It's a hard question to answer. I'm a marketer's worst nightmare. I admire the art of marketing, as the subject matter has interested me since I was kid, but that means I see it in a different light and I'm not easily swayed by it.
Besides I was an extremely busy person in 2009 and 2010, having 2 babies, changing jobs, moving twice, opening a new store, having a few financial difficulties etc. Towers was just an annual visit at Scarefest and I knew almost nothing of Thirteen untill I rode it. So I had no marketing fed expectations going in, I just knew that Towers had got rid of Corkscrew and built a new coaster. That's pretty much it. I certainly didn't have time for daytime telly.
I loved Ug Land, and Festival Park before it. So the first disappointment came as soon I entered the area. Awful area layout, now all grim and incoherent. Grey paint over prehistoric theming, all other theming removed completely. Rita now looked even more silly. Sited next to real gothic buildings, they decided to build a faux one for the station? A Dark Forest, in a park with a Gloomy Wood, a Haunted Hollow, and a ride next door themed around heritage and a haunted tree. With a restaurant called Woodcutters in-between, was this all now part of the same area? What a mess. How many more haunted woodland themes does one park need? I didn't understand why Teddy Bears Picnic was being played, but I warmed to it quickly.
It all seemed to have a graveyard style feel and the entrance portal looked fine, but what does a shipping container have to do with anything? Looking at these wraith style figures, I was expecting to see more of them in the queue. There's not much forest taking over anywhere, as the area clearly wasn't designed that way, and the queue line is boring. It's just a van and some trees. They clearly wanted to use the woodland setting of the ride itself as a feature, nothing wrong with that as it's a pretty area, but tucked away like that the incoherence not only poorly bleeds into an area not designed that way, but seems to limp on poorly outside of it.
I didn't mind the look of the building, but always assumed the scaffolding was due to it not being finished. It's not until you get closer you realise it's supposed to be there. Some sort of Hex discovery and restoration vibe going on? Inside I liked it, and still do. The Tesla coil caught me by suprise. Like many Wardley classics, it's just there for the hell of it. There's no need for silly app descriptions about a 'lord of darkness', military goons running around panicking, or shipping containers spoonfeeding back story. There's the presence of some creepy girl, some branches engulfing stuff, some wriaths and a Tesla coil, and there's no reason for any of it, which is great! No nonsense story or anything like that.
I wasn't disappointed at all that it's a family coaster. Looking at those trains it was quite obvious this wasn't some thrill machine. Without any marketing fed to me beforehand, it's fine to theme a family coaster this way, if the park didn't have a plethora of similar themes already that is.
I was sat near the back for the first ride and being dragged over the crest of the lift hill down into that steeper than you expect first drop was great. But what followed was pretty boring in regard to the outdoor layout. Nothing else happens. But loved the show building, the surprise drop, and the shooting out backwards afterwards. It's a great element, very well engineered, and overall very well done. It's easy to look at it differently now the element of surprise has gone, but it really was an excellent experience when you didn't know what was coming. The air cannons, the lights, the theming, the floor boards creaking, the pre-drop, the falling backwards not knowing where you're going. Fantastic stuff. Taking people in it for the first time is still enjoyable to see their reactions.
I suppose my lasting impression of it is that it's a ride that has brilliant features, and I can see what they were going for. It's a welcome addition and families love it. But you can tell where the focus and money went, it feels unfinished and, like Rita before it, is a perfect example of how a single standalone attraction can ruin the area around it. If Rita killed off Ugland, Thirteen killed off Dark Forest before it even began because they never properly considered what to do with the area it sits in. A bit like how Forbidden Valley seems to have been infected with the theme of Sub-Terra, how Wickerman towers above the Rapids now, placing the Smiler queue entrance half way down an already thin and congested main pathway, or whatever the hell is going on with that Walliams Cuckoo Dungeon mess.
The legacy of the focus on the element itself rather than the overall attraction as a whole is now more obvious that ever. The USP is still great, does what it's intended to do, and seems reliable. But the lack of attention given to the bread and butter stuff seems to be quite staggering. It turns out that the outdoor layout, which just seems to serve the purpose of getting you from the station to the drop track, isn't just boring, but is poorly designed. Should that not have been the easy bit? It's so poorly designed that it spent a good while not being able to operate in the rain (in the UK no less!), needs a second lift hill to get it into the show building, and necessitated to retrofitting of an anti-rollback and trims. What were why thinking?
