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Hex [2024 Refurb]: General Discussion

a few musings from my trip today:
- audio was good up until the vault, which unfortunately only appeared to have one speaker working
- lighting was quite bright in the vault, sort of spoiled the mood
- there was a little bit of slipping with the vault for the first part when they're supposed to move in sync but whatever
- there was a lag between the film finishing in the cinema and the doors opening, probably about a minute and a half. little awkward
- other than that, good cycle and ride's in good shape. Busiest cycle I've been on in a while and everyone seemed to be enjoying.

as an aside: crikey that diverted exit line is long!
 
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Yes hex and the broken speaker, I even told them this as was there on the ride the day it went...

Love seeing people's reactions for the first time !

There is no other way to run the exit I don't think during scarefest.
 
Mattie boy said:
Yes hex and the broken speaker, I even told them this as was there on the ride the day it went...

Love seeing people's reactions for the first time !

There is no other way to run the exit I don't think during scarefest.
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I was on Hex today. The vault has always suffered with broken speakers, I remember the subwoofer playing up as far back as 2003. I am sure the audio has only ever come from one side. It is probably cursed.

What is a little jarring is the volume. The vault entry announcements are very loud, as soon as the cycle starts with the announcements from the same voice. The volume is much more quiet.
 
On my ride last week, the fans in the octagon were working as opposed to 2 weeks prior, and the vault branch had smoke in, which I also believe was missing a couple of weeks prior!
 
DistortAMG said:
I was on Hex today. The vault has always suffered with broken speakers, I remember the subwoofer playing up as far back as 2003. I am sure the audio has only ever come from one side. It is probably cursed.

What is a little jarring is the volume. The vault entry announcements are very loud, as soon as the cycle starts with the announcements from the same voice. The volume is much more quiet.
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Must be something to do with the show programming then surely. Unless the announcements come from different speakers. Makes no sense otherwise.
 
The announcements have always been really really loud for as far as I can remember and the actual ride much quieter. I guess something isn’t programmed right. Eg the ride doesn’t use all the speakers or the announcements are set much louder
 
When the ride audio came on, it seemed louder, it was just the voice audio at the start of the sequence.

I have to say though, the overall audio quality in Hex these days is awful. The Cinema is really sharp on the high end with very minimal low end which makes it sound crispy and tinny. The Octagon has perhaps slightly too much bass, it sounds nice and loud, and the bass does sound good, just slightly too much so that it muddies up the top end a little bit. Then the vault itself, very light on the bass again, makes it sound pretty bad and pretty flat.

For some reason they have never managed to get the Ohm system working as well as what the Bose system used to. The audio in the ride used to be incredible and really well tuned. Now it is a shadow of its former self and is just OK. The Ohm system has never really sounded that good to be fair. While in my opinion Ohm do not sound as good as Bose full stop (Bose have far more advance signal processing) I do not think that is strictly the issue, If the system was tuned right, it could sound much better than it does now.

In a ride where the one of the key elements of the attraction is the AV aspect, it is a shame to see the standards dropped so much in recent years.

The used to use a pair of Bose 802 loudspeakers in the Cinema which sounded incredible (they are incredible speakers) why oh why did they replace them with some Ohm BRW-28 (A's I think) they sound so inferior. Was the Hex revamp a case of no professionals messing with stuff again, like it was with Duel? Good intentions for sure but ruined the experience somewhat. We have professional lighting designers and sound technicians for a very good reason. Alton must have missed the memo on that one.

I am sure they used 802's in the Octagon too, with some large subwoofer and then a Bose 402 in the pre pre show (after turnstile) mounted to the rafter above. Then Bose 151's in the queue TV's, The 151's were the single most common Bose speaker you would see around Alton Towers back in the day, to be fair, there are still a lot of them around these days, alongside it's identical counterpart the Bose 32se, both in the original rectangle design. Still a few 402's knocking about too, specifically on Rita.
 
