What's new

New ride for London Dungeons

SAW_gameover

Mega Poster
^ Don't think they've removed anything - though I'm not entirely sure :D They definitely haven't removed either of the previous rides, however.
 

Ben

CF Legend
HI GUYS.

OK, CF has been invited to the Media Day for this, which starts at 7pm on Thursday 26th May (two weeks today!)

I'm going because I rock, and I get to take a plus one! The obvious people (ie, Lofthouse and Ollie) are already going, so I'm gonna open this up to anyone that wants to come. Obviously there's just the one space, so I'll have to choose the person dependant on stuff like contribution to CF, enthusiasm etc.

So, if you want to be the plus one, just PM me. I'm going away this weekend, so I will aim to make a final decision and let people know on Monday.

OK, awesome. Get on it if you wanna come!
 

Ollie

CF Legend
Taylor the boat ride is still there. They're putting this ride after the Sweeney Todd section. The old scenes with Jack the Ripper (where you're on the street and see the silhouette in the window and the room with the fire) have been removed to make room for the ride.
Now they've shortened the Jack the ripper section into a couple of smaller scenes which are really good and REALLY gory and much better and interesting that what they used to have that went on forever
 

Ollie

CF Legend
Had a great time last night. Merlin sure know how to do amazing press evenings. They opened up an area for guests to mingle and have a drink before going in. Then we went round the dungeons fro
The torture chamber onwards (skipping the bloody Mary section).

Anyway. Vengeance. The ride is fun and the outside area before you enter has a nice ambience to it. The 3D glasses where cheap and made of cardboard and we got to keep them after. However I don't know if this was just for the press night or they have proper ones for when it opens to the public.
When you enter the rides room it's full of smoke. The seats and guns are nicely themed.
The film is very cheesy and is animated. When the seats spin it's great fun however there's only two walls with screens and the other walls are a bit plain. The film is really random and everyone was confused what you were meant to be shooting at. Also the guns didn't seem to do anything at all as when you were shooting the books and ghosts that were flying towards you nothing seemed to happen.
The effects in the seats were fun as well but didn't seem to make sense.
After the tour of the dungeons we went back to the start and spoke to loads of people. It was great to see peole from the Dungeons going you'd with everyone and getting their oinions.

I told the guy in charge o
 

Ollie

CF Legend
Had a great time last night. Merlin sure know how to do amazing press evenings. They opened up an area for guests to mingle and have a drink before going in. Then we went round the dungeons fro
The torture chamber onwards (skipping the bloody Mary section).

Anyway. Vengeance. The ride is fun and the outside area before you enter has a nice ambience to it. The 3D glasses where cheap and made of cardboard and we got to keep them after. However I don't know if this was just for the press night or they have proper ones for when it opens to the public.
When you enter the rides room it's full of smoke. The seats and guns are nicely themed.
The film is very cheesy and is animated. When the seats spin it's great fun however there's only two walls with screens and the other walls are a bit plain. The film is really random and everyone was confused what you were meant to be shooting at. Also the guns didn't seem to do anything at all as when you were shooting the books and ghosts that were flying towards you nothing seemed to happen.
The effects in the seats were fun as well but didn't seem to make sense.
After the tour of the dungeons we went back to the start and spoke to loads of people. It was great to see peole from the Dungeons going you'd with everyone and getting their oinions.

I told the guy in charge of marketing what I thought and he thanked me for being honest and said a lot of people agreed and that they can easily get people to tweak the ride to improve it.

The rest of the evening was great fun milling around with loads of celebrities such as Jonathan Ross, tinct strider, Danny dyer, the kid from Outnumbered and loads more.
There was loads of free booze and food which we all took advantage of and they had actors wandering about and people reading fortunes and playing instruments.
The mirror maze was opened up for everyone to wonder round and doing that after 7 glasses of wine is great fun. :p

I also loved being able to wander around the sets and take ad many photos as you wanted. I just wish my camera still worked as I had to use Maddies and most the photos came out really dark.

Anyway I'm sorry if all that's hard to read or has random
Words and errors as I'm writing it on my iPod on the coach home.
Thanks to Merlin for putting on such an amazing event.
 

