I agree with the general gist of the recent comments above. There are occasional pictures of this that get me a little optimistic but others that just completely blow any form of expectation, I’ve never really had that feeling with a new coaster being constructed before.
In regards to the dark theme and target audience aim I believe Merlin continually make mistakes with this, as per
@scw55 post I believe the marketing / theme of this ride will actually go further in putting off the rides main target audience that it will attract it. Its an issue I’ve had with DBGT and Thirteen most recently. The latter is clearly a family ride but I’ve seen families turning back out of the queue line after finding the Plasma Globe area to be loud and intimidating, I get that most adults / teenagers aren’t going to find this scary or unnerving but we aren’t who the ride is marketed to. We come off the coaster disappointed whilst some of the target audience find it too intimidating or unnerving to even ride the thing. Similar thing with DGBT, its clearly not aimed at families but the build up, advertisement and marketing for the ride lead people to believe it was one of the scariest experiences going. This put off loads of potential riders and left only the relatively brave people to ride it, the people more tolerant to scare attractions ride it and are disappointed (it’s really not very scary at all) yet the people who would have likely enjoyed it or been thrilled by it the most were too scared to ride in the first place.
I mean I have no idea how far Merlin will go with the marketing of this attraction but I know DBGT had a huge marketing campaign and I still see TV adverts some 2 years after it was built. In my opinion this is clearly talented Merlin marketers / PR being given an inferior product by upper management. The campaigns they do are always very good they just don’t always reflect the product they’re being given to work with. I actually think Merlin feel like they are in the position to cut costs on actual products knowing they can, in their opinion, make up for it with some excellent marketing. From a GP perspective this model clearly works, doesn’t quite fool us nerds though.