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[2023] The Curse at Alton Manor

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RIPCorky said:
When everything was working it was a world class dark ride. Same with Toy Land Tours, why do they let these cherished rides get into such a state of disrepair then have to remove them for something crap?
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Budgets get cut, broken things end up being put on a priority list, more things break as repair jobs are rushed through or ignored as not a priority, ride ends up in an awful state, park will only give budget if made into something new to market.

Simply put that the UK parks do not seem to prioritise keeping effects in good working condition anymore. Hence we get simple effects such as the TVs on Wickerman and even THEN they break fairly regularly.

Basic cutting corners business strategy.
 
Trooper Looper said:
Link? I looked on the website and it just read the average 'Property Repossessed' info.
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There was a link in this thread not sure how far back but it was an article, not the website. Not sure where it’s come from that it’s on the Alton towers website (unless of course I’m being blind and can’t see it)
 
Merlin will market this as a new attraction and I guess the new park maps have been approved with the new names and the new ride line up and they be going to the printers soon.
 
rob666 said:
keep hearing how good Toyland Tours was.
I know I was hardly the age target at the time, but the younger kids I was with didn't really rate it at the time.
Not in the same league as the original Haunted House, by a very long way.
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There was something going on in every scene, from an engineering point of view it was impressive. The scale of the sets were probably the largest in the UK at the time. It's more what they replaced it with to be honest
 
rob666 said:
I thought they had scrapped the maps?
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Sorry didn’t know I not had 1 in years but thought all parks still had them as I know was handed them at Drayton Manor and the parks we visited in Devon. Even the tourist maps you get at Service stations can’t be cheap to produce.
Leek signs will soon be producing the new signage for the park maps.
Anyway I wonder if the whole of the extended queue will be reused?
Be good if there was new tombstones made as a tribute to the original Haunted house.
 
Benzin said:
Hence we get simple effects such as the TVs on Wickerman and even THEN they break fairly regularly.
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Those LED screens probably cost more than any single effect on all other major coasters in the park and have been replaced several times to improve the effect and keep it maintainable. It's now looking the best it ever did. Nothing to do with budget cuts in that case.
the horrendous lab finale, which are all pretty much funfair quality.
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The set was actually good and detailed, but the effects in that area were incredibly poor.
 
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NoSmoking said:
Those LED screens probably cost more than any single effect on all other major coasters in the park and have been replaced several times to improve the effect and keep it maintainable. Nothing to do with budget cuts.


The set was actually good and detailed, but the effects in that area were incredibly poor.
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Definitely. Don't get me wrong, the set pieces were good undoubtedly, but the effects and moving props they used were just funfair quality. I think most of the other effects in the rest of the ride are still really good, same with their high quality props, but they seriously need to be fixed and maintained to get operating back into quicker movements, but some things like the giant spider is probably unfixable and that's probably being scrapped.
 
RIPCorky said:
There was something going on in every scene, from an engineering point of view it was impressive. The scale of the sets were probably the largest in the UK at the time. It's more what they replaced it with to be honest
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I would have to disagree. Pirate Adventure at Drayton Manor Park had sets that were much large in terms of scale, way larger in fact. The Battle and Town scenes were huge, lots moving and lots going on.

I am really keen to see what changes to sets have been made in Duel 2 or whatever we call it, but if we are talking in size and scale. I guess Duel would have taken the crown as having the largest sets once Pirate Adventure closed.
 
DistortAMG said:
I would have to disagree. Pirate Adventure at Drayton Manor Park had sets that were much large in terms of scale, way larger in fact. The Battle and Town scenes were huge, lots moving and lots going on.

I am really keen to see what changes to sets have been made in Duel 2 or whatever we call it, but if we are talking in size and scale. I guess Duel would have taken the crown as having the largest sets once Pirate Adventure closed.
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Pirate adventure definitely had the larger scenes, which I loved! But the HH had the larger individual props, in which I think made it feel huge. Both feel huge in different ways. Purate Adventure had more props and space, while The Haunted House had the larger moving scener and props, though having set pieces not as big as compared to Pirate Adventures. Pirate Adventure was big, but the HH felt big.
 
