Jump to content
  TPR Home | Parks | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Instagram 

Alton Towers Discussion Thread

p. 235: Nemesis Reborn announced for Spring 2024!

Recommended Posts

After being a huge sceptic and riding I can say wow it's pretty awesome. The wind and forces with the video are great, I didn't even feel like I was outside you're in a whole 'nother world. The camera can be shaky at times and the wait for the attendants to clean to glasses is long and painful to watch, I feel terrible for the workers there.

 

Also their claims of it being incredibly clean/revolutionary cleaning etc. are overboard. Being a minor germaphobe I had a huge problem with their cleaning process. They reuse the same throw-out wipes on multiple VR headsets, and you use the same as the person before you. It's fine I'm sure but I was very grossed out. I got over it quick when the ride started . I also felt the need to hold onto the VR about halfway through because it was being shaken loose.

 

They also have 9(!) employees on each(!) side of the station. Which kind of annoys me because sub terra and other rides are closed because of budget costs.. And they are the only rides my aunt could've enjoyed with us. It takes them so long to explain to people what is going on/tighten their headsets/clean/explain focus. Couldn't imagine it without the double station.

 

Also- silver fast pass doesn't work on the ride and they refunded my entire fast pass and give me nothing. No problem.

It's very easy to just take off the VR and put it back in its pouch, or just hold it why not .

 

Any questions -just ask

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They also have 9(!) employees on each(!) side of the station. Which kind of annoys me because sub terra and other rides are closed because of budget costs.

 

In my own personal opinion I feel this had a significant impact on some of the ride closures that has effected the park this year. When you think about it from a staffing cost point of view they won't have had to hire extra staff to run the ride they have just relocated them from other attractions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

^ firstly, where is your source for this information? I was just wandering. And secondly, maybe they had already used their gold fast pass on Galactica already so this cannot use it twice.

 

Saw it on Facebook with the reply from the official account and Austin's post above seems to confirm. For Facebook there doesn't seem anywhere near the amount of complaints about it now being all VR that I expected, so I guess the majority were interested in trying VR anyway.

image.thumb.png.553e56809a2d5399a33dc1cfa11963f9.png

image.thumb.png.a9cb022ea564f829b31b09dfdbecb6e0.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just back from the park today, Galactica doesn't really work imo, I don't know if it was just my headset that wasn't in focus but the image wasn't great and I could see black edges when I moved my head to the left or right, no where near as immersive as I expected. Also, the loading and dispatch time is absolutely awful now, I think there is gonna' have to be changes before summer season starts.

 

The cuts all over the park were quite noticeable. Guests were choosing their own rows on every single coaster without a staff member to direct them where to go. 2 guests taking up a row of 4 leaving 2 seats empty etc. Noticed it all day.

 

Smiler and Nemesis as great as ever, unfortunately the rest of the park seems to be heading downhill.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agree with you about how horrible the park seemed to be ran compared to previous times. Empty seats were beyond what you could believe, and made queuing much longer with a combination of confused guests and employees that wanted to fill seats just wasting more time.

 

^Surprised by your account of galactica. I queued in the rain for a very short time, and was very happy with it, however I went into the ride expecting to hate it. No black box surrounding my sight (maybe I didn't look around enough), quite pixely though and did get blurrier as you looked away from centre of screen.

 

I also felt the towers loving care wasn't noticeable at all. There's paint peeling and wood rotting in many sections still. I also liked the look of the old nemesis more :/. Log flume was pointed out by everyone on my gondola rides as looking terrible too. Overall I heard many more negative comments from overhearing guests vs positive ones.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Been to Alton today, got many rides in including The Smiler and Galactica. Regarding Galactica, i thought it was really impressive, VR really improves the ride massively. The only downside to it is that the capacity has been significantly reduced and it now takes much longer to load than before. Nemesis also looks great with its new paint job and was very intense as usual, no queue for it all day too. To touch on The Smiler, it was incredibly good as usual as well, people were coming off really impressed and certainly not scared to ride after the accident. Really good day overall and a much better atmosphere on park compared to when i visited last July

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is my reaction to most online April Fool's Day pranks

 

 

And this is mine, especially since now you have 3x as many people who think it's better to share PSA's about who your April Fools may be hurting than people who actually bother with April Fools:

12923266_10153365385691039_9162968269443234394_n.jpg.4a83ac2cbc9fd1352f2f0bc09321d2a7.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey,

 

Just some thoughts and photos from myself about Galactica:

 

I visited Alton this past Saturday, mainly to give Galactica a try. The day started out very rainy but we made our way over to the ride and stood by the entrance until it opened. The whole area and plaza is very similar to how it used to be when the ride was known as Air. The Galactica logo has been created in bricks in the plaza and is a nice call back idea to the ride name "AIR" also being embedded into the ground when Air originally opened back in 2002, (now let's just hope Alton don't build a corner of a coffee shop seating area over it this time around!).

 

The new Galactica sign lights up and looks very striking and should look brilliant during the Scarefest and Firework events. The new soundtrack also gets blasted around the queue line and the area and is very reminiscent of Helix (I guess it would do having been composed by the same guys). I've embedded a clip below.

