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[2023] The Curse at Alton Manor

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RIPCorky said:
People forget the rides size, to remove every single set and prop is more than 3-4 skips worth of material. It will be interesting to see what remains, not long now until we find out.
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It’s hard to tell how much has been removed or how drastic of a change this will be, really.

I’d guess that it will be a notable change to at least a certain degree given the change in storyline and the fact that the marketing material and overall brand seems quite keen to divorce the ride from its history (the park doesn’t explicitly reference the previous Haunted House on the website or in the ride’s marketing material), but whether that translates into significant scenery removal remains to be seen.

It’s worth remembering that the skips seen may not have been the extent of the scenery removal. Enthusiasts are not watching the site 24/7, so they could well have removed more, with that removed material having simply evaded the prying eyes of enthusiasts.

I also feel that the fact that the ride closed in September rather than at the end of the season could potentially be indicative of the scale of refurbishment that’s occurred. If it were only a minor refurbishment with little scenery removal or changes, surely they’d have kept it open until the end of the season in November, particularly given the park’s ride reliability struggles in late 2022? If I’m remembering correctly, the Duel revamp didn’t begin until after the end of the season in 2002, and they changed a not insignificant amount of the Haunted House to facilitate that revamp.

It’s hard to tell how much has been removed at this stage, but while I no longer believe that pretty much everything will have gone, I do think that some people could be surprised at how much of the old scenery has been removed and how little of the old scenery remains. I could be wrong, but I don’t think this will be a case of them reusing pretty much all of the 1992 scenery like some predict and/or hoped for.
 
Matt N said:
It’s hard to tell how much has been removed or how drastic of a change this will be, really.

I’d guess that it will be a notable change to at least a certain degree given the change in storyline and the fact that the marketing material and overall brand seems quite keen to divorce the ride from its history (the park doesn’t explicitly reference the previous Haunted House on the website or in the ride’s marketing material), but whether that translates into significant scenery removal remains to be seen.

It’s worth remembering that the skips seen may not have been the extent of the scenery removal. Enthusiasts are not watching the site 24/7, so they could well have removed more, with that removed material having simply evaded the prying eyes of enthusiasts.

I also feel that the fact that the ride closed in September rather than at the end of the season could potentially be indicative of the scale of refurbishment that’s occurred. If it were only a minor refurbishment with little scenery removal or changes, surely they’d have kept it open until the end of the season in November, particularly given the park’s ride reliability struggles in late 2022? If I’m remembering correctly, the Duel revamp didn’t begin until after the end of the season in 2002, and they changed a not insignificant amount of the Haunted House to facilitate that revamp.

It’s hard to tell how much has been removed at this stage, but while I no longer believe that pretty much everything will have gone, I do think that some people could be surprised at how much of the old scenery has been removed and how little of the old scenery remains. I could be wrong, but I certainly don’t think this will be a case of them reusing pretty much all of the 1992 scenery.
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I don't think Alton Towers would have been bothered if people saw what was coming out of the ride, they were even happy to use old props for parts of scarefest. I certainly don't believe they'd be removing scenes from the ride at night just so people wouldn't see. If you look at the scale of the garden for instance, it would be lorry loads of material if they removed the scene in it's entirety. The ride my well have been finished months ago internally, we have no idea.
 
Matt N said:
the marketing material and overall brand seems quite keen to divorce the ride from its history (the park doesn’t explicitly reference the previous Haunted House on the website or in the ride’s marketing material)
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How would you get this impression with the main theme based on a ghost from the original ride including by name in all the press material?

They are however making a new version of the ride so I agree with you, it could be anywhere between a lot or a little scenery changes but overall a different experience
 
ChristmasPud said:
How would you get this impression with the main theme based on a ghost from the original ride including by name in all the press material?
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Because for all the average guest cares, Emily Alton could be a completely new character based purely on the press material.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I don’t think the website or the descriptions the park have revealed make any strong, explicit reference to The Haunted House or Duel.

I also find it somewhat telling that “The Haunted House” is not in the name like some predicted; even Duel had “The Haunted House Strikes Back” as a suffix, whereas The Curse at Alton Manor does not contain “The Haunted House” at all and doesn’t make any explicit reference that it has anything to do with the previous iterations of the ride.
 
zeock said:
It would be quite a coincidence.
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True, but I don’t remember “Emily Alton” ever being strongly referenced from a guest standpoint within the ride itself.

Other than her fleeting hologram appearance in the queue for the ride, “Emily Alton” didn’t appear within the previous iterations of the ride and wasn’t even referenced in the queue or on the ride. Until I learned more about the lore of the Haunted House while watching this project develop, I never even knew “Emily Alton” was a character associated with the Haunted House…

I think anyone not familiar with the more nuanced lore of the Haunted House could be forgiven for thinking that Emily Alton was a totally new character based on Alton Towers’ press material and her fleeting appearance in the previous iterations of the ride.
 
