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Altons reliance on 'dark' themed areas

Ben

Ben

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While having a think about Alton tonight I deducted there are 9 areas to the park:

Towers Street
Mutiny Bay
Katanga Canyon
Gloomy Wood
Forbidden Valley
Dark Forest
The Towers
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Cbeebies Land + Sonic

so remove the 'youngster' areas: Cbeebies, and Cloud Cuckoo Land and also Towers Street as it has no rides. You are left with:
5 areas, of which the predominance of each area is of a dark nature.

Mutiny Bay is not a dark area, but its generic pirates - you probably could argue it is dark, but I think its more jovial in its existence so Ive not included it.
Katanga Canyon - again isnt a dark area, its a hidden African continent with a couple of rides.

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So lets move on:

'Gloomy Wood' - not to be confused with Dark Forest (-eh)
In its time a 'one ride' area focused on a haunted house, its become more than that due to the opening of Haunted Hollow *shudder* and certainly doesn't seem as remote as it originally should have been.
Anyway, it is intended to be an essentially spooky and grim area.

'Forbidden Valley'
You've got a monster, who fought people and was chained down - it chucked bits of fighting equipment around the local area. Recently there was a whole ride based on the egg discovery of this monster. Its all pretty nasty stuff!
Yes Air is there, but the horrificness of the bad theming and 'car park view' and the fact it doesn't really belong makes it worse.
Theres no glimmer of hope there!

'Dark Forest' - not Gloomy Wood.
Enter this dark woodland area... well apart from its surprisingly open and light. Whatever.
The 2 rides here are about fighting either a force and escaping at speed (to where you start from). Or one where some unexplained hooded figures make you drop into a crypt, but no reason why. Anyway theres clearly meant to be some sort of nastiness.
So the wood forest is evil!

'The Towers'
Well we all know how well they are looked after.
Anyway Hex is there. Again evil trees. I find a theme here!
Trees in Towers are EVIL.

'X-Sector'
Some evil company, we aren't even sure who anymore - has planned rides to test how well your body can cope under duress. The company is hidden, its all done to observe you - its all very Orwellian and cloak / dagger.
So yeah, nasty men!

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Over half of Altons areas have an 'evil' 'nasty' theme - and thats excluding the family areas!

Are alton too reliant on things being bad? Why can't we have something more original and different. I mean in one park we have 2 bad woodland areas, neither of which has a good story.

Lets look at some well executed themes elsewhere (IP mentioned if needed):
Super Heros (IOA) - IP
Old Cartoons (IOA) - IP
Dinosaurs (IOA) - IP - but could be done without
Mystical Greek (IOA)
Princess / Medieval - (Disney) - easy with no IP
Old Hollywood (DHS, UST, etc) - no IP needed
Film Studio (US, USH, UST, etc) - no IP needed

I just don't get why Alton / Merlin Studios have never expanded their base to something abit more lively, interesting and different.

My last visit we spent most of our time in the more thrill-seeker areas, and didn't touch Katange or Mutiny Bay and and I left feeling rather crap about the whole visit. On reflection it wasn't that I didn't have a good time or have a bad ride count, but that I never experienced any joy or fun or humour in my visit.
It was (intentionally) drab area and dark themed rides.


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Am I alone in this?
 
If you look at all of Merlin's 'thrill' projects then you'll see that they pretty much all (with the exception of one or two projects) have incredibly dark themes. To me, this indicates that Merlin lack the imagination to come up with a different theme for a thrill ride.

You can look around the world and you can see that there are plenty of thrilling rides that do not rely on a dark theme to make them scary-Gatekeeper is a recent example of this. Heck, even Air (at a push) is an example of this too (even if it was not Merlin in charge at the time).

I'm hoping that the next secret weapon is a brighter theme and, if it's situated on the Air car park, then it creates a whole oasis like that which Air was meant to create to not only fit Air in properly but also prove that Merlin can create a thrilling and scary ride without the need of a dark and quite frankly depressing theme.

