Teasing thrill-seekers with the promise of ‘miss it and you’ll be gutted’, Alton Towers’ highly-awaited Dungeon has been launched for the 2019 season.
Guests are taken on a journey through darkest moments the country of Staffordshire has seen on what promises to be an unmissable scary experience for brave families who dare to enter the Dungeon’s gates.
Holovis, the experimental design company which specialises in creating immersive and mixed reality to engage audiences, worked with Merlin on the Dungeon, following a similar collaboration in 2018 when the two companies worked on last year’s new flagship attraction Wicker Man.
Holovis designed and installed the AV, lighting, audio, SFX and some ghoulish projection mapping on the new experience.
The Dungeon can be found in the theme park’s former Charlie and the Chocolate Factory site where it incorporates different elements of the factory, including the former chocolate river with newly themed vessels that will take guests through the eight scenes immersing them into Staffordshire’s darkest history.
Using multisensory immersion techniques, the ride creates anticipation about what and who might be around them.
As Peter Cliff, creative director at Holovis explains:
“Some of the highlights for me are the zonal audio, where during a blackout scene voices and whispers surround the guests and give the impression that live actors are right behind them, breathing down their necks. Audio is something that often isn’t used to its full capabilities within projects so it’s great to experience it being used here as a key storytelling metric.
“Another striking feature is the talking heads where we’ve intricately projection mapped onto the three-dimensional theming to make it look like the head is really talking. Details like this make the experience stand out in the minds of guests, whilst the technology remains invisible and frictionless,” Cliff added.
