WE are all used to warm sun, hard rain, snow and biting winds -- but all at once, will we ever cope? The multi-million pound Valhalla ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach is claimed to be the biggest dark ride in the world and no doubt it will draw crowds of thousands. But what is the secret behind the latest rollercoaster creation about to be unveiled? Not much has been said about the Valhalla ride, despite it being opened to the world next week. Reporter VICTORIA EGLINGTON prepares for a ride into the unknown. . .

I'VE never been scared of the dark, but I have a gut feeling that by next Wednesday I could have a deep-seated phobia.

But it's probably because I'll have had more than four weeks to think about my journey into the home of the Viking Gods and until recently I didn't really know what Blackpool Pleasure Beach's managing director Geoffrey Thompson had up his sleeve.

It promises to be a totally new experience. But then again so was the Big One!

Valhalla roughly means 'the great hall of Odin where warriors who were slain in battle dwell eternally'.

But Blackpool Pleasure Beach says of the ride: "No man ought to know his fate beforehand, then his mind is free from care". Call me a yellow-belly, but if I'm putting my head in the lion's mouth I want to know if his jaws are going to close.

Thrill-seekers will get into a water-borne Scandinavian-style Viking Longboat and travel along a half-mile track. Approaching the teeth of the skull, entry seems impossible through the cascading curtain of water, but there's no escape as the longboat emerges into a cavern containing the first of many surprising and shocking elements.

Flames surge and scorch on either side of the craft at the ascent through the pulsating disorientation tunnel.

Water explodes from every angle as the tunnel of fire approaches. Negotiating this fiery furnace, the elements transform as torrents of water cascade down and mist hovers menacingly above the track.

There's daylight ahead but the journey continues; darkness envelops and invades through a rushing descent into a frozen wasteland -- and my heart has stopped dead in my throat at the thought. Temperatures plummet to a chilling -20C as real snow enshrouds and those who have gone before and failed to reach their destination materialise through the blizzard, frozen into immortality.

Escaping from the icy graveyard, the longboat plunges downward heading for watery depths. Encircled in a vortex of thousands of gallons of spinning water the journey continues past the remains of fallen warriors in their once magnificent vessel.

Upwards once more and into the forbidding forest. Giant logs crash all around, flaming arrows rain and a colossal spiked log threatens to impale all who have survived this far. Lightning lacerates the gloom as 20,000 volts reverberate overhead. Plummeting earthwards, the longboat cleaves through a path of fire into temperatures reaching 110F, breaking out of the furnace through a wall of flames into an Armageddon of carnage and devastation.

All of that takes place within six minutes and just reading about it has brought me out in a cold sweat. There is one question preying on my mind, will I be brave enough to survive the ride and be hailed a true Viking warrior? Ask me again next Wednesday -- that is unless I'm taken by the winged angels Valkyrie rescued me from the battlefield and take me to live eternally in Valhalla.

Mind-boggling facts...

At a cost of £15million, it is Britain's biggest privately funded millennium investment.

Valhalla is built on the site of the famous Fun House, which was destroyed by fire in 1991.

Many of the specially-created 'show action' effects have never before been used on amusement park rides.

Valhalla incorporates fire, water, snow, thunder and lightning effects with riders experiencing extremes of temperature from minus 20C to 110F.

More than 100,000 gallons of water a minute is used to propel up to 2,000 riders per hour.

The man-made waterfall spanning 30 metres cascades at 12,000 gallons per minute and is continuously recycled.

Approximately 35,000 cubic feet of gas an hour is used to provide the flame effects. To make way for Valhalla, the traditional hedge maze was moved and developed by designer Adrian Fisher as the world's first four-dimensional interactive maze.

The special effects have been created and installed by American firms Technifex and Attraction Services, Germany-based Heima and the UK's Farmer Studios as well as Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

The Valhalla station design takes its influence from a Scandinavian-style Stave Church and is made entirely of timber.