Maybe we'll see a project from Merlin in the next couple of years that proves us wrong in the sense that they do have the creativity and imagination to come up with a unique theme of a roller coaster that is 'bright' and vivid for once!
 
i kind of like the fact that Alton towers is the dark alternative to disney and feel it fits the theme with the towers in the background what i would like to see is them go even darker and push the envelope of what is acceptable
 
I agree tbh, there are a lot.

I think one or two work, like FV, although it does have Air in the back, it does work unlike most of the other themes. (the Air problem could be fixed if they built another ride and FV was separated from Air and the new ride)

I do believe that Gloomy Wood has had it's time, it's not atmospheric and doesn't attract much attention. I believe that Gloomy could have a total retheme, and then they could add a real back story to dark forest.

Then if they properly added the MOJ theme to the whole of X-Sector, then I believe that would be it for 'dark' themes, although, Hex works perfectly :)

Although it would keep the 'dark' theme, it would feel a lot better than it is now, and as areas come and go, they could change the theme of each area (look at Ug Land for example ;))

chris556 said:
i kind of like the fact that Alton towers is the dark alternative to disney and feel it fits the theme with the towers in the background what i would like to see is them go even darker and push the envelope of what is acceptable
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I also agree with that tbh, although it is a 'family' park, the themes do give a good contrast to what other 'family' parks are doing.
 
jackandylan123 said:
Then if they properly added the MOJ theme to the whole of X-Sector, then I believe that would be it for 'dark' themes, although, Hex works perfectly :)
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Yep, because nothing says 'dark' like plastic vinyls and painted spirals. :S
 
CoasterCrazyChris said:
jackandylan123 said:
Then if they properly added the MOJ theme to the whole of X-Sector, then I believe that would be it for 'dark' themes, although, Hex works perfectly :)
Click to expand...

Yep, because nothing says 'dark' like plastic vinyls and painted spirals. :S
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lol, if they tell the story of MOJ well in queues and stuff, I'm sure it would seem quite dark ;)
 
If you look at other parks, you can see that a thrill ride doesn't have to be dark. Just coming back from a trip at Europa, most of their top rides are the complete opposite:

Silver Star is a racing car themed ride.

Blue Fire is themed around some sort of problem with what I can only assume is a Gazprom (I guess they are dark) power facility.

Wodan is themed around Nordic gods and their power, but its not done in a dark manor.

EuroSat and Euro Mir are both fairly big rides at the park still and both of them are themed around space in a comical way.

None of those rides have a dark theme and I think Merlin really need to start looking at other themes other than is dark and scary, it's what teenagers want.
 
This topic is interesting because I was wondering something very similar not long ago. The thing is a lot of recent ride projects at Merlin parks are either "dark/frightening" for thrill attractions or "bright/quirky" for family attractions, but it should never be so black and white.

Theme concepts were something I think Alton Towers got right during the 90s, as many of their rides were built to be imposing and sometimes sinister, but there was always a human charisma underneath. However, over time these area themes have become either diluted through alterations or just appear run down aesthetically, meaning less guests actually feel that underlying charm. It's easy to think somebody would visit Alton Towers these days and just get tired of all the "fear" and "darkness", whereas when these areas were new they were bolder and exciting.

Gloomy Wood, for example, was an area that loved to surprise you. Despite the "gloomy" exterior of the Haunted House and its grounds, once inside you'd find yourself lost amongst visual gags and energetic synth music in a kind of surreal ghoul house. It was intended to be vastly different from the unfortunately similarly-named Dark Forest; an area which really has no personality or humour at all as it stands.

Nemesis is a mean and nasty ride today: it looks quite ugly, sounds ferocious and has scraggly trees growing from every crevice. It's easy to think of it as dark. This is not helped by Nemesis Sub-Terra, which tries its best to scare you when the Nemesis legend was never intended to be a horror story.

However looking at pictures and bits of Nemesis-lore from when it opened, Forbidden Valley looks almost enchanting and mythical. Those stone monoliths following the path to Nemesis' entrance in a kind of Stonehenge ritual, of which few remain. The freshly quarried rock looked like the set of some dodgy 70s British sic-fi programme, but is now covered almost entirely by weeds. Along with the grand music, it all feels much more cerebral than just plain "apocalyptic devastation".

