But they could have got an Intermin Mega coaster or whatever they are called, but seeing both or Thorpe's break down all the time this probably put them off.
Agreed. In fact, I don't think the parks in the Merlin chain will go back to Intamin.
I doubt it's simply because of Wardley... he hardly themed air... at all.
You, and everyone else who commented on this subject after are misunderstanding what Wardley does.
He's a conceptual designer. He doesn't design the coaster or the themeing he just comes up with the general gist of it.
With air, for example, Wardley was set on the concept of having a roller coaster that could fly. But he'd been obsessed with this idea since Nemesis. After riding the B&M invert prototype, Wardley was excited by how free it was...
"It is the nearest thing to flying that you can get.". So Nemesis was brought to the park under similar intentions and concept as air. Wardley pushed B&M for the concept of a true flying roller coaster, but didn't design it.
I don't know whether to believe the stories about 9/11 in relation to air's theme, but we do know that it was Wardley who came up with the concept of a tranquill roller coaster because of the way he talks about the idea (
you can clearly see it's his idea, he's passionate about it)... So I think those rumours air's original theme are, frankly, rubbish.
Air does have a themeing, it's just not blatent themeing... Oblivion is the same. These two rides, their theming and names are perhaps the best examples of coasters driven by concept alone. I personally think they are wonderfully sucessfull. It's a shame that their concepts were not evolved with the realisation of extended models. Oblivion and air's ride types match their concept completely, obviously... and that's what Wardley was so damn good at.
When I mentioned Wardley in my previous post, I wasn't suggesting that he's the reason for the heavy themeing, not at all. I was talking about rides who focus on atmosphere and emotion. All Wardley's projects have had this focus, but in previous coasters emotion has been drawn from the physical feel of the rides.
I'm sorry if this post is a spelling mistake mindfield, the spellchecker is being dodgy... It keeps like, editing my entire posts when I try to use it.