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Duel: The Haunted House Actually Strikes Back - Refurb Incoming

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Trooper Looper said:
Well, let's just hope we see some familiar faces (preferably former Spark team mambers) around Duel soon. Wasn't John Burton also around Nemesis with John Wardley as well before the retrack was announced?
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Supposedly mate, I definitely knew John Wardley was around as it was all over Facebook :tearsofjoy:
Guess we will see, but Duel definitely needs some TLC soon, with new carpets at least.
 
Whilst my nostalgia for HH has deteriorated with what I've seen the ride become to the point I think this sacred cow could well be put out of its misery now for all I care, I'd hate yet another crappy IP shoved inside Duel. GG, fine. Put another Walliams IP in Charlie and the theatre, ok with me. Cbeebies was probably a good choice. But Duel as well? I think the park will loose yet another piece of what makes it what it is. What next, an IP for Hex? The Rapids?

And I don't think that Jumanji ride in Gardaland looks good at all. It looks like another decent ride "for Merlin". Like that's become acceptable. Because the bar has been set so low, the fact that it's not as crappy as some would naturally expect doesn't make it a good ride. It looks screen and vinyl heavy. Granted I haven't ridden it, but I can't say anything about it makes me want to visit.

That's not to say that IP's are always bad. They just seem to be shoehorned in as an excuse to invest in anything. Why do original attractions have to be left to rot until an IP deal is signed? Why can't a decent investment be made and marketed on its own merits?
 
Matt.GC said:
Whilst my nostalgia for HH has deteriorated with what I've seen the ride become to the point I think this sacred cow could well be put out of its misery now for all I care, I'd hate yet another crappy IP shoved inside Duel. GG, fine. Put another Walliams IP in Charlie and the theatre, ok with me. Cbeebies was probably a good choice. But Duel as well? I think the park will loose yet another piece of what makes it what it is. What next, an IP for Hex? The Rapids?

And I don't think that Jumanji ride in Gardaland looks good at all. It looks like another decent ride "for Merlin". Like that's become acceptable. Because the bar has been set so low, the fact that it's not as crappy as some would naturally expect doesn't make it a good ride. It looks screen and vinyl heavy. Granted I haven't ridden it, but I can't say anything about it makes me want to visit.

That's not to say that IP's are always bad. They just seem to be shoehorned in as an excuse to invest in anything. Why do original attractions have to be left to rot until an IP deal is signed? Why can't a decent investment be made and marketed on its own merits?
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Outside of Roller Coasters, Merlin haven't made any original or non IP based rides for ages now. If this ride does become an IP, it shows how little they actually care about what guests and fans really want, excluding Nemesiss retrack.
 
Trooper Looper said:
Outside of Roller Coasters, Merlin haven't made any original or non IP based rides for ages now. If this ride does become an IP, it shows how little they actually care about what guests and fans really want, excluding Nemesiss retrack.
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Guests and "fans" aren't always the same. Ask a lot of guests what they would prefer a new Jumanji (or ghostbusters) ride or a new haunted house and most would pick the one based on a film as they are familiar with the film.

Its also not just Merlin doing this, when was the last time Disney made a ride not based on a film? I think it was Expedition Everest. Could you see Disney building a Haunted Mansion now without adding a film IP?
 
I wouldn’t be so sure that guests don’t want IPs. Rightly or wrongly, I think people do like familiar brands within theme parks these days, and IPs do tend to pull people more than originally themed attractions of the same vein.

I know this is an extreme example, but take The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, for instance. Had Islands of Adventure built a generic magic-themed land of the same quality, I’d wager that it would have been nowhere near as successful. People don’t visit that land because it’s well themed and has quality attractions, people visit because it’s themed to Harry Potter.

Citing some less extreme examples; Thomas Land at Drayton Manor. Or Peppa Pig World at Paultons Park. Or Saw The Ride at Thorpe Park. Or CBeebies Land at Alton Towers. Or Gruffalo at Chessington. These were all big successes (TL and PPW arguably made their respective parks, Saw increased Thorpe attendance quite substantially and has been hailed as one of Merlin’s biggest successes, CBeebies is certainly proving very lucrative for Towers, and Gruffalo has quite a big pull among young families from what I can gather; I certainly remember it being cited as a big success), and I’d wager that none of these attractions would have had the same degree of success had they been originally themed and built to the same quality. And while TWODW’s success is yet to be determined, that appeared to be following the same pattern; it appeared quite popular on my visits to the park last year.

My basic point is; I don’t think the average guest cares about whether or not a ride is IP-based if the ride is good, and in many cases, an IP can even make guests care about the attraction more than they would if it were originally themed.
 
pluk said:
You are mistaking what yourself and a few geeks might want with what the public will respond well to.
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Fair enough, I just see a lot of the General Public actually enjoying Duel a lot, even though it rarely has a queue above 10 minutes outside of Scarefest. From many of the non Enthusiast Vlogs at the Park, the people who ride Duel never seem to complain about it, so it would be stupid for Merlin to give it a complete retheme if The GP isn't complaining about the rides current state.