X Sector is one of the hardest areas to nail down because it was left unexplained for a reason. Unfortunately many of the clever hints and suggestions were altered quite soon after its opening season, meaning for a long time X Sector was perhaps too vague to mean anything to the average guest! It was sinister and forbidden, yes, but took the persona of an ultra-cool high tech organisation once you got inside. That's why I'm so glad The Smiler, despite all its flaws, finds a bizarre niche between euphoria and evil rather than just being drab, decayed and 'dark' like those original plans suggested. That would have made X Sector such a horrible place to be and the exact opposite of its original intentions.

Overall I think Alton Towers was very clever with how it created feelings of amazement and excitement amongst fearsome ideas, in its own unique style. If it tried to scare you, there would always be a youthful sense of entertainment to it. However I don't really trust Merlin Studios with coming up with such clever ride concepts anymore, judging by all the nasty 'destruction' themes at Thorpe Park and inability to create anything truly charismatic in the last decade. I mean, one of the proposed ideas for SW7 was a 'clowns of death' theme to replace Katanga Canyon... whaT? Alton Towers should focus on re-injecting charm into its classic areas rather than overpopulating the place with horror!
 
It's an interesting one. I do agree that Alton relies on the dark, sinister style themes a little too much, considering when you look at other parks around the world and see how they handle their thrill rides.

However, Alton has very much always had a style of its own if you ask me. Ok, so Dark Forest certainly not as much, but generally speaking take Gloomy Wood/Haunted House, Forbidden Valley/Nemesis, and X-Sector/Smiler & Oblivion. They all have their own little twists to them which in my opinion makes them so quintessentially Alton Towers rides. They're all wonderfully over the top, to the point I'd say they're all rather camp! It's this that makes Alton's finer ride stand out in the crowd if you ask me. They manage to convey a dark and sinister theme whilst at the same time having a lot of fun and being incredibly tongue-in-cheek about it (The Smiler is perhaps the epitome of this!).

Unfortunately, a lot of this was lost, especially in Dark Forest, with both Rita and Th13teen trying for a very loose dark theme, but ultimately falling rather flat on their faces because both fail to deliver any substance in the theme department. I wouldn't be sad to see the back of a dark theme to these rides in favour of something new, as they both flop when placed besides the other Secret Weapon Coasters (Bar Air) at the park. Virtually any theme could be made to work as long as it's well thought out, so these both would be the perfect chance to explore something new. It would probably result in a lot of work, given how much Th13teen is integrated into its theming with the crypt and whatnot, but there's certainly no lack of potential.

So my opinion in short? I'd have no problem with them ripping the weaker, dark thrill themes out (Rita and Th13teen) and then look at taking a new approach to them. But, I wouldn't have our primary quality attractions (Nemmy, Blivvy, Smiler, Duel/Haunted House) any other way. It's these attractions which really define Alton for me :)
 
Alton Towers is in some dark woods on the land of an old gothic manor. It'd be weird if the themes weren't 'dark'.
 
Not every thrill area should be themed towards something dark. Look at Chessington's rameses revenge, a thrill ride for teens yet set in a calm, acient land with a moderately relxed theme.
 
But Chessington isn't meant to be a darkly themed park, it's a 'world of adventures'... Of course Samurai was rather the complete opposite of this, and always felt imposing and menacing when on park...

As mentioned, Towers' location and the building itself lend to something a bit more darker and mysterious... Not something of course brought out in Dark Forest but still, it's all about how the park wishes to present itself...

That being said, it does appear that Merlin love a good dark theme... Have they added anything to any of their parks that's completely nice without dark undertones that hasn't been linked to an IP? Says a fair amount about their imagination...
 
Alton Towers might have ruins and stuff, but that doesn't mean everything has to be dark. Remember the magic years? They were fun and didn't rely purely on dark themes.
 
Toyland Tours? Are we not forgetting that beauty of a bright theme?!

Ian and electricBlll have summed upo the themes of the areas nicely. Alton Towers has undoubtedly got its own 'touch' when it comes to dark themes. They are not so much dark, they can be quite comical, magical and do feel like another world. What seems like a dark theme isn't dark at all, you experience it and realise just how wonderful it is.

