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Roller Coaster TV Programs and Other Related Videos

I watched the Hidden Britain episode tonight and it was pretty poor. They showed a flashback of Steve Royle performing at the theme park and it was a completely different person! Meanwhile a woman dragged her kid round and moaned she had nowhere to go anymore, and Simon Rigby thought it would last forever.
 
Pants.

I get that it was just one big PR exercise to show that they're safe and we should go ride the new ride but it was a bit **** tbh. Go to an ad break with a bloke swearing about how the ride is ****ed, come back and no mention of it is made?

Stock Rollercoaster Tycoon screams every thirty seconds?

Interviews with 'interesting' characters?

Even for a program that was meant to appeal to the GP, I think it was a bit rubbish. The concept art sneak peaks and the media day preparations and trackwork installation was the most interesting part.
 
Some people are complaining that the enthusiast community were portrayed in a bad light in the documentary, but I personally think that enthusiasts were portrayed just fine myself!
 
^ haha I agree with the above.

The rides staff embracing the story narrative made me feel embarrassed just watching!

I'm speaking from experience here, those group exercises are truly awful, I never really got them but hay ho I was more concerned with breaking the throughput record and running the ride correctly!

Pound shop Disney if you ask me
 
Matt N said:
Some people are complaining that the enthusiast community were portrayed in a bad light in the documentary, but I personally think that enthusiasts were portrayed just fine myself!
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I think they were portrayed in quite a tragic light, with the documentary focusing heavily on 'sad' back stories that caused them to turn to roller coasters for solace and escapism. Personally I don't see this as an accurate depiction as it misses out the more prominent fun-loving hedonistic side of coaster enthusiasm. I assume it was edited to come across like this to try and force some emotion into the programme.

It was a confusing documentary that lacked focus. The Smiler incident was mentioned lots but never really explored in depth. If there was a focus on how Alton dealt with the aftermath and rebranding it could've made for a really interesting documentary, as could it if there was an in-depth focus on the process of marketing and opening a new ride. It didn't even work that well as an hour long advert for the park, as although safety concerns of the public were talked about they were never really addressed in detail. I thought it was all a bit crap.
 
Smithy said:
Stock Rollercoaster Tycoon screams every thirty seconds?
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This drove me up the wall. Would it have been so hard to take some on site audio of the rides to at least get a bit of variation, rather than the same rollercoaster tycoon audio clip playing over and over.

I personally thought the documentary was dreadful. It didn't explain or explore many points raised such as the Smiler Crash, H&S, the design of the ride etc. As many have said, it was basically an hour long advertisement that didn't really do a good job at advertising the ride or the park!

For a professional company producing the documentary, it was really badly compiled and edited piece. Am surprised Alton Towers are happy with it!
 
I enjoyed seeing Alton Towers on the telly for an hour but there was such little substance to it.

I wasn't keen on how apart from Megafobia Mark every enthusiast was into coasters to escape from something horrific in their lives. Obviously for some that is the case but I don't think it sums up the general enthusiast population who just want a laugh on a day out and something geeky to read to pass time in the evenings.
 
About halfway through and giving up on it. Total and utter s**te. Where did they dig those sad cases up from?
 
Recorded it last night to watch now - wasn't impressed and all I can really do is echo everyone else's thoughts.
Aside from a bit of background on the Beornen and Wickerman theming, I didn't learn anything I didn't already know, the RCT sounds were funny to start with but quickly became cloying - and they made enthusiasts look even more tragic than is in fact the case. When you interview a handful of people and Georgia seems like the most normal, it really doesn't say a lot for the rest... It seemed like a shameless attempt to make people go 'Let's go to Alton Towers this bank holiday' when I was basically expecting Secret Life of the Zoo (but with more coasters)

Also a shame Ian avoided the cameras at the media event, I was hoping he'd make a cameo ;)
 
Inside Alton Towers could have been so much better if they'd just devoted a bit more time to the park developments over time. It's a park with such a rich history that i would have loved it to be a celebration of why it's been such an important part of the UK theme park industry.

Also, I was seriously fuming at the sight of the guy pushing past a bunch of kids to get through the gate first. There was just no need for that for the sake of being on the first public ride of the wicker man.
 
Not a great programme, and hard to see who'd be happy with that. The ride itself has got good reviews but I'm still baffled why they went for this theme following the Smiler accident and this documentary came nowhere near to addressing that, or even looking at lessons learnt. The way they went to the final break with a worker complaining on issues and then never addressed it is just really poor film-making.
 
Benenen said:
apart from Megafobia Mark every enthusiast was into coasters to escape from something horrific in their lives.
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Did you miss the part about Megafobia Mark's son being dangerously ill when he was a baby!?

Will said:
they made enthusiasts look even more tragic than is in fact the case.
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Haha a difficult task expertly executed!

I thought the programme was alright, I guess I just had lower expectations that the rest of you. They obviously wanted to feature enthusiasts with some relevant back story as it makes for better TV than somebody just saying "yeah I have always loved roller coasters". There was some good vintage footage from BPB in there but disappointingly little on the current park and its wooden coasters.

A lot of people I know seem to have watched it, lots of people have talked to me about it. Hopefully it raises the profile of woodies in the UK and helps the Wicker Man to be a success so that we may see bigger better woodies in the UK in the near future.
 
Just watched it today - was a bit of an odd programme, didn't seem like it knew what it wanted to be, was certainly not "Inside Alton Towers" in any great way, lots of guff nothing to do with Alton and the dreadful enthusiast sections (not that I'm saying those people were dreadful by any means, just thats not an "Inside Alton Towers" thing - if they wanted to make a human-interest story about enthusiasts then that was the place for those stories, but as it was they were far too light-weight as a human-interest story and didn't add to the Alton angle at all). Some parts of the Wicker Man sections were good, but again it lacked the narrative to tell the whole "building the Wicker Man" story (as it ignored so much that we know about).
Pretty wasted effort all round then, poor film-making overall IMHO.
 
I just switched on the TV and Camelot was on TV on the One Show. It was only 5 minutes, fairly similar to the recent Tony Robinson programme, but worth a watch on iplayer if you're interested in that sort of thing.
 
I disagree, they use a ****ing stock RCT scream at the end and it ****ing pissed me right off.

Honestly it's such a ridiculous reason to have to explain to a room full of people why I'm shouting OH **** OFF at the One Show.
 
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