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We
all owe a huge debt of gratitude Charles Talbot, the 15th Earl of
Shrewsbury. He transformed a barren area of the Staffordshire
countryside into the elegant landscape that we know as Alton
Towers. He created the gardens, the lakes, and everything that
made it one of the most extraordinarily estates in the world. It
was his life's work, his pride and joy. He died in 1827, and as a
tribute to him, his nephew John Talbot, the 16th Earl, built the
Choragic Monument at the entrance to the gardens, inscribed
"He made the desert smile".
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Don't
say Alton Towers don't give you anything for free.
Throughout the (inevitably long) queue, there are a
number of push button games that you can play.
Sadly, throughout our visit these machines were all
out of order, so we took photos of them instead. |
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Interestingly,
research suggests that Charles was never quite satisfied with the
end product, and unverified reports suggest that newly discovered
documents record his last words as follows: "I hope that some
day, some kind person will finish my work by building a great big
pinball-themed roller coaster right opposite my front door".
At long last, in 2004, a mere 177 years after his death, Charles'
vision was completed, and the estate became home to Spinball
Whizzer, a custom-designed spinning coaster from Mäurer of
Germany.
Let
me say from the outset that Spinball Whizzer is, if we are looking
purely at the two-minutes or so that you're out on the track, a
reasonably respectable little ride. With that established, we can
start factoring in the various unwelcome elements that turn a neat
little coaster into something overwhelmingly irritating and
frustrating. The enjoyment of the coaster itself is outweighed by
far too many problems, either cosmetic or practical, that force me
to the conclusion that the addition of Spinball Whizzer is about
as complementary to Alton Towers as a multi-storey car park would
be to Stonehenge.
If
we don a pair of metaphorical blinkers, Spinball Whizzer looks
great. It towers above the local greenery, and its silver cars
look great as they manically dart and weave among the structure. Mäurer’s
signature "Immelman" element, in which the track rises
until vertical, then turns 180 degrees and drops back to Earth, is
nicely framed by a smaller horseshoe turn that threads the main
arch. Like a wickedly warped Wild Mouse, the track darts and
weaves around the area with tremendous grace. By
"normal" standards, it's undoubtedly a good-looking
little ride. |
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Now, let's
take those blinkers off:
Once
upon a time, you could walk down Towers Street and see the genuine
majesty of Alton Towers. You could walk on the lawn, admiring the
wonderful sight of the Talbots' ancestral home, and marvelling at
the timeless beauty of it all. Those days are gone. Nowadays, the
whole area is clogged up with the kind
of tacky paraphernalia that would look fine in any other park, but
which destroys
the dignity that was once Alton Towers' hallmark. To your right,
as if to emphasise the permanence of this disregard for tradition,
is the bright red tangle of track that is Spinball
Whizzer, complete with accompanying soundtrack of roars and hisses
from the ride's machinery, and the yells of its riders. The
contrast between the beauty of the towers, and the ultra-modern
style of Spinball Whizzer simply looks wrong, sounds wrong, and
feels wrong. In all the years that Alton Towers has operated as a
theme park, there has always been a feeling that great care has
been taken not to infringe on the park's great history. Spinball
Whizzer is an unmistakable omen that this is to be consigned to
the history books. Oh well, they were nice while they lasted.
One
thing that was immediately obvious when Alton announced their
intention to build a Mäurer spinning coaster was that these
rides, with their "Wild Mouse" type capacity, would
generate outrageous queues. Indeed, the precedent had been set by
the Vekoma-built “Alton Mouse”, which generated gargantuan
queues until its removal in 1991. Nevertheless, we thought, Alton
Towers must have considered this, so let's take a look to see what
ingenious scheme they've concocted to relieve the crowds:
Well,
there' not a lot to report, to be honest, and certainly nothing I
can say that would be remotely positive. The queue for Spinball
Whizzer is definitely not its finest point. In the grand Tussaud's
style, it weaves among the structure of the ride, but is an open
invite to queue jumpers, as one hop over the right fence here and
there can skip giant chunks of the queue, while offering little
risk of being spotted by the staff. What about Fastrack (AKA
Virtual Queue)? Amazingly, this is conspicuous only by its
absence, meaning that you either wait your turn, or you don't ride
at all. Actually, that's not quite true, there is one method which
will allow you to bypass the queue completely, and the park
isn’t exactly secretive about what it is.
