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It’s not so great a leap of imagination to compare a dark ride with a theatrical performance, especially a ride that claims to be as epic as Valhalla. The basics are the same. You create and perform scenes and stories to your audience using characters (real or animatronic), sound and lighting. In fact, a dark ride even has one benefit that the theatre could never give you – a ride system that lets the audience live the story; the ability to be part of the adventure.

Valhalla (the place), put simply, is the Viking Underworld – where warriors slain in battle go for a bit of respite in the next life plane. Valhalla (the ride) is unexplained, but it could be a representation of Valhalla itself, or the journey to Valhalla, or a bit of both, or none of the above. We may not be sure what we are letting ourselves in for, but the frontage is impressive none the less and with gallons of water ferociously falling down a huge rock frontage, you don’t need Pleasure Beach’s marketing team to tell you that the scene is set for something quite ambitious; Not that that will stop them doing so at every opportunity.

A small and fairly fast-moving outdoor queue grid allows you to purchase a see-through poncho before delivering you to the front of a wooden carved station that is pretty mind-blowing in its genuine beautifulness. Behind the station, the afore-mentioned water cascades down and a pumping choral music track plays throughout the station. (Please don’t trouble yourself that it is an old Hot Ice track, it’ll ruin the mood.) Crows hang upside down off of the rafters like bats, and whilst you may entertain the idea that it is because the super-glue holding them on wasn’t as strong as planned, the fact that they are all doing the same gives them a strangely ominous presence.

So far, all good… but seemingly just to counteract all the Viking intricacies, a man with a vacuum nozzle in his hand stands on the far platform ready to start thrusting it into each boat that comes through. As boats enter station, eight people exit to their left and one fact becomes very evident – everyone who didn’t buy a poncho in the queue is now really quite nervous. But there is no turning back for water protection now, as we are marched into our boat that is rushing through the station at lightning pace. Four rows seat two each with no restraints, or indeed, comfort. The seats are soaking wet, and you may well find that the floor of the boat has a shockingly deep puddle of muddy water in it despite the vacuuming that goes on every time it arrives back in the station.

We now approach the end of the station conveyor, and a suitably dramatic speech welcomes us to the ride of our lives, then it’s off and away – ready for the adventure to begin. The ride shows its true colours straight away as we dip into the fast moving trough and the boat tips sharply one side enough to let a huge amount of water in over the edge of the vessel and into the laps of riders. It is quite possible to get uncomfortably wet in the first five seconds of the ride.

Towards a parting fountain now, that may or may not recede in time for front riders to escape a heavy pelting of H2O and into the building, and on our way to the Viking afterlife. A stone tunnel takes us round to the left, where a two-headed dog suddenly bursts out of a wall, barking furiously as we glide past it and on to a wooden contraption that in the dim light looks like the longest and highest lift hill ever created. Above our heads, a Viking helmet periodically reveals a face that looks scarily like Sir Patrick Moore. He loudly proclaims something, but the terrible acoustics don’t let even the slightest clue out as to what he is saying. Given that this is the Pleasure Beach, he is probably telling us that our wristbands allow us to see some amazing shows for only a few extra pounds.

Over the crest of the lift, and the small dip that follows will have first-time riders believing for a split second that they will pass unscathed, but hopes will be dashed as the boat drops out of the run-out and promptly sinks, causing everyone to get huge dollops of water hit them from seemingly random directions. The boat turns to the right now, and as our vessel hits the angled trough, more water heads straight into riders on the left. In front of us, a serving hatch in the wall lights up, and a disembodied giant head rises to the occasion. Before you can even comprehend what this could be, we are suddenly drifting through a claustrophobic stone tunnel. Steaming vents of noxious gases are expelled from both sides creating a wonderfully intimate environment. Or at least, they would do if various jets of water from the walls and ceiling were not aiming straight for the faces of riders and causing various yelps from all round as water jets protrude into various parts of ones anatomy.

Out of the venting tunnel and round more corners now before we see our next glimpse of Viking mythology: Namely Sir Hiram Maxim’s Flying Machines and the Pepsi Max Big One… Erm, Shurely Shome Mishtake? Nope – in front of us the building opens to give a panoramic view of the Pleasure Beach. Only weak stalactites blocks up from oblivion, and we ram into them with the finesse of a car crash. Having come to an abrupt stop, we are given plenty of time to survey our surroundings, which consists of a deck-chair, some corrugated metal walls and a member of staff reading The Sun. If you’re really lucky, they might even tell you that you’re about to go backwards. And surely enough, the boat then plunges down a small backwards drop that, of course, soaks riders in the last two rows.

The boat comes to a stop again as a huge fan blows into riders face causing poncho hoods to ricochet against ears and unpleasantly causes a sound not unlike someone machine-gunning some seals. We pause in this purgatory of sorts for ten seconds or so, before the boat is pushed forwards down another small drop that yet again causes the boat to plunge into the water soaking everyone.

