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Drayton Manor Park

Yeah, I followed it closely too, I rode it the day after it opened (it didn't open until the afternoon but when it finally opened there was a huge queue). Personally, as I said, parts of it were awesome such as the indoor bit at the end and the station/queue, but the budget was too small for what it was supposed to be.
They wouldn't of built a coaster there sadly, due to the lakes location.
If the changes I suggested were implemented, don't you think it would be great though?
 
@Sauron97 You followed the construction of Excalibur as a 5 year old?

There are still bits of the Drayton Log Flume rusting away at Flamingo Land.
 
@Rick I did indeed. I was obsessed about Drayton even in Reception, quite sad I know, I used to collect the wristbands and take them in to school :p
Before Excalibur opened, I was entering a bit of a craze about megablocks Dragons, so Excalibur was right up my street, and for ages I'd been watching 'Project Neptune' and seeing the castle go up and the boats arrive so watching the grand opening on an old computer was pretty awesome.
 
Original flume(me on it) if anyone’s interested
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There is actually alot still in place from that pic, the train station, arcade, bumpercars, waterway from main lake, teashop. Nice pic!
 
In no particular order, here are some images I have lying around, these are not my photos, but some from the collection. Enjoy.

Excalibur station overview, before first filling. You can just about make out the blue motors on the station platform that would be covered over. The rotation of the station from the motors is actually what made the whole tow system work. One major issue they had with this ride was having the boats on spring loaded attachements for the rope. Not good when trying to tow a boat through a narrow indoor waterway. Quite a few of the boats were actually scratched quite badly along the sides before the ride even opened.


Excalibur waterfall section construction


Excalibur left side waterfall construction


The waterfall section after the first filling of the lake, notice all the floatsam!


Farmer Dan from Farmer Studios with the captured dragon scene of Excalibur. The black cups on the bottom of the photo are actually where the water level would be, they would sit a few millimeters under the water line and blast compressed air. Giving the illusion of something (such as arrows) being fired into the water. Pirate Adventure had the same effect aswel as Pirates of the Carribean having a slightly more advanced one.


Indoor section of Excalibur prior to scenery, this was the left hand side of the indoor end section. Katana the Dragon would live here, with her fire breathing husband sitting immediatly opposite on the other side of the waterway.


Top of Apocolypse during construction, with Jungle Cruise clearly visible on what would become the Excalibur lake. Aswel as Storm Force 10, which would have been in full swing of construction just 12 more prior to this photo.


Apocolypse machine housing being lifted into place



Again, Apocolypse machine housing being lifted into place. It is actually sitting inside the yet to be built station footprint here. That is where the sit down side resides today, alongside power systems that actually power the huge lifting motors inside the machine house of this Intamin drop tower.



Maelstrom frame during construction (Intamin Gyro Swing)


Jungle Palladium frontage being dismantled to make way for Toonstone, changed to Golden Nuggets during construction. Golden Nuggests uses the same show building as Jungle Palladium, they just built a new frontage.


Golden Nuggets construction


Promo sign for Golden Nuggets, notice the name!
 
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Sorry for triple post. There are more photos nocking about if anyone wants to see more. If a mod wants to merge these, feel free. I could not merge them without it messing up the photos for some reason.

Excalibur official concept which was used to show the park what the attraction would be like. Including the still in production and yet to be finished audio. The layout, general narrative and scene placement are all exact to what would eventually open on the park.


Maelstroms gear box location before it arrived on site.


The gearbox itself, arriving at a farm down the road. The only place they could store it to install electronics. As it is such a big piece of machinery. Notice the 3 light blue cylinders on the left. Where the 3 huge electronic motors that power the ride were to be installed. Which can clearly be seen to this day, on park. The gearbox is sitting flat on the start of the very top of the arm that holds the gondola, the arm would be bolted to the section of the gear box that the gearbox itself is sitting ontop of the lorry on. The flange on the very right of the gearbox, bolts the the flange in the above photo, with the motors facing Storm Force 10 way.
 
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Bloody fantastic pictures right there! Do you remember UDMP? That website had loads of stuff on it from Drayton construction back in the early 2000s. There was another page I found on flickr that was similar, but I can't remember its name.
 
I do, I would suspect lots if not all of these are from UDMP. I manged to grab them years ago before the site went offline. They should be shown, as rightly so they are fantastic pictures. I had the pleasure of being shown around the Excalibur construction site by Farmer Dan at some point myself. Not long before opening. He showed us the Dragon working in the lair. Great stuff.
 
That gearbox is impressive- I have ridden the ride many time but had no idea it was actually that big - it doesn’t seem it
 
These two photos should give you a good idea of scale with the gearbox in situ. You can just about make out ladders around the gearbox, aswel as the motors in place.





Notice the ladders more clearly in this photo, for a better idea of scale. This photo below is taken almost at the same angle the gearbox is sitting on the lorry on.



