Relocated London Dungeons at County Hall

[Nemesis Inferno]

Someone else has found this, but Merlin have applied for planning permission to add a Dungeons attraction into County Hall, right by the Aquarium and the Eye...

This is... strange and interesting for the future of the London Bridge ones themselves, are they to be removed for this version? Or both kept?

Can have a mosey at the plans here:

http://planning.lambeth.gov.uk/online-a ... MTDBOHV000

 

[Thekingin64]

Re: Second London Dungeons at County Hall?

Interesting.

At first I thought this meant that Death Trap thing at the exit to the Aquarium, but don't think it is. Still could be though as it was very random posistioning for a scare attraction otherwise.

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

Re: Second London Dungeons at County Hall?

Looking at the plans, it's located in the old Dali thing, so between the Eye and Sea-Life...

Has Traitor and Extremis, and apparently is aimed to be a replacement for the London Bridge site... It's an interesting move from them really... Has LBE affected them that much? They sick of them so just shifting to where the rest of the attractions are to make people visit all of them?

 

[Hurri]

Re: Second London Dungeons at County Hall?

Very interesting, looks almost certainly like they want to move the entire London Dungeon attraction to County Hall. The most obvious difference as far as the rides go is that Extremis would load at the top rather than on the lower level, in a Sub-Terra fashion.

They must be pretty confident about getting permission to have actually submitted the plans, and I think it would definitely mean closure of the existing Dungeon. Will be interested in seeing how this pans out.

I don't think it's down to LBE, I think it's more a case of being able to sell a multi-ticket covering the Eye, Sealife and Dungeons with the selling point of them all being there together. Which leads me to wonder if somewhere down the line they're going to try shoehorning Madame Tussauds into the arcade space or something.

 

[Ian]

Re: Second London Dungeons at County Hall?

They may as well rename the South Bank "Merlin Bank" and charge people £7 to have their photo taken with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

 

[Mark]

Re: Second London Dungeons at County Hall?

I don't think it would be anything to do with LBE tbh. Not really. Especially considering this move would put them slap bang next to Death Trap, a not entirely dissimilar style of attraction from LBE.

I reckon it is more likely that the current location is rammed with stuff and have absolutely no room for expansion etc. Plus putting it over with the Eye means that people are more likely to take advantage of the combo tickets etc like Hurri said.

I doubt that they would ever move MT though. MT has been there for 100 years and is a huge building. It may fit into the arcade space, but the Baker Street location is historic in itself... I don't know, perhaps it could. I just can't see it myself.

You might want to change the topic title though. This isn't a 2nd London dungeons attraction... its an attraction move

They may as well rename the South Bank "Merlin Bank" and charge people £7 to have their photo taken with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

Naaaah, they will just bung people infront of a green screen for a photo and superimpose the House of Parliament into it... Just like they do with the eye...

 

[Nemesis Inferno]

Re: Second London Dungeons at County Hall?

I hadn't bothered fully reading it till I did the topic, so it's changed now

I like the idea of top loading for Extremis, kinda makes more sense to the actual story tbh, though it might mean it loses the old kick...

Also Guy Fawkes is in there, dunno about Vengeance either... Oh wells, defo need to go back to the Bridge

Think Deathtrap isn't gonna be much of an effect on the Dungeons though in comparison to the LBE as well, as LBE was effectively the same style as Dungeons AND the scaremaze section... Deathtrap is just a scaremaze...

 

[Anonymous]

I believe all the ride systems will be new ones, as extremis will be top loading, the boat ride a different layout.

Vengeance could possibly be in the "turning room" scene 9, not sure though. It will be to do with multi buy tickets in 1 location

 

[scw55]

Seems a bit silly to have it so close to the SeaLife centre. Families with young children will visit the latter and kiddies might catch glimpse of promotional material/banners and be harrowed. Bad enough as it is when you leave the Aquarium you get a TV trailering promo for Death Trap and you can hear some guests screaming.

I went to Covenant Gardens with my dad when I was 8 and there were some horror themed interactive booths there. They disturbed me for many months.

 

[Hurri]

I don't think they'd have that much difficulty modifying Extremis and building a few new sections of trough, it'll almost certainly be the same machines.

 

[Thekingin64]

The current London Bridge location is very handy when travelling on the tube whereas for the eye, it's a bit of a walk. Why move it though? It's doing very well where it is now.

 

[T0M]

I've just spent an hour or so analysing the plans.

To me, the boat ride seems to be the same system but significantly shortened.

I'm not sure what the weakest link is with regards to the current Dungeon's throughput, but they have to be aiming to increase it with this relocation.

And that's what it is, a relocation. You can be sure that as the old one closes, the new one will open.

I can't see anything at all about a timeframe though, I wonder how long it would take them to do it all.

