Derren Brown's Ghost Train

Derren Brown's Ghost Train was a dark ride at Thorpe Park in Surrey, England, that combined HTC Vive virtual reality headsets with a physical train carriage, live actors, illusions and special effects. It was created by the illusionist Derren Brown with Merlin Magic Making, part of park owner Merlin Entertainments, and the attractions company Figment Productions, which made its VR sequences. The ride opened to the public on 8 July 2016, two months after its planned opening date.

For the 2017 season the attraction was renamed Derren Brown's Ghost Train: Rise of the Demon, with new 360-degree video footage replacing one of the two original VR sequences. It is an example of a VR attraction at a traditional theme park, part of the wider field of location-based virtual reality. In 2023 Thorpe Park replaced it with a reworked attraction called Ghost Train, which dropped both the VR headsets and the Derren Brown name.

Reviewed 13 October 2026. Every date, quote, name and number checked against the cited Attractions Management, Engadget, Blooloop, Theme Park Guide, Park World, Dark Ride Database and Thorpe Park pages. About review dates.

History

Announcement and delays

Thorpe Park announced the attraction in January 2016 for a spring 2016 opening, describing it as a "4D" thrill ride created with Derren Brown and its "most ambitious investment to date". In an interview with Attractions Management, Paul Moreton, global creative director for Merlin Magic Making, said virtual reality, delivered through an HTC Vive headset inside the train, would be one of several equally important elements, and stressed that the attraction was not a VR experience. In February 2016 Engadget reported that the ride would open on 6 May and that riders would sit in a suspended carriage and that the experience would use multiple HTC Vive headsets, although early trailers did not make clear exactly how the headsets would be used.

The 6 May opening was postponed shortly before that date. Thorpe Park announced the delay on its social media channels without giving a new date, saying the team was making "final tweaks to the remaining elements to get things absolutely perfect". The ride first ran for guests as technical rehearsals, which allowed the park to close it and adjust parts of the show, and it opened officially to the public on 8 July 2016. At the opening, Brown said he had spent three years working on the project and called it "one of the biggest challenges I've undertaken".

Rise of the Demon (2017)

In February 2017 Merlin announced that the ride would be renamed Derren Brown's Ghost Train: Rise of the Demon and promised a "new deeper, darker, more intense journey". According to Attractions Management, the ride had been built so that it could be updated, and Merlin's creative team had studied guest behaviour during the first year to make the VR more realistic. A camera crew filmed new footage on the installed ride during the off-season, and the footage was streamed live to a VR headset so that the director and producers could watch performances from outside the train. Thorpe Park divisional director Dominic Jones said the ride kept the previous year's technology, VR, effects, movement and live actors, with added scares. Attractions Management reported that the park would reopen for the 2017 season on 23 March and the ride on 31 March.

Engadget's Nick Summers wrote that the update was meant to fix two problems with the original. The first was its second VR sequence, which he described as "a fun but corny CG-fest" that did not fit the rest of the ride. The second was reliability: the ride "had a tendency to break down", and "the headsets would die, or not show the VR sections properly". The new version replaced the computer-generated sequence with a new, smaller and more atmospheric scene, built from 360-degree video, that shows other survivors reacting to a monster, and added a new physical space. Theme Park Guide, reviewing the press launch, reported clearer audio in the first VR section, professional sound-cancelling headsets in place of the previous year's headphones, and a new video message from Derren Brown played inside the train.

Replacement (2023)

On 1 February 2023 Thorpe Park teased an overhaul of the ride after seven years of operation. The replacement, named Ghost Train, kept the haunted train concept but had a new storyline, new special effects and live actors, and removed the VR element together with the Derren Brown intellectual property. It opened to the public on 26 May 2023. As of October 2026, Thorpe Park's page for the ride answers the question of whether it uses VR with "No, there's nothing virtual about this petrifying experience!"

Timeline

Date	Event
18-19 January 2016	Attraction announced for spring 2016
6 May 2016	Planned opening date; postponed
8 July 2016	Public opening as Derren Brown's Ghost Train
24 February 2017	Rename to Derren Brown's Ghost Train: Rise of the Demon reported
31 March 2017	Reported reopening date of the updated ride
1 February 2023	Overhaul teased; replacement drops VR and the Derren Brown name
26 May 2023	Replacement attraction, Ghost Train, opens

Design

The attraction was housed in a 2,300 square metre (25,000 sq ft) warehouse. Its centrepiece was a 20 metre (65 ft), seven-tonne Victorian train carriage suspended in mid-air by iron chains. Attractions Management reported a ride length of 10 to 15 minutes, with 12 possible journeys leading to two alternate endings, so that different riders could have different experiences. The storyline involved a company, Sub Core Energy, drilling into the Earth's core, and the queue line suggested a toxic gas leak, with guests passing through infection checkpoints.

Use of virtual reality

Riders wore HTC Vive headsets modified with attached headphones and wide elasticated straps so that they could be put on in one quick motion; staff presented the headset to riders as a "mask" protecting them from infection. In the 2016 version, the first VR sequence placed riders in a virtual London Underground carriage, where they could look around but not move. Characters were made with photogrammetry, combining photography and LiDAR scanning. Riders then removed their headsets for a physical section on a Tube platform and in a tunnel with live actors, before a second VR sequence in which monsters attacked the carriage and the train plunged toward the Earth's core. According to Engadget, Figment at one point built the first VR sequence with polygonal characters and facial motion capture, but the result looked like a "triple-A video game" and was dropped as not believable enough. Figment managing director Simon Reveley said: "We want to blur the line with reality."

For Rise of the Demon, the new 360-degree video sequence was shot inside the train car with a Nokia OZO camera, using a LIDAR scan as the base for visual effects. Colin Arnold, Figment's head of film and video, directed the actors through earpieces using a live preview from the camera. Reveley, by then Figment's chief executive, told Engadget that the ride used more than one train car and "almost 200 HTC Vives in total". The headsets were attached to the wall by cables, which kept riders in their seats, and a monitoring system tracked each headset's position on the physical train and in the virtual one. Of this limit on movement, Reveley said: "It's one of the restrictions that really helps us."

Reveley also designed the VR experience for Galactica, a roller coaster at Alton Towers that used Samsung Gear VR headsets.

Reception

Reviewing the 2016 version for Engadget, Nick Summers found the VR immersion strong and the live actors and the Tube platform section the highlights, but called the story a "patchwork of zombie movie tropes awkwardly stitched together", said the second VR sequence felt out of place and its monsters crude, and concluded that the ride lacked a grand reveal in Brown's style. On his first run of Rise of the Demon the ride operated smoothly, but his second was stopped for about 15 minutes inside the warehouse. Theme Park Guide rated the 2017 version 7 out of 10 and wrote that it felt like a finished product, while suggesting more variety in the final VR section, which had only one film.

See also

• Location-based virtual reality
• VR Arcades and Theme Parks
• Virtual Reality Use Cases