This has never been described as family. The basic ride type is family, but Alton Towers have been clearly promoting this as a major thrill ride. ^It is easy to manipulate one ride type into something else, especially as Intamin have no type to class this under, as it is half the size of a Mega-Lite. Nor will the track 'dispear' that was just made-up.^
I think this is real. If it had to be removed then there must be a reason the want no body to see it. It really sounds exciting, but most of it is marketing speak and hyping up. I can not see how they could limit the age of riders, you could easily blag your way in, same for more than one go. The age limit is a small possibilty, if this was trully too much, but they can not limit how much you can ride.
The piece has a lot of proffesional-style writing and vocab, and ticks all the boxes for these things. Things like "built by the world's best" "number one destination" are the kind of things PR should be saying. It also says it has been tested in Europe. Remember the 'delivery'? If it was tested, they would not want to disassemble it and rebuild it, as mistakes could be made. Would explain the wierd container. So far this looks well on schedule.
The ride is very short, but should deliver quite a blast. The hills are small and shallow but they are low. The first is half the lift and the second peaks at the bottom of the first drop. There will easily be some airtime there. There also looks to be some on the last tall corner's exit, and the s-bends at the end and between the tall turns should be fun. Obviously the inside section should be great, but lets not go into that just now. It looks great in my opinion. It won't be another Nemesis or Oblivion, but it could easily be the next best ride above Air and the back row of Rita.
Hopefully Dark Forset will be a proper area not just Ug Land with some trees in it. Rita does not need a re-paint, dark red could work in the new area, although a repaint would be great. The most important thing is building the new area and doing it 'properly'.
The next update hopefully will be on Christmas, a nice little present for us all! Here's to March!