I rode "Nemmy Rebo" for the first time today. Despite being dismissed as being simply a "black track hater", that shouldn't expect "Phalanx: The Ride" (even though it was blatantly obvious from the ofset that was the route they were going down), and that we should all "wait and see", I felt that my last ride at the end of 2022 was a sad goodbye. And after today, it still feels that way.
Opinions on the rest of Warzone World is for another thread, but the first thing you notice is the new rubbish soundtrack. I've heard that it does a Wickerman and changes through the queue. But it's so forgettable, you have to listen out to notice it. It's the kind of stuff they play to dramatise things in tacky American reality shows like Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares, or the kind of stuff used in Micheal Bay movies. Mind you, the old soundtrack clearly wouldn't suit the new theme, this somehow does.
If I had to be honest, everything about the Nemesis creature station itself is better than the original in every single way. It's brilliant. The interior is fantastic. The eye, the teeth movements, the roars, the growls, the interaction. It feels and looks like a living breathing creature now. It's outstanding, a steal the show centerpiece, I can't praise it enough. That's until the eye goes the way of the rest of the screens and projections in the park of course. Which we all know it will.
Entering the queue, I'm not fooled by the old shanty structure entrance being simply just painted gloss black. Although the tenticles are a nice detracting touch (like they are everywhere they appear). I'm drawn to the old track piece coming out the ground to my right, another nice touch, although it needs to be blended in better rather than just chucking some gravel at either end to make it feel likes it's coming out of the ground. Then to your left and ahead of you, the corrugated back of the awful Sub Terra building, an access gate, and dead ahead a dirty broken lamp post with the cover hanging off. Hardly immersive for a queue line section that's now permanent.
Then we get walked around the gun. What the hell? Interactive sound effects, fine. But you build a central theming structure of high quality, then proudly walk me round something that looks like it was made by the local primary school art class? It looks very cheap and nasty. A good view across the corkscrew, like the old queue, follows, before an interesting perspective of the first drop, turn, and top of the lift hill. Which is great at first. You have to like this view though, because for the next half hour, the queue is designed in such a way that you'll be looking at the first part of the ride and the lift hill a hell of a lot. For around the next half hour in fact. Don't look the other way though, because that's the car parks. Lots and lots a views of the car park.
But then there's a break in all this lift hill and car park admiration, and some new theming structures come in to view. 2 logs sat on some gravel, 2 oil drums, and the pinnacle structure - a shipping container! First you see this corrugated masterpiece from the end. Then from the back. Then from the end again. Then from the front. There's a piece of track in front of it this time though with a piece of comflage netting hung off the end of it for some reason. It's kind of cool that it goes into the hole in the shipping container I suppose, although all that's in there is a PC monitor, some posters, and what looks like pesticide pumps from B&Q? Meanwhile, some guy is spoon feeding some back story to you over a radio.
After more marveling at the lift hill comes the money shot, the reason we've done all this meandering around lift hills and a shipping container. As I look across the whole layout from the top of the embankment, towards the awesome monster, as a train smashes over the zero g roll that angers Nemesis, with monorail trains trundling back and forth at eye level behind it, I'm reminded of how special this park still is at heart. It's a truly immersive, high quality theme park view and is absolutely wonderful. The toy helicopter by the stall doesn't look as bad as I thought, although close up the fake rocks look pathetic. Who's idea was it to make fake rocks amidst real ones?
Coming down towards the station, the pit itself however looks terrible. I think I prefer it run down and overgrown like before. It's gravelly and has a small pool of stagnant water sat at the bottom. No gushing red waterfalls of the original, just gravel and a puddle.
On ride, I was expecting a glass smooth (and quiet) ride with a bit of an insignificant rattle near the end that I thought Thoosies had blown out of proportion. I was sat in row 3, which was always one of the less desirable places to be for me (I'm usually in 7 or 8, but they don't trust you to choose anymore). The first half was as expected. Extremely smooth, corkscrew still smashing you over the top, downwards helix and zero-g still almost as good as they used to be. I noticed it seemed to slow down a lot more than I was used to, but this was the least of my worries as by the end of the loop, that rattle became loud. Then louder through the ground level corkscrew. By the time we'd exited that, the train was physically vibrating an awful lot like some of that gravel from the pit was ground into the track all the way to the brake run.
Other bits of note, thankfully the red on the track really shows more than I thought it would with trains on it and the monster now complete. It doesn't look as bad as I thought, I although I still dislike the gloss black. The textured charcoal colour of the monster, and heavier use of red would look a lot better. And the sound, if you're not looking you can hardly hear it. I know it was inevitable that it was going to be tamed, but not hearing that roar anymore really does lesson the experience. Although the view across the top of the pit is brilliant, I really missed being down among those rocks, with this imposing roaring structure on top of you, surrounded by blood waterfalls thundering down around you.
Overall, the most disappointing ride I've ever had on Nemesis. I accept that we were never going to keep the roar, the sound track, and that it was never going to ride like it did in it's latter years. The station is absolutely brilliant, inside and out. But the sound track is dull, the latter third of the layout was ruined by something that's a lot more than just a rattle, half the queue line is dull, the shipping container is pants, and the gun is laughable. The new corrugated metal, gloss black, oppressive war theme really detracts from the excellent theming structure that sits in the middle of it all. The original was Die Hard on Blu-Ray in its early years, and Die Hard on VHS played on a 14 inch CRT in its latter years, this new Nemesis is Die Hard 2, played on ITV before the watershed.