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Have ridden this twice since its reopened with first time riders...both have said how rubbish Hex was.

Monster Party House at Legoland packs more of a punch than Hex.
 
Sambiasso said:
Have ridden this twice since its reopened with first time riders...both have said how rubbish Hex was.

Monster Party House at Legoland packs more of a punch than Hex.
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Madhouses aren't solely about the ride section though, they are packages. Hex is made by the full experience of the setting, queue, pre-shows and vault. If just one of those parts didn't exist it wouldn't be the same.
 
Haven’t been on Hex for a while to be able to comment on its state this season but I’ve always thought the ride is really good.

Very unique theme and I like that it’s actually related to a real legend of the area.
 
Sambiasso said:
Have ridden this twice since its reopened with first time riders...both have said how rubbish Hex was.
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As much as I know many on here won’t want to hear this… this is a view that appears to be quite common among non-enthusiasts, from my experience.

I know that Hex is very well liked among enthusiasts, but for the average visitor, I get the impression that it’s, rightly or wrongly, perceived as boring.

Whoever I’ve been to Alton Towers with over the years, they never seem to have liked Hex that much. My nan didn’t care for it in 2019. My sister said it was so boring that she’d rather wait outside than go on it. Even my mum and dad reacted with “Oh god, do we have to?” when I suggested riding Hex on a 2021 visit.

This could just be the people I know, but I personally don’t know of anyone who particularly rates Hex outside of enthusiast circles.

I personally really like it, and I’d definitely say it’s my favourite madhouse and one of the strongest UK dark rides, but I do sometimes struggle to fully get on board the hype train for it; particularly in Alton Towers fan circles, most people seem to revere it a fair bit more than I do.
 
Still probably the best madhouse I've done. Think I've done 5 of them: Hex, The Haunting, Feng Ju Palace, Hotel Embrujado and Fluch Der Kassandra
 
Matt N said:
As much as I know many on here won’t want to hear this… this is a view that appears to be quite common among non-enthusiasts, from my experience.

I know that Hex is very well liked among enthusiasts, but for the average visitor, I get the impression that it’s, rightly or wrongly, perceived as boring.
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I struggle to believe this. I absolutely accept that some will find it boring, everyone likes different things.

But to simply say outside of enthusiast circles that the average guest finds it boring just doesn’t make logical sense. Parks do not keep rides running just because enthusiasts like them since we make up a tiny fraction of overall guest numbers.

Therefore for an attraction (that was never intended to be a headliner btw, so huge queues are not to be expected) to remain open 22 years later pretty much unchanged in all that time, it must have wide appeal and it must also be re-rideable as most guests are repeat visitors and so are likely to have ridden it before.

It has lasted longer than most if not all other dark rides at the park, and continues to attract guests through the doors.
 
AT86 said:
I struggle to believe this. I absolutely accept that some will find it boring, everyone likes different things.

But to simply say outside of enthusiast circles that the average guest finds it boring just doesn’t make logical sense. Parks do not keep rides running just because enthusiasts like them since we make up a tiny fraction of overall guest numbers.

Therefore for an attraction (that was never intended to be a headliner btw, so huge queues are not to be expected) to remain open 22 years later pretty much unchanged in all that time, it must have wide appeal and it must also be re-rideable as most guests are repeat visitors and so are likely to have ridden it before.

It has lasted longer than most if not all other dark rides at the park, and continues to attract guests through the doors.
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I apologise. I think that was perhaps the wrong thing to say.

However, I do sometimes think that enthusiasts somewhat overestimate its appeal among the wider park-visiting populace. People on here often make out that it’s a headline attraction and that it’s one of Alton Towers’ most popular draws, but I don’t personally agree with that view. I will not deny that it does very well as a peripheral filler attraction, but I don’t feel, from my experience, that non-enthusiasts generally revere Hex anywhere near as much as enthusiasts do, or consider it anywhere near as important to Alton Towers. I personally feel that it definitely plays a peripheral role within the park’s lineup rather than being a big draw.

