X-Sector: a history of the sinister side of UK theme parks

The UK is home to some incredible family theme parks and attractions, offering tame thrills and immersive adventures for all ages. But the theme park scene here isn’t just for young families- there are some parks that offer themed lands that are a lot darker than you’d expect from a park with a Cbeebies Land Hotel, and is owned by the same company as Legoland Windsor and Chessington World of Adventures… that’s right, I’m talking about Alton Towers, and specifically X-Sector.

Tucked away in the corner of the park, this themed land that first made it’s debut in the late 90s offers two heavily themed coasters as well as a Huss Enterprise (creatively named Enterprise!), loosely tied together by the theme of a mysterious industrial site that is possibly the site of a secret government organisation. Let’s take a trip to the Ministry of Joy and explore the history of X-Sector- just remember to Smile Always and Don’t Look Down!

From Fantasy to Horror

Alton Towers opened its doors in 1980 and has been developing and changing ever since. In its earlier years the park was predominantly family-orientated, allowing visitors to go Around The World In 80 Days, and get completely drenched on the Flume and Grand Canyon Rapids, but every few years a new coaster was added that would pave the way to the Towers becoming the thrill park we know it as today. Corkscrew was, as you can imagine, a Corkscrew, manufactured by Vekoma that opened with the park in 1980, while three years later, a Schwarzkopf Jet Star 2 called Black Hole would make it’s debut inside a large black tent to simulate being in a black hole, hence the name.

One of the biggest changes in the park however, at least regarding Alton Towers’ target audience, was the transformation of Fantasy World, which had once been home to attractions like a Vintage Car Ride, a playground, and a miniature golf course, into an industrial-esque area aimed at a much older and more thrillseeking audience. There had been some thrill rides in the area before, including a Gravitron and The Black Hole (which would later be modified by Schwarzkopf to become the Black Hole II, with a higher capacity!) but neither could compare to what was to come for the area, and only one would remain.

X-Sector’s Second, and Deepest “Black Hole”!

Around the late 90s, Alton Towers were looking to make a statement with their newest coaster, four years after the success of Nemesis let the UK’s theme park industry know that the Towers was a park to be watched. Discussions were held with ride manufacturer Bolliger and Mabillard, (who had also constructed Nemesis and would go on to build another revolutionary Towers coaster, Air, in 2002!), to create something that would be modern, innovative and, most importantly, terrifying.

Soon each of Fantasy World’s attractions would be removed, with the exception of the Black Hole, and another hole would soon begin to fill space in the area, one that kept getting deeper, and deeper, and deeper. Curious visitors intrigued by why the hole was there, where it was going, how deep it would get, were greeted by a mysterious figure in an orange suit, who would simply tell you to “clear the area”, while muttering vague commands in to a walkie talkie. Naturally rumours began spreading about what exactly was going on in the former Fantasy World, now renamed X-Sector.

Very little was revealed about the project, codenamed Secret Weapon 4, until it’s opening month of March 1998, when fans and enthusiasts were finally put out of their misery as to what on earth the hole, and the coaster track travelling into and around it, was going to be.

Don’t Look Down!

The park’s newest Secret Weapon was announced to be Oblivion, the world’s first B&M Dive Coaster, complete with some dystopian-looking and slightly unsettling queueline videos and the theme of an experiment to test endurance. Via screens throughout the queue, riders are told that they have been “designated for Oblivion” after the idea to ride was “implanted into their brain”, and that they are going to experience the most intense ride ever devised.

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Soon visitors would board their ride vehicle and climb to the lifthill to the highest point of the ride, where, despite the ride’s slogan of “don’t look down”, the vehicle quite literally forces you to look down into the intimidating hole beneath you. Oblivion’s drop was advertised as the first “straight-down” drop on a coaster, but Alton Towers were a little off on this one- the drop was only 87 degrees! Not quite as impressive as a true vertical drop, but still pretty steep nonetheless.

