Thrill Laboratory

[chris.radders]

So the one thing i guess that many of you havne't heard about is Thrill Laboratory. Basically, it's a company that are looking into the way that thrills happen with people. All you had to do was fill in a online survey where they did a reading of you to see if you were a wimp or OTT adrenaline junkie, and if you had the right information you were asked to come along to one day of the week. Although I filled in the information and wasn't invited to one of the days, my girlfriend had the information they required and it was up to Alton Towers VERY early on wednesday morning.

 

So anyway on to Wednesday, and upon arriving at Alton Towers we met up with the leader of this experiment, Brendan, who took us up to HQ for the day (one of the function rooms) where my girlfriend was told of what would be happening, as well as me.

 

To keep it short, all the guinea pigs were to be tested on several different attractions in the park during the day. These rides were:

 

Corkscrew: NOTE the ONLY time an experiment has been done on the ride in it's history (unless you count Carol Vorderman)

Rita: Queen of Speed

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Oblivion

 

During the ride, all the guinea pigs (2 ladies and 1 male) were wired up to sensors to see the way they reacted to the ride as well as filmed with lip cameras on their face at all times. These were then watched at the end of the day.

 

As the group was split throughout the day, we were each able to ride all of the rides in the park. As it was a Wednesday the park was fairly quiet however..good bit coming up now.. Unlimited passes on all rides to get to front queue. This meant loads of rides on many of the rollercoaster in the park and time for me to christen and say goodbye to the Vekoma Death Machine (copyrighted to Robb) that is Corkscrew. Now i have to admit all rides in the park were brilliant, especially Air, something pretty amazing.

 

One fairly funny moment of the day was walking around the park with all this equipment on you. While waiting to fix part of the equipment and go onto Corkscrew, we had a fairly big laugh. Many little people in the queue (not Kidtums size, but close) were asking what we were doing. Brendan goes up and tells them that we were doing the preparation for the new Blue Peter presenter ( the male in our group) and his introduction was to do this experiment. It was really funny as everyone was asking him when he was starting. Another person, same area, was quite like the group outside Thorpe Park on the 2006 UK trip. We christened her *not to be rude but....* girl and told her the same story. Now she was about 17ish and you had to be there as every sentence starting with not to be rude but... it made most of the team giggle.

 

With all the rides completed that we were being experimented on, we had about 2 hours to go around the park by ourselves. All in all a brlliant day to which I would recommend taking part in if you got the chance, especially with all the complimentary bits and bobs we got.... ENTRANCE FEE, parking (in the visitor car park behind the scenes), food, drink, unlimited priority passes.

 

If anyone else is interested in the day, i've added a link to the event below. Note the videos are not from the event I went to, it was their Oblivion experiment in 2007.

 

http://www.thrilllaboratory.com/

 

best wishes to all

Chris

[Groteslurf]

Interesting.

 

I wouldn't mind wearing all that technology if I would get priority passes either.

Are the results published somewhere too. I didn't find them back on the thrillfactory website. Or did I overlook it ?

 

One thing, Brendan Walker should buy a new set of glasses

[chris.radders]

My girlfriend was told that she would get the video sent to her, but all the other information is being kept by thrill lab as it was an experiment done with University of Nottingham

[mash80]

I took the survey but didn't get accepted. I remember there being some "interesting" questions lol. Mostly I recall one asking if I enjoyed group sex or swinging, or something along those lines. A lot of the questions I could have given 2 or 3 of the answers and there was some real tough choices. Oh well, there's always next year!

 

Glad to hear you had a good day overall. It's pretty awesome that you got the passes too, free entry would be enough to please me so that would be a massive bonus

[CoasterRog]

I saw him on a TV program (I think Discovery Channel) a couple of weeks ago where he analyzed Fahrenheit. It was very interesting.