SMOKE MACHINE LOCATIONS

Spirit of London ride - Madame Tussauds London
An excellent, if somewhat dramatic, use of literally dozens of smoke machines was at Madame Tussaud's wax museum on Baker Street in London.

The Spirit of London is a dark ride filled with animatronic historical characters charting the history of the City of London from the late 1500's (the narrator Enn Reitel says 400 years, which in 1993 would be 1593). The rider is transported in a black cab styled ride vehicle (left) in an omnimover type ride system through the mists of time - several smoke machines working very regularly to really fog up the atmosphere for the numerous overhead Clay Paky Golden Scans(?) to create an interesting white light 'time tunnel' effect.

Smoke machines were throughout the ride when it originally opened in 1993 - so many that they must have fed from a central reservoir. Notable scenes using smoke machines aside from the inital mists of time were the Great Fire of London scene and 'the engine room' symbolising the industrial revolution which depicts Queen Victoria at the controls (right). The Spirit of London ride cost £21million to create in 1993.

(*This location report refers to the ride as it was in 1995 when everything was working. By all recent video accounts viewed on YouTube it appears to need some attention. We believe it originally opened in 1993 and very little has changed since - some of the sound effects / voices from the figures have been updated with more variance to a longer loop cycle so you don't hear the same short line 8 times until you are out of earshot!).

The smoke machines must have been running from a central fluid reservoir system, as they were simply the smoke producing 'heads' of a complete system - only the heat exchanger module. We seem to remember them being silver/metal rather than black, and a compact size. At this time, only a couple of manufacturers were making this type of system; Rosco, MDG and possibly Jem (custom).

More recent videos seen on YouTube show the ride in various states of disrepair. Animatronics not moving anywhere near as much as they used to (some just bearly twitching), and seemingly only fog in the mists of time and the fire of London scene, whose focal oven-based fire video effect has not worked for quite some time, nor the fireman's hose shooting water over the heads of the guests (now replaced with a solid 'fibre optic' stream), the fibre optic fireworks behind Nelson not flashing, mechanical leg workings of Beefeaters clearly visible through knee joints, hands hanging off figures, town crier figure missing (but wall mounted speaker behind him still there), sporadic missing Queen Victoria figure... not how we remember it from the opening year, but do let me know if you have seen different!

The great fire of London fireman / bread oven scene appears at some time to have had a continuously operating hazer blowing air-bolstered smoke from the grille under the open oven in videos around 2013, with more recent videos showing thicker timed smoke production - perhaps from the same unit but on a thicker setting, and timed. Presumably using a quicker dispersing fluid than the original 1993 unit as it does not appear to permeate the following scenes so much.

The mists of time smoke also appears to have made a welcome return after a hiatus. It appears to be quietly introduced with the assistance of a fan from above left as you enter, blowing into the 'time tunnel' part and following the flow of the ride vehicles. Some white strobe and a coloured centrepiece lighting effect (a ProLights RadionStr) producing green and orange moving beams are now used in place of scans, which were themselves replaced by a white 'tunnel of light' effect shining directly into the ride vehicles from above. This appears to have been installed around 2018 when all of the ride lighting was upgraded to LED fixtures (of which, as an aside, there are over 180 small spots and 60 larger wash fixtures in the ride, all made by Italian company ProLights).

The industrial revolution scene with Queen Victoria also appears to have one working smoke machine back, situated well below the large moving mechanism behind her, again blowing what appears to be a fan forced stream on a timed output, just to the right of the Artful Dodger figure.

You can see one very old video on YouTube from the first few months in the ride's history which shows how it used to be with everything working! (it's below, about 17 minutes 50 seconds in for the - sadly out of focus - mists of time effect (but you can still hear the smoke machine hiss), 19:50 for the fire (with the rest of the ride being rather foggy from then on)).

If you have worked on the ride or have any more info from riding the ride in person and could see any of the machines in any more detail, please do get in contact with us and we will update this page!

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