Alton Towers is known for using some amazing and unique marketing tactics when advertising their Secret Weapons, from the suggestion that riders may need to sign a waiver to experience Th13teen, to painting sheep with the Smiler’s logo in 2012, and Oblivion was no exception. The park did everything to ensure the world’s first dive machine would make its way into the UK’s consciousness, with Oblivion appearing on cereal boxes and several TV shows, but most notable, and certainly interesting was the coaster having its very own limited edition brand of deodorant! Though given how hot and sweaty many of us can get walking around a theme park all day, perhaps selling deodorant in park merch shops really is a genius idea!

Oblivion experienced the same success that many of the Towers’ coasters do, aside from some noise complaints, and paved the way for a range of taller, longer and faster dive coasters that continue to thrill brave riders today. In the same year Oblivion opened, Enterprise was moved from Festival Park (now Dark Forest!), to X-Sector, and until the early 2010s, the three rides were the main attractions in Alton Towers’ most dystopian themed land.

The Loss of a Black Hole

Since Oblivion’s debut in 1998, X-Sector had been home to two rollercoasters, the aforementioned “one-drop-wonder” Oblivion, and the Black Hole, which had become a classic at the park. However, all classic coasters reach a point where, for whatever reason, they are no longer able to operate, and the 1983 Schwarzkopf was no different. In order to retain the safe and fun thrills we all love at theme parks, ride safety regulations are being updated almost constantly- which can sometimes cause rides to be closed if the park at which they are located at is not in a position to update the ride, or does not want to pay to do so.

Black Hole suffered the latter option in March of 2005- the ride had already been updated once during its operation, in order to accommodate a higher capacity using two car trains rather than one, and it wasn’t financially viable to modify the coaster once again, so the decision was made to just remove the ride altogether. With the Black Hole’s tent still intact, the track was taken out, modified and shipped to Fuvurik, a park in Sweden, where it operates to this day as Rocket.

Although it was used as a venue for scaremazes during Scarefest, the tent remained largely empty for much of the eight years after the Black Hole’s removal. That was, however, until a major new addition would rock the park and the theme park industry alike, and change the fate of Alton Towers, both for better and for worse, forever.

A Ride To Smile About

By 2011, it had been just a year since Alton Towers’ last major addition, in the form of SW6, or Th13teen, an Intamin family coaster with some rather aggressive marketing that eventually ended in disappointment for riders expecting something a little more thrilling, and the park were already looking for something new, and something impressive. There was one problem, however: space.

It had been decided that SW7 should be located in X-Sector where Black Hole was previously, but this was an extremely compact space, and the park was and still is subject to restrictions preventing rides from being built above tree height, which, while it had lead to some pretty innovative solutions over the years, such as the use of deep holes and craters for Nemesis and Oblivion, was still a huge design obstacle for a coaster set to smash the record for most inversions.

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Meanwhile, German rollercoaster manufacturer Gerstlauer, who had built Saw-The Ride over at Thorpe Park a few years prior, were also working on a groundbreaking project- the Infinity coaster, that would be similar to their existing Eurofighter model, but upping the thrills that could be packed into a compact space. The two companies were a perfect fit, and by early 2012, permission had been granted for what would become one of the Towers’ most popular coaster, and Gerstlauer’s first Infinity coaster that would pave the way for 10 more installations across the world.

Merlin’s creative team, Merlin Magic Making, along with attraction designer John Wardley, were tasked with creating a theme for the ride, to tie in with the rest of X-Sector. Concept art displayed on the coaster’s official website showed various chilling theming elements, including a grey spider arm, which was likely an early design for the Marmaliser, and industrial structures suggesting the possibility that SW7 was originally intended to be based around a much more industrial and Oblivion-like theme than what we eventually got.