DistortAMG said:
I would have to disagree. Pirate Adventure at Drayton Manor Park had sets that were much large in terms of scale, way larger in fact. The Battle and Town scenes were huge, lots moving and lots going on.

I am really keen to see what changes to sets have been made in Duel 2 or whatever we call it, but if we are talking in size and scale. I guess Duel would have taken the crown as having the largest sets once Pirate Adventure closed.
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I was more referring to the moving things rather than the sizes of the actual "rooms" The elephant for example, was there anything as big moving in pirate adventure?
 
RIPCorky said:
I was more referring to the moving things rather than the sizes of the actual "rooms" The elephant for example, was there anything as big moving in pirate adventure?
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There is an elephant in Duel? I guess in that respect yeah, some of the animations were certainly larger in Duel. I guess in a supernatural setting, you have the ability to make larger than life prop pieces and still have them hold up as being 'correct'. When you are building something that partially mimics real life you have to abide by the laws of scale.

That said, the battle scene, with the castle, animated cannons, water blasts and a huge ship full of animated pirates combinate to result in one very large animated scene, but made of smaller parts. With the Haunted House, you had some large moving set pieces such as the demons near the start and the face at the end of the tunnel. Both impressive in their own rights. I will be really impressed to see more animation added back to the attraction, but the reality is, physically animated figures and effects are resource heavy in terms of maintenance and upkeep. I am sure Alton Towers would be wanting to have as maintenance free effects as reasonably possible without being too negative on the ride experience. We will see very soon I guess.
 
Danscott22 said:
I’m not really sure what else is needed to totally convince people.
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Patience - that’s what. There’s circa 2 months to go until the park reopens and possibly longer until “this house” does. So damn difficult to speculate without any hard evidence. A sign being removed doesn’t necessarily prove the name has gone.
Trooper Looper said:
Link? I looked on the website and it just read the average 'Property Repossessed' info.
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On the photo update from Saturday, go to the bottom of the page and read where it’s titled “Stick with TowersStreet”. You’ll notice the return of Duel links to this topic.
 
RyanUK said:
Patience - that’s what. There’s circa 2 months to go until the park reopens and possibly longer until “this house” does. So damn difficult to speculate without any hard evidence. A sign being removed doesn’t necessarily prove the name has gone.

On the photo update from Saturday, go to the bottom of the page and read where it’s titled “Stick with TowersStreet”. You’ll notice the return of Duel links to this topic.
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While the name being gone is not 100% confirmed, I think that the evidence we have ("the Duel is over", for one, as well as Mark Fisher stating that the 2023 ride would be "more like the original Haunted House", amongst others) strongly infers that the ride will not be named Duel in 2023 and that the blasters will not be returning.

Personally, I will be phenomenally surprised if the ride reopens with the name Duel and the blasters return. There are very few known certainties with this project, but I'm 99.9% certain that the Duel name and the blasters are not returning based on the evidence we have.

It should also be noted that TowersStreet is a 100% unofficial fansite. TowersStreet referring to this project as "the return of Duel" means absolutely nothing; I imagine the team referred to it as that simply because most enthusiasts (who are ultimately the core demographic of the site) know that this project is a refurbishment of Duel. I wouldn't read too much into what TowersStreet calls it seeing as TowersStreet is not officially affiliated with Alton Towers in any way.
 
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DistortAMG said:
There is an elephant in Duel? I guess in that respect yeah, some of the animations were certainly larger in Duel. I guess in a supernatural setting, you have the ability to make larger than life prop pieces and still have them hold up as being 'correct'. When you are building something that partially mimics real life you have to abide by the laws of scale.

That said, the battle scene, with the castle, animated cannons, water blasts and a huge ship full of animated pirates combinate to result in one very large animated scene, but made of smaller parts. With the Haunted House, you had some large moving set pieces such as the demons near the start and the face at the end of the tunnel. Both impressive in their own rights. I will be really impressed to see more animation added back to the attraction, but the reality is, physically animated figures and effects are resource heavy in terms of maintenance and upkeep. I am sure Alton Towers would be wanting to have as maintenance free effects as reasonably possible without being too negative on the ride experience. We will see very soon I guess.
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He is referring to Toyland Tours
 
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