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Charlie & The Chocolate Factory The Ride

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Euro Theme Park Archive

TS Member
This year is the 20th anniversary of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory The Ride and we're producing a feature on the ride's making for Dark Ride Database. It would be super great to hear your memories of the ride and especially if you remember the original version from 2006. It's often not realised the ride had a mini revamp for its second season which changed the soundtrack with different music, some new animations and altered lighting.

So what are your memories of the ride when it opened?
 
The original version can be seen here in this old towers nerd video


From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WHbS5AtSD4


The lighting looks much better and theatrical, and you can hear how they utilised the "zoned" audio to create depth.
The revamp got rid of the oompa loompa songs and made the onboard audio just a truncated version of the theme with more voiceover.
They also added signs between each room to tell you more of the story along with more set decoration in the nut room.
The main change seemed to be to tell more of the story as the original relied on people having prior knowledge of it, hence the signs and the extended pre show describing the characters.

I remember people being disappointed when it first opened and rumours of John Wardley being bought along to give some advice on how to improve it.
 
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I remember at the time of the planning applications going in, the facade was initially going to be very different.

You'd have entered under a chimney stack and the exterior would have had a more realistic brick finish. Alas, we ended up with the cheap looking cartoon finish.

On the whole, it was largely underwhelming and there were far too many static props to really engage people. The lifts were pretty neat though.
 
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All I remember is that I found it pretty boring, but the bouncy lift was pretty decent and was the best bit (for me). I wasn't really the target audience though, being in my 20s at the time. I don't think I really bothered going on it much after that first season to be able to compare.
 
I’m too young to have ridden Toyland Tours or Charlie in 2006, but I rode Charlie as a child in the late 2000s and early 2010s (I first visited in 2009), and I always had a soft spot for it! It was one of me and my mum’s go-to rides while my older sister and my dad rode the big coasters, and we always found it really good fun! I remember there being being lots to look at, and I remember the lift being really good fun!

When I first started reading TS, I was always stunned that the ride got such poor reception. Granted, I never rode Toyland Tours, but my memories of it are roundly very positive!
 
Think it was because of a similar situation in the Bubbleworks retheme.

Interesting takes on themes with dynamic and memorable set pieces replaced with static props and very corporate/cheap feeling attractions.

Music for Charlie slapped way harder than it needed.
 
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