 

[Thekingin64]

I don't think throughput will be any different with this relocation. The groups can't be any bigger and there will still be a lot of people queueing.

 

[Nicky]

From reading through the documents up there, they are admitting that there are problems with their current site. They don't have the space to hold the queues that are needed at the busiest times and are having to use the pavement outside which isn't really practical since they state how wide it is reduced to at certain points and they also raise issues with how close they are to London Bridge station and problems with accessibility for deliveries due to the Shard construction site, one way systems and high traffic volumes.

By moving to County Hall they can hold up to 10 batches (45 people per batch) at a time in the queue waiting to go into the attraction and that is without the extra space there is outside if needed at super peak times. Also they state in the operations report that they can shave 32 seconds to be exact off the time between batching groups therefore increasing from 360 visitors per weekend peak hour to 450.

Overall it seems they are moving for a larger site, at least from a front of house perspective, and also to tie it together with their other attractions allowing for more combo tickets (they expect between 7-10% of visitors to be on combo tickets. They are also sharing facilities with the Eye and Sealife such as coach management, security, etc.

 

[Robbie]

Seems a bit silly to have it so close to the SeaLife centre. Families with young children will visit the latter and kiddies might catch glimpse of promotional material/banners and be harrowed. Bad enough as it is when you leave the Aquarium you get a TV trailering promo for Death Trap and you can hear some guests screaming.

The two attractions are a couple of streets apart, but it doesn't seem to be much of a problem at Blackpool.

 

[Mark]

Seems a bit silly to have it so close to the SeaLife centre. Families with young children will visit the latter and kiddies might catch glimpse of promotional material/banners and be harrowed. Bad enough as it is when you leave the Aquarium you get a TV trailering promo for Death Trap and you can hear some guests screaming.

I went to Covenant Gardens with my dad when I was 8 and there were some horror themed interactive booths there. They disturbed me for many months.

The Dungeons is not a typical 'scare' attraction although from the outside it looks no different to Death trap i suppose. But yeah the attractions are very different. To a degree, the dungeons are educational for instance. Its not all about people intentionally trying to scare you etc. I daresay it won't be that different when it moves.

Also Madame Tussauds is a family attraction and has a full scare attraction and in the 3 years I was working there it was never an issue. Of course, some kids got scared but for the most part... Children actually enjoy the macabre, grotesque and frightening stuff. They scream at the time but when they leave the area they are fine. The funny thing is they will often want to go back.

A little bit of fear in a child's life is not a bad thing. Its part of the learning process. If you shield a child from every last thing that is scary how are they ever going to learn to deal with the emmotion. I'm not saying sling a 5 year old in front of a horror movie for 5 hours by the way. I'm saying that walking past a poster/screen (which would be under the same scrutiny as tv advertusing) and a creepy looking building is not going to damage a child. If that was the case Death Trap wouldn't be able to advertise the way they do.

 

[scw55]

I think it's more the child walking past briskly and catching sight and their imagination taking over. Like you said on the actual attraction they're fine. It's if they're not given a chance to analyse then their vivid imagination will be their bane.

 

[furie]

Re: Second London Dungeons at County Hall?

They did have some promotional material pulled for being too horrific, but yeah, generally kids are pretty good at dealing with these things. They are attracted to the macabre as it's part of learning about how life works (guess who spent the weekend feeding a new Venus Fly Trap ).

They may as well rename the South Bank "Merlin Bank" and charge people £7 to have their photo taken with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

Nah, they'll take your photo in front of a green screen blocking the view and then super-impose you onto the view later and charge £7 for it

 

[Ollie]

Seems that it's due to redevelopment in the area according to ScareTours Facebook page.

The whole of London Bridge and Tooley St is due a big redevelopment which has been known about for years. The walkway opposite The Dungeon is due to be opened up which will give London Bridge Experience more visibility. It's a mixed blessing for LBE: they won't have the restrictions on advertising that Merlin put on them, but then they will lose the casual tourist that stumbled into them instead of the Dungeon. What they lose, Death Trap gain. Ie increased competition but also a captive "scare" market. Time will tell how this pans out for all involved but you can bet Merlin are already planning the combined tickets!

It probably will affect the LBE as with the Dungeons at London Bridge you had the two big attractions in one place which people seemed to like. When the dungeons move the only things left apart from LBE will be that paintball thing and the war museum.

Will be interesting to see how it changes and pans out. Although the current entrance (at London Bridge) looks loads better than the new one in the plans. It looks too modern. Plus I liked the fact it was all under the bridge as it actually felt old and helped with the atmosphere (until a train went past above you).

 

[marc]

Got to be honest I hope they change it back to being a walk through like it was 20 years ago before these silly boring talks.