Dropping at 70 miles per hour vertically into Oblivion has to be much scarier when you can’t see where you’re going. So a wispy blanket of fog, floating eerily around the vertical tunnel mouth, was rated a definite plus at the planning stage of the new Alton Towers white-knuckle ride, the first vertical roller coaster in the world.
But because of the size of the passenger vehicles, the tunnel mouth is a huge concrete shaft the size of a motorway underpass. “Without some element of concealment it would just look like a gigantic piece of civil engineering,” said John.
“We needed a means of creating fog around the tunnel entrance so that, as the vehicles poised at the top of the drop, and hung there, with the riders looking straight down at the hole in the ground, the fog would hide the structure and add an element of mystery. Also it would create a disorientating environment as the riders dropped through the tunnel.”
The effect John wanted was spectacularly created using the energy efficient, American-made Mee Fog system, designed and installed for Oblivion by Golden Coast. Mee Fog, developed by cloud physicist Tom Mee, is widely used to create special effects in theme parks like Walt Disney World’s laser show and Universal Studios’ E T Adventure. “It’s the only economic alternative to the high consumer costs of theatrical fog, and because it uses water vapour, it’s climate dependent, so the effect is unpredictable, just like real fog,” explained John.
On day one the fog worked so well that it obscured not only the tunnel mouth, but also the camera’s eye view of the riders poised on the brink, relayed to those waiting in the queue. It had to be turned off while the cameras were moved to a better vantage point. But then, adjustments made, the fog was back in action, billowing eerily around the ride, adding even more excitement to one of the hottest new thrills around.
You can watch the launch video for Oblivion below.