STAGE 1 - THE INOCULATOR
TIME TO
GET CORRECTED
An archive of the lore of The Sanctuary, The Smiler, and the Ministry of Joy from Alton Towers Resort.This is entirely a fan project maintained by one person, I have no affiliation with Merlin Entertainments.Everything you see here has been collected from sources from 2012 onwards, including but not limited to official press releases, promotional materials, designers on the initial SW7 project and the cast of The Sanctuary scare maze.Click below to begin...
STAGE 2 - THE TICKLER
THE SANCTUARY (1952/1962)
The Sanctuary presumably opened in either 1952 or 1962 - the number written on The Marmaliser’s screen during the brief segment with information on The Sanctuary is a bit tricky to make out from videos and photos.I will update this if I manage to see it clearer on park sometime - but it is fair to assume that it would’ve been 1962. Specifically, the 25th of April is the exact date shown. It may have also closed during this time period, as it is said in the pre-show for the scare maze that The Sanctuary had closed its doors for new patients for 50 years - adding up precisely if we go by the logic that it closed in 1962, due to the maze’s debut year being 2012.
From a lesser known promo video simply titled #getcorrected, we are told that despite closing its doors to the public, The Sanctuary never stopped its experiments on its patients. In this video, we also see a familiar face - we will visit this later!
STAGE 3 - THE FLASHER
THE SANCTUARY - 2012
For Scarefest 2012, The Sanctuary first opened as a scare maze. This was the first detailed look into the twisted world of the Ministry of Joy and their methods of “correcting” society.
It was also in this time that it was revealed that the Ministry of Joy were behind everything in X-Sector the whole time undercover - from its beginnings as a suspicious, shady government facility to its current transformation into a public testing facility for the Ministry of Joy. A lot of people may scrutinise this retcon but think about it - a Ministry is a government body! (Watch this space, I need to double check on the Internet Archive for when exactly the Oblivion tidbit was first added to the website!)
The focal plot of the 2012 maze was the introduction of the Ministry of Joy as they made their public appearance after hiding in the shadows for years. The Ministry’s goal at the time was to recruit new “advocates” to test their old and new methods on and to compare the results, in order to build the “ultimate correctional device” - this of course being The Smiler. These tests were simply called “The Advocate Trials”, and were lead a higher up at the Ministry named Professor Sherif. Not much is known about this character outside of his appearance in the pre-show.
The Sanctuary had not changed at all since its initial closure in the 1960’s, all medical and technical equipment being to the same standards as dire mental health treatment was held to at the time. Gerry Cannell, the actor behind Dr. Kelman, has shared that The Sanctuary is in fact based on a real hospital in Canada, and additionally, Cold War communist brainwashing and torture methods. Of course, the history of the lobotomy is also a key factor to the reason the treatments are the way they are. This was explained as the Ministry needing to get a “true understanding of the previous issues with [their] system”.
In the pre-show we are then introduced to The Sanctuary’s founder and chief of medicine, Dr. Kelman. Dr. Kelman is a shady figure with a falsely charming facade, trying to come across as trustworthy and kind. His intentions are, of course, the furthest from this possible.
Inside of The Sanctuary, the patients praised Dr. Kelman as though he was some kind of God, or some other form of cult-like worship. Patients were visibly disfigured, using mobility aids such as crutches and wheelchairs, skin grazed with bruises, cuts, and scars, and most typically - a large smile cut directly across the face with a scalpel.
We are introduced to the concept of marmalisation, or correction, in The Sanctuary. Marmalisation is a procedure in which the subject, presumably one of poor mental health, has their mind and body adjusted in order to feel a constant state of joy and euphoria, eliminating thoughts of sorrow or harm, and enforcing “social compliance” in the subject.
As you progressed through the maze, the test subjects became more and more deranged and disfigured, all the way down to the basement.
