News The Time-Lapse of Theme Parks and Attractions
Theme parks are bustling hubs of entertainment and adventure, and have long captivated the imagination of people around the world. Their evolution over time reflects a dynamic industry constantly seeking to innovate and cater to the changing tastes of visitors. New rides and facilities help to maintain visitor interest and engagement in a competitive market. By teasing upcoming attractions and gradually revealing details over time, parks can create a sense of anticipation and curiosity among potential visitors. This incremental approach to promotion helps to maximise exposure and generate momentum leading up to the official opening of new rides and facilities. Additionally, it allows parks to gauge public interest and adjust marketing strategies accordingly, ensuring maximum impact upon launch. Our time-lapse photography has helped some of the UK’s most prestigious theme park resorts to promote and market their new facilities. Additionally, building and implementing complex attractions often requires meticulous planning and coordination among various stakeholders, including designers, engineers, and construction crews. Some of our clients use our time-lapse services to give team members, in different locations, the ability to see the progress of a project in real time. Here we reflect on some of the projects we have documented for our clients at some of the UK’s most well-known theme park resorts.
Time-Lapse for Alton Towers
We have a long standing relationship with Alton Towers and over the years we have documented a variety of important events at the theme park, hotels, the Splash Landings indoor water park, as-well as a range of other filming and promotional projects such as Oktoberfest and the build of their stargazing pods. We have also documented important construction work on Wickerman, Thirteen, Smiler, Gangster Granny: The Ride Galatica and Sharkbait Reef.
Alton Towers: Time-Lapsing the Dismantle of the Corkscrew
Alton Towers asked us to capture the full demolition of the iconic Corkscrew ride. Our engineers set-up one of our bespoke time-lapse cameras at the helix of this landmark attraction. This was a monumental moment in the park’s history, as this ride put Alton Towers on the map and attracted thousands of visitors every year. Opening at Easter in 1980 the ride reached speeds of 40mph and lasted for 1 minute and 30 seconds. The slow climbing lift hill was followed by a 180 degree curve before an abrupt drop when the riders would be turned upside down twice.
Alton Towers: Pink Pop Concert
We also documented rock star: Pink’s Summer Funhouse Carnival Tour concert at Alton Towers. We documented the construction of the stage, the concert itself and the de-rig. The grammy award winning singer performed to a crowd of 28,000 people in the theme park and descended onto the stage from a crane in true rockstar fashion. She performed a variety of her well-known hit records including ‘Get the Party Started‘.
Time-Lapsing the New Nemesis Ride
Recently we captured the new revitalised ‘Nemesis Reborn‘ ride being constructed which promises to exhilarate thrillseekers. The original ride opened in 1994 and was Europe’s first ever inverted rollercoaster before closing in 2022 for a full revamp. Taking 18 months to complete Nemesis Reborn has new story-telling elements bought to life through cutting edge art auto-visual technology as-well as new stylisations on the 3.5 G Force coaster.
Legoland: Time-Lapsing New Attractions
We have time-lapsed a variety of projects for Legoland at their resorts all over the world including Toronto, Osaka, Tokyo, Manchester, Boston, Texas and Windsor. Legoland is aimed at children aged between 2 and 12 and offers adventures, rides and attractions inspired by the popular building block toy Lego. We have loved watching the craftsmanship and skill used by the Lego team as a number of projects have taken shape. We hope that they will continue to excite and inspire young minds all over the world.
Time-Lapsing Chessington World of Adventures Resort
Chessington World of Adventure is another Merlin Entertainment resort which we have worked for. We were asked to document the construction of a large marquee, the event itself and the de-rig at the Surrey resort. This Nintendo Wii Party event had performances from Jedward as-well as Alexandra Burke from the X Factor. This theme park offers over 40 theme park rides and a range of magical attractions for all ages. Additionally, Chessington also has a zoo and SEALIFE centre where visitors can see over 1,000 different animals and sea creatures including tigers, lions, penguins and sharks. We also documented the Croc Drop ride and the construction of their World of Jumanji ride.
Thorpe Park Time-Lapse
Thorpe Park is a popular resort only a short distance from London, and has a range of exciting rollercoasters and attractions. We are time-lapsing the construction of the park’s latest ride, Hyperia. This rollercoaster soars to 263ft and reaches speeds of 80mph and features an inversion which is the tallest in Europe. The team at Thorpe Park have been using our photography to update expectant thrillseekers on the ride’s progress as construction has been underway.
London Dungeon
The London Dungeon brings together a range of actors, special effects, rides and scenes to thrill and terrify guests. We created important show reels and filmed celebrity launch nights for our client. Not only do we specialise in time-lapse photography, but we have years of experience filming a range of multi-genre projects for marketing, advertising and documentaries.
We provided our time-lapse services at this eco visitor attraction in Cornwall for an energy generator project. The Eden Project has beautiful botanical gardens as-well as two biomes which grow plants native to the rainforest and the Mediterranean. This attraction has important green credentials including the Planet Mark Sustainability Certification which shows the attraction’s mindfulness of carbon emissions, waste, water and energy output. Our time-lapse cameras helped to document a new Geothermal Energy Project which harnesses naturally occurring sustainable energy from rock deep underground which helps to power the biomes as-well as the site’s plant nursery.
We work extensively for theme parks and leisure resorts providing our time-lapse photography as-well as filming on rollercoasters for promotional material and producing shorts of special events and celebrity launches. We have also produced a documentary for a client in this sector and we have created a viral video which attracted over 2.5 million hits on YouTube.
Our team are happy to discuss your needs, please get in touch if you would like to hear more about our services and to see more examples of our work.