Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Ride

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Ride
The entrance to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Ride.
Alton Towers
Area	Cloud Cuckoo Land
Status	Closed
Cost	£8million
Opening date	1 April 2006
Closing date	8 November 2015
Replaced	Toyland Tours
Replaced by	unknown
General statistics
Attraction type	Dark boat ride, Elevator
Manufacturers	Mack Rides Rexroth Bosch Group
Designer	P&P Projects Tussauds Studios
Theme	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Capacity	1000 riders per hour
Vehicle type	Boat, Elevator
Vehicles	10 boats, 2 elevators
Riders per vehicle	9
Duration	11 minutes
Construction	JJ Cavanagh Construction (started mid-2005)
Projection	Electrosonic Bose
Elevator show	Falcon's Treehouse nWave Digital

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The Ride was a dark ride located in the Cloud Cuckoo Land area of Alton Towers theme park, Staffordshire, England. It is based upon the famous Roald Dahl book of the same name, and takes its thematic inspiration from the illustrations of Quentin Blake.

In 2016, the attraction was announced to be temporarily closing as part of Alton Towers' Towers Loving Care initiative. However, when Alton Towers' website was updated on 16 January 2017, the attraction was not listed at all, implying permanent closure.

The building was originally constructed for Around the World in 80 Days, a water dark ride produced by Sparks Creative Services in 1981. This ride took you on a journey through numerous locations including Egypt, Las Vegas and Paris. The ride was scenically redesigned as Toyland Tours in 1994. During the 2005 season Toyland Tours was closed and work began converting it to its present incarnation. The transit system manufacturer Mack Rides was brought in to add a new disembarkation point towards the back of the ride building. This was necessary due to the new ride featuring two simulators as the second half of the attraction.

This attraction was closed to guests at the end of 2015 after the Intellectual Property license from the Roald Dahl Foundation was not renewed. It is currently closed for the foreseeable future with no sign of reopening.

The ride is split into two segments, the first being a boat ride along the chocolate river inside Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. Passengers encounter all the characters from the book (going from Augustus Gloop to Veruca Salt) either as simple animatronics or CGI projections. After disembarking the boats the second segment begins with a short pre-show video (involving Mike Teavee). The video is presented as if the viewers are actually trapped within the TV set. The ride continues inside one of two "Great Glass Elevators" which simulate passengers taking an airborne trip through the rest of the factory. Each elevator is a static room with semi-translucent walls and ceiling on which CGI animations are projected from the outside, and only the floor trembles slightly to give the impression of movement.