I have been somewhat neglectful of you recently dear reader. I have been away for a few days to enjoy the delights of the countryside thus I missed a few updates to this superb blog. Before we dive back into the LEGO® and theme park based action, let me share something I learned in the greenest, muddiest depths of Norfolk last week. Apparently, if you dye chickens purple they won’t attack each other. No, it’s not a hilarious gag, people really do dye their chickens purple to stop them fighting. That’s what happens if you live more than 15 miles from a properly franchised coffee outlet, you start colouring poultry. As we speak/type/read my Grandmother is probably dunking another heavily protesting bird into a bucket.

The antics of Norfolkians aside, I have some relevant news for you. While I was away something rather strange happened in the world of LEGO. A six-foot LEGO minifig was found washed up on a Brighton beach with the highly ambiguous (and possibly badly translated) slogan “No Real Than You Are” painted on the front.

What does this mean? Is the end nigh?! Why are giant LEGO minifigs making me question the nature of reality? Why Brighton? Where did the responsible parties get hold of a giant minifig? BBC news kindly provided me with some answers, apparently an artist named Ego Leonard who according to his website “comes from the virtual world” is responsible. Sounds questionable? Wait for the best bit….Mr Leonard had this to say;
“Show me all the beautiful things that are there to admire and experience in your world. Let’s become friends, share your story with me, take me with you on a journey through beautiful meadows, words, sounds and gestures.”

I’m torn on this one ladies and gents, my cynical side sees all this as clever marketing for an upcoming arty tour. Why does Leonard care if I’m smiling or not? The childish, naive side of my brain is quite taken with the whole happy smiling fictional world Leonard has woven around these giant minifigs (another of which appeared in Holland in 2007).

Taken as I am I can’t help but being reminded of Con Air. Remember the bit where Nicholas Cage writes a message on the body of a dead person and slings it out of the hi-jacked plane to get the attention of the proper authorities? It reminds me of that. Here’s what I think is going on. Somewhere some scientists, physicists probably, are doing some frightfully clever experiments involving reality manipulation. Something went wrong and someone was turned into a giant minifig, in a dastardly attempt to cover up the accident he was pitched into the sea. Aware he only had a few minutes of life left the transformed scientist daubed the words “no real than you are” on his chest to try and tell the world what’s going on. We missed the message and now the poor scientist is a seaside curiosity that dogs are probably using as a urinal by now, what a shame.

Honestly, I’m really not sure what all this is about but it’s certainly interesting. I’ll be keeping a close eye on Ego Leonard from now on. Here’s a video of the Dutch giant minifig just in case you were wondering what one looks like (hint – like a minifig but really really big)

Remember a few weeks ago I wrote about my favourite coaster? Well today I’m going to share another of my personal ride experiences with you, this one ever so slightly less positive.

Allow me to set the scene for you.

In his infinite wisdom my father had decided that a family holiday to Croatia was in order. Yes, Croatia. I have literally no idea what possessed him to take us to a country I swear was the inspiration for Dante’s Inferno. A country that had been locked in a bloody war so recently I swear I saw bullet holes in the hotel, but hey, I guess it was cheap.

I would love to say the hotel had the air of a building that had once been great and had entered a kind of genteel decay, but it was just decayed. Hot water only came if the taps were in the mood to provide it, food was simply horrific, there was not a decent pizza or coffee to be found in the entire place.

Perhaps sensing that I was somewhat disappointed with Croatia (but by no means ungrateful) my father took me to what appeared to be a cross between a fun fair and an actual theme park. Some seriously shady looking coasters rattled along their disconcertingly rickety tracks. Swarthy men beckoned us towards various unwinnable games of chance. It was night-time, so the whole place was lit with a combination of builder’s spotlights and fairy-lights attached to every available surface.

The centrepiece of this distinctly ghetto theme park was a “bungee catapult”. This consisted of a large spherical cage with two seats inside, a great deal of strapping, what appeared to be two cranes and two massive bungee cords. The cage was attached to the cords and cranes, stretched downwards and attached to a massive hook. I was ushered into the sphere, strapped down like some kind of mental patient and there I sat, waiting.

As I waited to be flung skywards I looked to my right, the bungee cords were frayed….badly. I waited for a moment, thought about saying something and eventually summoned up the courage to point out the obvious safety flaw to the ride’s attendant. It quickly became apparent that he didn’t speak English and took my pointing at the cord to be excitement. After a “reassuring” toothless smile and a thumbs up from the blissfully ignorant attendant I was released and flung upwards with what felt like 100G’s pressing against my chest.

While bouncing I realised that I was in fact on a beach, should the cords have snapped I would have been pitched into the sea in the dead of night with not a coast guard in sight. My worries quickly disappeared as a monumental adrenaline rush flooded my bloodstream. Despite the huge safety issues the whole experience was actually quite a lot of fun. I’d not recommend it, but it was certainly a buzz.

Oh and what did my father (who incidentally didn’t join me on the ride) have to say when I eventually stopped vibrating and told him about the bungee…..”you’re alive aren’t you? Stop being a poofter”……it’s a miracle I ended up so well adjusted…

Since I started writing tenuous LEGOLAND® based blog of the week a few months ago I have seen all kinds of interesting LEGO stuff, but I must admit, I have not considered very much of it “art”. This week I have something a little different for you, some LEGO art, not the wacky headache inducing modern kind either.

Apparently for around £33,000 Nathan Sawaya, the Claude Monet of the LEGO world, will make a model of you and a loved one just like the above picture. Not just any model though gentle readers, life sized, one of a kind, sculptures modelled on the detailed photographs and measurements you send in when you order your LEGO self.

