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  1. Today
  2. For all my fans out there, I'll be going on 11th June as had already locked this date in prior to the announcement, as there's no way we're going over half term!
  3. Yesterday
  4. Agreed seems very brave of them to announce an opening date when they haven't sent a train round the track yet! Interesting what they've done with RAP for this - its essentially just working as a 1 shot fast track. Can only go on it once per visit and but won't be timed out for it. Sounds like this could potentially be open to abuse? Hopefully not. Have pre booked for the 24th but may change that closer to the time. Not sure I can be bothered with a 4 hour queue and vloggers but would be nice to see it on opening day too. Currently advertised as a 5 close for the Friday and 6 for the Saturday - hopefully these get extended to 7 or later. 7 on the Friday would tempt me!
  5. That is generally what roller coasters do, to be fair.
  6. I don't particularly want to "do" Thorpe Park... Good to have a date, but it's a brave choice to announce it when trains have only just started arriving on park. So many variables which could impact completion. And we have seen issues like this affect Lego Racers coaster. I also wonder if it will therefore end up opening but not fully finished in terms of landscaping, etc. Ultimately, 24th May is the latest they could open it for it to be ready for the half term. Opening it mid-half term wouldn't be ideal. So I guess that was the aim anyways. In other news, the park have announced the Hyperia rooms, and that they're also doing a 'golden ticket' deal, where you can pay once and visit twice: once before Hyperia opens, and once after it opens: https://www.thorpepark.com/tickets-passes/day-tickets/golden-ticket/
  7. RAP sold out for opening day already. That being said they're implementing a 1 ride only policy on it so that should help matters.
  8. Does seem a bit optimistic but oh well. Does anyone know how fast the annual pass tickets will go as I can’t book it until I get home later and don’t want them all to go…
  9. 24th May is the day then. Is it just me that thinks given the state of the site at the moment that's... a little optimistic? Tight? Both? The weather isn't exactly brilliant for the forthcoming week either - all critical at this point of things....
  10. To be fair, I do quite like the logo on the app; the colours look great. They do need to fix the way it fits though, that’s what annoys me most.
  11. I've seen that Colossus has been up and down a bit. Opening day availability went to the wall when a storm hit combined with "strong" winds, but that can't be helped - at one point, everything was closed bar TWDTR, Rush and Dobble Tea Party.
  12. Out of interest, what have operations and ride availability been like at Thorpe Park this year? It seems like both Alton Towers and Chessington have been struggling, with sporadic ride availability, reduced capacity on many attractions and a number of rides still closed, but I haven’t heard too many similar horror stories from Thorpe Park this season. To my knowledge, Samurai is the only ride still closed, and that’s only due to the paint job over-running slightly, meaning that it should be open soon. I’ve also heard relatively good things about Thorpe’s operations this year. Are things OK at Thorpe on the operations and availability front so far this year?
  13. Am very impressed from photos and VEE-LOGS of all our fave enthusiasts in the CoMMunItY - however, what's a fanboi godda do around here to get those Covid yellow spot markers removed 😪
  14. Absolutely atrocious and I will be boycotting Thorpe Park until this is rectified.
  15. Looks terrible and another example of how poor the design is.
  16. It does feel a bit like Chessington is a bit behind compared to the other Merlin parks. They still seem to be stuck in the money-grabbing Varney era, when Thorpe and Towers have had a big leadership change and a new way of thinking. Keeping Rattlesnake closed on peak days is dreadful and feels a lot like what Merlin were doing across the board when they were scrounging for savings for the shareholders. Embarrassing and unprofessional. At least Mandril has had its air gates changed to allow the station to actually be used now. Does Chessington struggle to retain engineers or something? They seem to have constant problems with availability and reliability, more so than anywhere else.
  17. I quite like it. You can still tell what it is. Just like a lot of the other apps out there, it doesn’t need to have the whole logo or the name or the app.
  18. I visited at the weekend and I am very impressed with the efforts over the closed season. Finally, we are seeing the park move in the right direction after a decade of decline. (Excluding the DBGT 'investment') The Stealth area is looking great. Big Easy Boulevard is a huge improvement on Angry Birds. Personally I love seeing IP's replaced for an original concept. Rush, Vortex and Colossus have also been refreshed among others. There is a way to go, however, the great news is for the first time in over a decade the pros outweigh the cons. It looks like Thorpe's Management/Merlin have smelt the coffee. They have realised presentation is vitally important to running a theme park. Hopefully over the next few years their attention will move to Rumba/NI, The Beach/DC and the park entrance.
  19. Last week
  20. Hopefully this is the start of slightly stronger ops on Oblivion! In previous years, it's often had slightly weaker operations, with throughputs slipping to 800-900pph on occasions, so I was pleased to see this improved throughput reading! That's an interesting finding with Wicker Man. Clearly it was going a bit slower during your visit, as both of my readings had it closer to 800pph, or dispatches roughly 10s or so faster.
