Uncovering the Dark Secrets of Alton Manor The Mystery of the Alton Towers Curse
Rejuvenating a haunted house is something that many amusement parks and theme parks have done, but hardly any of them take the job as seriously as Alton Towers, the UK’s largest theme park. The park’s Haunted House originally opened in 1992 and then received its first major refurbishment in 2003, coming up with changed scenes and an interactive system. The re-incarnated ride was called Duel, including the catchphrase ‘The Haunted House Strikes Back’. Duel, in turn, closed for a major retheme in September 2022, and re-opened this weekend as The Curse at Alton Manor. On this opening day, we’ll find out what the Haunted House has in store in its third incarnation, striking back again.
Alton Towers re-opened their beloved dark ride on Saturday 18 March, the very first day of their 2023 season. The turnout for The Curse at Alton Manor was quite significant, with the entrance and surrounding area bustling with guest activity, smoke effects and roaming actors interacting with the prospective riders. The building exterior looks familiar, with subtle changes to certain landmarks in the vicinity. However, before boarding the long queue, which seems to have had a promising refurbishment, let us first dive a bit into the history of the ride.
When the Haunted House opened in 1992, Alton Towers was at the brink of developing into a true theme park. The park already included a fair number of rides, including roller coasters and a dark ride, but after it was bought by Tussauds Group in 1990, new developments were created in another vein. One of the first new rides introduced by Tussauds was the Haunted House, and the main designer of the new ride was John Wardley.
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In his own autobiography, Wardley fondly recalls the development of The Haunted House. The ride was built at a former maintenance area, which was already screened off from the public’s view by trees, meaning that the site was the perfect place to hide a large dark ride building. It was soon determined that the ride would have a spooky theme, as that was very popular among the public. Nevertheless, the ride should be a fun, family-friendly ride, without any elements of gore and horror.
“The acid test […] was that no children should come out crying, and nobody would have nightmares as a result of visiting the Haunted House, ”
In order to create the spooky-yet-humorous atmosphere of the ride, Wardley turned to Keith Sparks to produce the ride’s sets. The two had already worked together on Professor Burp’s Bubble Works , the almost legendary dark ride at Chessington World of Adventures, known for its sense of humour. The Haunted House that they designed was huge: at the moment of opening, it was among the largest dark rides in Europe and it became the largest ride that Sparks’ company ever built. The show building would measure 50 by 50 metres, with the entire ride costing £4 million.
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To transport people through the attraction, Wardley wanted a ride system which existed nowhere else in the world. Having worked on ghost trains for smaller amusement parks in the U.K. before, he knew that the true magic of such a ride is the intimacy, the sense that you experience all the scares and adventures on your own. However, for Alton Towers he needed a ride with a much higher capacity.
This was not a new concept in isolation. Spooky high-capacity rides had already been created, quite often in the shape of endless-chain ride systems, such as Disney’s Haunted Mansion. However, these systems, in which you could often see other cars both ahead and behind during the ride, lacked the sense of intimacy Wardley wanted for Alton Towers’ Haunted House.
“I came up with the idea of individual 6-seater cars which progressed slowly non-stop through the station bumper-to-bumper, but as they entered the ride proper they would peel off from the cars behind, speed up considerably, and whizz through the ride and encounter the horrors within, ”
The Curse At Alton Manor
“Each of the 34 cars had its own on-board computer […], and these computers communicated with the main master computer in the control room, monitoring the position and speed of every car around the circuit. If one car slowed down for any reason, the following car would sense this and position itself accordingly. It was a very sophisticated piece of technology.”
Even though the ride system was a major element in the design for the Haunted House, Wardley and Sparks realised that the ride experience should already start long before guests would board their vehicles. The ride became part of a new themed area, called Gloomy Wood. Apart from the ride itself, the area consisted of a souvenir shop (originally called ‘Something Sinister’) and a food kiosk (named ‘Wicked Things’). The three buildings were all designed in a somewhat sinister Gothic-Victorian style, which was even made slightly more ominous by the grave in front of the ride’s entrance.
After entering the building, guests found themselves in a dimly lit drawing room, where the eyes of the portraits on the walls seemed to follow them as they walked through.
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“Including the ghost of a small child walking around inside a miniature doll’s house, and a talking face (actually Spark’s own) in the flames of the fire […]. The whole of this walkthrough pre-show was tilted […], so the visitors had a strange disorientating off-balance sensation even before they boarded the ride.”
Once riders boarded their vehicle, they would take a five-minute journey through the haunted house. The use of separate vehicles rather than an endless chain enabled the use of sudden ghost appearances, such as a large ghost appearing above riders in the Grand Hall. Keith Spark’s humour was present in the caricatural style of the ghosts, and in special elements such as a ghost offering a cup of tea to the riders. For a more detailed look at the ride experience, watch the video below or check out the page (including map of the ride lay-out) on TowersStreet .
The Haunted House officially opened on 31 March 1992, in the presence of TV celebrities Philip Schofield and Michaela Strachan. The first rides did not go without problems: just an hour before the ceremony, the vehicles developed a fault, making them stop along the way. Every now and then, the cars needed to be reset manually by pressing a button at the back of the vehicle. Wardley rapidly requested for 34 staff members, dressed them up as undertakers and put one in the back seat of each of the vehicles, ordered to push the button any time the car stopped. That way, all visitors of the opening ceremony rode through the Haunted House in the sinister presence of an undertaker.
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Despite the opening day problems, the Haunted House operated without major issues throughout the following years. The ride rapidly became one of the most beloved rides of the park, even though some of the theming elements kept causing technical problems. Some of the animatronics were replaced in the early years, but the most profound change was the replacement of the ‘ghost corridor’ after the first season; it was turned into the skeleton corridor, needing less complex technology.
After ten years of operation, Alton Towers decided that the Haunted House required a major refurbishment for the 2003 season. The original ride closed by the end of 2002 and re-opened the next year by the name Duel: The Haunted House strikes back . The ride used the same car and track system and basic scenes but included a new background story. The most noticeable change for riders was the introduction of laser guns, turning the haunted house into an interactive dark ride.
The storyline of Duel revolved around Dr Roodyn, who studied reanimation of the dead, but suddenly disappeared. According to a news report, playing in the pre-show walkthrough, zombies have since invaded Roodyn’s house. The mission of the riders is to face all zombies and other creatures inside and blast the laser targets to get the highest score.
First Look At The Curse At Alton Manor
The new storyline included quite some changes to the ride, apart from the addition of many laser targets. The portraits that used to follow visitors with their eyes were replaced by videos explaining the ride’s story and instructing riders. In the ride itself, zombies were added to inhabit the giant’s lair (the giant had long gone) and several other parts of the ride. Moreover, the last scene, which used to depict a swamp, was completely changed to look like Dr Roodyn’s secret lab which was infested by the undead. The addition of the zombies meant a major change in tone and style of the ride, moving away from the caricatural ghosts that were originally installed by Sparks and Wardley.
After twenty seasons of operation, it was time for Duel to be rethemed again. Starting from August 2022, Alton Towers hinted at the closure of the dark ride. A sign was added to the queue line saying
. It turned out that the sign hinted towards the closing date of the ride, as it shut its doors on 6 September,
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