The haunted house comes alive for scarefest as the laser guns are temporarily evicted and the house is instead filled with live actors
The haunted house comes alive for scarefest as the laser guns are temporarily evicted and the house is instead filled with live actors
| Theme Park | Alton Towers |
|---|---|
| Park Area | Gloomy Wood |
| Type | Dark Ride |
| Audience | Families |
| Season | Scarefest |
| Debuted | 2008 |
| Retired | 2009 |
| Manufacturer | Mack Rides |
| Model | Interactive Dark Ride |
| Location | Inside Duel |
Gravedigger in the queueline
For Scarefest 2008 and 2009, Alton's Duel: The Haunted House Strikes Back interactive haunted house dark ride became Duel: Live. The usual laser targets were switched off, and the house was filled with live actors who would jump out at passing ride cars. The ride music was changed too, from the usual energetic beats to something more melancholy.
The outside section of queueline was used throughout the event, ensuring guests would walk through the old graveyard which was usually also populated with a "gravedigger" actor or two. Rather than walking straight into the house itself, the front door was closed. When the next batch of guests were ready to be received, the door would be opened and they would be "welcomed" inside by actors portraying the butler and the maid.
In some ways, Duel: Live brought back the old Haunted House atmosphere, although overall it didn't quite work: the lighting and some of the effects had been changed when the laser targets were added, meaning the trip around Duel with the targets turned off had guests travelling through a number of dark sparse sections. This wasn't helped, especially in the first year, by a lack of sufficient actors.
During the first year, Duel only became "live" after 3pm, before which the ride was available in its usual laser gun shooting incarnation. For 2009, Duel: Live was available all day, and the experience underwent a few more changes including a substantial increase in the number of actors inside. For Scarefest 2010, Duel featured the family-friendly scarefest characters in "Skelvin's Haunted Adventure" but that only lasted for one year. Since then, Duel has remained untransformed during Scarefest.