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As refinements to the theme were made, and marketing began for the ride, visitors were introduced to the hypnotic storyline of the Smiler, and the fictional government organisation the Ministry of Joy, even though the coaster’s name wasn’t announced until later on. Alton Towers released a set of videos on YouTube following two psychology students exploring the actions of the mysterious organisation and their “advocate” Miles Cedars, and the Smile logo was projected onto Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and, iconically, painted onto sheep! I guess even sheep can go down the “path to joy” and become Smiling Advocates!

The Smiler began terrifying and hypnotising visitors in late May 2013, after being delayed due maintenance problems, and even when it eventually opened, constant teething problems such as trains valleying made it difficult to ride in its early operation. Over 3800 feet of track consisting of two lift hills, one being vertical, and fourteen record-breaking inversions winded around a large spider-shaped structure known as the Marmaliser, with enough hypnotic imagery and patterns to make the man in the Oblivion queueline videos who tells you hypnosis is not available at Alton Towers question his very existence.

Despite the maintenance issues that come with such an innovative attraction, and making some people sick due to the sheer amount of twists, turns and inversions, the Smiler was a success, with many riders loving its unique theme, thrilling experience and unsettling soundtrack. However, just two years after opening, the ride would experience a tragic accident that left five riders seriously injured and changed the reputation of the park forever.

The 2015 Crash

Warning: the following information may be distressing to some, if you feel you may be disturbed by this, click off the post or scroll to the next point.

On 2nd June 2015, Alton Towers welcomed visitors as usual: it was a warm summer day, however strong winds were making it difficult to operate some rides due to safety. The Smiler’s manufacturer, Gerstlauer, had stated that the attraction should not operate in winds of the strength that they were that day, and maintenance were repeatedly sending out test trains to check if the Smiler could actually operate safely, and when it was decided that it could, the ride would run four trains.

To cope with crowds, a fifth train was eventually added, and when the Smiler went down for maintenance, this train was sent out as a test train, but didn’t make it all the way around the layout, valleying on the ride’s Batwing element. A lack of communication between operations and maintenance led to a train full of riders being sent out. The Smiler’s built in safety system stopped the train on the lifthill, but the system was overridden. The result was that the full train crashed into the empty fifth train on the Batwing with a similar impact to that of a high speed car crash. Three riders in the front row were left with life-changing injuries, while others suffered with injuries that were less severe.

The next day Alton Towers closed out of respect for the victims of the crash, and a full investigation of what had happened that day on the ride led to some employees being found guilty of gross negligence. When the park reopened several days later, many rides remained closed for the remainder of the 2015 season, including Hex, Duel and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- the last of which never reopened.

During the 2016 season Hex and Duel reopened, and so did the Smiler, with increased safety measures incorporated to ensure that such a horrific accident could never happen again.

I feel it’s important to note that this sort of accident is not a common occurrence in theme and amusement parks, far from it, and that these parks are some of the safest places you can be: you are far more likely to be injured on your way to a park than at the park itself. Rollercoasters undergo meticulous safety checks daily, and while rides sometimes need to be evacuated, it is often purely as a safety precaution, caused by the ride’s safety system being oversensitive. After the crash, changes were made within the amusement industry to incorporate stricter measures to ensure a safe and fun experience for all visitors- especially at Alton Towers, which is now one of the safest parks in the world.

The Future of X-Sector

X-Sector is one of the most popular lands at the Towers, and it’s safe to say the land or its rides are not going anywhere any time soon. New merchandise is often being released for the two coasters, and Enterprise, X-Sector’s oldest attraction and only flat ride, is still going strong, having received extensive maintenance in 2013 in time for the Smiler’s opening, and later received a new paint job for the 2020 season, with its central circle being painted a florescent yellow that really ties in with the Ministry of Joy theme of the Smiler! While X-Sector may have had a bit of a rocky history during the 2010s, it remains a hugely beloved area among enthusiasts and the general public alike!

Have you visited X-Sector? What is your favourite ride in the land? Let me know in the comments below!

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You are all clear… and outta here! Thanks for reading!

-Lily 🙂