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Talbot Street Lock In

When you look at other parks around the world, including Gardaland which is a Merlin park, the mascot plays such a huge role. It is a pity that Towers scrapped Henry Hound way back. If they had stuck with him then I reckon he would be very popular among kids and fans. However re-introducing him now could prove to be more difficult, certainly initially. They would need to be patient and persist.
 
Henry was based on the fountain on the wall close to the top of the gardens wasnt he?
One if the Earls favourite hunting dogs?
Could be making it up...again.
 
Our Lock In rundown is on the cusp between 2005 and 2006, so we thought this Wednesday we'd look at something random from that very moment in time.

Who remembers that one time when we nearly had a zipline off the top of the Towers... or the time we actually did?

In 2006 the park intended to install the UK's longest zipline, which would have delivered guests from the roof of the Towers to the front lawn in a matter of seconds.

Vertigo may never have made it into the park's line-up, but we got a taste of what the attraction would have been like when the Playstation 2 Freedom Weekend brought Free to Speed to the park for one weekend in 2005.
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Why were they intent on making the Towers looks so tacky around this era?! It's so weird.

Spinball, Swans gone, golf balls all over the lake. Thankfully no zipline.
 
RicketyCricket said:
Why were they intent on making the Towers looks so tacky around this era?! It's so weird.

Spinball, Swans gone, golf balls all over the lake. Thankfully no zipline.
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Money making is the easy answer. The rides being added during this period were added on minimal budgets (Spinball is probably the best example of that) and almost all of the other visible investment was going into adding pay per play style attractions crammed into almost every corner of the park.
 
Didn’t they also briefly apply for permission to add an upcharge tethered balloon attraction on the Sub Terra site around this time too?
 
Willy Wonka sailed into Alton Towers in 2006, taking guests on a whimsical tour through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Ride.

The breakout attraction of the year though was the Driving School, which opened midway through the season and breathed new energy into the heart of Cred Street.

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Squiggs said:
Willy Wonka sailed into Alton Towers in 2006, taking guests on a whimsical tour through Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Ride.

The breakout attraction of the year though was the Driving School, which opened midway through the season and breathed new energy into the heart of Cred Street.

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A poor replacement to Toyland Tours. Driving school was ok but everyone preferred the classic Vintage Cars.
 
One does have to wonder what the park would be like if all of the projects Charterhouse/DIC had dreamed up had come to fruition. I think the zip line, while perhaps not the most historically respectful use of the Towers, would certainly have made the ruins more popular among guests, and I think some things could have been quite good had they come to fruition (I think the hot air balloon ride on the Dynamo site could have been nice if it had been allowed, and the proposed wooden coaster-water ride combo in the form of Project Shark is something I would have quite liked to see come to fruition).

However, I admit that there are also some I’m a little glad didn’t come to fruition, in spite of them being interesting ideas that could potentially have been popular. Things like the casino-themed hotel and Singstar on the Runaway Mine Train come to mind in particular...

As for 2006, I must admit that I have quite a soft spot for both of the attractions it bought with it. CATCF is perhaps one of my most missed Alton Towers attractions (out of the ones I rode); I really did enjoy it, and I have very fond memories from before I was 1.4m tall of me and my mum riding it while my dad and sister rode Oblivion! Even after I was tall enough for the big rides, I still occasionally enjoyed a ride on it! And I still have a driving license from the Driving School now from when I was 6, and even though I personally have incredibly limited memories of it, I can imagine it must be a really fun attraction for the younger children!
 
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Charlie was an ok and fun ride but I still preferred Toyland Tours better like everyone else probably thought as well, it needed more work and improvements and perhaps add new features like an onride photo camera would be appreciated as there was space. Driving School was quite quirky and bubbly and had some good humour.
 
2006 was an eventful year, kicking off with Chocolate Towers and ending with the return of Halloween in the form of Room 13, a scare maze in the Alton Towers Hotel

It was also one of the few seasons in the past 40 years when the park had a full summer event. The Great British Bucket and Spade Event saw Towers Street transformed into a turn-of-the-century seaside resort for the summer months, complete with beaches, Punch and Judy and a show inside a giant inflatable whale.

Did you get the chance to grab and ice cream and pull up a deckchair during this rare one-off event?
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Matt N said:
However, I admit that there are also some I’m a little glad didn’t come to fruition, in spite of them being interesting ideas that could potentially have been popular. Things like the casino-themed hotel and Singstar on the Runaway Mine Train come to mind in particular...
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The Singstar thing wasn't an actual plan.

During this period there is a lot (and I really mean a lot) of marketing nonsense. Essentially the marketing department were churning out content that might get them in the tabloids... Singstar on the RMT was one of those, no doubt in conjunction with Playstation's marketing team, who were a strategic partner at the time. Possibly the same with the Casino hotel... I don't recall that one though.
 
Didn't they do some apparently sincere market research around the whole karaoke RMT idea? I vaguely remember someone on here being asked about it at the time, but not the full details.
 
Nearly forgot how awful the DIC years were... For all the slate Merlin get they were a saving grace in 2007.

There clearly were still good intentions at the time with more events and I don't think CATCF was that horrific. It was no where near the standard of Toyland Tours however you can see that the ideas for CATCF were there, a grand ride/experience akin to something at Disney, however very poorly executed due to no budget to fully realise the concepts.

At least they never themed it to the 2005 film. That would have been FAR worse.

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