2018: Wicker Man - General Discussion - SPOILERS! - Part One

Jared said:

They can't really use Sean...he works there, and as an employee they can't really display favoritism.

Click to expand...

What does that even mean? This is a public company not a dancing competition at a toddler's party.

This might be a stupid idea, but didn't the plans say about the trains having a wicker appearance? Maybe the trains are the 'Wicker Man', and the theming structure being some kind of bonfire with all the fire effects?

PeteB said:

It did bring in decent numbers in its first year but the guest satisfaction was extremely low due to expectations of the ride.

Furthermore, repeating that combined with a wooden rollercoaster is asking for trouble. It's on record numerous times over the years that the park/merlin have had serious problems with market research regarding wooden rollercoasters. The public simply don't respond well to the idea of a wooden rollercoaster.

That being said, what they're doing with SW8 could be quite clever. A wicker man theme would require wood. The coaster is wood. It's almost like they're hiding the obvious in plain sight. Maybe people will just think all the wood is part of the theming.

I suspect there'll be no mention of a wooden rollercoaster in the marketing, people will just assume its supposed to look like wood. Definitely hiding the wood in plain sight.

Click to expand...

Have you not seen the latest video with the vloggers talking about the SWs and SW8. Whenever they say "would" or "wouldn't" they emphasise the word, as if to say "hint hint, "WOOD" "WOODEN"". They even shoe horn the words in where they aren't particularly needed, also say "paper" for no real reason, which is made from trees/wood. Of course it will be mentioned.

I'm very interested to know who Merlin interview for their market research, because I told my parents that Alton were building a woodie in 2018 and my mum's initial reaction was "Brilliant! Wooden coasters are great!" I then told her that Merlin had previously dismissed wooden coasters for being hard to market due to being old and rickety, she said "What a load of rubbish!"

DiogoJ42 said:

Technically, the festival is Burning Man.

Just to be picky.

Click to expand...

There was a wicker man festival until 2015, not sure if the event eventually turned into burning man.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickerman_Festival

EDIT: Seems burning man has been going a bit longer than wicker man so two separate festivals

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

Matt N said:

I'm very interested to know who Merlin interview for their market research, because I told my parents that Alton were building a woodie in 2018 and my mum's initial reaction was "Brilliant! Wooden coasters are great!" I then told her that Merlin had previously dismissed wooden coasters for being hard to market due to being old and rickety, she said "What a load of rubbish!"

Click to expand...

I know many GP friends/family who also don't really care that it's made of wood and are excited to ride it whereas the not-so-High IQ-people are reacting as if 'OMG Wood is dangerous, I'm not riding that' or 'Loads of people die at Alton Towers'. But I'm sure Merlin have thought about how to change the GP's stance on wood coasters or have realised there is still a big enough market for those who aren't naive and gullible.

All I can say is ffs

I have a friend who loves the idea of a wooden coaster, and Towers is the one of the only parks he's ever been to.

Wickerman?!

The coaster looks great as it is but now they want to apply another cliched dark theme to a ride this time in the shape of some pagen nonsense.

What relevance will this have to anything around it?

It's a family woodie, why not have a fun lighthearted theme? No doubt there will be a silly convulated backstory (ala Smiler) for 14 year old enthusiasts to fap over but scant theming or clever design aside from the main feature.

Of course this should be no surprise to anyone on here.

But credit where credit is due regarding the progress with construction, not sure if this can be credited to Merlin or is due to the demands of the manufacturer.

Jared said:

They can't really use Sean...he works there, and as an employee they can't really display favoritism. Plus the point of using a YouTuber is a wide audience, forgive me when I say Sean's channel is somewhat too niche - although relevant. Also, if we're talking about the guy who presents those SW8 videos...I dunno who he is, so they clearly didn't choose well.

Click to expand...

Talking about Shawn (the correct spelling) here are some pics from TPWW

Altonadvocate1 said:

but seriously Pete, when you were a kid, did you want to hold mummy's hand whilst playing nicely on the climbing frame... Or did you want to hang out with your mates, smoke, drink, snog the girls, get into fights and act like you were the coolest, hardest guy in the world (till you got older and knew better).

Click to expand...

Dude, what are you on about? That is me NOW!

I think the gp has mixed attitudes to wooden coasters. People I have spoken to have asked isn't that dangerous whilst others have expressed their excitement about finally getting a woodie at towers. However I do have one friend who can't seem to grasp the concept of a wooden coaster and doesn't understand how it will 'move on wood' or how it won't all just collapse

Now that this unsurprising theme is all but confirmed, I feel rather neutral about it.

