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SW9 at Alton Towers

Despite there being a quality gap of several galaxies between the two, IMO if anything Alton Towers should do what Europa Park has done after they built Wodan: look at their coaster line-up, think to themselves "not missing anything obvious, this will do for the next 10 years" and just have a one-year-project every year to spruce up the place, give every area some much needed TLC and especially add some variety into their atrocius flatride-lineup. I wouldn't even mind them being a total copycat. Build a Flying Theatre. An Inverted Dark Ride. Anything that will turn Alton Towers back into a theme park, because right now it more has a feel of a private roller coaster collection on someones private property, operated by only that one single person.

Speaking of private collections, there's a guy living nearby who has his own private oldtimer-museum in his backyard, and he has longer opening hours than Alton Towers most of the time. Yeah, maybe you guys got a LOT to fix.
 
Robbie said:
Ah, OK. Just with him saying on TV last week that they're making a roller coaster of one of his books, I took that to mean they're making a roller coaster of one of his books.
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In fairness, they haven't confirmed either way if it is or isn't a coaster. But I think that part of the park requires planning permission and no plans have been submitted for a coaster. And if there was a coaster going there, they almost definitely would push that on park, which they're not.

Walliams probably just said the basic thing of calling the new ride a coaster because it's easier than saying a ride at this stage (ie, when the focus was on the fact one of his books is being made into a ride, rather than what that ride is).
 
Ethan said:
I think of it as a load of crap, so there you go :)
There doesn't appear to be any evidence to support this rumour. From what I can see, people think it's because Alton (apparently) asked B&M for a water ride. But I also haven't seen any evidence for this.
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I saw a YouTube vid of a John Wardley Q&A. He said that B&M would never do a water ride, only roller coasters.
 
Fluorineer said:
Despite there being a quality gap of several galaxies between the two, IMO if anything Alton Towers should do what Europa Park has done after they built Wodan: look at their coaster line-up, think to themselves "not missing anything obvious, this will do for the next 10 years" and just have a one-year-project every year to spruce up the place, give every area some much needed TLC and especially add some variety into their atrocius flatride-lineup.
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Yeah, err... Have you heard of Merlin's business model? I don't think investors would be very happy with your idea. Yes, Lego might change things up now that they've purchased Merlin, but I don't see them going down this route either. Also, a flying theatre at Alton Towers? Nah.

Fluorineer said:
Anything that will turn Alton Towers back into a theme park, because right now it more has a feel of a private roller coaster collection on someones private property, operated by only that one single person.
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Have you been? It feels like a theme park to me, albeit a Merlin one. I also disagree that it feels like it's run by a singular collector or whatever, but honestly the setting of the park is pretty spectacular and it sort of benefits from feeling like private property.
 
Ethan said:
Yeah, err... Have you heard of Merlin's business model? I don't think investors would be very happy with your idea.
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Yeah, err... Right now their business model is somewhere along the lines of "genuinely not knowing what to do to make sure that they won't get rid of their classical theme parks entirely because they have become unprofitable and way too expensive to fix". But hey, if that's what makes the investors happy, then what do I know.

The details don't really matter, if a Flying Theater doesn't fit for one reason or another, then something else will. For Coaster enthusiasts, the place is very much a theme park because you can kill an entire day or even two with just the creds (and a little bit of walking inbetween), and the experience can be genuinely good in that case. However, enthusiasts don't make up enough percentage of the visitors to pay for new roller coasters, or even running the place. They have alienated the most important visitors with their current business model, which is: families that can only go on weekends or holidays. I specifically brought up Europa Park because it's not exactly a Coaster enthusiast's dream park, but they have a clear vision for what the park is supposed to be, how it has to be run and what it should offer. You might not like their vision but they go through with it, and currently they are printing money from all those people that are leaving 1-star reviews for Alton Towers (or Thorpe for that matter).
 
Gazza said:
Wouldn't a flying theatre be a logical addition? Nowhere else in the UK has one right?
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No, but does the UK not having something always mean one is needed, or necessary? I don't know if it would go down well, even in the family market, but who knows. I just don't see it at all.

