Alton Towers prepared a new kind of descent for the Staffordshire park in 1998. Bolliger & Mabillard names Oblivion among its Dive Coaster works, and Coasterpedia records it as the manufacturer’s first Dive Coaster installation. bolliger-mabillard.com· coasterpedia.net

The ride’s achievement is not a tall silhouette above the gardens, but the sudden use of the ground itself. Sources describe a 19.8 metre structure and a far longer plunge into an underground tunnel, a neat piece of showmanship made from steel, excavation, and Staffordshire earth. en.wikipedia.org· de.wikipedia.org

Visitors are carried to the brink, held for a moment, and then released into the dark opening below. The train reaches 109 km/h and returns without a single inversion, making Oblivion a plain, concentrated proposition: one grand fall, cleanly engineered. en.wikipedia.org

Its fame endured because the idea was so simple and so legible from the midway. Coasterpedia notes that the surrounding area was closed and reworked for the ride’s arrival, while later accounts still place Oblivion at the centre of Alton Towers’ modern coaster history. coasterpedia.net· bolliger-mabillard.com