Ollie

CF Legend
Sorry about the post above Martyns. My finger caught the submit button when I was halfway through writing it. Stupid iPod lol.
 

Ben

CF Legend
Last night was awesome, it was so much fun, they really did put on a great event.

The ride itself isn't amazing, but, I will cover that more with the full review, hopefully up tomorrow cause I'm going out this evening, haha...
 

Ollie

CF Legend
Yeah that's the stupid spell checker on the iPod changing opinions to onions lol. I'm sorting out my photos atm and will post them once I'm done. :)
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Ben attended yesterday on behalf of CF, expect a review from him soon. When he's stopped modeling.
 

Ollie

CF Legend
Have some pictures.

Vengeance:
249991_2089411231951_1145311439_2611735_5162679_n.jpg


249874_2089411111948_1145311439_2611734_4481312_n.jpg


254315_2089411551959_1145311439_2611737_7360534_n.jpg


252542_2089413071997_1145311439_2611746_1172836_n.jpg


247819_2089413672012_1145311439_2611749_1508949_n.jpg


Rest of Dungeon:
Danny Dyer.
250404_2089408951894_1145311439_2611721_8170576_n.jpg


Daniel Roche.
252249_2089409311903_1145311439_2611724_2737638_n.jpg


251111_2089410511933_1145311439_2611730_3096413_n.jpg


247025_2089414512033_1145311439_2611753_8253421_n.jpg


248489_2089414152024_1145311439_2611752_5135280_n.jpg


248459_2089422712238_1145311439_2611805_4753023_n.jpg


Press Evening bits:

250910_2089416672087_1145311439_2611765_1652713_n.jpg


252423_2089418072122_1145311439_2611775_541031_n.jpg
 

Ben

CF Legend
Hi everyone!

As you *may* have heard, on Thursday night some of us were lucky enough to be invited down to the Dungeons for the preview of their new 5D ride, Vengeance. During the event there was free food, a nice run-through of the majority of the Dungeons and the new ride, and lots of free drink…

Now, on the other press events I’ve done I’ve been banned from using a camera, so I left mine in my bag in the cloak room at the start, but, luckily, Ollie didn’t. We weren’t given any “official” photos, so I’ve stolen lots of his! Some of the photos are still mine, but, a big thanks to Ollie for about half of them... And I've just seen he's posted some of them already on this page, but, **** it.

OK, let’s get down and do this.

First of all, we had to get there, so here is AJ mincing across London Bridge to get to the Dungeons!
IMG_6530.jpg


Where he broke his lens cap, ha, spite.
IMG_6531.jpg


This report features the SHARD. OMG. I love the SHARD, it’s amazing.
IMG_6532.jpg


More SHARD <3
IMG_6537.jpg


And we approach the Dungeons…
IMG_6538.jpg


Dungeons AND the SHARD OMG
IMG_6539.jpg


The Dungeons are all done up to show off their new ride!
IMG_6541.jpg


And we sex up the adverts a bit more
IMG_6544.jpg


We got there early, what can I say…
IMG_6545.jpg


More mincin’
IMG_6573.jpg


And then queuing to get in!
IMG_6576.jpg


Once we’d got in, we started the Dungeons pretty quickly, and were in the first group going round, which meant that it ran flawlessly. I’m not 100% on the layout of the Dungeons, but, we started with the Torturer and worked our way round from there, doing the Judge, the Asylum, Traitor and the Sweeney Todd show which I’m sure you’re all very familiar with…
247903_2089410951944_1145311439_2611733_269746_n.jpg


All the actors were on their game that night – probably helped by the fact we were doing it with two celebrities! Danny Dyer…
250467_10150270926147845_655017844_9210935_4238552_n.jpg


And the curly-haired kid from Outnumbered, omg
252249_2089409311903_1145311439_2611724_2737638_n.jpg


We then got round to the actual focus of the evening, the new ride! Themed to 50 Berkeley Square, which is reportedly the most haunted house in the country (check it out here – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Berkeley_Square) you are invited to take part in a Victorian séance in the house, but are warned that you will be armed with guns to make sure there’s not a repeat of what happened last time…

