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Talbot Street Tuesday/Thursday (Picture Heavy)

This is genuinely fascinating stuff, thanks for your responses guys!

Presuming there is truth in the rumour that the projector was stored at Alton Towers, my almost completely unfounded punt would be that JB bought it on the cheap at some point expecting to upgrade the Planetarium. It would be consistent with his penchant for a bargain, not necessarily considering the practicalities of a purchase.
 
Two years ago demolition of The Flume was well underway, ending the ride's long and varied history at Alton Towers.

From Dinosaurs to Ducks, for this week's Talbot Street Tuesday we took a look back over the legacy of the ride, which was once the longest flume in the world.

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BritishThemeParkArchive said:
Here are those Towers Street photos on my Facebook page (dont have a website just yet). I'm pretty sure they are from its opening year.
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Definitely its opening year, and most likely in the first few months, since there is no sign of the monorail. Later in that season you'd expect to see the monorail station under construction beyond the entrance plaza.

Awesome pics though, I'm especially like the one that shows the original park bank in the unit where The Towers Trading checkout is today.
 
WillPS said:
This is genuinely fascinating stuff, thanks for your responses guys!

Presuming there is truth in the rumour that the projector was stored at Alton Towers, my almost completely unfounded punt would be that JB bought it on the cheap at some point expecting to upgrade the Planetarium. It would be consistent with his penchant for a bargain, not necessarily considering the practicalities of a purchase.
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Interestingly I uncovered some further info on the projector whilst researching the Planetarium/Oblivion conundrum. The projector at the towers, looks to have actually been a model that was aimed at the school market in America (apparently it is not unusual for schools to have planetary projector for all those astronomical needs). Needless to say therefore that the model in question was actually quite reasonably priced, so I suspect it was a relatively inexpensive addition to the park's line up.

It would therefore seem likely that the planetarium closed when the projector gave up the ghost after 14 years of heavy duty usage since I can't imagine that such a model was designed to be used none stop for two thirds of the year.
 
Cool photo!
Alton Towers was not really a 'theme park' during this time and didn't call itself one (despite what some from Tussauds said when they took it over). It called itself a leisure park, more along the lines of Blackpool Pleasure Beach with some individual attractions rather than whole areas.

Might only be a slight difference, but it wasn't attempting to do the whole 'immersive' thing, with more focus on being an all round 'entertainment park' in the grounds. Remember it was still better known for being the famous Alton Towers gardens and grounds, than Alton Towers 'the theme park' back then.
 
Are the original plans before so much was cut public anywhere, or did these plans not get that far?

Would be very interesting to see. I remember well when it first opened and the complete underwhelming feel our whole boat shared. It wasn't disappointment, it was just... nothing. Big exciting new ride, with great style and potential, and it just turned out to feel pretty flat.

It's easy to see a great example of how not investing in the value of an attraction can really let it down. All the money went into the IP licence instead and use of the elevator gimmicks. The elevators and boat ride felt like completely different attractions.

Really great retrospective article! The park misses a really good, big family ride like Toyland Tours in this corner of the park now. A tiny pedantic thing that the Veruca Salt effect wasnt a peppers ghost illusion, just a reflection with a TV and mirror (was always the dud scene of the ride!)
 
CATCF was an interesting one... I really liked it for what it was when it was operating, but most other people didn't seem to like it.

However, the disappointment only seemed to come around in the ride's later years judging by the TowersTimes construction topic for the ride; there were people in there comparing it favourably to Disney theming when it opened!
 
Matt N said:
there were people in there comparing it favourably to Disney theming when it opened!
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Like every new ride, ever, literally. I would take looking back at old discussions as showing how deluded some fans are when a new ride opens, rather than mean anything about what a ride was like.

Also, it was a family ride so you're missing a huge part of its ridership in kids there. Although kids seemed to mostly enjoy it whenever I went on the ride (at the time I was a slightly older kid), there was still a feeling of complete averageness.

I remember very well the awkward moment when all the scenery and music just peters out, then our boat suddenly haults in an empty room, a host popping her head out the darkness saying "Ok, that's it, off you get" and we all thought "...That was it?!"

The ride had good scenery style but there was barely any of it after the beginning. It had far less going on that Toyland Tours before it and even Around The World had. So much of it was just 2D printed stuff on flat walls. The scenery could have been fantastic had it not been so stripped out for budget.
 
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TakeYourMedicine said:
Like every new ride, ever, literally. I would take looking back at old discussions as showing how deluded some fans are when a new ride opens, rather than mean anything about what a ride was like.

Also, it was a family ride so you're missing a huge part of its ridership in kids there. Although kids seemed to mostly enjoy it whenever I went on the ride (at the time I was a slightly older kid), there was still a feeling of complete averageness.

I remember very well the awkward moment when all the scenery and music just peters out, then our boat suddenly haults in an empty room, a host popping her head out the darkness saying "Ok, that's it, off you get" and we all thought "...That was it?!"

The ride had good scenery style but there was barely any of it after the beginning. It had far less going on that Toyland Tours before it and even Around The World had. So much of it was just 2D printed stuff on flat walls. The scenery could have been fantastic had it not been so stripped out for budget.
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Agree with all this. Huge potential but a huge let down.

For me the biggest issue was there was no sense of consistency with it. Some parts were almost completely 2D in the style of Quentin Blake's illustrations, some parts there were a few random 3D figures, for whole sections there was literally nothing, then there were all the CGI elements... it just didn't glue together nicely at all.

Compare to Toyland Tours which was all out fun, something to see whichever way you looked - no story as such just a charming happy experience. The only slightly mismatched part was the Sonic scene, which always felt like it was shoehorned in to me - but it got away with it because it was cool, and because it was short.

FWIW I always felt the attraction would have been better if they licensed the 1971 'Willy Wonka' film instead, and concentrated on the boat ride rather than the gimmicky elevators.
 
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