I'd wager the majority of guests walked straight past the effect without even realising it existed.

Pressing the nostalgia button works very well in media. And they're using some pre-existing 'lore' as much as it was to push it forward.

The marketing doesn't push any 'return' of the character so clearly treating it as something brand new. The name wasn't even mentioned for anyone riding Duel.
 
I don't think Emily Alton was ever truly a character, rather a name used to refer to a particular effect featuring a little girl.
As far as I can see, this is an entirely new storyline that re-uses a name as nothing more than a nod to the very few guests that will understand the reference.
 
Earthwürm said:
I don't think Emily Alton was ever truly a character, rather a name used to refer to a particular effect featuring a little girl.
As far as I can see, this is an entirely new storyline that re-uses a name as nothing more than a nod to the very few guests that will understand the reference.
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It was a true character:
IMG_20230311_132612.jpg
Image found in Smoke and Mirrors, apparently courtesy of Graham Owens, Sparks Creative Services.
However, as you say, Emily Alton could just be an HH Easter egg.
 
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For the average guest, however, this is all very easy stuff to miss. You could easily walk past the painting, and you could easily miss the doll’s house hologram if you weren’t looking for it.

With that in mind, I maintain that to the vast majority of those outside of the enthusiast community, Emily Alton may as well be a totally new character.
 
Matt N said:
For the average guest, however, this is all very easy stuff to miss. You could easily walk past the painting, and you could easily miss the doll’s house hologram if you weren’t looking for it.

With that in mind, I maintain that to the vast majority of those outside of the enthusiast community, Emily Alton may as well be a totally new character.
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Once again, I think we need to step back from this bizarre notion that "average guests" experience theme parks in a totally different way to enthusiasts.

Broadly, the only difference between an "average guest" and an Alton Towers enthusiast is that the average guest does not want to sign up to a forum and discuss hex codes of paint at length. It is a bizarre notion that just because you're not a self-declared enthusiast, you choose to have an entire day out and basically ignore everything around you.

It doesn't really come down to levels of enthusiasm in Alton Tower at all, it comes down to how interested and observant people are. As demonstrated regularly around the forum, there are plenty of 'enthusiasts', who are not very observant when it comes to things around the park and certainly the levels of interest vary dramatically too from topic to topic.

Ultimately, I suspect there is no difference between the percentage of enthusiasts that recognise the name Emily Alton vs. the rest of the park's guests.
 
There is also the chance that people are mistakingly thinking people are un-observent when there is a chance that effects just weren't working when they visited.

I don't think I ever saw the hand in the jar work or the face on the fire place so I could see how people could miss these.
 
I wasn't really talking about the effect, just saying that there is an explicit, deliberate connection to the original ride by using the ghost as the basis for this new theme, even using the name. I wouldnt call that "divorcing" the ride from its past, more like basing it on it.

No she wasn't a character or part of a story, they've made a new one for a new haunted house.

It's probably like a 2023 reboot. You don't have to know the original movie to enjoy a reboot, younger generations may not even know it's a reboot.

So either way it really has no bearing on how much might be retained for the new version.
 
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I mean she was a character in the HH in the sense the creatives at sparks named her as such and there is the stitched panel with her name on. But haunted house didn’t have a story, it was just a laugh in the dark ghost train with a higher budget.

HH didn’t get a story until Duel
 
Dave said:
I mean she was a character in the HH in the sense the creatives at sparks named her as such and there is the stitched panel with her name on. But haunted house didn’t have a story, it was just a laugh in the dark ghost train with a higher budget.

HH didn’t get a story until Duel
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Agreed, but also nothing to do with whether a connection to the original ride is any indication of how much will be kept / removed or whatever.

It is a deliberate connection to the original, but in idea only for all we know.
 
My gut feeling is most of the rides theming has changed. It might reuse some props and walls that existed will have been repainted but I suspect the only scene that might have been mostly preserved is the grand hall.

I have no evidence for that, it’s just the vibe I’m getting.
 
When I think about it, a lot of the HH/Duel scene transitions felt a bit incoherent - sometimes it was hard to tell which part of the 'house' you were in/outside of and how you'd got there - which is fine, it was never supposed to be this rich narrative-driven dark ride experience.

Curse does, however, appear to be aiming more for that feel, which would suggest some more thought going into how the ride flows as a whole. Retaining all the basic scenes from HH and Duel would make it very difficult to tell a story that made any real sense in my opinion.
 
Yes I hope they either keep the wacky factor if reusing all scenes, or redesign everything needed to make the new theme work.
Or you'd end up with a Tomb Blaster 2020 where they've tried (poorly) to tie scenes together that werent meant to be. Im sure they wont be doing that.
 
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