In the morgue scene, a dead body lay on an operating table with its entrails exposed. This is worth noting, as in the maze, multiple people reported that the advocates said that they would eat patients who didn’t survive the trials, and the surgeon character who would tell guests to pick a freezer in the morgue to place their body in case they didn’t survive. I’m not sure what caused the cannibalism in the smiling advocates, but it’s likely malnutrition and neglect at the hands of the doctors and other staff at The Sanctuary.
STAGE 4 - THE GIGGLER
SMILE. ALWAYS - 2013
Following the Advocate Trials, The Sanctuary closed, and the Ministry of Joy set about building their “ultimate correctional device”, which would feature a much more streamlined and effective marmalisation process.
A little while after this, specifically April 28th 2013, as seen on the promotional Twitter accounts made for the characters, 2 students at Manchester University studying for PhD’s in social psychology, Trisha White and Daniel Holden, went to the home of Miles Cedars, author and smiling advocate, to conduct an interview about his book “Smile Always”.
Miles describes his house to be an “open house” where people can come and go as they please, also stating that “most stay”. We can see some of these guests as Dan records the exterior of Miles’ house, holding hands in a circle, singing the Alton Towers theme tune, Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, made up solely of “ha”s. This was also something the short-lived smile assistant actors during the construction of the ride have been recorded doing multiple times. We do not know the identity of the 4 advocates visiting Miles’ house, and if they were already corrected or were corrected at the hands of Miles.
Upon finding Miles’ behaviour unsettling, Trisha has a look around his house whilst he isn’t in the room, ultimately resulting in herself and Dan stealing a handful of VHS tapes and fleeing from his house upon him appearing behind them with a wide, deranged grin.
Trisha and Dan viewed these tapes and saw the marmalisation of Miles Cedars by Dr. Kelman. In this tape, Dr. Kelman refers to Miles’ correction as “Sanctuary Test #1” - meaning he was likely the first test subject of the re-opened 2012 iteration of The Sanctuary.
Upon viewing just 2 of these tapes, Dan wakes up in the small hours of the morning to find the TV playing a final tape, simply a hypnotic loop of smiling related imagery, her room covered in drawings of smiling faces and spirals, and Trisha standing in the corner giggling to herself repeating “Ride the ride”. He then receives a phone call from Miles, who tells him that the Ministry of Joy have been “watching [him] for some time”, and that Trisha is on “the path to joy”, before telling him to not resist marmalisation and to “join” the Ministry.
In universe, the uploads of the recordings from their shared house were uploaded by presumably a friend or relative, posting them in hopes that “somebody knows of their whereabouts”, but that was the last we ever heard of Dan and Trisha.
…Or was it?
Back to the #getcorrected video I mentioned earlier. That familiar face appears to be… Trisha White! It is also worth noting that the set for this video is identical to the set from Smile. Always Part 2.
STAGE 5 - THE HYPNOTISER
THE SMILER - 2013
The Smiler opened sometime after the events of Smile Always - it’s safe to assume it opened the same date it did in real life, May 31st 2013.
The Smiler was to be the Ministry of Joy’s “ultimate correctional device”, taking the methods of marmalisation first crafted many decades ago in The Sanctuary, and modernising them to be more efficient with the usage of modern technology and improved medical devices.
This was greatly to the disapproval of Dr. Kelman, who greatly disagreed with the modern methods that the Ministry of Joy were taking moving forwards, believing that his method of correction was the only real way to achieve true joy and satisfaction. During The Sanctuary’s 2013 run, Dr. Kelman would make his displeasure with The Smiler greatly known, discussing it during the opening scene of the maze.
One of the key features of The Smiler is The Marmaliser - the large, spider-like machine that stands and looms over the track. Each of its individual arachnid-like legs hosts one of the elements of marmalisation, which are as follows.
The Inoculator - “A jab (changed to “blast” post 2015) of happiness”. 3 large hypodermic needles and yellow barrels filled with an unknown, biohazardous substance.
The Tickler - “Aims to tickle you until you can’t resist smiling”. A pair of very large, car wash like yellow brushes which spin and tickle the patient to force them to smile and laugh.
