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Towers Loving Care

The Haunted House could come back and be really entertaining for the public, only if..

-They nailed the appeal for a really fun & original haunted family ride
-More dynamic animatronics were used (but Merlin deliberately don't invest in costly animatronics)
-A more dynamic transit system was used?

(Although enthusiasts/engineers like the Mack transit, I think it's dated now, considering the speed changes and fast turns it was intended to do back in 1992.)

But Merlin do struggle to create big dark rides without using IPs, or arent interested because their strategy is all about rolling out brands. They either make dark rides overly complicated without actually appealing (DBGT), oritentated at young adults (who rarely care for dark rides anyway), or with a decent but short-lived hook (Sub Terra).

I'm not talking about bringing back the enthusiasts' memory of the Haunted House. I mean more like trying to create a fun and surprising new Haunted House for families to really be taken in by, which is what the original ride did for 1992. You could still do the same appeal & style, but more convincing for today.

It's been through many cycles of broken, poorly maintained effects & lighting, followed by a cheap redo (whether advertised or not), of which TLC risks being yet another. But might not be. Who knows yet, but it's not what the ride really needs. It just comes across so lame now, though the foundations are still there for something great.
 
Without wanting to repeat myself, let's put this into perspective.

The park closes at 4PM most days, landscaping is currently in a dire state, although improved recently there's still loads of maintenance and cleaning up to be done.

There's SBNO rides all over the place, a good Rapids ride that has virtually non existent theming and is little more than a gentle boat ride that could be sorted out by just switching on the water features and spending a couple of quid on theming.

The monorail, an integral part of the park, is in need of an upgrade. Nemesis has been left half painted for over 2 years. Cloud Cuckoo Land is so sparse and baron it looks almost abandoned.

Dark Forest consists of Thirteen, a randomly placed off the shelf launch coaster and prehistoric theming painted smoky colours.

The parks finest attraction is a 23 year old coaster. Entertainment has almost completely dissappeared and even scarefest has now become a wound down part time event.

So replacing a perfectly fine, working, suitable and well designed transit system in a ride that few visitors will ever care about no matter how good it becomes is the last thing the park should be worrying about when dividing out the decreasing pot of money Merlin have announced they'll be giving them.
 
matthewgcole said:
Without wanting to repeat myself, let's put this into perspective.

The park closes at 4PM most days, landscaping is currently in a dire state, although improved recently there's still loads of maintenance and cleaning up to be done.

There's SBNO rides all over the place, a good Rapids ride that has virtually non existent theming and is little more than a gentle boat ride that could be sorted out by just switching on the water features and spending a couple of quid on theming.

The monorail, an integral part of the park, is in need of an upgrade. Nemesis has been left half painted for over 2 years. Cloud Cuckoo Land is so sparse and baron it looks almost abandoned.

Dark Forest consists of Thirteen, a randomly placed off the shelf launch coaster and prehistoric theming painted smoky colours.

The parks finest attraction is a 23 year old coaster. Entertainment has almost completely dissappeared and even scarefest has now become a wound down part time event.

So replacing a perfectly fine, working, suitable and well designed transit system in a ride that few visitors will ever care about no matter how good it becomes is the last thing the park should be worrying about when dividing out the decreasing pot of money Merlin have announced they'll be giving them.
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Thank the lord it wasn't just me who thought most of this. I thought the entertainment was okay when it was getting dark but it has nothing on Thorpe Park in my opinion. The place does look so tired though.
 
matthewgcole said:
So replacing a perfectly fine, working, suitable and well designed transit system in a ride that few visitors will ever care about no matter how good it becomes
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What gives the impression families would never care whether the park's largest attraction for their demographic was good or not? Even the Gruffalo was scrutinised by young families recently at Chessington, and although it was more of a kiddie ride than what I was suggesting for Duel, it still had a big draw as a dark ride.

Haunted dark rides, done well, are very popular! Most enthusiasts just have a terrible impression of them in the UK because most of ours have long since been floating in limbo getting worse each year. And most of us discussing them online are adults more interested in the coaster side of things, when dark rides mostly have a family appeal.

I've never intended to suggest replacing Duel's transit system was a priority for the park over everything else because that's a ridiculous idea. What I was suggesting about the transit was obviously as part of a bigger redesign for the whole ride, a transit that would totally transform the (currently dated) format. Not a new transit for the sake of it to serve the existing scenes .

