The Dungeons are fairly formulaic in nature, with several scenes that are consistent across almost every Dungeons attraction, however, there are always a few scenes based on historical events that have happened around the location of the attraction, such as, a Guy Fawkes scene in London, a Viking scene in York, and so on, which makes each dungeon attraction educational as well as entertaining.
The Alton Towers Dungeon is the 11th attraction to be currently operating under the worldwide “Dungeons” brand. Other locations include London, Amsterdam, Shanghai, and San Francisco to name a few.
The first scene is The Judge, where guests are trialed for their sins. This scene has lots of laughs as guests are chosen and accused of various outrageous crimes, some of which I had never heard in previous dungeon attractions before. It's a great start to the experience as it sets the tone perfectly.
After being sentenced by The Judge it was time to head on the boat down The Black River. The journey passes several decorated scenes, as well as animatronic figures and possibly, has some of the most intense scares that we've seen in a dungeons attraction. In terms of length, it has the same route as Charlie and the chocolate factory with the same onload / offload points so lasted around 4 minutes.
Once we disembarked the boat we were at the castle gates and shortly we were let into the torture room. Greeted by the torturer, we were then told about all her favourite tools for inflicting pain. This scene was almost carbon copied from every dungeon we've been in however it is still an enjoyable scene and very funny!
After surviving our torture, we thought it was best we treated ourselves to a stiff drink at the Welsh Harp Inn, where the landlord retold tales of pub regular Dick Turpin who as it happens has popped in for a pint! This scene is similar to Skippool Smugglers at Blackpool and Sweeney Todd at London and is a great use of binaural audio and effects.
We made it out of the Inn alive but it seems that during our journey through the dungeons some of us have contracted the plague! Don't worry the doctor will see us now, wait? He's died from the plague... Guess the assistant will have to cure us. This scene is the same from all of the UK dungeons and is essentially the same script but as with most of the dungeons scene they provide enough laughter and a few frights to ignore that fact.
The final scene in The Alton Towers Dungeons is The Haunting. We enter the cottage of Molly Leigh to take cover from a raging storm, however not all is as it seems as Molly still haunts this very building. This scene is one we have seen before in the other dungeons but is a great, atmospheric scene featuring lots of practical effects and theatrics. And with that, our dungeons experience came to an end. We had a great 40-minute experience through the dungeon. All of the actors were on perfect form and really made the experience memorable.
The £5 up-charge for The Alton Towers Dungeon also includes a Digital copy of your group photograph at the start of the experience.
Throughout the experience, we had laughs and scares, and the whole team enjoyed the theatrical experience.
If you haven’t visited a dungeon before, we highly recommend a visit.