 

 

Half way through the queue comes a photo building which is actually pretty unique. Due to the fact there is no point in taking an onride photo of people all wearing VR headsets, the on-ride photo cameras have been removed and this new photo kiosk building built in the queue line. When you enter there are six acrylic bubbles on the left hand side. You stick your head in them and look directly at a screen which takes your photo and prints out a ticket for you to scan after the ride. The photos are made up to look like you are wearing a spacesuit. It's a nice effect overall.

 

After the photo op, the queue splits to either the left and over a bridge or to the right and straight on. Each way takes you into the station ready to board your flight. The front queue line option has been entirely removed considering that it is entirely pointless now.

 

As many people have stated, the whole boarding procedure is pretty laborious. Each row of the train had its own dedicated ride operative and the process seemed to go like so:

 

- Train arrives back in station and tilts to seated position

- Guests sit headset ontop of storage pouch

- Operative wipes headset and places each securely in their pouch and velcros it shut

- Restraints are unlocked and rides disembark

- New riders board and operative checks restraints and locks them

- Operative opens headset pouch and re-wipes each headset then tells rider to place it on their head

- Rider adjusts tightening strap and focusing dial to suit themselves

- Operative recalibrates each headset by asking rider to look straight ahead and then starting calibration

- Train is raised into flying position and departs

 

Staff were getting pretty quick with the whole procedure but it does take time and has impacted throughput.

 

The headsets are pretty heavy but you get used to them. The focusing dial helps but doesn't seem to go far enough (well not for me). Audio was great on my first ride, second was left side only and third was very quiet and could hardly hear anything. One great thing about the headsets is that it really does block all excess light out and really takes you away from reality. With your headset on and fully adjusted you sit there feeling quite alone staring at a rather large Galactica logo and what feels like a giant very black room.

 

Ok, so, the ride experience, once the trains start moving, the room opens up and you find yourself in a quite elaborate space station corridor moving forward. Quite a lot is going on and it's nice to be able to look around and see things either side rather than just infront of you. As you engage the lift you get the best part of the whole VR experience in my mind. Such a lot goes on and it's hard to decide where to look next. It's quite a strange sensation. This is the part that Alton is calling the launch. At the top of the lift you exit the portal and you are in deep space flying around the planets. As the fly to lie inversion arrives you are portalled (new word!) to a fire planet to witness the birth of a new star apparently. This part is where you are lying on your back. Due to this the headset does wobble quite a lot. After you are portalled again to an ice planet that crumbles away infront of you. Near the end of the circuit something happens that seems to take you offcourse and you are told you are landing and head through an emergency portal to land back on your original spaceship.

 

I enjoyed trying a VR coaster but it does have some issues. The two biggest personally are the resolution is not quite good enough to give you that feeling of escapism and secondly you do see the edges of the scenes a lot more than you should. Just turning your head slightly you notice them and it was very noticeable on the barrelroll as the headset video could not keep up with the physical motion and showed me the edges a lot.

 

One thing I was highly impressed by is that it did not make me feel queasy or ill in the slightest. No problem at all. I'm not too sure what others will make of it but this was my experience.

 

Overall, I think it's a nice update to Air and gives it a bit more rerideability and I think the public will love it. I did notice however that it does not feel like you are riding a rollercoaster anymore. It's like a glorified simulator. It has lost it's sense of height when you are at the top of the lift and there is no real sense of speed. It's very hard to explain and I think just needs to be tried out to understand.

 

Anyway, some photos and a short video I took:

 

 

galactica-1.thumb.jpg.9e52d6ac4936375919761176cfbb31e2.jpg

The old Air Shop is now home to the Rollercoaster Restaurant opening in May

galactica-10.thumb.jpg.922244084b1547ecae0404bd1e0136a4.jpg

This is the spaceship you take a flight on

galactica-11.thumb.jpg.8f9c438370d7093fcf799a320b14d8f5.jpg

A Galactinaut ready for their flight

galactica-12.thumb.jpg.fd2c21de70b7631bd2f2f25b943bec04.jpg

These are two of the small panels between each pair of seats. Apologies for the bluriness but I didn't have long the snap the photo and failed. As far as I could tell, this panel shows the operatives the current battery level, bluetooth connectivity status, allows them to calibrate the headset and to enable such features as captions and subtitles which is a great addition!)

galactica-13.thumb.jpg.bf10b510bb42e71916249dd3bc0eed09.jpg

Galactica soaring through space

galactica-2.thumb.jpg.71ed9b9097b6cd313cd11c0416ad77b6.jpg

Weird seeing people climbing the lifthill

galactica-3.thumb.jpg.401cc6ffdcc6b29e1a11ec311de9f1e9.jpg

Wheeee!

galactica-4.thumb.jpg.88a77c1459af3fd94d3a92f3570ffc28.jpg

Launching!

galactica-5.thumb.jpg.6b94845c5499160dc9a22b1c6563670e.jpg

galactica-6.thumb.jpg.702ec301e901dc09a372d5675327cea5.jpg

The new entrance logo

galactica-7.thumb.jpg.0a8dac69d8d5fda0d936e0a336bac2da.jpg

The test seat

galactica-8.thumb.jpg.3b3ecaca970a81829d6efdf79dfa1b6a.jpg

New covering on the bridge heading to the left hand station

galactica-9.thumb.jpg.c4e4919faa4ffaf14c85c9519994d711.jpg

The newly enclosed station.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use https://themeparkreview.com/forum/topic/116-terms-of-service-please-read/