I meant in the context of redesigning Duel as something new, to make it a flagship attraction again. And the park getting the best value out of the building & running of the ride that they're supposed to be. Just discussing why the TLC project won't save the ride.

TLC won't fix the park's wider problems either. If we're talking about priorities for the whole park, I'd absolutely agree with you!
 
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electricBill said:
What gives you the impression families would never care about whether one of the park's largest attractions for their demographic was good or not? The Gruffalo was scrutinised by young families recently at Chessington, and although it was more of a kiddie ride than what I was suggesting for Duel, it still had a big draw as a dark ride.

Haunted dark rides, done well, are very popular. Most enthusiasts just have a terrible impression of them in the UK because most of ours have long since been floating in limbo getting worse each year. And most of us discussing them online are adults more interested in the coaster side of things, when dark rides mostly have a family appeal.

I've never intended to suggest replacing Duel's transit system was a priority for the park over everything else because that's obviously a ridiculous idea. What I was suggesting about the transit was obviously as part of a big redesign for the whole ride, not a new transit alone just because it would be nice.

We're talking in the context of redesigning Duel as something new, to make it a flagship attraction again. And the park getting the value out of the building & running of the ride that they're supposed to be.

If we're talking about priorities for the whole park, I'd absolitely agree that there other priorities.
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They would absolutely care about those ride experiences. Which is why money wasn't wasted on replacing Bubbleworks ride system instead as it would have been a waste and would have attracted no extra visitors whatsoever.

What I'm getting at is, even in Disney parks, there has to be some sort of prudence and thought put into return on investment. The Norway ride to Frozen or shoving some of the film characters into Pirates of the Caribbean springs to mind.

I get what you're saying. I like a good dark ride. But even if the good times where rolling for Towers and they had cash to spend, putting a new transit system into Duel when the existing one scoots you around the inside of the warehouse no problem seems pointless.

If you're talking about doing that kind of stuff, you might as well just call it a day and build a completely new modern haunted house somewhere else in the park. If you owned a 1.2 ltr Vauxhall Corsa that no one wants to buy, you can get it serviced, tuned, hoovered out and cleaned up a bit - OR you could spend 10 times its value putting a brand new twin turbo V8 under the bonnet.

With the park in it's aforementioned sad state and in light of the recent promise of devastating cuts on their way, I think the best we can hope for is Duel is put out of its misery for a couple of seasons. At least that way it won't be embarrassing the park any further and efforts could be concentrated on getting Cloud Cuckoo Land and the Rapids sorted.
 
matthewgcole said:
They would absolutely care about those ride experiences. Which is why money wasn't wasted on replacing Bubbleworks ride system instead as it would have been a waste and would have attracted no extra visitors whatsoever.
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Yeah I agree but I think the old Bubbleworks transit still worked fine, it's straightforward and does what it needs. But for what Duel's transit is trying to do, you could do that much better today, and a redesign would surely smash the 'dated' format of trundling around a room.

Maybe I was being too blue sky and just some kinda re-engineering of the existing thing is more what I'm getting at. To introduce more acceleration, wilder turns, to make a more memorable ride. For what it's trying to do with speed changes and the quite dated tech behind it - you could surely do that so much more reliably & more fun with today's technology. Same with the scenes, doesnt need to be Universal kind of effects, but done more excitingly and more reliably than flogging a 25 years old (long since tarnished anyway) design.

Although I realise this will never happen the way things are currently. :)

matthewgcole said:
At least that way it won't be embarrassing the park any further
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Ha ha, although I love the Haunted House, I totally agree with this. I cringe to think what it must feel like going in there fresh as an every day guest! I agree "It used to be good" is no excuse for keeping a dead ride open, when making it truly "good" again would require a much bigger project than the park will be able to do.
 
Merlin face a cross roads when it comes to duel. I am pretty sure they will be trawling these sorts of forums to see what the hardcore fans want doing. That doesn't mean they are doing what we want.

Duel is unfortunately on the edge. If i was them i would have a team of people working it it throughout the off season to renovate it completely, however we all know it's not going to happen

The main things they will replace/fix is the electrics (lighting and whatever keeps causing the ride to cut out). They will give it a deep clean and maybe replace one or two of the broken pieces.

I don't think there will be a big budget for duel and i think they will look to replace it long term but for now it is an attraction which has a constant stream of people visiting it and although its never busy, they will want to keep it like that as its an attraction so people can go to it knowing they wont have to queue long.
 
