Wicker Man - General Discussion

[LF22]

We waited it out and managed to get an amazing ride, not without an another added wait as someone had wet themselves in the station (front row) so that had to be cleaned. The poor wickerman staff yesterday didn’t have it easy!

I didn’t get an answer on what had happened unfortunately, only that they had to go from 3 trains down to 2. I did ask but one said he couldn’t give me that information and the other said he wasn’t sure. The operator definitely said “due to guest behaviour” though and in an annoyed voice whereas for the wee, he said “we are having to slow down despatches while we carry out cleaning in the station” so makes me think it can’t have been sick etc. Very odd!

 

[djtruefitt]

It stayed on two all evening as we did it right at the end of the day and it was still on two.

 

[DiogoJ42]

sooo..... do those in the know have any inkling in to what happened? Or is this a classic "no comment.... check your PMs" situation?

 

[Jb85]

sooo..... do those in the know have any inkling in to what happened? Or is this a classic "no comment.... check your PMs" situation?

the latter

Someone shat themselves…. Done.

 

[rob666]

I was going to post similar...well done Jb85...saved me the scatology.

Most of us oldies are slaves to our bowels you know.

 

[Secret Weapon]

Shawn Sanbrooke from Theme Park Worldwide said earlier today that he believes that Wicker Man was only built due to the Smiler crash in 2015, as the park was desperate for good publicity at the time and so finally gave the public the wooden rollercoaster that they always wanted (see link below at 22:17 mark); he even went so far as to say that it was the park's second most ever important investment, as a result.

I found this interesting, as John Wardley had always suggested the opposite - i.e. that he personally always wanted a woodie, but that the public had always voted against it during market research.

Shawn was working at AT at the time, and so perhaps he knows something that I don't, though?

Does anybody know whether any of this is accurate?

Had the plans for Wicker Man already been drawn up before the Smiler crash occurred?

I remember John Wardley saying in his second book that he didn't even hear of Wicker Man until 2016 or so (I think), and so I am not quite sure about the timeline.


From: https://youtu.be/77s-usDTWIc?t=1337s

 

[Matt N]

There was a roller coaster being brainstormed for Forbidden Valley prior to the Smiler crash, and it got far enough along that an Environmental Impact Assessment was filed for it in April 2015. It was also wooden, with a “timber truss structure” being described in planning, but from what we know of it, it would have been a pretty different ride, with later talks revealing that it was planned to potentially have a launch and/or inversion(s).

With this in mind, I can fully believe that Wicker Man in its current form was not conceived until after the crash. I think they were likely planning a woodie of some description before the crash, but Wicker Man as we see it today was likely a post-crash proposal, in my view.

 

[Secret Weapon]

There was a roller coaster being brainstormed for Forbidden Valley prior to the Smiler crash

That's really interesting; I wonder whereabouts in FV it would have been located?

I didn't think there was much space left in there at the time? (Unless more trees were removed)

 

[Matt N]

That's really interesting; I wonder whereabouts in FV it would have been located?

I didn't think there was much space left in there at the time? (Unless more trees were removed)

If I’m not mistaken, the station would have been where The Blade was located, with the ride going through much of the wooded area in and around Forbidden Valley.

 

[John]

A while back the team put together an article showing where the FV wooden coaster might have gone, along with several other plans for wooden coasters that never came to fruition:

Seven times Alton Towers could have got wood – TowersStreet - Your premier Alton Towers guide!

towersstreet.com

Very hard to say for sure how the proposed FV wooden coaster would have compared to what we actually ended up with, but having 3 major coasters in that area of the park for the first time in 20 years would have been quite something

 

[MaxPower]

Attraction Source posted some images of what was proposed, quite glad we never got that to be honest.

 

[AltonLover123]

Shawn Sanbrooke from Theme Park Worldwide said earlier today that he believes that Wicker Man was only built due to the Smiler crash in 2015, as the park was desperate for good publicity at the time and so finally gave the public the wooden rollercoaster that they always wanted (see link below at 22:17 mark); he even went so far as to say that it was the park's second most ever important investment, as a result.