What's even weirder to me, is I remember a post on this Thread a while ago by @Squiggs mentioning that Duels reception wasn't all that bad publicly because of the lack the of Internet access, when in actuallity, most people, Enthusiasts and GP didn't like the Refurb of the Haunted House to Duel, but nowadays, there seems to be little to no criticism of it outside of Enthusiast media, given the fact that the ride its in a worse state than ever, and pretty much everyone has the Internet now.
 
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Trooper Looper said:
What's even weirder to me, is I remember a post on this Thread a while ago by @Squiggs mentioning that Duels reception wasn't all that bad publicly because of the lack the of Internet access, when in actuallity, most people, Enthusiasts and GP didn't like the Refurb of the Haunted House to Duel, but nowadays, there seems to be little to no criticism of it outside of Enthusiast media, and pretty much everyone has the Internet now.
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People did have the internet back in 2003, and interestingly, a number of positive reviews for Duel were around at that time.

For instance, Coaster Kingdom (a reviewer who certainly isn’t afraid to be critical) gave it 4 stars out of 5: http://www.s104638357.websitehome.co.uk/html/duel_main.htm

Interestingly, they actually felt that the refurbishment improved the ride based on some of their quotes. Some examples include:
Let’s look back at the failings of the Haunted House and see how Duel compares. The Haunted House was superficially good, but relied far too heavily on cheap scares. The element of surprise quickly fades and yields a rather lacklustre ride with little other than characters jumping out of the dark recesses of the house.

Equip riders with laserguns, and the entire focus of the ride shifts from an idle gallery of oversized synthetic monsters to a three-dimensional interactive arcade. And like Tomb Blaster it works… just not as well.
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Duel suffers from the same downfalls as the original Haunted House. Off-setting this nicely, though, and most importantly, it celebrates the same positives as Tomb Blaster. It’s good, but could be better.
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People on here who were around at the time also say that Duel was a genuinely well received upgrade.

I think the belief that Duel was a commonly hated upgrade and people were sad to see the Haunted House go appears to have been one that’s come about more recently rather than one that was necessarily felt by guests at the time, from what I gather from people who were around at the time.
 
Skyscraper said:
If they were to change the ride system as part of a re-theme, it would need to be as high-capacity and high-throughput as the original. When Duel is working at full capacity with no issues, it rarely gets a queue. Plus a lower thoughput system would require the queue line to be extended.
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You could easily get a modern ride system with a similarly high throughput.

The ETF Multi Mover (Symbolica-style ride system) gets 1,440pph according to ETF, which is higher than the current Duel throughput of 1,296pph.

And the Oceaneering system could get a high throughput too; while I’m not sure about the 6-seater model, I know the 8-seater model had a theoretical of 1,400pph when it was at BGW.
 
Squiggs said:
This feels like a misrepresentation of what was going on at the time.

Whilst I would agree that the reaction to Duel being announced was fairly muted and there was “no great outpouring of loss”, the news that people were reacting to wasn't that The Haunted House was closing. The park were very clear that what they were doing was revamping/upgrading The Haunted House, which most people agreed was much needed. There is a reason that Duel has the tag line of "The Haunted House Strikes Back" - this was the park emphasising that the attraction wasn't going anywhere.

Also, you have to bear in mind that at this point Tussauds were well known for adding high quality attractions - they had very few misses over the previous 15 years, so if Tussauds said they were upgrading something, it was broadly expected that it would be good. To be honest, it is almost the inverse of where we are now with Merlin, where even if an attraction sounds good on paper, you almost have to expect it won't have the budget required to do it justice.

In contrast to the community's reaction when Duel was first announced, the reaction to the ride when it opened was pretty poor all round. Even the reviews that rated it as good still highlighted how bad it actually was. When discussing the new zombies, a four-star review at the time included the line: "Frankly, I expect better animation from a pop-up book." And lots of those criticisms from day one are essentially the same ones being discussed today.

It is worth pointing out that one of the recurring features of those early discussions was just how bad Duel's lighting was in comparison to The Haunted House. I don't think it can be stressed enough that when you are riding Duel, whenever you can see either the ceiling or walls of the building, you would not have been able to see them in the Haunted House. The lighting was so much better designed and so much darker that essentially you only ever saw what the ride designers intended you to see. And if there was any chance that the riders might see a bare wall - it was themed, so it blended in.
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Found the comment by @Squiggs, sums it up perfectly
 
Trooper Looper said:
Found the comment by @Squiggs, sums it up perfectly
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The thing is though, if CK’s review which I quoted above is anything to go off of, it suggests that many of those flaws were still present when the ride was the Haunted House, and reverting the ride back to its original form and ripping out the guns wouldn’t necessarily be a silver bullet that makes it brilliantly received again.

