Hello,
You might find this interesting, I hope, and will therefore forgive me joining the forum to post a whopping great plug....
We (the BBC Travel Show) have done a story on VR and theme parks, focusing heavily on the Ghost Train. It begins just over a minute into the show on this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0 ... pisode-123If you want to avoid potential - no more than that - spoilers, avoid the bits timed between around 4'45 - when the reporter opens the door - and 5'45. That's from a "making of" provided by Thorpe Park/Figment, most of which is from a video made many, many months ago.
The Travel Show's mainly made for BBC World News - hence the line "Alton Towers in England's Midlands" which I think is in there - but it does go out on the UK BBC News Channel and on iPlayer.
Some possible questions answered:
Don't read anything into the timing of this film going out. We'd originally (briefly) planned to do something in March; that quickly got moved to early-May to coincide with the planned opening, then that got postponed when we weren't able to film enough in time. We settled on this weekend around five weeks ago; when we heard about the latest delay (the day before we did the bulk of our filming, ISTR), it was too late to move it. TBH, I doubt we'd have got much more of the ride if we'd waited till it was open anyway.
We know no more about when the ride will open than you do, on or off the record.
Why is it delayed? Nobody's told us explicitly - on or off the record - any more than the official Thorpe Park statement. But one of the interviewees in the film does know....
We did the interview with Derren back in February, when we were aiming to get the piece on air before the ride launched. We also did one with him on the press day in May in front of the train, but the earlier one worked better in the piece.
We shot the pictures of the train and most of the Thorpe Park shots on the press day; the exteriors of the ghost train building, signs and the rest of the TP shots were a couple of weeks ago, when photos of our camera appeared on various forums....
In the opening sequence when our reporter goes on "Colossus", we use shots of more than one rollercoaster. We know. That's why the script says "these rides".
Do the "characters" in the "making of" sequence appear in the final ride? We don't know; as mentioned above, that footage is from a video that was made quite a while ago.
Have we been on it? We had the same experience as everyone else who went on the press day and have promised to keep it secret, like all the others.
Will it be any good? I think I'm probably still covered by the vow of silence on this, but it's probably safe to say I've been following the Ghost Train for months now - and I can't wait to try it out properly.
Hope you find the piece interesting....