We head towards some rubber doors. Those who expect them to open for us like Alice in Wonderland will be severely disappointed as the boat bashes through them like a supermarket delivery entrance. And, as luck would have it, we appear to have arrived inside a refrigerator. Ice and bitterly cold air drafts whirlwind around us as frozen stick-men-like Vikings look us in the eye. You may even get some snow drifting around your wet faces if you’re really special. Whilst the scene is half interesting to look at, the overall impression of this part of the ride feels like going outside to build a snow-man having just come out of the shower. Something your mother told you never to do, no doubt.

Anyway – onwards and upwards, and we’re on another lift. This one is leading to the first real drop, and as we clear the apex we hurtle down the darkness and level out in a blue haze before the boat then suddenly lurches down again and lands heavily into a vortex of water fountains that makes the Bubbleworks finale look like a small garden pond. Not only are the water jets more powerful and more numerous, but nearly half of them are directed straight into various parts of the boat. Still passing through the vortex, the boat rapidly slows down causing water already in the boat to rush around your feet easily filling up shoes and trainers. Water from the splash-down is thrown into the air, gets caught in the vortex, and promptly lands back inside the boat. As we exit the vortex, the sighs of relief are short-lived as we then drop out of the run out and into the trough, where we again dip below the water line and more water seeps over the sides.

The fact that the water vortex looks fairly splendid lit in a cool shade of aqua blue is completely missed by the fact that no one can look at any of it as they are pelted with water from FOUR separate sources. The boat is now moving fairly swiftly, and a sharp turn to the right will add insult to injury to left-hand riders get another dose of the wet stuff.

If you can still bear to look, you will now see ivy growing all around you and flickering lanterns as we float through a seemingly moon-lit swamp. Two wooden hammers rise into the air and as the boat passes between them, hurtle towards you into the pool of water resulting in – yep, you’ve guessed it – water being launched towards the boat. Above riders’ heads, a rotating log rushes past, though being badly lit will probably go un-noticed by most. More twists and turns lead us past a metal cage that unspectacularly starts flashing before we exit the room.

This cage once-housed a spectacular lightning bolt (akin to that in the G-Force Queueline). However, its unreliability causing problems, it has been replaced with a strobe light that lights… nothing. No time to worry about such stuff now though – its up another hill and into the grand finale.

You’ve got the score by now – speed down a drop and land in a heavy splash of water that would soak you to the skin if you weren’t already more saturated then a drowned rat. As the water pelts you from everywhere at once, a huge fireball is let off and the heat blisters around you. Then we drop off the run-out and the boat sinks for a third time. Then another fire-ball. Then we turn a corner and get soaked. Then some more flames, a bash through some more rubber doors and we’re back outside. As we head for the station though, the ride has one more evil trick planned and a water cannon explodes next to us, the water from the trough raining down on us like acid rain.

Let’s cut to the core here: Is Valhalla a dark ride that happens to use a water flume as its method of transport, or is it a water ride that happens to be indoors with a few scenes? The unbearable truth for those having to endure it is that it simply doesn’t know, and succeeds at neither.

If it wants to be a spectacular dark ride, then it is already faltering at the first hurdle with only a handful of scenes, none of which are particularly amazing and all of which rely on a special effect for its trick. In the event that the special effect doesn’t work, the scene is left feeling flat. Valhalla then adds insult to injury by not allowing us to look at the few bits it has, because it is too busy throwing water in our face. The boat passes through these sections far too quickly, and by the time we have recovered from the deluge, we have passed the bits we were supposed to be looking at. It is hard to take a ride theme seriously when we keep bursting through plastic doors like waiters at a restaurant, and even when we take into account what every scene does actually show, we are still left with no idea how it all fits into with each other. There is no story, no consistency, nothing fulfilling in the slightest.

But if the ride wants to be a water ride… it fails even more badly. Even the oldest chute-the-chute rides were able to make their way around their respective tracks without listing to the side, hitting sides of channels, grinding along the bottom and regularly submarining like daddy-long-legs on steroids. Our longboat doesn’t feel like it could navigate one side of a rain puddle to another let alone take Viking warriors on a quest. Perhaps worst of all, the fact that water cannot drain out of the boat means that gallons of the stuff mixed with park leaflets, bits of litter and anything else left in the boat from previous passengers is collected at the back or front every time a lift or drop is encountered, resulting in front and back seat riders’ feet getting a thoroughly raw deal.

The ride is just too wet. This isn’t fun-wet in a Tidal Wave or Hydro fashion, this is “jump into a swimming pool with your clothes on” wet. And yes, there is a difference. You’ll experience no mirth when leaving Valhalla, only a lot of stinted walking as your socks squelch in your shoes.

By not knowing what it is supposed to be Valhalla succeeds in nothing, but unlike other rides that simply don’t deliver what was expected, Valhalla’s hidden saturation score can leave you in a far worse mood then when you got on – surely the worst curse that any “amusement” ride could ever have attached to it.

Of course, there is always another side to the coin – and I can think of just this: If Valhalla was supposed to be a genuine recreation of Viking Hell, then it has caught it perfectly, and will have you repenting for years to come.

Rhythmos Soundtrack Valhalla uses the "Song Of The Elders" track from this CD