A new TV show with Duncan Bannatyne

I worked on a new TV show with Dragons Den star Duncan Bannatyne for a new series on Virgin 1 that airs in April 2010. Under the working title The Great British Holiday Show – the series focussed on six UK tourist attractions, and Tunnels Through Time were lucky enough to be included.

This was once a dusty, rainy day attraction with a range of life sized models of kings, pirates, giants and similar characters from Cornish legends. A large number of its special effects and sound recordings had stopped working long ago. It unfortunately looked old and tatty and in need of a big fix up.

All that changed in 2009 when I helped consult on the complete makeover and modernisation of the ageing tourist attraction. Millionaire businessman Duncan Bannatyne from Dragons Den spent several weeks earlier in the year working closely with the owners and the Twofour production team to give it a complete revamp and bring it into the 21st century and making it a sea-side attraction worth visiting.

New stories for new experiences

I worked with the production company, Twofour Broadcast, to go through every inch of the old attraction and create recommendations for improvements. The team had a tight budget, and an even tighter time frame to get Duncan and his team to re-vamp the old attraction.

I recommended that live actors would be brought in to replace some of the static waxworks, and that a new story, with popular characters, Princesses, Pirates and Prisoners could bring the place to life. I also designed and recommended new special effects, including an amazing 3D fairy, that would fly throughout the attraction, guiding visitors in a high tech and interactive way.

In the end, not all of the incredible ideas I came up with were implemented, as we had to pick the most effective and exciting ones! The twofour production team worked with AtmosFEAR to create a totally new, interactive scare attraction!

The revamp

The revamp has cost over £30,000 and saw Tunnels Through Time  renamed as a pirate themed experience: Buccaneer Bay. One of the biggest things that changed was the time that people spent at buccaneer bay. By giving visitors more to do once they entered the building, the time a visitor needs to spend in the attraction has increased from around 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

For those visitors who are not afraid to enter, The Sunken Village of the Damned - Cornwall’s first SCARE attraction awaits its newest victims! In this dank, dark and foreboding place, scary tales are told of the ghost of Davy Jones and the lost souls trapped forever in Davy Jones’ Locker deep beneath the surface of the ocean. This dark, scary and exhilarating experience is most definitely not for the faint of heart!

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