The
entrance to the ride is marked by a large pinball scoreboard, with
numbers whirling around feverishly. To the left is a sign saying
"ENTRANCE". To the right, "PASS HOLDER
ENTRANCE". That's right, should you stay in the Alton Towers Hotels,
you will be given a pass that entitles you to walk straight onto
the ride. Better still, the pass holder path directly shadows the
last part of the main queue (approx 45 to 60 minutes worth of
queue), enabling you to flaunt your superiority right in the faces
of the poor souls in the normal queue. Arriving en masse? Don't
worry, you can all hop straight onto the ride, and everyone else
can abandon any hope of the queue moving in the immediate future.
Now, I don't particularly begrudge the hotel guests being given
priority passes per se, but I do object to the way Alton Towers
has chosen not to let them on discreetly, but rather to parade
their preferred customers under the noses of those who have had
the “audacity” to confine their visit to a single day. In
short, it seems to be a fairly shameless way of reminding you that
the more you pour into the Alton Towers coffers, the better
they'll treat you.
However,
what the priority pass holders don't get is the opportunity to
play a series of pinball related games. These are scattered
through the queue, with approximately one for every half hour of
waiting. All consist of a single button that triggers a blast of
air, propelling a silver ball to the top of the machine, with
points awarded depending on where it lands. While a nice addition,
these games provide little more than five seconds of amusement in
what is a very slow and frustrating queue.
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The
only other in-queue entertainment is the constant music.
Generally, this consists of a similar playlist to the WWTP radio
station in Thorpe Park's Amity Cove, featuring classic Americana
from the likes of Elvis, the Beach Boys and The Monkees. With no
speech in between, and with an odd tendency to throw in the
occasional piece of modern dance music, it lacks the atmosphere of
Thorpe's version, but does at least help to make the wait a little
more tolerable. Again, however, there is a niggling feeling that this
Americanised atmosphere is inappropriate in a park that used to be
the very definition of British grandeur, but if you can eradicate
such thoughts, it helps to make your wait a more tolerable one.
Now,
if you're getting frustrated about how long I've spent going on
about the queue without starting on the ride itself, then consider
that an accurate simulation of what it feels like to wait for
Spinball Whizzer. You will be glad to know, however, that the end
is nigh as we inch towards the silver hut that is the station.
Mercifully, there are no hidden cattle grids in the queue, and the
path leads straight to the loading platform, where all the usual
station announcements are made by a highly enthusiastic character,
who preceeds and proceeds every announcement with "Woohoo",
"Wahey", and other such exclamations. The station itself
is a rather plain affair, unthemed but for a series of pinball
bumpers in the ceiling, and the occasional pinball-related word
written on the wall.
As
with all Mäurer spinning coasters, each car seats four riders in
a 2x2 back-to-back formation. Although awkward to climb in and
out, the cars are very comfortable once seated, and the large lap
bar is nice and snug, offering a tremendous sense of security. The
silver cars are undecorated but for the park's name and car
number, which is a shame, but appropriate to the idea of the
theme. Soon, you leave the station, past the "BALL IN
PLAY!" sign that adorns the service hut, and up the lift
hill.
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Height:
56 feet
Speed: Approx 35mph
Cars: 8 (seating 4)
Elements: Immelman, banked turn under Immelman, 2
helixes |
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The
lift hill is swift, and soon the first drop arrives. Unlike Mäurer's
travelling version of the ride, the car is free to spin right from
the off, and our budding Tommies are plunged into a spiral drop,
reaching around half way to the ground, before hopping back into a
set of block brakes. From the brakes, the car embarks on a long
straight drop, followed by the Immelman, with these two elements
presenting a quite imposing sight, being the most prominent
section of the ride for passers-by.
The
Immelman is OK, but lacks the sense of mania that other Mäurer
spinners seem to offer. Facing downwards, it offers good visuals,
but is something of an anti-climax for anyone expecting anything
particularly thrilling. Far more enjoyable is the proceeding swoop
back in and out of the structure, and back through the Immelman
arch, which has a nice flowing quality to it. All that's left now
is a nice drop into a good ground hugging helix, and a final
back-and-forth zigzag to the brake run. Don't let your guard down,
though, as the device that straightens the cars relies on very
basic technology and is not subtle, being more than capable of
giving a quite aggressive thwack to unsuspecting riders.
