Villa Volta

The Villa Volta was quite obviously the inspiration (Or if not done by the same designers) for the Alton Towers Ride HEX (Coincidentally... or as a subtle nod to it's Dutch heritage "Hex" is the Dutch word for "Witch" [Thanks to Nomi for that insight]). The two are essentially the same, however Villa Volta lacks some of the more modern advances that have come around in the 4 years between each ride being commissioned.

The ride is what's called a Madhouse where the audience sit in a gondola that only rotates 30deg from horizontal, but the room is capable of moving 360deg, which gives the strange and eerie perspective of being upside down... it fools the senses between inner ear and eyes to achieve this.

It has a fantastic storyline (Which I couldn't understand at the time as I can't speak Dutch) and has a animatronic of Hugo van den Loonsche Duynen building the suspense before the ride proper:



You all sit on wooden benches with a lap restraint:



And then the room and bench start to turn:



It's impossible to tell which way up you are by the time the ride's in full swing. A very cool ride :-)