Sorry to bump this thread, but I had another pretty weird, and slightly morbid, theme park-related dream last night…
Basically, it concerns Duel at Alton Towers. For starters, the ride was in Dark Forest instead of Gloomy Wood, but that’s not the important bit.
In this dream, an elderly woman had died within Duel a couple of weeks before my ride. However, the park was being incredibly nonchalant about it, brushing aside any criticism and brushing aside the death as “nothing to be worried about”; Nick Varney even did a TV interview where he said “Why is this even news? People die of heart attacks every day, and why is our ride any different to her living room chair?”. He then proceeded to shoo the reporters away with some rather choice language…
This is where it gets weird; they were so nonchalant about it that they actually kept the woman’s body and put it into Duel as a new piece of theming… heck, they even marketed its addition (“DUEL: NOW WITH ACTUAL DEAD PERSON” was what I remember the TV advert saying…).
The park had said officially that this was due to feedback saying that guests wanted more “realistic” theming within attractions, but I went onto TowersStreet, and the members on TS had other ideas; the common consensus on there was that it was “yet another Merlin cost-saving tactic” to prevent them from having to actually refurbish Duel… the vlogging community was very enthusiastic, however, and they all went down to see the dead body on the ride’s reopening day, with rave reviews accompanying their visits!
Anyway, onto my ride. When I rode Duel, I would discover that the “change” was very obvious as soon as you got into the slanted section of the indoor queue; in this room, the body had been placed onto a rocking chair. The park was displaying it very proudly, with a sign promoting it, and every few seconds, strobe lighting and that zombie screaming sound that Duel uses drew attention to it. After seeing this, I got onto the ride, which was mostly normal apart from the fact that the park had taken some of the dead woman’s outfits from her family and dressed each zombie in the ride in one of them, as well as a white “old lady” wig… the park said that it was so riders would feel the body’s presence throughout the ride!
The ride exit is where things get weird again. Instead of the current wallpapered corridor with paintings up, the park had built a giant viewing window looking into the indoor queue line so that guests could take one last look at the body. When I was in this section, the woman actually woke up. Naturally, I ran away as quickly as my legs could carry me, but it was later said on the news that the woman wasn’t actually dead, but had merely fallen asleep on Duel… Nick Varney then reappeared on the TV looking very smug, and saying “See? Not even news!”…
I know many people want Duel refurbished, but I sincerely hope Merlin never resorts to this idea…