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Duel: The Haunted House Actually Strikes Back - Refurb Incoming

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Perhaps the way forward then is to redo the ride completely? I'd love to see something trackless like Symbolica. I know it will never be anywhere near the theming quality of Efteling but even half as good would be fantastic.

I agree though, If they are going to do something then I don't think it should set itself to recreate the original.
 
I cant see Alton having the budget to completely redo the ride having just opened CBeebies and SW8. What we will get I think is some sort of tidy up.

I think they will leave the blasters in place as it adds a fun element to the ride for the younger guests. If anything, I think broken effects will be fixed, lighting issues addressed etc. What I would like to see however would be a change to the end scenes, the zombies bit is just out of place and looks drab now.
 
GaryH said:
I cant see Alton having the budget to completely redo the ride having just opened CBeebies and SW8.
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Meanwhile Merlin are building their seventh Legoland and many more midway attractions oversees, which likely cost 100x more than the required budget to properly refurbish Duel. They could easily afford to do it, but they know that they don't have to and won't.

They believe it makes better business sense to keep the ride sub-par, for the many thousands of paying guests who will ride it during this interim period, until it gets replaced by a rushed surface-deep redo in the coming years, which can then look much more commercially attractive by comparison. At what (I believe to be) a big lost opportunity to the guest experience for everyone, we won't see anything worthwhile happen to Duel.

I'm almost certain it will go the same way as BubbleWorks - a greatly loved attraction that gets old, got badly refurbished, is kept very bad with lots of excuses that it's still popular with kids until it can be replaced by a middle of the road IP in a (cheaply budgeted) surface redo.
 
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The biggest obstacle to anything other than a TLC at the moment is the ride system itself. It would need a lot of money spent on it to get it up to modern tech or completely ripped out and start again which Merlin won't do unless it's a completely new marketable ride.

May have imagined this so don't take it as gospel but I think Mack stopped "supporting" it recently so it's maintenance is now completely based on parts the park can source elsewhere.
 
Im not sure if that's completely true, sounds out of character for Mack unless it's something to do with their ability to accomodate Merlin's demands. It was one of their proud 'bespoke' rides their engineers supposedly like back to refer to learn from, although it's pretty dated now. But I don't know anything about the ride's maintenance from Alton Towers' own point of view.

The laser system however is certainly in that situation, any part that breaks can never be replaced, because the original manufacturer made it for walkaround laser quests (not rides) and has long since been liquidated. This is also why the Tomb Blaster one was replaced by the (very rushed) Lagatronics system.
 
electricBill said:
Im not sure if that's completely true, sounds out of character for Mack unless it's something to do with their ability to accomodate Merlin's demands. It was one of their proud 'bespoke' rides their engineers supposedly like back to refer to learn from, although it's pretty dated now. But I don't know anything about the ride's maintenance from Alton Towers' own point of view.

The laser system however is certainly in that situation, any part that breaks can never be replaced, because the original manufacturer made it for walkaround laser quests (not rides) and has long since been liquidated.
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As I say I may have dreamed it but it's not unusual for manufacturers to say "either let us overhaul or we will end full support" encourages people to buy new kit
 
I'd have thought that mechanically the Duel cars are much like those used on a number of other Mack tracked dark rides. I was watching the car in front setting off last time I rode Piccolo Mondo, and certainly the wheels and system of axle articulation for taking tight corners looked similar.

The control system would seem like a good reason to end support though even if they haven't, as I don't know of any other Mack ride that has the same endless loading and frequent changes of speed around the course. You'd have to imagine that it'd be vastly more straightforward to achieve the same result now, and that any hardware obtained or engineered to do it back in the early '90s is specialised enough to be obscenely difficult and expensive to replace or repair now.
 


Sorry for self promotion but people on here might find this interesting. A 30-min no nonsense video we did on the original Haunted House, not related to Duel but hopefully a good watch. It has John Wardley and the usual but also new interviews with the design team, and a touch on Sparks who first developed Alton Towers into a theme park format for John Broome. A bigger surprise than we could have thought how different the ride was, lots of fun to make.
 
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OMG what a fantastic video. Thank you so much for posting that, brought back so many memories and stuff I have never seen before.
 
Blackpool Pleasure Beach Ghost Train.....

Still popular with the GP despite no guns.

Absolutely ancient transit system. Still works fine. Serves it's purpose.

Duel needs a Haunted House revamp, with no guns, and keeping the same transit system.
 
I don't think you could really compare the Blackpool ghost train which is pretty kitsch now, a patchwork of additions over years has cheapened it and people go in with a different mindset because they know its a traditional, old style ghost train. The Haunted House was a big powered up theatrical ride, rather than the traditional pretzel format, and was never meant to get so worn out that it became medicore.

You'd be able to do a much better transit system with more fluent, fun changes of pace and speeding round corners in the faster scenes today, more what they were going for with the limited control systems in the 90s. Same with the animations, you could still do just as big and suspenseful, but without as many limitations.