I agree, I think Duel will get some TLC next year, but I dont think it would be much. To get things back up to modern, special effects etc it would cost a lot. I think we will see some touches of paint here and there, entrance tidied up and some of the lights and minor effects fixed throughout the ride, but I dont see much else happening.
 
Obviously we would all want some expensive kit out and the best haunted house on the planet. But in terms of realistic options the best we can hope for (and even this is a stretch in the current climate) is a minor retheme where decent sets are restored, the zombies and guns etc are removed and we get new half decent scenes put in there. So basically we get a decent ish haunted house with a new name like "Alton Manor NEW FOR 2019" or something.

However I think even that would be too blue sky at the moment. So if that option was off the table due to budget constraints, then please just put the key in that door and focus on CCL! I don't want any SBNO rides at Towers, but they've become a sad reality and walking past a closed Duel would be far more dignified than leaving CCL in its current state. At least Duel would still look fine when walking past with some TLC excuse A frame outside to explain why it's closed.

But I agree with what's been said, I think they'll take what would be the very worst option for me. They'll put the duster, paint brush and jet wash around, fix the effects and go in there with a box of new light bulbs. So we end up with a working ride that's rubbish.
 
I dont think they will remove the guns - it makes it more fun for the younger guests who may find sitting there watching the various props moving around a bit boring. Was thinking though of the Altonville Mine Tours - the scene which I thought worked really well was the smoke filled corridor with the strobe lights because you couldnt see a thing at times and the scares when they did happen were very jumpy.

Not sure if something like that could be utilised in Duel, but some smoke to create a "mist" in there particularly around the garden scene would be easy to do and create a lot of atmosphere. Plus, it will enhance the laser guns experience as guests will be able to see the beams shooting out.
 
I really don't think they could do it justice by removing the guns. If they're going to remove the guns it needs to be quite a big investment with lots of new scenes and set pieces; that doesn't look too likely. But it is in a bad way at the moment.
 
The guns do nothing. They're just there to deflect attention away from a lack lustre ride. I never advocated removing the guns from the current ride experience. If the ride was good, why would anyone be bored without the guns?

The guns and indeed the whole ride are outdated. That's why I'd prefer them to at least try and make a decent haunted house or just put it out of its misery. I see a quick cheap spruce up of the existing ride as the worst thing that could happen.
 
matthewgcole said:
a good Rapids ride that has virtually non existent theming and is little more than a gentle boat ride that could be sorted out by just switching on the water features and spending a couple of quid on theming.
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Be careful what you say, Towers could end up like Chessington with tatty Poundland "theming" littered all over the place...
 
I agree with removing the guns and zombies, and although I'm certain the garden scene will not return, they can just go for an easy restoration.

If you want an interactive element then why not give the overhauled ride a storyline and make it a scavanger hunt. That will encourage guests to look around as they ride and actually enjoy the theming lol.
 
Olivus Prime said:
Be careful what you say, Towers could end up like Chessington with tatty Poundland "theming" littered all over the place...
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Are you talking about Vampire's new queue theming for 2017? The chess pieces look exactly like the ones you get in the generic section of theming in RCT3. The crosses are effective but not as effective as the proper stone effect gravestones used in 1990.

Anyway, back on subject. I think Duel has four realistic options myself, which are as follows:
  1. Keep the ride the same as it is now. This wouldn't cost Towers anything, but it would mean the ride would probably deteriorate even further.
  2. Revert it back to a Haunted House style attraction. This wouldn't cost them too much, as you'd only have to fix the lighting and animatronics, remove the guns and possibly retheme the final scene. However, I'm not sure if the 2017 GP would like the ride without laser guns, and that's what's most important to Merlin.
  3. Retheme it to a popular IP. This would cost quite a bit (I'd estimate about £7-10m judging by past IP rethemes in Merlin parks.) but it would probably be popular and would give Merlin an easy thing to market. Maybe Hotel Transylvania as an IP, as this is already a relatively similar theme. I would rather an original theme, but I'm just being realistic.
  4. Demolish the ride and replace it with a completely new dark ride. This would cost a lot (I'd estimate at least £20m.) and depending on ride type and theme, it might not be as successful as hoped *cough* DBGT *cough*
Out of these options, the one I'd like the most is 2. What do you guys think should happen to Duel?
 
The existing building actually has quite a high ceiling in it. I'm sure they could put a 3D screen ride in there, like Universal's dark rides, but on a smaller scale.

Projectors = easy to maintain. Perfect for Merlin's cheap ass.
 
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