Park News
21st Century
Ghost Train Thorpe Park’s new attraction will mess with your mind!
If you’re reading this from outside the UK, you might not be familiar with Derren Brown, but rest assured the new multimedia dark ride he is lending his name to at Thorpe Park will be something out of the ordinary. Brown, a psychological illusionist whose Channel 4 TV shows
feature intriguing stunts and experiments based on mind reading and manipulation, is collaborating with the creative team at
Merlin Magic Making to realise an ambitious new attraction that will fuse grand illusion, live action, 4D effects, technology and transit. Derren Brown’s Ghost Train, opening this spring at the popular park outside London, has been in development for over three years and represents its biggest investment to date. Like its inventor, it will be a smart ride, with 12 knee-shaking sequences and two possible endings. Housed inside a purpose-built 2,300 sq m warehouse in centre of the park, the centrepiece of the attraction will be a 20m-long Victorian-styled train carriage suspended in iron chains above the ground.
Equipped with Vive VR headsets by HTC, guests will be subjected to a variety of multi-
sensory surprises throughout the journey and also a series of high-octane live action sequences where participants will take centre stage in the story. As in his TV shows and stage performances, Brown will toy with guests’ minds and perceptions throughout the journey on board the ‘Ghost Train’ until they no longer know what is real, before leaving them on a cliff- hanger ending. Bradley Wynne, who is leading the creative team at Merlin Magic Making (MMM)
together with Paul Moreton, and is also working on the Galactica VR project at Alton Towers (see right), tells Park World virtual reality will be only a part of the Derren Brown experience: “Whilst we’re incredibly excited to be working with this cutting edge technology I wouldn’t get too hung up on this feature. Think of it as just one item in a magician’s bag of tricks!” A team of over 1,000 specialists from Thorpe Park Resort, MMM and various external
experts have pooled their skills to create the new attraction, which Thorpe Park divisional director Mike Vallis describes as “an entirely new invention. You can’t simply call it a ride, an attraction or an experience. We can’t wait to see people’s reactions to it. Just don’t take the first visuals at face value, as they are deceptive and all is not quite what it seems.” “The ‘run of the mill’ ghost train has stood the test of the time, it’s a guilty pleasure and staple
of the theme park industry,” reflects Wynne. “This attraction is more of an homage. We are taking all the parts you love of the classic ghost train, the feelings you experience, and packaging it up into a completely new entity. This is the ghost train for the 21st Century!” “Working with Derren and utilising a mix of techniques from the Victorian era through to today’s technology, we have created something utterly original.,” continues Wynne. “It is not just a scare ride, you will experience delight and it may even provoke thought. This will be the first Ghost Train that I can honestly say will have a mind of its own. It will play with your senses, mess with your mind, and your fate will be chosen once you pass through the suspended Victorian carriages doors.” Have fun following the hints, clues and hyperbole provided by Thorpe Park over the coming months at
mindswanted.co.uk
Air will get a new lease of life as Galactica
Alton Towers reveals
VR coaster plans The famous British theme park resort Alton Towers is to give one of its biggest attractions an intergalactic upgrade. Air, which debuted in 2002 as the world’s first B&M (Bolliger & Mabillard)) flying coaster, will reopen this coming April as Galactica. Virtual reality (VR) technology from Figment Productions near London will
provide visuals perfectly synchronised to the coaster’s twists, turns and loops, launching riders up into “space,” flying and looping beyond the stars, banking through wormholes and speeding across undiscovered galaxies. The 840m-long (2,760ft) coaster is located in the Forbidden Valley section of the park near Nemesis, another B&M favourite. Alton Towers and its owner Merlin Entertainments is hoping to piggyback
on the current excitement for the space exploration that followed Tim Peake’s (the first British man to go into space) maiden voyage in December 2015 and the arguably more interesting NASA mission to Mars and anticipated landing of a spacecraft on Jupiter. “For two minutes, our guests will be transported into space,” says the park’s marketing director, Gill Riley. ”We believe Galactica showcases the future for theme parks around the world – it’s a complete game changer!” According to Simon Reveley at Figment Productions, the result will be far superior to any simulator-based experience: “No simulator can reproduce what we have done because if the brain and the body are in conflict and the brain tries to tell body it is ‘flying’ then result is motion sickness, sometimes quite severe! So only the combination of a real coaster flight and the VR can produce this experience.” Figment has been working on virtual reality projects since 2006, realising
the Vector VR system that will be used on Galactica in 2014. “It was based on an idea that originally saw us strapping mobile phones to our chests and whizzing around the studio on wheelie chairs,” remembers Reveley. “Before long, our long-standing relationship with Merlin meant we were lucky enough to test our fledgling system on a real rollercoaster and now it has matured into the world’s first fully realised VR motion-sync system.” MackMedia famously pioneered its own VR Coaster experiments behind closed doors in 2014 at Europa-Park in Germany before making the technology available to the public on a limited basis last season on the park’s Alpenexpess mine train. The new innovation at Alton Towers, however, represents the first time VR has been extended to a full rollercoaster. Also new for 2016 at the British resort will
be the Rollercoaster Restaurant. Opening in May, it uses the same entertaining food delivery system as Europa-Park’s FoodLoop restaurant, courtesy of the German company Heine Mack (no relation to the Mack family at Europa-Park/MackMedia). Reveley adds that Figment Productions is currently in talks on around half a dozen other potential Vector VR projects. “Primarily its uses are in parks and other attractions, but in some circumstances ambitious live events might also benefit from Vector VR. We will have a major, bespoke project announcement in the near future.”
8 The ride building pictured during construction last year FEBRUARY 2016
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