(Side note, I could swear that Legoland Windsor is getting a smaller version of the Lego Movie area that Orlando has, or am I getting confused? I remember my friend inside Merlin talking about it but I can't remember if that's already been announced, or if I'm getting my Legolands confused. But if that is the case, I imagine that would be the first flying theatre).

Edit- The expansion is already known about, and it turns out I have nothing new or noteworthy to say about it. Fab)
 
Why wouldn't it go down well? They seem quite well regarded at basically every park they are installed at.

Edit, looks like Windsor is getting one.
 
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Not much SW9 discussion going on here!

The David Walliams topic is here:

The World of David Walliams is coming to Alton Towers

There has been rumours for a while, but it’s now official, the World of David Walliams is coming to Alton Towers next season. Located in Cloud Cuckoo Land, the area will include a new ride (believed to be in the old Wobble World building) and a variety of other smaller attractions.
coasterforce.com coasterforce.com

The topic for mindless, ill-informed bashing of Alton Towers is here:

WTF Merlin?

It claims that the issues Wicker Man is having means it won't be reopening until August. Oh dear! Thanks anyway @CSLKennyNI!
coasterforce.com coasterforce.com

It's important to me to keep it on topic because I do want to hear any news of SW9 but I don't want to read pages of rants about Merlin's business model!
 
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Rita, along with Nemesis, featured as a peculiar question on the guest feedback machines earlier on in the season, with the purpose of the question seeminy to be to guage visitor interest in the attractions.

Could certainly speculate that the only reason they'd be asking about 2 named attractions, was to aid in deciding an attraction's future. Given that it seems highly unlikely the park would ever get rid of Nemesis, I'd say a reasonable speculation would be the question was used to determine Rita's popularity against a Nemesis baseline. A low popularity score would make ideal ammunition for a project lead wanting to use that space for something new.

It should also be noted that Rita is the Resort's most expensive attraction to maintain by considerable margin. Couple that with Stealth having required repairs to the hydraulic system mid-season that caused not only a lengthy shut down of the ride but I would suspect had a significant cost itself, I'd have to assume the question has been raised about Rita's value for money as a continuing attraction.

Are these very early signs that Rita's site is the possible site of SW9?
 
CrashCoaster said:
If a launch coaster is to be removed, a launch coaster is to be the replacement imo.
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Yh absolutely. It definitely seems like that's gonna be the site too because they aren't gonna get rid of Nemesis. Plus, it looks like they are planning something that could be the same popularity as Nemesis, which is difficult to get cause it's such a popular rollercoaster
 
Coaster Chall YouTube said:
Are these very early signs that Rita's site is the possible site of SW9?
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Rita being on its way out makes a lot of sense from a business-perspective imo. It's young enough that you can still get a decent amount of money for it, but also old enough that it has both not aged well in terms of coaster design, as well as not being a major draw for guests to the park at all anymore.

However, since it's Alton's only launch coaster, I would much prefer if they pulled a Liseberg and built a shiny new launched coaster before replacing their poopy hydraulic one, so hopefully Rita could serve as the site of SW10 rather than SW9.

If you allow me to be a dreamer, this could be a golden opportunity to hit multiple birds with one stone. An Intamin Blitz with inspiration from both Hagrid and Taron could be a really nice family/thrill-coaster/dark-ride. Something like that could be worked in well within Alton's height requirements, 1 or 2 sexy darkride-sections inbetween launches would really add to that department while being different enough from DBGT that Merlin wouldn't be too scared of doing something like that, and some snappy transitions with maybe an inversion or two really could make for a phenomenal package. The hardware and possibly terrain-work would be costly, but then again, track length and amount of theming could be kept within sane constraints. And it would "allow" them to scrap their most expensive coaster while they're at it.

A couple of years ago I would have said that a concept like this would be too conservative for a marketability-driven company like Merlin, but Wicker Man proves that they are willing to go with the more conventional hardware if the package is right. And I would argue that the Intamin Blitz is a proven and matured product at this point.
 
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