I suppose it is a little expensive, well a lot expensive, but come on, being immortalised in LEGO is worth more than just pounds! Personally, should I ever earn enough to be able to buy giant LEGO sculptures, I’d use them in a cunning scheme to convince future generations I was some kind of plastic king.

The scheme goes a little something like this;

• Stage one – Buy LEGO self.
• Stage two – Add a little plaque to the foot of my LEGO sculpture saying “Jonathan Dudley – God King of the second British Empire”.
• Stage three – Bury statue.
• Stage four – Eventually die.
• Stage five – Archeologists from the future with jet-packs dig up statue.
• Stage six – I become the topic of many children’s history projects in the year 4000.
• Stage seven – Historical immortality

As you can see, I’m a genius.

Ok ladies and gents, I’ve had 24 hours to let the “Saw – The Ride” shock sink in. That’s more than enough time to have a jolly good think about the connotations of a ride themed around a horror film and now, after a full day of fevered brain wrangling, here are my thoughts on Thorpe Park‘s new ride.

1) I don’t like the SAW films

Yup, a controversial number one. What can I say? I don’t like them, they are the most vulgar, needlessly shocking and gratuitously gory films I have ever seen. That said however, they are undoubtedly going to make a far better ride than film. Let’s be honest, that dodgy puzzle loving headcase storyline is far better off as a rollercaster’s fluff story than a movie. Nemesis‘s crashed alien spacepod story isn’t exactly going to win any Oscars but it’s jolly good fun while you’re queueing.

2) There’s going to be a big spinny saw

A slightly obvious one but I think it needs pointing out. In Thorpe’s official e-mail regarding Saw – The Ride there’s a picture of a huge spinning sawblade at the foot of the drop. At first I presumed this was just concept art but a glance over the plans for the coaster revealed what seems to be the very same sawblade. If it’s on the e-mail and it’s on the concept art then it stands to reason that it’s really going to happen. I can only suppose that this is the “head-chopper scenery” we were promised. Here’s the pictures so you can see for yourself. If you think it’s not a sawblade and is in fact some vital part of the coaster’s mechanics then let me know in the usual way.

3) 30% of the ride is indoors

Some of you may remember that I suggested that “Project Dylan” as it was then known would be as much grown-up spookhouse as rollercoaster. It would seem I was right (how delightfully satisfying). A full third of the ride will be indoors, presumably dark. At this stage I can only assume it will be some kind of super-scary tour around the twisted world of ‘Jigsaw’ – the SAW series’ questionably named but highly sinister villain. Having being forced to sit through SAW and SAW II, I can say with some level of certainty that rusty, sticky looking gadgets, blood and lots of screaming will form the bulk of the dark section. My coaster-sense is tingling a little bit and telling me that there will be some kind of suspense element as well. I think that it’ll probably be something along the lines of “someone on your carriage is sitting on a bomb/spike/something nasty and it’s going to go off”. I may be wrong however, but it would certainly fit in with the SAW theme.

4) The unique queue experience

A very interesting element of the whole experience, Thorpe seem to be putting a great deal of effort into building the suspense of the crowds. I have very little hard information to work with regarding the queueing area but I suppose it will be heavily themed to match the rest of the ride. Having ridden some other heavily themed coasters in the US I think it’s fair to assume that SAW – The Ride will have a lot of screens displaying suitably unpleasant videos to build the tension. There will probably be some kind of big prop around twenty minutes into the queue. Perhaps a torture victim or one of Jigsaw’s trademark gadgets. I doubt that Thorpe will employ people to frighten the queues so all the scariness and suspense will probably be built by sound effects, videos and the heavy, possibly interactive, themeing of the queue area.

5) Samurai

It’s pretty common knowledge that Samurai is being re-themed to fit in with SAW – The Ride. Now we know just what the theme is, we can begin to have a pretty decent guess as to what Samurai will become. Personally, I reckon it will be one of Jigsaw’s torture gizmos, the seat harnesses will be rethemed to look suitably mechanical and grimy and whatever fluff story they apply to SAW – The Ride they will somehow link to Samurai (which will be renamed of course).

6) The website

The official website for SAW – The Ride is pretty flash intensive, it looks quite good and it fits in well with the theme of the new ride. It’s pretty obvious that Thorpe didn’t have the family market in mind when they were designing this new coaster or its website. They have used buckets of blood and a liberal sprinkling of viscera all over the site, it looks like the backroom of a cut-price butchers. Design issues aside, the website yields a few clues for those who have a little poke around. Some images on the site show bloody spikes coming from the ceiling, what appears to be a design for a crossbow booby-trap and a nice clear picture of a big sawblade. It looks pretty certain that the spinny blade of certain doom is definitely going to be a feature of SAW – The Ride. Here’s my “evidence”.


There are a lot more images on the site but they are pretty hardcore, feel free to pop to Saw – The Ride’s official site to have a look. If you click the blueprints there is a pile of photos on a table, click each picture to get a nausea-inducing image.

7) Themeing

This is what excites me most about SAW – The Ride. The designers have an excuse to really go to town on this one, the head artistic lady at Thorpe (I think her name is Candy) has a background in theatre set design. That’s going to come in very useful when designing some of the finer details of the ride. I’m really hoping for heavily themed carriages and harnesses and some very realistic animatronics in the dark section. As I have already mentioned, I expect the queuing area to have some pretty gruesome props and a fair amount of interactivity.

Let’s wait and see what they come up with but I have a very good feeling about this, I think Thorpe may well have the world’s scariest coaster on their hands. With ‘Fright Nights’ now underway there may be some more scary titbits regarding the new ride trickling in, we’ll keep you updated, just keep checking in!