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On the plus
side, the ride feels nice and long, and is wonderfully smooth,
which is a relief, given that 50% of the time you can't see what's
coming and prepare accordingly. Some of the changes of direction
are wonderfully subtle, and it does seem that Mäurer have really
made the spinning coaster concept their own. Unusually, the
highlights are the dives to and from the various block brakes,
which offer a wonderfully disorientating transition from chaos to
calm, and back, as well as providing a slight pop of airtime if
you're lucky.
As
for the downers, well, for a spinning coaster, there seems to be
one quite startling omission. Spinning. Only the hops onto the
various block-brakes seem to persuade the cars to move at all,
whereas much of the "proper" sections of track see the
cars stick rigidly in whatever position they have chosen. Compared
to the wild spinning offered by some of Reverchon's Crazy Mouse
coasters, you get a distinct feeling that Mäurer's cars would
welcome a liberal dose of WD-40.
While
you can argue that a pinball theme does not suit the park, you
can't deny that it opens up a huge array of potential tricks and
effects. The Mäurer-designed Winja's coasters at Phantasia Land
include such features as see-saw track, which would have suited
the pinball theme beautifully. Spinball Whizzer could have been a
real showcase for what Mäurer can do with the concept, and yet
this potential remains entirely untapped, leaving a relatively
coaster that is little more than a simple re-shuffle of the
elements found on the travelling version.
As
for the in-ride theming, this consists of little more than the
occasional bumper-tower here and there, which is a real waste of a
gilt-edged opportunity to do something truly spectacular.
Similarly, the ride fails to exploit the possibility of in-ride
effects such as endless chaotic head-choppers and sound effects as
the car darts around the structure, meaning that riders have very
little to watch out for during the ride. Considering that the idea
is that you are the ball in a pinball table, you'd be forgiven for
expecting a bit more razzamatazz. A real pinball table is a
fast-paced extravaganza of action, lights, sounds, and anything
else the designers can chuck into the mix. By contrast, Spinball
Whizzer's décor could not be more bland and insipid if it tried.
Now,
observant readers may be wondering whether this is the same
Coaster Kingdom that has heaped praise upon Dragon's Fury,
Spinball Whizzer's sister ride at Chessington World of Adventures.
Well, while Dragon's Fury is certainly the better and more
interesting ride, it also suits Chessington in a way that Spinball
Whizzer does not suit Alton Towers. Both rides fall somewhere
between the categories of "family ride" and "thrill
ride", and as a result of this, Dragon's Fury works perfectly
as a relatively major ride in a park intended for young families.
Spinball Whizzer, meanwhile, is forced to cater to both audiences,
the young families and the thrill seekers, and simply does not
have the capacity to do so. As a result, family groups are charged
with the task of keeping the youngsters amused as they plod
interminably through a soul-destroying queue, while older groups
are going to be frustrated to find that they've queued longer for
Spinball Whizzer than they would for Nemesis or Oblivion (or,
quite possibly, the two combined).
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Building
Spinball Whizzer at Alton Towers was like housing a Rolf Harris
sketch in the Louvre. Individually, it might be a fairly
entertaining piece, but it should not be there, and makes its
surroundings less dignified than before. It simply had too much to
do in terms of trying to entertain too great a proportion of the
park's visitors, without infringing on the park's unique
landscape. As a result, it fails on both counts, being garish
enough to cheapen the area, while not garish enough to create the
illusion of a giant pinball machine. It makes you wonder why the
pinball theme was chosen, given that it was never really going to
work in such a location.
In
short, Mäurer has designed a respectable little family coaster
that would work extremely well in many parks, but which totally
ignores the fact that Alton Towers regularly attracts crowds
beyond what the ride can handle. As a result, actually getting to
ride it involves far more hassle than it's really worth. Given
that Spinball Whizzer has much lower capacity than any of the
parks main three coasters (Nemesis, Oblivion, Air), and appeals to
a much higher proportion of visitors, I can't really recommend
Spinball Whizzer to you unless you happen to visit on a very quiet
day indeed. "Fair enough" you might say, but there's one
unavoidable proviso - At Alton Towers, "Very quiet days"
are all but non-existent.
JP
6 June 2004
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- Spinball
Whizzer Offers a fun - and relatively long ride
- Smooth
as silk
- Comfortable
cars and seats
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- Fails
to blend in with the surrounding area
- Fails
to exploit theming opportunities
- Capacity
is well below what is required
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