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Nemesis: Looking back at the 1994 original

Squiggs

Squiggs

TS Team
Hi all,

It's now over a year since the original version of Nemesis closed, and today marks its 30th Anniversary.

Given that Nemesis Reborn is now officially with us, here's a place we can reminisce about the original ride that operated from 1994-2022.

And what better way to start than with a trove of new Nemesis Construction photos the park has released today to mark the 30th Anniversary.

53597597639_d19ec438d4_c.jpg

Full gallery can be found on TowersStreet
 
Old enough to remember when they used to close Thunder Valley for the day for quarrying and you could hear the blasting from the Corkscrew.
All those big stones, dotted all around the park and express parking, all nemesis hole lumps.
And that strange season or two of free fasttrack with the turnstiles...and they would alter the queueline every season.
 
As far as civil engineering goes, this was nothing short of spectacular at the times. From what Thunder Valley was to what it became was genius. To have had that vision you can only praise the design crew and Wardley.

It’s nice that so much of the rock excavated is still seen around the park.
 
Would there of been CAD at that point? Maybe very basic.

What I’d give to see the engineering drawing cabinet/room at Towers

Stood on the shoulders of giants

I suppose they did dig a trench of sorts for 13 but they’ve not really done it on that scale since other than Oblvion
 
Ash said:
Would there of been CAD at that point? Maybe very basic.

What I’d give to see the engineering drawing cabinet/room at Towers

Stood on the shoulders of giants

I suppose they did dig a trench of sorts for 13 but they’ve not really done it on that scale since other than Oblvion
Click to expand...
We do have some of the SW1 plans on the site, which gives you some idea about what they were working with.
 
CAD has been around since the fifties, so yes, probably.
From watching at the sidelines at the time, the Oblivion hole was much larger than the Nemesis one, you could see the bottom of the nemesis pit easily during construction, but I couldn't ever see the actual bottom of the Oblivion one, even on tall tippy toes.
Fun old times.
 
rob666 said:
Old enough to remember when they used to close Thunder Valley for the day for quarrying and you could hear the blasting from the Corkscrew.
All those big stones, dotted all around the park and express parking, all nemesis hole lumps.
And that strange season or two of free fasttrack with the turnstiles...and they would alter the queueline every season.
Click to expand...

Was this the virtual queue thing with the big green V as the logo?
 
Can't actually recall using them properly, I think you entered your day ticket, and you received a printed ticket...I think it was one a day, to come back at a fixed timeslot.
Problem was, the ticket machines also caused a queue to form, they weren't very quick.
Then paid fasttrack came in, when they realised money could be made.
I think Oblivion had them as well, often only used on busy days.
 
rob666 said:
Can't actually recall using them properly, I think you entered your day ticket, and you received a printed ticket...I think it was one a day, to come back at a fixed timeslot.
Problem was, the ticket machines also caused a queue to form, they weren't very quick.
Then paid fasttrack came in, when they realised money could be made.
I think Oblivion had them as well, often only used on busy days.
Click to expand...
It was the same at the old Disney FastPass, swipe the park ticket and get a return time printed out.
 
Ash said:
Would there of been CAD at that point? Maybe very basic.

What I’d give to see the engineering drawing cabinet/room at Towers

Stood on the shoulders of giants

I suppose they did dig a trench of sorts for 13 but they’ve not really done it on that scale since other than Oblvion
Click to expand...

The whole reason why B&M had that edge in extremely precise engineering back in the early 1990's, was because of the extensive use of CAD for the time. No human was able to finely engineer a ride like B&M managed to do, they took CAD and used it more than any other manufacturer had done before and in some cases, not at all (Arrow). Something Arrow famously never got onboard with, very much to their detriment, as you simply could not complete.
 
SW1 and SW2 are often used interchangeably to distinguish between a pipeline and the model we got with SW3. But I wonder what the differences were between 1 and 2? And what spurred them to redesign 1 into 2? What part of 1 were they not happy with that needed to be changed for 2? Would love to ask our Johnny Wards those questions.
 
Matt.GC said:
SW1 and SW2 are often used interchangeably to distinguish between a pipeline and the model we got with SW3. But I wonder what the differences were between 1 and 2? And what spurred them to redesign 1 into 2? What part of 1 were they not happy with that needed to be changed for 2? Would love to ask our Johnny Wards those questions.
Click to expand...
I would love to know the answer to this. We've seen the SW1 plans relatuvelt often now, and indeed there is one notable version of the SW1 plan that had Nemesis drawn over the top.

But I'm not sure I've ever seen an SW2 plan, or heard any narrative on what would have been different. I do wonder if SW2 ever got to the full planning stage or if it was jettisoned at an early stage in the process.
 
Yeah I've always assumed it was just a revision before they realised the whole idea was a non starter, I wouldn't be surprised if it was largely the same layout.
 
Squiggs said:
I would love to know the answer to this. We've seen the SW1 plans relatuvelt often now, and indeed there is one notable version of the SW1 plan that had Nemesis drawn over the top.

But I'm not sure I've ever seen an SW2 plan, or heard any narrative on what would have been different. I do wonder if SW2 ever got to the full planning stage or if it was jettisoned at an early stage in the process.
Click to expand...
SW2 is a somewhat mysterious beast. Even when Wardley speaks about it himself, he quickly glosses over SW2, and just moves to the subject of abandoning the Pipeline idea entirely in favour of a B&M invert.

I wonder whether the SW2 redesign was instigated by him riding the prototype and finding it slow and boring, or whether this event happened after SW2 and before he rode Batman? It's possible that riding the prototype happened between SW1 and 2, as he does mention that he heard about Six Flags building Batman and that the potential a B&M invert had over what they had planned instigated the change?

It could have a far more boring explanation of course, like it was taking up too much land mass or something like that, or as a result of geological surveys. But I have doubts that they would have given the project a different code name if it was just minor profiling alterations or something like that. There must be another set of blueprints out there somewhere surely?
 
It must have been amazing to ride the original Nemesis in 1994, because there wasn't much like it back then. Even now, Nemesis is different to any other inverted rollercoaster due to the pit that it resides in.
 
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