Im sure in isolation this ride will look rather good actually. But I still have absolutely zero confidence that this will blend in at all well with MB or KC. Could it? Yes, maybe and I certainly hope so but I'm not holding my breath after Thirteen destroyed Ug Land and a space port was placed within an apocalypse.

I'm not adverse to "dark" themes actually. I know I'm in a minority on here for that but this is a park who's centerpiece is a massive grey stone, gothic, ruined, "haunted" building, bursting with history and legend in a country where it seems the sun rarely shines. There's plenty of happy clappy fantasy parks both here and abroad already. It also depends on your interpretation of "dark" as well.

But what I do find stupid, as @Ben has already said, is all these dark haunted woods everywhere.

We have a gloomy Wood, yep great fit. A ride themed around a cursed oak tree, genius! A haunted hollow, well we kind of have to let it off as being an extension of Gloomy Wood don't we?? A Dark Forest, now this is just getting ridiculous. And now a ride themed around some sort of tree or woodland worship......

There is a Pirate themed area RIGHT NEXT DOOR!!!! It's like they saw a winning lotto ticket on the floor, coupied down and took a massive dump on it.

I'm not a fan of the name 'Wicker Man', it just doesn't seem right as a coaster for me. But then again like many others I was not keen on The Smiler or Thirteen when we first learnt their names yet now they seem to fit and work perfectly.

I really like the logo though, very cool and as mentioned previously will work wonders in selling merchandise. So good work there!

Ben said:

But ANOTHER dark woodland theme. Come on. We have gloomy wood / dark forest / thirteen / haunted hollow / hex. Where is there a shred of creativity. The park has 10 ride areas (excluding Towers Street) and 6 are already dark or closely dark themed. So were now probably heading to 70% of the park having a dark / evil / bad undercurrent as a theme.
I just can't even be bothered to try and defend this.

Click to expand...

I have to agree with this. I am not adverse to darker themes in theme parks, they certainly have their place and can be a lot of fun (Haunted Mansion being the perfect example). However every new major Alton Towers addition of late has been a dark theme and the park is full of them. I cannot help but feel this has an impact on how much some guests enjoy the park. It is a fair assumption that you may not be as happy when being constantly surrounded by dark themes and things going wrong.

It is still early day though and we don't know any real thematic details regarding SW8 specifically. Hopefully the theme will lean more towards mysterious adventure than dark with lots of bad things.

Croftybaby said:

There is a Pirate themed area RIGHT NEXT DOOR!!!! It's like they saw a winning lotto ticket on the floor, coupied down and took a massive dump on it.

Click to expand...

The very fact that it's made of wood, it practically themes itself!

I wonder if a desire (or insistence) to use an IP has swayed them away from pirates or Katanga?

I'm still a bit confused with regards to the protests surrounding dark themes. Can someone point me in the direction of thrill coasters with sunshine, lollipops and rainbows in the narrative that surrounds them? I'm not saying they don't exist, I just don't understand which rides people are drawing the comparison against?

I like the dark and sinister themes personally, I think it's easier to pull them off with the park's surroundings.

The protests are against the fact that another dark theme is present in a FAMILY theme park. It seems the only place now that family with kids can escape to is CBeebies land, CCL (at a push, as there's nothing there anymore) and at a further push now, mutiny bay with this dark theme overhanging the area.

As others have mentioned, why not theme the coaster to a jolly pirate adventure? Or something similar? Find the treasure, blah de blah... you could go on for ages listing lighter themes that would match the area the new ride resides over; even if the entrance is in gloomy wood (where the ride's theme will somewhat fit) the sheer presence of this "evil theme" in a family area of mutiny bay is bewildering; especially with all the other options of a family adventure available.

Even as a coaster, it looks like a family wooden coaster! Not a thrill wooden coaster.

Just echoing what others have said before, love the marketing and the way they've gone about teasing the ride, but the theme is just so out of the blue!

Rick said:

Can someone point me in the direction of thrill coasters with sunshine, lollipops and rainbows in the narrative that surrounds them?

Click to expand...

Well one could argue that within Towers they do have 2 or 3 jolly coasters - Air/Galactica, Spinball, and the original version of Rita. Tis a bit of a coincidence however that these were all put in from 2002, 2004, 2005.

There are numerous other examples of lighter themes at parks around the UK and Europe. Just seems like ALL of Merlin's medium-large investments are dark or abandoned type themes, and that would include things like NST and DBGT.