| Ride Review - Latest Revision: 2003 (WARNING! Will Spoil First Time Riders) |
 Every town has its own museum,
but not many have their own Ride. (I hear Luton
considered one, but the age limit that it entailed would
have reduced it's audience to nearly none.) Anyway...
Oxford is indeed a very historically important town in
the UK. Museums are all well and good, but a museum about
Oxford would be so large, that family visits would
presumably get thwarted by misbehaving kids before it has
even started. Not only that, but it would be a bit of a
bugger to organise it all into some sort of order, and
visitors would probably leave even more confused then
when they entered, but under the spell that they THINK
they know it all.Perhaps it was to solve this problem that the OXFORD STORY was created. A dark ride (and a very long one at that) that takes you on a chonological tour of the history of Oxford, from it's universities to its Civic Centres. The ride entrance is basically a shop front, and you enter into a themed historic Oxford street, from sometime in the past. You pass through passages and a short film before before being moved into the boarding area, barely bigger then the cars themselves. The cars are independent of each other, and can be sent off whenever needed. They all travel at the same pace though. Tourists to Oxford are very often not English Speakers, or understanders. So Headphones were fitted for people to wear, and there are a number of commentaries to choose from depending on what your native language is. Interestingly though, it seems that a car can only have one language for all of its headsets, meaning that if you are riding with someone who doesn't understand your language, then you are in a sticky situation. The ride goes up and up and up to begin with, along VERY steep spiral ramps that are never ending. Not only is the motorised car whining as it striggles to take 6 humans up this steep gradient, but the floorboards which hold the track creak incredibly loudly, as though they are about to collapse. Even with your commentaties going on, the creaking is loud enough to unsettle you. Sound effects burst into life as your car crawls past them at the slowest dark ride speed I have expirienced, and the comentary houses music which changes from period to period. It may have been a one-off, but the commentary we had seemed to be quite a bit ahead of the car itself - talking about models and scenes which we could barely see yet. Unfortuantly, the ride has nearly no moving models, and all the scenes are static, which is a shame. At the top, the car intertwines round some level scenes - before going down a spiral ramp just as steep as the upward journey. Again, floorboards creek and the motor whines - but this time, to stos up from hurtling down the spirals and hitting the car in front. Of course, with gravity constantly trying to pull the car down faster then the motor is willing to let it go, some alarming shuddering occurs. You then get off and have the opportunity to buy horrible rainbow-multicoloured erasers, before you get thrown out into another street, a different one from where you entered. The ride theming is very good and the models were in a clean and fresh state. The intriguing thing about the ride is its length - it must last a good half an hour. But, the commentray is informative and although cramp does start to set in near the end, you are at least forced to change postion and brace your legs as the car starts its decent. Where this ride really excels though is it's incredible attention to detail in the commentary. Compare and contrast with DAWN OF TIME, which treats everything like a cartoon, and SPIRIT OF LONDON which whisks by things so fast you hardly catch the date. Well worth a go if you are exploring one of Britain's finest cities! |