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Alton Towers | Wicker Man | GCI Wood

That is sad, it was a great log flume and seeing as the area still hasn't been touched and we are almost in August they could have had one last season out of it rather than just let it rot for a year.
 
spicy said:
That is sad, it was a great log flume and seeing as the area still hasn't been touched and we are almost in August they could have had one last season out of it rather than just let it rot for a year.
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Yes, it does seem they could have got a good "one last ride" marketing boost from keeping it open until at least mid-season. But Merlin know best!
 
So i was pondering over on the Kings Island woodie topic and had a bit of a brainwave. Could the pre show element on this ride be a vekoma madhouse style illusion whilst sat in the coaster train?

Here me out.

It would explain the extended ride time. It could utilise the now closed HEX. It would be pretty cool.

Clutching at straws but i think its do able. My opinion of HEX is one of high praise but it seems a lot of the GP havent ridden HEX as they assume its just a walk through at towers and pass it by. Perhaps towers think that HEX is too hidden away to really be appreciated as a ride. What better way to make the most of an amazing experience than by incorporating it as part of a new roller coaster?

Excited to see whats in the barn of the KI woodie as i think this will be a large clue as to what GCI have up there sleeves here.
 
Chris Brown said:
Could the pre show element on this ride be a vekoma madhouse style illusion whilst sat in the coaster train?
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Personally I would like that, but I know of LOTS of people who don't like Hex simply to do with feeling nauseous on spinning rides. Having a Madhouse built in would alienate all of those and if they did ride it would probably be negative on social media.
Also, Hex is not just about the ride, the whole experience is so fab I wouldn't want to lose it forever because the Madhouse was stuck onto a new coaster.
 
It's not really 'doable' to be fair.

Hex's platform (which would be where the track would be), is situated on two arms at each end, much like a Top Spin is, so the revolving drum (room) is separate and rotates around this. So there's really no way of getting the same effect as the track would have nowhere to connect to be supported due to it having to 'hover' in the room. What is plausible is a large trommel with a large animatronic to block the end of the room off to gain the same illusion, but that's unbelievably costly and you're looking at a lot of technical issues.

But yeah, sorry to burst that bubble Chris LOL.
 
Cheers gents,

I wasn't sure how HEX worked and didn't ever imagine it to be that complicated. I would be interested to see if something like that could be done as I'm sure someone could find a way but whether it would be cost effective would be a different story altogether as you said Lofty. Agreed with the nauseating side of HEX delpiero as i did find it a little stomach churning. Odd that this utlilises something at the beginning and Mystic Timbers utilises something that could possibly be the same at the end of the ride.
 
What could work in the tunnel is projection mapping or one of those Vortex tunnels. But with a vortex tunnel, the illusion only works if the rider is traveling at a speed relative to the tunnel spin. Nope, ignore me, I'm having a funny five minutes. Next I'll be suggesting something silly like putting a mad house in there.
 
Ian said:
Nope, ignore me, I'm having a funny five minutes. Next I'll be suggesting something silly like putting a mad house in there.
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Lofty said:
Hex's platform (which would be where the track would be), is situated on two arms at each end, much like a Top Spin is, so the revolving drum (room) is separate and rotates around this. So there's really no way of getting the same effect as the track would have nowhere to connect to be supported due to it having to 'hover' in the room. What is plausible is a large trommel with a large animatronic to block the end of the room off to gain the same illusion, but that's unbelievably costly and you're looking at a lot of technical issues.
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Is it, though? Bear in mind that I've never ridden Hex, nor do I know entirely what it was like, but to rotate a room on one axis around the track doesn't seem that complicated to me.

You need to build the track itself like a bridge across the room, roughly as long as the train itself is. Some 10-15 meters without supports, which is fully feasible.

Next, a hollow cylinder is placed around the "bridge". The cylinder is entirely circular on the outside, but could be fit to include a square room on the inside. The coaster track goes straight through the cylinder, with plenty of clearance on all sides.

The room itself is then rotated like a hubless wheel, with a system similar to a swinging ship. The engines are placed on the outside of the cylinder, powering the rotation by external rollers, like a big cog. As this is already done with large ferris wheels, I see no problem with extending it a few metres in the length direction while shrinking the diameter.

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Heck, you could even just build a "cradle" and not rotate the entire room. Or build a cradle with a light roof above, if you only want to "rock" the room rather than inverting it completely.

It's understandable that costs go up as you'd want to have this entire system inside another building for weather protection, but it's not prohibitively expensive. The room itself is the one moving part, albeit a big one. The "bridge through a revolving drum" concept doesn't sound overwhelmingly complicated to me. Closing off the ends might be a little tricky, though, but could be done with screen doors or tricks of lighting.
 
Hex is a complete room, it has solid sides and doors lock you in the 'chamber'. So it's definitely not really possible unless the walls were incredibly thin enough for a locking mechanism of the track transition and even then, you're pushing it.

It won't happen ha.
 
Lofty said:
Hex is a complete room, it has solid sides and doors lock you in the 'chamber'. So it's definitely not really possible unless the walls were incredibly thin enough for a locking mechanism of the track transition and even then, you're pushing it.
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Yes, of course, if you want a fully enclosed room, things get a lot harder. I suppose you could use some sort of canvas or sliding door that closes over the track, independently of the drum, in front of and behind the train, but then it won't rotate with the rest of the room (unless you get into further shenanigans with a rotate-able section on the door - like a wheel of fortune hung on a wall...), so the illusion would be much harder to create.

But simply rotating two parallel walls, a ceiling and a floor around the track, on one axis, that's pretty doable. Not sure how much fun you could have with it, though. If you somehow put a switch track on a cantilever (think Expedition Everest, where the track switches behind you) inside such a drum room, you could make one heck of an mid-ride show, since then you get an extra wall to play with. But that's quite far removed from SW8.
 
This reminds me of the rumours Smiler would have a rotating track piece before the lift hill so they could add as many inversions in as they wanted :p
 
You could do it, if you out the room on track rather than supports. Let's say you have the square ends of the room, with wheels attached, and a loop track that went around the box. The wheels would be on the loop, and the box will simply go upside down, as it's like going through a loop. No need for anything on the outside of the walls of the room. It would be kind of like a revolving tunnel, but you could easily turn that into a box within a tunnel, stop the train in there, and turn the box around the track like a mad house.
 
roomraider said:
This reminds me of the rumours Smiler would have a rotating track piece before the lift hill so they could add as many inversions in as they wanted :p
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Oh yes that was amazing :lol:

[youtubevid]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy1agS8-7RQ[/youtubevid]
 
Sw8 was approved by the council a couple of days ago. I assume the lack of updates in this topic displays a lack of enthusiasm for the coaster?
 
I'll probably get excited about it when I see it constructing because at the end of the day - even if it is going to be a completely mediocre family coaster, it's still a +1 woodie for the UK.
 
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