Air was a massive missed opportunity for Alton. Imagine it as the paradise at the end of Forbidden Valley. Tranquil music plays throughout the bottom end of the area, palm trees dominate the area, blue swirls on the floor, waterfalls bombarding the area (I know they were originally planned)... it had the potential to be very over the top and dramatic. If they mixed in those extra elements with the already existing architecture I feel it could have been one of the greatest themes created by Alton. Air feels far too much as an add-on ride in the area. The tranquil world of Air does not feel distinct enough from the dark world of Forbidden Valley.

The best dark theme by Merlin is The Smiler. It is very unique and much like themes of the 90s it is not a dark, depressing theme as such. You just look at it and know it belongs at Alton Towers. It does have its flaws although out of all the ride and attractions of the past few years it does prove that there is some form of creativity that still exists out there. I think Candy and co deserve a lot of praise for what they created for The Smiler and I hope they continue to create better and greater things with the save level of creativity with future Alton Towers creations.

Dark Forest is a big problem area. A loose theme that makes no sense. The fact that the name of the area implies quite a harsh theme yet when you enter the area it's anything but dark. Dark Forest was a massive chance for Alton Towers to change the face and look of it - and they messed it up.

Bright themes can work, as long as the creative brains are there to realise it within the Alton Towers setting. Air is an example of something that could have been pretty unique although never came to happen. I hope that doesn't put off Merlin Studios creating a bright theme in future as I'm sure they would be very capable of it.
 
James said:
Air was a massive missed opportunity for Alton. Imagine it as the paradise at the end of Forbidden Valley. Tranquil music plays throughout the bottom end of the area, palm trees dominate the area, blue swirls on the floor, waterfalls bombarding the area (I know they were originally planned)... it had the potential to be very over the top and dramatic. If they mixed in those extra elements with the already existing architecture I feel it could have been one of the greatest themes created by Alton. Air feels far too much as an add-on ride in the area. The tranquil world of Air does not feel distinct enough from the dark world of Forbidden Valley.
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Somewhere very deep inside me I hope that they will do a Disney-esque modification of Air, and do what you've suggested.
 
James said:
It does have its flaws although out of all the ride and attractions of the past few years it does prove that there is some form of creativity that still exists out there. I think Candy and co deserve a lot of praise for what they created for The Smiler and I hope they continue to create better and greater things with the save level of creativity with future Alton Towers creations.
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I wonder if The Smiler really was managed by Candy and Co. I know it was a Merlin Studios project, but there seemed to be some new faces working behind the scenes during the promotional run (that Rob guy?).

Plus it seems totally out of character for Merlin Studios to conceive such a bombastic, confident theme that can be interpreted in a number of different ways and is actually exciting, rather than their usual straightforward and lacklustre ideas! I'm not suggesting Candy & Co aren't capable of getting it right - that's debatable since most of the same team were involved in Nemesis and Oblivion, I believe - but there has certainly been a positive change.

Of course these ride projects are not hemmed by one leading creative anymore, certainly not like John Wardley's role in the late 80s. Nor is it ever just one studio working on the project at a time (it's much less expensive and probably more efficient to commission specialist firms for each department - scenic design, scenic construction, graphics, music, lighting, etc). So there could be a number of reasons why The Smiler turned out better.

Of course people could also argue it turned out worse, in terms of planning! But there was clearly a lot more energy put into the ride than most Merlin-penned roller coasters.
 
I believe the concept of The Smiler was created by Candy. Herself and John worked together to create the 'fake' plans initially seen by us lot and used as a cover up of the real plans. Things such as the visuals for the indoor queue (the projection mapping) were created by an external company - and obviously all of us know the audio and videos around the ride were created externally too. The Marmaliser was designed and created by Merlin Studios.

I personally think we can trust Candy in charge. I know she has created several unique concepts for Towers. Although much like the countless of other concepts created since the park was conceived they get shelved and never see the light of day. But I'd keep an eye out with her involvement with Towers over the coming years. She seems to be a pretty creative person and probably most worth of replacing Wardley's role.
 
Either way she certainly looked rather chuffed with it on opening day :p
 
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