Granted, the zombies weren’t a thing when the ride was the HH, but the Coaster Kingdom review’s criticism of the overly heavy focus on jumpscares is one that the reviewer specifically cites as a flaw of the original Haunted House that was carried over onto Duel. And the reviewer says that the change in vibe that came with Duel had an overall positive impact on the ride and worked well, as it did with Tomb Blaster (in their opinion, of course).
 
Dark rides with an IP are easier to market and generally give better returns than non-IP’s. It is much easier to convince a guest to book a ticket to the park to experience an attraction when they know the brand/story than if they don’t. It doesn’t mean non-IP dark rides can’t be successful, just that it’s harder work and takes longer for ‘word to get out’

Merlin is a marketing led business. They will go for an IP if they are looking to re-do Duel.
 
jon81uk said:
Guests and "fans" aren't always the same. Ask a lot of guests what they would prefer a new Jumanji (or ghostbusters) ride or a new haunted house and most would pick the one based on a film as they are familiar with the film.

Its also not just Merlin doing this, when was the last time Disney made a ride not based on a film? I think it was Expedition Everest. Could you see Disney building a Haunted Mansion now without adding a film IP?
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Yeh and Disney is becoming shite because of it.
 
Matt N said:
I wouldn’t be so sure that guests don’t want IPs. Rightly or wrongly, I think people do like familiar brands within theme parks these days, and IPs do tend to pull people more than originally themed attractions of the same vein.

I know this is an extreme example, but take The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, for instance. Had Islands of Adventure built a generic magic-themed land of the same quality, I’d wager that it would have been nowhere near as successful. People don’t visit that land because it’s well themed and has quality attractions, people visit because it’s themed to Harry Potter.

Citing some less extreme examples; Thomas Land at Drayton Manor. Or Peppa Pig World at Paultons Park. Or Saw The Ride at Thorpe Park. Or CBeebies Land at Alton Towers. Or Gruffalo at Chessington. These were all big successes (TL and PPW arguably made their respective parks, Saw increased Thorpe attendance quite substantially and has been hailed as one of Merlin’s biggest successes, CBeebies is certainly proving very lucrative for Towers, and Gruffalo has quite a big pull among young families from what I can gather; I certainly remember it being cited as a big success), and I’d wager that none of these attractions would have had the same degree of success had they been originally themed and built to the same quality. And while TWODW’s success is yet to be determined, that appeared to be following the same pattern; it appeared quite popular on my visits to the park last year.

My basic point is; I don’t think the average guest cares about whether or not a ride is IP-based if the ride is good, and in many cases, an IP can even make guests care about the attraction more than they would if it were originally themed.
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I'm pretty sure Efteling and Europa Park don't use IP and they're the 2 most successful theme parks in Europe after DLP, just because theme parks have become lazy and use ip as a crutch doesn't mean they're necessary for a park to be successful.
 
Groundking said:
I'm pretty sure Efteling and Europa Park don't use IP and they're the 2 most successful theme parks in Europe after DLP, just because theme parks have become lazy and use ip as a crutch doesn't mean they're necessary for a park to be successful.
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Europa have used IP; at very least, they have Arthur, which is themed to a film (admittedly one I hadn’t heard of, but a film all the same), and I think they might have had shows themed to IPs, as well. I seem to remember a Paddington ice show being talked about once, and I could have sworn that they had some sort of IP show in the 4D cinema before. Isn’t Jim Knopf an IP as well? I could be wrong there, though…

Admittedly Europa perhaps doesn’t rely on external IPs as much as some other parks, but they still use them. Sponsorship is also quite prevalent at Europa (for instance, Silver Star effectively functions as a big advert for Mercedes-Benz, Voletarium has quite heavy promotion of EuroWings, and Blue Fire had heavy promotion of Gazprom until the recent Ukraine crisis), which could be argued to be similar to external IPs.

Efteling is an interesting one. From what I can tell, that park is a unique case in that it’s been around for so long and its stories have become so ingrained in the Dutch public conscious that the park’s attractions have almost become IPs in themselves. Also, they do use external stories (such as the fairytales they touch on, although they’re in the public domain now), and I think Max & Moritz may have been an IP.

But in general, I’d say IPs are the future, and they are definitely a way in which parks can connect with their guests and pull them in more easily.
 
Matt N said:
Efteling is an interesting one. From what I can tell, that park is a unique case in that it’s been around for so long and its stories have become so ingrained in the Dutch public conscious that the park’s attractions have almost become IPs in themselves. Also, they do use external stories (such as the fairytales they touch on, although they’re in the public domain now), and I think Max & Moritz may have been an IP.
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Absolutely, to the Dutch audience Efteling is the IP.
 
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