Outside you are batched into your group whilst waiting in a mock Victorian drawing room complete with cobwebs and everything you would expect in the most haunted house in England!
254841_2089411471957_1145311439_2611736_4309773_n.jpg


You are then led into the main room, where a large round platform with 25 seats in 4 rows awaits you. Made up to look like mock Victorian seats the chairs are highly detailed and look great…
252542_2089413071997_1145311439_2611746_1172836_n.jpg


And you pick up your gun, and you’re ready to go!
247819_2089413672012_1145311439_2611749_1508949_n.jpg


Now, without spoiling too much, obviously the séance does not go particularly well… The ride uses two screens, one quite large and “normal” shaped, and one that’s quite tall and thin. You spin between the two of these, but, sadly the rest of the walls are quite bland, with very little detail. Had there been some animatronics or just some details on the wall, the spinning would maybe feel more frantic and part of the ride rather than just moving you between the two screens.
254315_2089411551959_1145311439_2611737_7360534_n.jpg


Also, sadly, the screens themselves are a bit of a wasted opportunity as you are told to shoot at the screen but there are no targets and shooting the ghosts or items themselves do nothing. If something happened when you shoot the interactivity would be increased ten-fold and the ride would become instantly much better. Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no interaction and what is touted as the “fifth dimension”, falls a little flat. The ride itself is fun, the video is “child-scary” without being disturbing, but, the interactivity and lack of any other real special effects, makes it feel a bit of a wasted opportunity to really immerse the audience and create an exciting and scary experience. We were told when talking to the marketing director later that there would be some more improvements to come, so let’s see what comes of that!

OK, after the ride we finished off the tour with the new Jack the Ripper show, which basically takes the best parts of the lonnggggg section he had before and crams it into two rooms, one featuring a gross corpse…
254503_2089414632036_1145311439_2611754_5731846_n.jpg


And the other featuring the same bar scene they had before, but, with revised dialogue to add in the suspects they used to list in the autopsy scene which has been chopped (pardon the pun) for the new ride.

Then, after riding Extremis with DANNY DYER <3, it was time for…
252423_2089418072122_1145311439_2611775_541031_n.jpg


Omg, free booze. And lots of it. Then there was lots of mincing, chatting to people in the industry, getting contacts, listening to music…
250910_2089416672087_1145311439_2611765_1652713_n.jpg


Getting head…
250910_2089418872142_1145311439_2611781_8020471_n.jpg


Modelling…
249236_2089423672262_1145311439_2611812_1560305_n.jpg


Throwing ‘em the face for a while…
249898_2089417152099_1145311439_2611769_4632301_n.jpg


And general mincing…
252084_2089424112273_1145311439_2611814_2685241_n.jpg


It was time to sashay, away.

Overall, the Dungeons put on an amazing event that was a tonne of fun. Sadly, the new ride still feels very unfinished. What they have is good, but, they really need to go a bit further with it. They need to add in some more effects and some sort of interactivity with the guns, because at the moment it is sort of just sitting there spinning between two screens… The video and vehicle are great, but, it’s not the “5D” they’re advertising it as, which is a shame, because it doesn’t need MUCH more, but, it does need more.
 

Ian

From CoasterForce
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Social Media Team
Hahaha, Ben, brilliant report <3

I read somewhere that it suffered technical problems as well...is that true?
 

Ben

CF Legend
Um, I didn't see any, but, we were literally first and didn't go round again, so I'm not sure if it had a hiccup halfway through the night...

Wossy was sent round at about 9pm or so, so it must have been back up and running by then!
 

gavin

Moderator
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
So the guns let you shoot stuff in basically the same way as the steering wheels on those antique car things let kids actually drive?

**** ing lame.
 

T0M

Hyper Poster
^ In a nutshell, yes.

The ride is a huge disappointment. I went to the Dungeon for the first time on Saturday and was extremely impressed. I found it so immersive and of good quality, compared to York - the only other Dungeon I had been to previously. I think Vengeance lets it down as it's too cheesy and ineffective. The sound it makes when it spins is about as bad as an old-school Vekoma lift hill and in a small room, that is the scariest thing about the ride. Should and could have been so much better.
 
Top