Never understood why they had the elevators at all, including the painfully slow one at the exit.

The whole thing was an attempt at extending the 30 second ride into a longer, psychological experience. I guess so that long queues from its low capacity felt justified. The elevator itself was painfully slow, with dim lighting and an open cage so the roar of the launch and the screams would pass right through into the ears of the riders waiting.

Originally, you'd queue outside, roughly where the entrance to Escape from Madegascar sits. Thirty people -- two loads of 15 -- would be admitted at a time to walk through the dark tunnels towards the elevator. It never made a lot of sense; at first it's themed to an underground mine shaft, then inexplicably you're at the top of a skyscraper in the middle of a city.

It was only one elevator, with a divider down the middle. 15 riders would enter each door. The first group would exit first to stand in what is now the final queue room at the top of the stairs. Once they'd cleared into the next room (with the swinging door that reveals the station), the second group would be let off the elevator.

All basically an exercise in trying to extend the experience and build up to the finale. It worked well once, but for anything other than your first ever ride, it felt basically like queueing to ride a slow elevator to a smaller queue.

^^^thats how I remember it. Cheers Richard

Never understood why they had the elevators at all, including the painfully slow one at the exit.

I never went on it with the old queue, but I really have to agree that one at the end seems so pointless.

It looks like there's enough space at the back there to replace it with stairs and still have people exit via the gift shop?

Whenever I can I jump the rope and use the Q4U stairs. The elevator is a pointless waste of time.