He also says that Covid had no impact on the Resort and it wasn’t the public that vandalised the Towers but Alton staff…

He is just click bait at this point

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

Shawn Sanbrooke from Theme Park Worldwide said earlier today that he believes that Wicker Man was only built due to the Smiler crash in 2015, as the park was desperate for good publicity at the time and so finally gave the public the wooden rollercoaster that they always wanted (see link below at 22:17 mark); he even went so far as to say that it was the park's second most ever important investment, as a result.

I found this interesting, as John Wardley had always suggested the opposite - i.e. that he personally always wanted a woodie, but that the public had always voted against it during market research.

Shawn was working at AT at the time, and so perhaps he knows something that I don't, though?

Does anybody know whether any of this is accurate?

Had the plans for Wicker Man already been drawn up before the Smiler crash occurred?

I remember John Wardley saying in his second book that he didn't even hear of Wicker Man until 2016 or so (I think), and so I am not quite sure about the timeline.


From: https://youtu.be/77s-usDTWIc?t=1337s

To suggest that a multinational corporation spontaneously commissioned a £16 million wooden rollercoaster as a knee jerk PR reaction to an accident reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how CapEx timelines work.

The full planning application for SW8 was submitted to Staffordshire Moorlands District Council on 17th May 2016. That is less than 11 months after the accident. To suggest that Merlin could conceive, budget, design, conduct environmental surveys for, and submit a full planning application for a custom wooden rollercoaster with a "world's first" element in that timeframe is to attribute them with a level of corporate agility they have never demonstrated.

The project was clearly already in the pipeline long before the crash. Whilst the incident undoubtedly influenced the marketing, pivoting away from dystopian themes towards the "Feed the Flames" narrative, the ride itself exists because Merlin finally found a gimmick (fire) that allowed them to sell a wooden coaster to a sceptical UK public.

Just because one sold Fastrack tickets in a kiosk during a specific era does not necessarily grant one a seat at the board table where the CapEx strategy is decided.

 

[AltonLover123]

Just because one sold Fastrack tickets in a kiosk during a specific era does not necessarily grant one a seat at the board table where the CapEx strategy is decided.

And therein lies the problem with creators. It’s so easy to make such offhand comments like his and they will be lapped up and believed and taken as gospel.

 

[Matt N]

To suggest that a multinational corporation spontaneously commissioned a £16 million wooden rollercoaster as a knee jerk PR reaction to an accident reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how CapEx timelines work.

The full planning application for SW8 was submitted to Staffordshire Moorlands District Council on 17th May 2016. That is less than 11 months after the accident. To suggest that Merlin could conceive, budget, design, conduct environmental surveys for, and submit a full planning application for a custom wooden rollercoaster with a "world's first" element in that timeframe is to attribute them with a level of corporate agility they have never demonstrated.

The project was clearly already in the pipeline long before the crash. Whilst the incident undoubtedly influenced the marketing, pivoting away from dystopian themes towards the "Feed the Flames" narrative, the ride itself exists because Merlin finally found a gimmick (fire) that allowed them to sell a wooden coaster to a sceptical UK public.

Just because one sold Fastrack tickets in a kiosk during a specific era does not necessarily grant one a seat at the board table where the CapEx strategy is decided.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but the EIA filed only 2 months before the crash, for a roller coaster in Forbidden Valley, would suggest that Wicker Man in its current form, on the site of the Flume, may have been a post-crash proposal, or at very least had not been concretely decided upon prior to the crash. A planning document for a site in Forbidden Valley would strongly imply that something else was in the pipeline.

Whether the crash and ensuing financial side effects were the catalyst for this change or whether it would have happened regardless will likely never be known, but we do have evidence that the park was considering something else pretty close to when the crash happened.

Also, incidentally, I seem to remember hearing that both Rita and Spinball Whizzer were allegedly not known about at the start of the prior season and materialised within a year. Take that with as much salt as you like, and it was admittedly a different time and under different, more slender corporate management, but I don’t think it’s necessarily impossible to conceive a roller coaster within one year.

