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  Closed

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Toyland Tours was just that, a tour around toyland in a boat. A slow slamlom through colourful scenes with toys with a very catchy piece of music playing the whole time. You board your boat within the well decorated station, you must cross the water channel by means of a bridge in the shape of a boat. Once on the boat (not usually filled to capacity), you embark on your journey through Toyland. There are many different scenes in Toyland tours, from Toy imagineering, to Toy testing and even a party at the end - following the basic structure of: Ideas make Toys, Toys Make Presents, Presents Make Parties!

Some of the scenes are fantastic, fun and flamboyant, others were dated and falling into a state of disrepair. Scenes that stuck out as fun to look at were the snail racing scene, quite unusual, but snails looking like racing cars, following a track, really does look good (when working). In the party scene a fantastic looking toy train winds around a circuit with toys as passengers and also is a good site to see (when working). Many peoples favourite is the hippo at the end of the ride with.......um.......a rather large upper body which she swings, a very funny end (if working). But my favourite is a mermaid who sits upon a wobbling jelly, it just looks good, but it barely ever works anymore. And to further compliment the ride is a fantastic sound track.

The problem with the ride if you haven't already noticed was it's reliability, many of the scenes were static when they should be moving and it is a shame as it spoils the ride. Also parts of the ride were out-dated, we see a scene which encorperates the Sega Megadrive in it, which hasn't changed in the whole time the ride has been there. Mega Drives are very out-dated and Sega don't even make games consoles anymore, and so to leave that scene there was laziness.

Toyland Tours wasn't a bad ride by any stretch, but the unreliability of scenes and failure to update the chronically ageing setpieces meant that it spent most of it's final years untouched and unloved. Of course, it's location never helped matters, tucked in a dead end behing a McDonalds restaurant right at the back of the park where nobody ever goes. That said, along with the superior Bubbleworks at Chessington, it was a ride that people seemed to know about and it was ironic that both rides then vanished at the same time to be replaced by updates. Toyland Tours was to be chopped and changed into it's third life: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Toyland Tours won't exactly be missed, and there will be no candle-lit vigils by it's old entrance way, but it was fun while it lasted - even if with a little bit of TLC, it could have lasted longer without dying a slow and horrible death.

Toyland Tours @ ReRide.net Download the original ride music here