One thing I would say about Hex’s longevity is; could a significant part of the reason it’s lasted so long be that very little else can be done with the space? Unlike other peripheral attractions at the park that have gone over the years, the scope for replacing Hex is quite limited by virtue of its location. It also gives the park a slightly more tangible reason to fulfil their obligation to maintain the ruins that offers more business value than leaving the space unoccupied.
 
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Matt N said:
I apologise. I think that was perhaps the wrong thing to say.
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No need to apologise.

Matt N said:
One thing I would say about Hex’s longevity is; could a significant part of the reason it’s lasted so long be that very little else can be done with the space? Unlike other peripheral attractions at the park that have gone over the years, the scope for replacing Hex is quite limited by virtue of its location.
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Potentially yes, this could be a factor. But equally they are unlikely to continue keeping an attraction open and paying for its maintenance and staffing if it isn’t popular with guests. See NST as an example.

If it wasn’t popular enough, they could just close it.

I agree it’s not a headline attraction, and it isn’t marketed or treated as such by the park. But parks need a mix of attractions and Hex is a very solid tier 2 ride.
 
Depends what crowd you hang out with, my two non-enthusiast fans absolutely adore Hex, both their favourite dark ride ever, and on my last visit to the park in July, my own mother was wanting to experience Hex herself in which she has never been on it even after going to the park in the years since then, guess it was something that never crossed her mind. Suppose I made it up to her by showing her the chained oak in the flesh which was something in itself but that's another story.

Much like with Toyland Tours/Charie/ Dungeons, it does seem a little bit out of the way from other areas of the park; yes, it is nearby Dark Forrest when you're heading there on route, but I do feel they could do with a little bit more marketing skin with the ride...one idea I have thought about is that maybe just for Scarefest the ride can have a special Scarefest only layer in which it can have a different story that maybe plays about with a sequel to the chained oak which focuses on the decline of the Towers following the events of the fallen branch or something different regardless. They have done that with Duel for Scarefest such as the Duel: Live! event so it's not quite out the realms of possibility if they attempted it with Hex.
 
AT86 said:
Potentially yes, this could be a factor. But equally they are unlikely to continue keeping an attraction open and paying for its maintenance and staffing if it isn’t popular with guests. See NST as an example.

If it wasn’t popular enough, they could just close it.
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I think I might have edited my post after you quoted it, so you probably missed this comment, but as I said above, I think keeping Hex open gives them a slightly more tangible reason to fulfil their obligation to maintaining the Towers Ruins that offers more business value.

If you look at it purely from a business value standpoint (I appreciate it’s a lot more nuanced than that in reality), the ruins on their own are a bit of a white elephant within the context of Alton Towers as a business. Very few guests enter and explore the ruins (and that’s even before you consider the considerable proportion of them that aren’t publicly accessible), there aren’t an awful lot of ways that they can contribute to the core goals of the business, and the park is obliged to maintain them, which costs a fair bit of money. If you view the ruins in that way and don’t utilise them, then they are a bit of a millstone from a business standpoint that swallow up a lot of money and don’t give a lot back in terms of business value.

However, the park can increase the business value of maintaining the ruins by keeping Hex open. Having a ride operating inside the Towers Ruins does contribute to the core goals of Alton Towers as a business, therefore seeing as the maintenance of the Towers Ruins would happen anyway whether Hex was open or not, keeping Hex open allows the park to maintain the ruins in a way that adds business value. I’d also say that housing scare mazes inside the Towers Ruins has a similar effect.

Ultimately, I think that adding Hex was a very clever move by Alton Towers. It made the Towers Ruins less of a white elephant from a business value standpoint while also adding a new filler attraction into the lineup. However, I think you really need the ride operating to gain maximum business value from it, hence why it has lasted so long (partially, at least).
 
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