Ollie
CF Legend
I was lucky to be able to attend the VIP event for Pleasurewood Hills new ride Hobs Pit. Having never visited the park before I'd only heard from others what to expect and opinions ranged from the place being a dump to people having fond memories of visiting when growing up. Upon arriving at the park it was clear that it was no Alton Towers however it appeared to have all the family charm of the small parks you visited as a child. That said you could tell that they're slowly growing with several coasters and larger rides within view as you arrive into the large car park.
Once inside the park we were led the to a building where we were served drinks and had the opportunity to mingle with others and see concept art and designs of the ride. Here we were given a talk about the ride from Ben Rowe, Alexis Camelin and Sean Alexander on how the idea came about and how the effects and illusions for the ride were created. The park spoke about how they hoped the ride would set the bench mark for all extra additions to the park and their aim to go full out on everything they do in the future. The parks magician Sean spoke about how he used illusions such as peppers ghost in several of the scenes to make the characters seem like ghosts. We were then showed renders demonstrating how the peppers ghost effect is used inside the ride.
As you turn into Main Street you notice the facade of the building looks fantastic and really makes the ride stand out and tempt you inside to discover what lurks within. It instantly demonstrates the lengths the park has gone to to make the ride as detailed as possible from start to finish.
The new ride, which cost over half a million pounds, has been developed by the park in conjunction with world renowned special effects expert Rob Ostir and voice actor Corey Burton. The pair, who usually work with theme parks in the USA such as Disney World and Universal Studios have been involved with movie blockbusters like 2012, Mars Attacks! and the Chronicles of Narnia, as well as most of Disney’s feature animations over the past two decades. Hobs Pit is part of the £3.5 million investment that Looping Group owners pledged to invest when they bought the park two years ago. Hobs Pit is just one of four new rides to launch this year in the park’s 30th anniversary.
Advertised as the scariest ride in the UK the park have given it a recommended 1.5 height limit and the BBFC have given the ride a 12A rating due to the graphic nature of some of the scenes. The online marketing was done fantastically well and got people all over the world talking about the ride including people in the states after an article was published about it in the Los Angeles Times.
Hobs Pit is not your stereotypical ghost train. Part walk-through and part ride it mixes sudden scares along with high tech effects such as projections. It begins with a dark walk through the mine until you reach a locked door and are told to get the key. Saying what happens after that would spoil the ride but it shows straight away how far they're willing to go with showing graphic scenes of gore.
The ride system is the same as the previous ride although the station had been moved to allow for it to flow from the walk-through section directly onto the ride station. The slow moving mine cart takes groups of 4 around the mine past different scenes as you try and escape from Hob. There are some great effects utilized inside the mine and some brilliantly graphic scenes which are themed amazingly for such a small park. However the sections of the ride that didn't have any scares were just black walls which we felt detracted from the overall experience as it wasn't fully immersive and it made it more obvious where the scares or effects were going to happen. That said though the actors did a great job and made our group jump several times and although the final effect wasn't working when we rode the ride it's going to look great once it's finally up and running.
The park stressed that what we saw was essentially Hobs Pit V1.0 and there's still plans to add more to the ride however from what we saw the main way to make it even better would be to make it darker, add a creepy soundtrack and add some theming to fill the spaces between the scenes. The park have already said they aim to add more to the ride to fill some of the gaps and to make it even scarier. If that wasn't enough then for their Halloween event Pleasurewood Chills the park are going to make it even scarier with Hobs Pit Live where more actors will roam the mines and provide more intense scares. Hobs Pit Live is just one of the attractions the park have lined up for their scream park where they plan to spend 10 times the budget as previous years.
When we attended the park the next day the ride opened in the afternoon for a soft opening. It was instantly popular with the queue going out the door and along main street and people coming out at the end screaming and physically shaking. The on-ride photo was also perfectly positioned
Hobs Pit will officially be launched as part of the park’s 30th anniversary celebrations on Sunday 2nd June. Here's some footage of the ride on BBC News.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2gJqqshb84&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]
