More work being carried out today as Theme Park Guide reports of work on the queue line has been seen today.



Credit: Theme Park Guide

I'm glad they're doing something with that site, being right at the entrance of Forbidden Valley made the area seem dejected but during Scarefest this year it's going to give it much more life towards the back of the park having a live attraction there.

It does make you wonder if it will be part of the maze experience or just part of the queue line theming?

I'm pleased we are getting a new experience though

Edit - Just having further thoughts about the maze. With the elevators in the attraction already, I wonder if it will take on a Military base or Government office theme? I also wonder if the maze will still be based on Nemesis or Forbidden Valley? This could be very loosely linked to the file image being used for the attraction?!

Been away for a while and this is exciting to come back to. Can't wait to hear about Project 42 and I wonder if it will use the Sub Terra ride system.

Also, for the Galactica area scare zone, I think it'll be something like Event Horizon (not that intense) or something coming through the portal.

TheDuke wrote:

Can't wait to hear about Project 42 and I wonder if it will use the Sub Terra ride system.

I can't imagine that'll be the case - there might still be the elevator element, but I doubt the drop portion will be making a return,

I swear there were some photos of the drop sections just left near where Submissions corpse was? I may be imagining things, but the drop portions may not be anywhere near Atlon Towers any more

My bet is they're not in there anymore.

Seems incredibly unlikely they'd use something they knew to be unreliable in a timed, paid-for attraction. So it makes little sense to have them taking up space in a building they want to transfer to Scarefest.

A big issue with using the drop towers would be how expensive it would be to hire all the actors and the extra staff needed to run the ride. It'd also be a bit weird for them to service/rebuild the ride just for Scarefest.

A big question I have is will the maze use the bottom of the hole or will it just be the top. I mean, there had to be stairs somewhere in the attraction just in case they needed to evac the ride at the bottom. 

I was wondering exactly that, if they're not planning to reopen the ride they could do anything they wanted with the hole. Only rode it once but I seem to remember it being quite a large space. Anything could be lurking in the pit below...

I think they’d miss a trick by not having part of the maze go through the bottom section of the ride area, presuming of course the ride system has been removed.

It may well be that the ride system is fully intact, but if it is and it’s out of bounds due to H&S, it would severely restrict the space they have available to build an effective maze.

For those reasons, I think the ride system has already been removed.

I imagine they were removed one or two closed seasons ago. No one would have seen. They could be anywhere. Even in Charlie...

I raised this possibility with a few friends of mine that used to work on N:ST. They've said that unfortunately unless they've somehow made space for a makeshift return staircase, the lower drop zone isn't able to be used even with the ride system removed because only one of the four corners houses a staircase. With the one near baggage having the cabin and the remaining two being the entry/exit points for the Central Core.

I'd absolutely love to see the lower drop zone used! But unless there's a temporary staircase in there, it can't be done.

Although Scarefest is plausible. I can't help but think that there's more to it. We might very well see a return of the ride. Even if it was to be a Scarefest attraction, the ride would be rendered useless for 3/4 of the year. It's a huge waste of £4 million IF they've removed the internal parts of the ride.

There’ll definitely be a staircase. I think the bigger problem is whether there’ll be two. You’d need two to incorporate the space in a properly flowing maze

If the ride mechanisms have been removed, then surely there’s enough room in the spaces these used to occupy to build a temporary scaffolding staircase?

The ride mechanisms were at least wide enough for a seat and legs - so plenty wide enough for a staircase. There were definitely gaps in the floor for them to decend through. And there were 4 rides, so building 2 staircase (one up, one down) could easily be done?

hursty wrote:

I can't imagine that'll be the case - there might still be the elevator element, but I doubt the drop portion will be making a return,

Sorry should've clarified; I meant the lifts and effects/egg. I always thought the drop tower was removed or cannibalized for parts for The Dungeons.
If the drop tower is removed they could probably fit a temporary staircase in to get the bottom. There's not much going on in the upper area, if I remember right. Also they could potentially have the maze run out of the attraction and back into the lower level through a maintenance entrance?

Does anyone know what actually happened to the egg? I remember seeing a jokey picture a while ago of the egg and a sign saying please take me...

Nutty Man wrote:

Does anyone know what actually happened to the egg? I remember seeing a jokey picture a while ago of the egg and a sign saying please take me...

That'll be from one of the PR stunts Merlin did in London a while back. It's not recent. 
As far as I'm aware one egg were used in the SW series last year and then there was a bunch of eggs in Sub Strain educational thing. So we know the eggs are gone, dunno about the rest of the stuff though, I'd imagine it'd be hard to remove the drop towers without removing a wall or the ceiling.

I've been thinking about the pit where the drop towers used to go, and I think that the maze itself may not use it but it could be a break room/costume/make-up area ect for the actors? Especially because, as far as I know, there isn't anywhere to do this around Forbidden Valley as the Scare Zone used to use Sub-Terra's building for these needs.