| Ride Review - Latest Revision: July 2006 (WARNING! Will Spoil First Time Riders) | ||
 Disney dark rides are often considered
some of the finest in the world. In their theme parks,
stretching from the sun-soaked sunshine state of Florida
to the, well, rain-soaked ponchos of Paris, the dark
rides are often the star attraction. The idea of theming
some of these rides after their films isn’t new, and
has often led to some of the more memorable attractions.
Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin at the Magic
Kingdom is a great attraction, and the Great Movie Ride
at Disney MGM is (ironically?) fantastic theatre.Peter Pan, Snow White, Winnie the Pooh… they are just a few of the Disney movie characters to now have their very own ride, as does Alice from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland adaptation. But you don't have to go all the way to California for it - because we've got our own ride, right here in Ol' Blighty - located at the heart of the very Un-Disney home of cheap tat: Pleasure Beach Blackpool. Hoorah! For two decades, riders have been able to step up and follow the white rabbit through the Wonderland. The ride is based on the Disney movie, but this is not a Disney ride. This is a Blackpool ride – and everything that that entails is here in abundance, including the curious notion of using the movie characters to not only act out some scenes from the movie, but also extracts from the original novel that were not featured in the film. Even curioser is that everything is set to a jolly tune from… Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a non-Disney movie based on Roald Dahl’s Charlie & the Chocolate Factory story. You wouldn’t get that in the Magic Kingdom. A rarely-used thin queue adorns the side of the ride, which features luscious theming around a raised concrete track where cheshire cats periodically rattle around making their way to or from the Wonderland itself. Each car seats four in two rows of two, with the exception of one very special car where one seat is taken up by the White Rabbit himself. Sitting next to him is extra special, and don’t you forget it . A seatbelt is locked, and with the grace of starting a car whilst in gear, we lurch off over the bumpy concrete path up and up and round and round, towards a set of doors above which some ancient gramophone horns play a jolly ditty as we move inside and through the door with the large knob (door knob, naturally…) What follows is a whistle-stop tour around some amazingly detailed and ultra-bright neon painted scenes. Every so often, what you are viewing is punctuated by a passage from the novel, usually with incorrect grammar and always flashing past too quickly to really read. The detail is fantastic, and pretty much everything is animated. All four viewable directions are themed which although being completely immersive means that the speeding rabbits don’t give much time to view everything. Repeat rides are necessary to appreciate everything.
Despite speeding through at the speed of a March Hare, the ride goes on for a long time – and more and more scenes are witnessed, with the car following a real epic journey of hair-pin turns, ramps and spirals, up and down. We even leave Alice’s story momentarily to see Humpty Dumpty fall off his wall, Upside down rooms and the infamous Oysters dance with glee before their impending doom at the hands of the Walrus and the Carpenter. The Cheshire cat makes several appearances, though his main trick is to appear with huge eyes that light us as we leave the wonderland back into the relative serenity of the Pleasure Beach. Sadly, we are still four storeys above the station platform, so more concrete channels weave us around the ornate gardens that continue the story, before we are delivered to a rain shelter made out of playing cards, and we are ushered out.
Add some marvellous smells and the continuous looped-track around the whole attraction, and you feel like you really have slipped into a wonderland. This is just as magic as Disney’s finest rides, but in a totally different manner.. It is a ride for fans of Blackpool, and fans of unique dark rides that entertain every single member of the family. If you don’t come off feeling a very strange urge to go through again, then my name is the mad hatter.
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However, a word of warning: Those
expecting scenes similar to Peter Pan or Snow White at
Disneyland parks will be severely disappointed. This is a
dark ride, Blackpool style – and that means
tongue-in-cheek humour and innuendo abound. For example,
as we pass Alice playing croquet, we are shrunk to the
size of a midget, and all we see is a huge (and dare I
say it, fat?) pair of legs with the bottom of a dress at
ceiling level. Between her legs, a huge pink bird
(substituting for a croquet mallet) lurches around
hitting the target. Like most things at Blackpool though,
the crassness is only there for people who want to spot
it. For the kids, it’s a true delight – and
even the drugged up caterpillar will delight all but the
stoniest of PC obsessed maniacs. 
The ride is fantastic. It has an air of
simplicity about it, when in fact, this isn’t the
case. Hell, it even manages to open doors automatically
as the car approaches, something that Valhalla
hasn’t even achieved yet. This isn’t authentic
theming, but it is impressive in it’s sense of fun.
The unpredictability of the scenes mean that you enjoy
every last drop has you hurtle from one set piece to
another. Although the scenes have been copied from the
film, it seems like they have been cobbled together using
old washing up liquid bottles and toilet rolls then
bathed in UV paint giving a strangely warped result.