Unfortunately, I had a really bad experience on The Haunting today.
Before I cover that though, I’d like to start by saying the ride is looking the best I’ve seen it in a long time. The garden has been cut back which means the facade and theming is much more visible, which really enhances the queue like experience. Also, pretty much all of the effects were working, which is also great to see.
However, on to the negatives. The ride host, whose name I didn’t catch, but name badge said ‘BFG’ (which I find rather unprofessional), was absolutely awful. As soon as I entered the trailer, he spent about 2 minutes going completely off script and taking away from the experience of the ride. Once we got into the corridor, instead of just letting the effects trigger which normally happens, he started talking about some sort of ‘gateway to hell’ or something? I thought this was bizarre as this has nothing to do with the pre show or storyline of the ride. In the library it was just as bad. He was talking about the lady of the house being a witch? Again, nothing to do with the story. During the library scene he kept shouting out from the back of the room, which caused a lot of confused looks from the other guests, myself included. The chapel was probably the only room he didn’t ruin the experience. The audio is still way too quiet in there too, and also sounded quite tinny.
I think there needs to be some sort of enhanced staff training over winter for The Haunting. It should be a very simple task with limited speech, however somehow this was turned into a completely awful experience by this ride host.
Before I cover that though, I’d like to start by saying the ride is looking the best I’ve seen it in a long time. The garden has been cut back which means the facade and theming is much more visible, which really enhances the queue like experience. Also, pretty much all of the effects were working, which is also great to see.
However, on to the negatives. The ride host, whose name I didn’t catch, but name badge said ‘BFG’ (which I find rather unprofessional), was absolutely awful. As soon as I entered the trailer, he spent about 2 minutes going completely off script and taking away from the experience of the ride. Once we got into the corridor, instead of just letting the effects trigger which normally happens, he started talking about some sort of ‘gateway to hell’ or something? I thought this was bizarre as this has nothing to do with the pre show or storyline of the ride. In the library it was just as bad. He was talking about the lady of the house being a witch? Again, nothing to do with the story. During the library scene he kept shouting out from the back of the room, which caused a lot of confused looks from the other guests, myself included. The chapel was probably the only room he didn’t ruin the experience. The audio is still way too quiet in there too, and also sounded quite tinny.
I think there needs to be some sort of enhanced staff training over winter for The Haunting. It should be a very simple task with limited speech, however somehow this was turned into a completely awful experience by this ride host.