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

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Ok, I totally missed when the new teaser was posted. But the very first thing that struck me was 2 seconds in....did you guys notice the banner on the left? 3 Rune sybols going down vertically....we know what the top and bottom ones are but what is the middle one?? and then like a second later there is another banner with more symbols INCLUDING the mystery symbol. When you put them together you get something like "r _ s e l _ s". Anyone got any ideas?
 
Benzin said:
That's not grammar, that's just proper speaking what-not...

All depends how you pronounce it, either is acceptable...
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I pronounce it like they did, personally. (Them being the person in the video).
 
So, the latest video is named 'Beornen' - has anyone googled this? Seems to bring up similarly looking mythical beasts, of which we believe the theming statue will look like.
 
On a slightly different SW8 related subject, I made another Planet Coaster recreation of the ride's layout now that we have a good idea of what it is, and... if the actual ride is anywhere near this good at maintaining speed, then Merlin are on to a winner! The ride's top speed was around 48mph, and it stayed above about 30-35mph for the whole ride up until the final hill before the brake run, and I think that was only down to my personal error of building the brake run way too high off the ground! Yes, it even stayed above 40mph in the virtually unbanked turn!
 
I was just thinking that it would be quite nice if the Scottish guy who narrated that video was to do the ride's announcements, like "Be Chosen" and "You have been chosen" or something like that. Sort of like on the Smiler, where you have "Join Us" and "You Belong To The Smiler".
 
Looking at Towers Facebook page, More specifically the comment section of the recent SW8 video, Most of the comments are 'Is this the new woodie?' or what I want to talk about 'I want to be first to ride' comments.

I've seen this marketing a lot with computer games with the caption 'Pre-Order now' and I think Tower's marketing team are trying to replicate something by making people want to ride and be the first. I don't know if this has been done before with any theme park attraction before (Because I haven't followed a ride construction as closely as SW8 before) but I don't think this type of marketing has been done before with a theme park attraction. Maybe this is another way Merlin have found out to advertise a coaster instead of really fully on ''It's really scary and dark'' like Th13teen.

Just wanted to point it out, I think it's quite clever.
 
skyscraper said:
Yes, if you go on www.thewelcoming.co.uk and sign up to their e-mail newsletter, you could be a first rider! (i signed up a while ago, doubt i'll get picked though)
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In the words of john Wardley, "Get. A. life."
;)
Regarding the Scottish accent in the videos, could the be an attempt to tie it in to th "wicker man" theme? Or are they just cashing in on the whole "regional accents are cool" thing?
 
I do think that, as I have mentioned in this thread before, Alton's method of marketing worked well for them in the 1990's, but is quite primitive/dated now. In terms of why I don't like Alton's method of marketing anymore, I will just echo what @MakoMania said in the Icon thread:
MakoMania said:
I'm getting a bit sick of the stupid and unecessary marketing around SW8. That's what's lowering my excitement for it, nothing to do with the project itself, I still think it'll be a decent ride. I just wish they'd stop beating about the bush and base the marketing on the ride itself like every other park in the world does. There's nothing wrong with having a story to the ride, but translating runes for months on end that end up giving no information whatsoever is getting boring.
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Also, I do feel like Alton would get more reception from the GP if they revealed it earlier and put a webcam on the site that people could always view on Alton's website or the Welcoming website. Think like what Cedar Point did during Valravn's construction. I think they're doing it now for Steel Vengeance, actually.
 
My thoughts on this...and sorry if I`m misinterpreting things: Valravn and Steel Vengeance are MONSTERS...just let the people see them and their stats and they will be excited and they will come to ride. But with SW8...me, I personally have no doubt that this will be a fun coaster...but I`m absolutely not surprised about that kind of marketing...I think that`s how they try to create a form of interest in the coaster that is not possible by "just" showing videos, pictures, stats etc. of such a low, short und slow ride. Sorry, but to me this looks like a very nice family coaster that merlin try`s to "sell" in a way that reminds me of the way they marketed Th13teen...it`s as if they try to distract from the ride itself by this kind of marketing. I guess that sometimes it`s better not to rise expectations too much and let the people be POSETIVELY surprised by the ride experience...
 
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Matt N said:
I was just thinking that it would be quite nice if the Scottish guy who narrated that video was to do the ride's announcements, like "Be Chosen" and "You have been chosen" or something like that. Sort of like on the Smiler, where you have "Join Us" and "You Belong To The Smiler".
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Please can we not give Merlin and the team of 'creatives' that come up with these brilliant ideas yet another thing to copy and paste onto all future attractions...

"You have been robbed, Your money belongs to Merlin"
 
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Bubblegum said:
Please can we not give Merlin and the team of 'creatives' that come up with these brilliant ideas yet another thing to copy and paste onto all future attractions...
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Why do you say that? Most of their attractions are reasonably different to one another, to a degree.
 
I don't know quite how I'm drawing this parallel, please hear me out, but does anyone else think that the first drop will offer a similar sort of experience to the first drop in Nemesis. At first glance, I thought the curve at the top was more of a 'scenic railway' sort of curve, but you can see it actually drops a fair amount before reaching the first dip (which is also a little like the little dip at the start of Nemesis), which makes me think it will pick up quite a bit of speed by the time it reaches the bottom. This is great obviously as there's less wasting of kinetic energy, so hopefully it will nice and action packed with a nice bit of floater airtime here and there.
 
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