That would be pushing the boundaries of dark rides in the UK to create something really surprising and fun, but Merlin aren't seemingly interested in that. Ninjago has a wonderful transit, but the ride is a copied & pasted design and very gimmicky, Derren Brown too has a brilliant transit but is a confused project from hell, all other dark rides are middle of the road IP rethemes like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Gruffalo.
 
Alton Towers (and Merlin) should sink a huge amount of money into Duel and make it one of the UK's best dark rides. We have almost nothing that comes close to the quality of dark rides at Disney parks, or even Symbolica! I mean, look at the Gruffalo. That's a brand new dark ride in the UK and there's nothing to it, it's all screens and static characters. They should completely gut it, and make it trackless with top of the line effects and props - maybe some actually decent animatronics, because the UK is terrible at that. Get Sally interested in a UK project!

Then I wake up from my dream and realise none of that is happening.
 
Alton pay attention:- I came across this video of the newly renivated ‘Terror’ ride ghost train at Lagoon Park in Utah - for a small ride it looks so fab, traditional but ‘fresh’.



(skip to 2.40)

It got me that Alton could create something similar with Duel - if they reverted back to the haunted house. Use the same facade and warehouse, redo the carriages and replace/enchance most of the scenes!

other ‘modern’ ghost trains include Blat Taget at Grona lund:-



and the Haunted castle at Santa Cruz boardwalk:-



Both of which have interesting elements that would fit into Towers.

Bla Taget uses cars by Gosetto - which have in-built vibrating seats, knocking, back pokers and air blasts creating a more multi-sensory experience, which could be swapped into the Haunted house, or the old cars enchanted to include such effects!
 
emmerse2891 said:
Alton pay attention:- I came across this video of the newly renivated ‘Terror’ ride ghost train at Lagoon Park in Utah - for a small ride it looks so fab, traditional but ‘fresh’.



(skip to 2.40)

It got me that Alton could create something similar with Duel - if they reverted back to the haunted house. Use the same facade and warehouse, redo the carriages and replace/enchance most of the scenes!

other ‘modern’ ghost trains include Blat Taget at Grona lund:-



and the Haunted castle at Santa Cruz boardwalk:-



Both of which have interesting elements that would fit into Towers.

Bla Taget uses cars by Gosetto - which have in-built vibrating seats, knocking, back pokers and air blasts creating a more multi-sensory experience, which could be swapped into the Haunted house, or the old cars enchanted to include such effects!
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All of these rides are absolutely amazing for such small and low budget operations. You can see they have been done with great care and passion.

There is no way Merlin could pull anything like this off. They wouldn't even understand how to time the lights to the effects as effectively.

No, I think the best we can hope for is a few plain walls painted black and some tacky Asda halloween decorations strung up. Maybe a few kiddies disco lights to add some sparkle.
 
PeteB said:
All of these rides are absolutely amazing for such small and low budget operations. You can see they have been done with great care and passion.

There is no way Merlin could pull anything like this off. They wouldn't even understand how to time the lights to the effects as effectively.

No, I think the best we can hope for is a few plain walls painted black and some tacky Asda halloween decorations strung up. Maybe a few kiddies disco lights to add some sparkle.
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I think anyone who experienced the quality levels of themeing, lighting and sound at this years Scarefest will tell you that this is complete bollocks. What Merlin need to realise is that entertainments engineers and ride engineers are NOT mutually exclusive, electrical ride engineers should NOT be maintaining the lighting in a dark ride when they have access to actual lighting and sound engineers.
 
Why are people bashing Towers about how a Duel refurb would end up? I mean everyone was praising them when they refurbed Hex.

I know there refurb is going to be different to Hex's but still, They brought in people who knew what they were doing with Hex, Such as the fine tuning was done by specialised engineers.
 
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If only they'd waited to make Thirteen - I've long thought that the dropping track would be beautiful in an otherwise standard haunted house.

A lot of Duel is okay, I think. I have nostalgitis myself but don't mind shooting rides if there is some link between the targets and scenery like in the Golden Nuggets ride at Drayton Manor. I haven't ridden Duel in years and remember some shoddy scenery like those sock puppets where the giant used to be. The demons are alright still and if SW8 is going to have an occult theme maybe it could be linked up with that somehow without needing to change too much.
 
Bert2theSpark said:
Why are people bashing Towers about ow a Duel refurb would end up? I mean everyone was praising them when they refurbed Hex.

I know there refurb is going to be different to Hex's but still, They brought in people who knew what they were doing with Hex, Such as the fine tuning was done by specialised engineers.
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Because Hex was a good attraction that just needed fixing up. Duel is a **** attraction that needs far more than that.
 
Can I just ask out of interest where the rumors came from that Duel will be receiving an overhaul this closed season?
I really hope this does come to fruition.
 
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