I will upload some more juicy photos after work at some point this evening. If I get the time.
 
No problem. I love the fact (as this gearbox shows). Rides are some serious pieces of heavy engineering. Not built for a airport baggage handling system or a logistics warehouse, where the reasoning for heavy engineering can be better understood. But serious engineering purely in the pursuit of fun.
 
Yep, it was partially repainted in 2002 I believe alongside the Shockwave station repaint. Only half of it over the lake was done red. I think the other half was 2003/4/5 around the time when Shockwave reached it's 10th birthday; the track for that was repainted blue to celebrate this (which coincidentally also was a half finished job that took a number of years!) .
Does anyone here want Excalibur to return in some form or another? My memories of it when I was young were so good that I couldn't really bear to see that castle torn down.
Also wondering if anyone remembers the issues it had when it first opened. I seem to remember going over a number of weeks when it was supposed to be opening to be let down by the 'closed for maintenance' sign at the entrance. When I look back on it now as someone less naive, I guess that was a sign for worse things to come! Also another important point, I don't believe this feature lasted longer than the first few weeks of opening in 2003, but I'm pretty sure Farmer Studios used an automatic sliding door (a little like the one they used in the Stormforce 10 launch) at the end of the Dragon Manor building. It made the final scene so much better/darker. I'm sure you understand what I'm talking about @DistortAMG , and I was wondering if you knew why they removed it so quickly.
All I can say is, it really doesn't deserve to be left as a pink Christmas tower. If they could make it a watercoaster, where drops and anything that will produce screams are indoors, and everything else outdoors, I think Drayton would have a family winner on their hands. If this is not possible, keep it as a tow boat, but just improve the theming and save up for it over a while to ensure that no areas are less themed than others.
 
Yep, it used to be white / grey. More greyish than white I think. I will see if I can fish any pictures out later, not sure if I have any.

The end of Excalibur indeed did have a door similar to Storm Force 10. It did work longer than the first few weeks. It worked for a few years at least. Intermittently though.

A few of the main issues that Excalibur had;

This tow boat ride as a lot do, use a spring loaded mechanism to connect the boat to the towing cable. This spring loaded action would give undesired results when the boats used to turn a corner. The boat could stretch further or less on the spring depending on the weight of the boat. Resulting in movement that was slightly different from boat to boat. This is perfectly fine when navigating a lake with lots of space. But when trying to navigate narrow waterways like the indoor section, this used to make the boats scrape the sides quite a bit.

The boats had a tendency to come loose from the tow rope more frequently than you would expect for whatever reason.

The scenery and mechanical theming within the lakes used to break down quite a lot and got into a bad state very quickly after opening. As would anything left in untreated water over a summer period when the lake was full. This led to increased maintenance or the effects just not working leading to a reduced experience. Plus, motor boats having to be deployed to maintain some of the effects in the summer season when the lake was full, leading to a practicality issue. While the lake wasn't too deep, it was uneven in places and quite muddy.

The rides audio was all played in the boats locally. IR emitters were placed around the lake on poles positioned to be received by IR emitters in the starboard bow of each boat. This would trigger the onboard MP3 to play a certain audio file corresponding to the scene in which the boat was at. Each audio file was timed almost spot on for the scene, so that as the ride went around there was almost no interruption of audio. If the boat failed to trigger a scene audio or the boats stopped, a default backing track with a 'please remain seated' voice over was played. In theory it worked fine, in reality it did not work as well. The IR sensors had to be aligned quite specifically to trigger, small changes in water level would nock this system off and sometimes fail to trigger anything. Also sometimes they wouldn't trigger scenes for no apparent reason, leaving big gaps in the narrative. The boats audio systems were powered by car batteries and broke over time. Probably from being left out in the elements all year. With no audio, half the ride was lost as you had no story what so ever. This system was possibly the best they could use in 2003 in regards to having an audio system outdoors on a ride, without disturbing the locals who are very close to this lake.

These are some of the major issues I remember the ride having. A combination of all of these led could be why they ultimately decided to close the ride, as no proper solution was ever found to any of these issues.

Quick picture you've seen a few posts before, with the IR transmitters circled, that used to trigger a receiver on the boat and trigger a specific audio file from the onboard MP3, these poles, all looking the same were placed at strategic locations around the ride.
 
I don't want to stomp on anyone's dewy-eyed nostalgia, but Excalibur was an absolutely bizarre investment and terribly executed, as is detailed in-depth in the post above. Why they felt the park needed another family boat ride alongside the one next door that they could barely maintain as it was, I'll never know. They also hyped the ride massively, which obviously didn't pay off at all. On the other hand, it did have some nice bits of theming, as was true with all the Farmer-led investments at DMP.
 
I only rode Excalibur a few times, but I'm pretty sure the default "please remain seated" audio was the only thing I heard on one of those rides!

Whoever thought it was a good idea to rely on IR triggers outside, in daylight needs a good slap.
 
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