Ahhh the restraint debate. Personally, I'm 99.9% convinced we'll see an OTSR here. I hate this whole Merlin idea of playing it safe. Rides like this are meant to be scary and induce a sense of fear. That's their whole job. I think it was Ron Toomer who said that the whole thrill of the ride is the constant feeling of danger, and being out of control. It's only when we're on the edge that we can truly experience the fear the ride should create.
It makes me laugh that companies and parks will push the boundaries on bigger, taller, faster, and more inversions, but Merlin will seemingly never take the plunge and push it that bit futher and add a new dimension of fear and thrill to their rides.
So what that the public believe lapbars to be unsafe? Most members of the public will find any way to make anything unsafe about the ride. Heck, they'd probably find a way to claim that Charlie is a high risk attraction!
I don't think the restraint would have too much impact on the ride's perception personally. Yes there will always be one or two or think it must be a deathtrap as it has inversions and lapbars, but look at Enterprise. That has
no restraint, yet people will quite happily let it invert them several times (Yes, I realise there is the cage on the bullets but even so, there's still potential for serious injury in there if it was to go wrong!).
If all these perceptions had so much impact would Europa have built Blue Fire? It's a lot of money to blow if the ride is not going to go down well with the majority of your guests. Would G-Force still be around? If it was going to put that many people off it'd have probably gone long ago. A lot of people rave about the ride amongst the GP. If the perception wood is unsafe is so dominant then how is Pleasure Beach still going? Those are some of the brutalist woodies in Europe (And I've ridden Zeus
) yet the GP still ride them. Merlin just seem to play into this whole "fear culture" for want of another word, but they need to realise that there is only so far you can go playing safe. Some of the most iconic attractions in the world have gained such status for their boundary pushing ideas.
Rather than pandering to the GP perception surely the bolder decision would be to try and dispel these beliefs by building rides with lapbars, or are made of wood?