to agree with the negative sentiment here. It truly is a tired ride nowadays, despite the cheap fix-ups they've implemented in the last few years (music update, awful bright portrait screens, dolls house stuck in a random odd spot in the queue). The Trommel not working for what, 3 or 4 years now is an enormous shame, but overwhelmingly it's the ghastly LED UV lamps that have ruined proceedings. It's just totally destroyed any sense of immersion or quality that the ride used to have. Nowadays it's just a microcosm of Merlin's attitude to the park in general - lots of things not working that once did but left to rot instead of being fixed etc. A sad shame.
 
Trooper Looper said:
If you've got nothing good to say, don't say anything. Plus, I've seen rides in much worse states than Duel is in right now, take Journey into Imagination with Figment for example. Its so cheesy and outdated more than Duel by a long shot, the screen quality is poor, it has some good set design though, I'll give it that, but it's version of 'One little spark' is anything but straight out annoying with Figment singing it, with him being annoying enough already to add that. And let's not forget, the man on the moon, that face....

Back onto the forums topic though, all I have to say is just appreciated what we have instead of trashing on it. Does it need major upgrades? Yes, by a long shot. Is it a bad ride? Personally, No. For what it is and what its trying to execute, it's a nice 4 minutes experience with good scenery and animatronics, nothing special, but it has potential. Though the lighting is just abysmal, even I can see that, you can literally see the walls of the warehouse. Should've just painted the interior wall with vantablack.

Calling it a Dperessed, Rusty old Car is a little Over The Top, more like a 25 year old 2 seater that still runs but it's just lacking maintenance if I had to sum it up in one go.
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Uhhuh, so Duel is not the worst maintained ride, and you still quite like it? That's cool.

I really do think it's telling that the voices defending the ride are the ones who didn't experience it in its pre-last-10-years state. That's not to say you're wrong; you're entitled to your opinion - but for those of us who did experience the Haunted House and/or Duel in its first couple of years, that "30 years" really is nothing to celebrate as the ride has been on an overall downward trend in terms of quality.

It's not like, say, Nemesis which has been delivering a top-notch ride consistently since the day it opened, regardless of the ageing and neglect it too has suffered.
 
Wow, I actually typed that last night...
I'm here to apologise everything I said last night, I was in a bad mood and was extremely tired. I shouldn't have said any of that. Your opinion is your opinion and I can't anything to change it becaude its yours and yours only. You Hate Duel, cool.
I dont want to star a forum war now guys. I dont want to sound like an idiot but the damage is done. What I typed last night was unacceptable.
 
Trooper Looper said:
Wow, I actually typed that last night...
I'm here to apologise everything I said last night, I was in a bad mood and was extremely tired. I shouldn't have said any of that. Your opinion is your opinion and I can't anything to change it becaude its yours and yours only. You Hate Duel, cool.
I dont want to star a forum war now guys. I dont want to sound like an idiot but the damage is done. What I typed last night was unacceptable.
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Don't worry about it. I'm the worst offender for late night bad mood posts.
 
***puts popcorn away***
As for Duel. It really is tired now. I would love to see a celebration but as others have said I cannot see what we are celebrating. They have ruined anything worth celebrating with years of neglect.

I would love to see the old overture music and the ghost host come back though. I thought they were both the two single most awesome parts of the haunted house. Even if the ghost host was a straight Disney rip off, it worked so well.

Trooper Looper said:
Wow, I actually typed that last night...
I'm here to apologise everything I said last night, I was in a bad mood and was extremely tired. I shouldn't have said any of that. Your opinion is your opinion and I can't anything to change it becaude its yours and yours only. You Hate Duel, cool.
I dont want to star a forum war now guys. I dont want to sound like an idiot but the damage is done. What I typed last night was unacceptable.
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To briefly touch on this, you may have said something that upset someone, it takes an even bigger person to openly admit they thought they might have done wrong, and apologise, especially on a public forum. So I am sure any sentiments taken away from this will now be positive rather than negative... Anyway, not to stray off topic.....
 
Do we have an accurate time scale of how long the trommel has been broken because I'm sure it's sadly actually longer than 4 years
 
Heidi said:
Do we have an accurate time scale of how long the trommel has been broken because I'm sure it's sadly actually longer than 4 years
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Not exactly sure, but definitely more than 5 years. I think it will always be broken, as remember that it was installed during the very early stages of construction, before the walls and roof were built. Removing it would hence require part of the roof to be removed (like the N:ST towers; the roof of that building would also need to be removed for them to be taken out).
 
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