The Flasher - “A giant flashing device”. 2 large panels with 2 rows of bright bulbs, which strobe to disorientate and temporarily blind the patient as they fly under the leg.
The Giggler - “Infectious, intoxicating laughing gas”. Nozzles located down the leg spray laughing gas on the patient, once again forcing them into a state of delirium. The barrels noticeably have a skull and crossbones style symbol with the logo…
The Hypnotiser - “Has the power to disorientate, mesmerise, and disrupt your self awareness”. 3 large spinning discs, alongside a couple stationary, hang over the heads of the patients and hypnotise them into the mindset of a smiling advocate.
A random note is that for some reason these elements are out of order on signage and promotional material for the ride compared to how they are placed on the actual layout.
There is one element of The Smiler that isn’t commonly known - this is moreso just a fact about the ride than lore but I felt it was worth including. The indoor section is called The Disorientator, as shown on The Marmaliser’s screen - we can infer this due to the discussion of the carriages’ 360 degree rotation and the usage of strobe lighting, both of which add up with the indoor inversion!
Despite the modernisation of the marmalisation process, side effects remained with the procedure - comically with a screen before the seeper room (the “correction block”) reading that marmalisation is “completely safe”, noting that side effects only occur in… “less than 95% of participants”.
The red ticker tape below the main screen graphics list the side effects reported, which are as follows - ranging from comical and goofy to genuinely a bit disturbing and gory!
• Extreme numbness
• Foot confusion
• Problems with speech and balance
• Hairy knuckles
• Befuddlement
• Crimson dimples
• Fickle chin
• Intermittent flatulence
• Decreased intelligence
• Cortex twisting
• Optic nerve melting
• Toe twitches
• Ringing in the ears
• Excessive dribbling
• Elbow fatigue
• Mind aches
• Ghost smells
• Wobbly fingers
• Brain leakage
• Memory scrambling
• Permanent hiccups
• Brain spasms
• Retinal rolling
• Night terrors
• Brain sweats
• Hallucinations
• Eye boggling
• Armpit itches
• Amnesia
• Wonky face syndrome
• Optical dismay
• Nostril quivers
• Throbbing earholes
• Yellow headaches
• Hair loss
• Enlarged earlobes
• Limp ears
• Eyebrow spasms
• Hypertension
• Mania
• Trembling tongue
• Colour blindness
• Giant ankles
• Sneeze malfunctions
• Thumb convulsions
There was another involving the eyes that I couldn’t make out on the footage available - if anyone could grab me a high quality recording of the seeper room exterior screens so I can refine this list it would be massively appreciated.
From the opening of The Smiler, The Ministry of Joy proceeded to operate more publicly than before, inviting all “advocates” to take a ride on the ultimate correctional device, get corrected, and find true happiness and joy. The fate of The Sanctuary remains unknown, but it is very likely that it still operates in secret.
Do not resist.Join us.
STAGE ??? - THE DISORIENTATOR
ABOUT THE ARCHIVE
This archive serves to preserve the canon lore of The Smiler and related properties. A lot of resources include the initial writer's own interpretations and headcanons, which then get misinstrued as canon, and to be frank it was really getting on my nerves!
As stated on the home page, this archive is single-handedly run by one person - Hi, my name is Tay and The Smiler has been my special interest for half a decade now. I was so invested in the lore and finding it frustrating that you had to trawl so many old forums, rummage through old promotional materials, and rely on reviews of scare mazes to try and piece together the full picture.
I took matters into my own hand and put together this handy archive! I want to expand it to include media as well, but for the time being it is just a simple overview of the whole canon lore. I have not included the Festival of Thrills as I am not 100% sure it is "canon", and personally don't think it is as it was just an event for the ride's 10th anniversary thrown together with duct tape and dreams. Nothing in it was "lore" anyway - it was just the Ministry doing weird Ministry stuff.
I hope you enjoy my research and findings, and thank you ever so much to the people I contacted for this archive, including Gerry Cannell, Peter Cliff, Ben Dowson, Painting Practice, and others.