 

[Squiggs]

Also, incidentally, I seem to remember hearing that both Rita and Spinball Whizzer were allegedly not known about at the start of the prior season and materialised within a year. Take that with as much salt as you like, and it was admittedly a different time and under different, more slender corporate management, but I don’t think it’s necessarily impossible to conceive a roller coaster within one year.

I'm not sure about Rita, but that's not correct on Spinball. I would reckon that Spinball was around 18 months from conception to opening, and certainly procurement/contracting was happening with Maurer in February 2003.

So not a huge amount longer, but it gives you an indication of the turn around time that was possible for a reasonably basic coaster installation.

Notably, neither of the proposed woodies were particularly basic.

 

[James]

Based on no insight. I feel Wicker Man was likely a second (or shelved) concept that was developed further in response to the The Smiler crash. The Forbidden Valley coaster would likely have cost far more, required far more extensive excavation, and resulted in huge changes to Forbidden Valley. Wicker Man, in comparison, would replace an existing ride within (roughly) the same space of land. It's not unusual for multiple concepts to be ongoing for several areas at the same time, or old ideas/detailed plans to be revisited. There's evidence that the Forbidden Valley woodie was quite far in development.

I doubt it would have been a PR reaction, but more than likely a case of "let's build something that costs less and is a safer investment... Shall we take a look at that woodie concept for the Flume site? We're closing it this year anyway..."

 

[Hid]

I do wonder what rides were already pre planned for closure before 2015 incident and whether The Flume was already planned for removal because it sat dormant throughout 2016 before construction began for Wickerman.

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

I don’t necessarily disagree, but the EIA filed only 2 months before the crash, for a roller coaster in Forbidden Valley, would suggest that Wicker Man in its current form, on the site of the Flume, may have been a post-crash proposal, or at very least had not been concretely decided upon prior to the crash. A planning document for a site in Forbidden Valley would strongly imply that something else was in the pipeline.

Whether the crash and ensuing financial side effects were the catalyst for this change or whether it would have happened regardless will likely never be known, but we do have evidence that the park was considering something else pretty close to when the crash happened.

The fact that an EIA was filed for a wooden coaster in Forbidden Valley in April 2015, two months before The Smiler incident, actually disproves the theory that the park only decided to build a wooden coaster as a panic-response to the crash.

The timeline proves that SW8 was always going to be a wooden coaster. The intent to build one was signed off by the board long before the accident occurred. Sanbrooke's assertion that they "finally gave the public the wooden rollercoaster... because they were desperate for good publicity" is logically flawed because they had already started the planning process for a wooden coaster before the bad publicity even existed.

The pivot from Forbidden Valley to Mutiny Bay suggests that the decision was operational, not reactionary. The Flume was a maintenance money pit that had reached the end of its viable life. It made far more sense to use the SW8 budget to redevelop a massive, defunct area of the park (Mutiny Bay / Flume site) than to try and shoehorn a woodie into the tight constraints of the Blade / Thunder Looper pit whilst The Flume sat rotting.

Also, incidentally, I seem to remember hearing that both Rita and Spinball Whizzer were allegedly not known about at the start of the prior season and materialised within a year. Take that with as much salt as you like, and it was admittedly a different time and under different, more slender corporate management, but I don’t think it’s necessarily impossible to conceive a roller coaster within one year.

Intamin, sadly, does not have a Queen of Speed hydraulic launch coaster sitting on a shelf in Liechtenstein ready for next day delivery via Amazon Prime. Even clone or standard layout rides require manufacturing slots booked years in advance. The lack of leaks in the early 2000s speaks to a lack of social media and drones, not a lack of corporate forward planning.

 

[Alfredo]

Shawn Sanbrooke from Theme Park Worldwide said earlier today that he believes that Wicker Man was only built due to the Smiler crash in 2015, as the park was desperate for good publicity at the time and so finally gave the public the wooden rollercoaster that they always wanted (see link below at 22:17 mark); he even went so far as to say that it was the park's second most ever important investment, as a result.

Wasn't wicker man already in early planning stages when the smiler crash happened