  21. Matt N

    Nemesis

    For anyone interested, I managed to see Nemesis Reborn for the first time last weekend (23rd & 24th March). I promised a longer written review of the project in my trip report from the weekend, so here it is! Let me start with the theming and overall Forbidden Valley area. The change in vibe from Nemesis to Nemesis Reborn has certainly been divisive throughout the construction process, but I have to say that overall, I'm a big fan of the final product. The area looks absolutely fantastic, and in my view, the new changes have added a real energy to Forbidden Valley that it arguably lacked before. I heard a review describing the new-look Forbidden Valley as "dynamic", and I have to say that that is an excellent descriptor, in my view! Pretty much every new theming element in the area has some degree of audio, movement, or both, and it does give off a sense that things are happening around you and really elevates the atmosphere beyond that of the previous area. In terms of some particular positives for me, these include: I have to say that the eye is an absolutely stunning piece of theming; it's just huge, and while I did not personally see the teeth move, I think it still really delivers on visual impact alone! The screen is very convincing, and overall, I do think that it serves as a very cool focal point of the new area! I was originally unsure on the loss of the original queue layout, which involved you going under the ride, but I have to say that the new queue was a pleasant surprise! It's littered with bits of theming, and they've woven some very nice bits of storytelling into it, in my opinion. As I said about the wider area above, most of these new theming pieces have some degree of audio or movement. I particularly like the helicopter near the stall turn, which has some nice audio, smoke and movement, and the Phalanx lab, which has some nice bits of storytelling audio associated with it. Overall, I do think that the back portions of the queue are overall far more interesting than they were before, and while the lack of queueing under the ride is a loss compared to the previous iteration, I think the new theming and storytelling makes up for it! On that subject, I do really like the new views of the ride the queue provides. It is very cool to be able to look over the whole ride area, and you do still get a couple of the close encounters that the old queue was good for. The stall turn comes pretty close at one point, and you are also close to the first drop! The new station is awesome, and a huge improvement on what came before! I always said that I liked the idea of turning the station into the inside of the monster, and I have to say that I think they've executed this brilliantly! The new dispatch sequence is brilliant, the new audio in there is brilliant, the lighting is brilliant, the theming is brilliant... it's just brilliant all round, really! I have to say that I think the Nemesis monster itself looks better than it did before. I think the darker grey/black paint job really suits it, the new tentacles look brilliant, the tail at the back looks better, and overall, I think they've done a really good job of refurbishing it! It's faithful to what was already there while also being enhanced and looking wonderfully shiny and new! Perhaps controversially, I think that the new soundtrack is awesome, and much improved on what was there before! I'm not too much of a music nerd, so I can't go into too many specific nerdy details, but I personally think that the new soundtrack sounds a lot more exciting, dramatic, and just overall more catchy and pleasing to my ear! It sounds like the soundtrack to a really awesome Hollywood monster movie, and I personally much prefer it to the old one, as good as the old one was. I really like some of the new triggered effects. For instance, I think that even something as simple as the smoke spraying the train going through the zero-g roll is really cool and really adds something to the overall theming! I've heard people say that the overall area gives off quite a "Swarm" vibe, and I do agree with this somewhat. However, I've always loved Swarm Island at Thorpe Park as an area, so that's certainly no bad thing, in my view! There are probably more, but those are just some of the ones I could think of! However, I don't think the new theming is perfect. Some minor areas for improvement from me are: As much as I do really like the new black aesthetic of the area and fences (it's definitely grown on me a lot since the initial reveal!), I think that if I'm being really pedantic, they could have gone for some slightly more interesting ride area fencing. For instance, maybe even just having some red lights on top and slightly more beefed up fencing, to give off the impression of it being in an enclosure similar to something like the raptor paddock on VelociCoaster, would have been really cool! Again, I'm being really pedantic here, but I do think that the helicopter near the stall turn is perhaps slightly too small. The one at the entrance to the area looks absolutely brilliant and is really impactful, but I think this one is perhaps a bit too small to have that sort of impact. If we're thinking wishfully, I would have loved to have seen the budget stretch to a retheme of Galactica to make it fit with the rest of the area, as that ride does stick out like a sore thumb when the rest of the area is so wonderfully themed and cohesive. However, I fully appreciate that that's wishful thinking, and I'm happy that they put more into the rest of the area as opposed to spreading themselves too thinly and trying to include Galactica if the budget didn't allow for it. Let's now discuss the ride itself. Now, you might think that there isn't loads to discuss because, well, it's the same Nemesis it's always been. And to an extent, that is true. However, I still feel like I want to talk about it a little, as the retrack has given me some thoughts. Overall, it's great to have Nemesis back in the lineup. It's an excellent, excellent coaster, and getting back on it over the weekend definitely reinforced how much it adds to Alton Towers' lineup. I have long held the view that I don't rate Nemesis as highly as many enthusiasts, and while I stand by that view to an extent and would say that the retrack hasn't drastically changed my opinion of it, I think that I have a newfound appreciation for it in some ways and that I would perhaps rank it a few spots higher than I did before visiting Alton last weekend. I had 2 rides; a row 7 inner seat and a row 4 outer seat. To me, the ride felt a little bit faster in spots (particularly the two turnarounds), definitely smoother (it certainly didn't have any of the headbanging that the original was prone to in its latter years!), and definitely just as thrilling and exciting as it ever was! This isn't anything new, but I have to say that riding Nemesis again gave me a new appreciation for some of the more unique aspects of its layout design. That opening salvo, where the speed just builds and builds out of nowhere, is particularly awesome and so exciting, and I have to say that I think that the way the ride keeps its pace right to the end, closing with that snappy final corkscrew, is just brilliant! And overall, I think there's something intangibly... pleasing about the way it rides. Is Nemesis my favourite coaster at Alton Towers? Definitely not. I definitely enjoy Wicker Man discernibly more than the rest of the coasters in the park, and I think that Oblivion may also usurp Nemesis for me too. However, Nemesis is a very solid 3rd place within Alton Towers for me, and while not a top 10 coaster, I'd definitely say it's a top 20, possibly a top 15 if I'm feeling generous (I haven't quite decided on its exact placement post-retrack yet; it was at #18 out of 111 before, but I could definitely see a touch of upwards movement if I took another look...). One thing I've often heard discussed is a notable rattle on the retracked version. I don't know if I just rode on the "good" train both times I did it, but if people hadn't mentioned it, I honestly wouldn't have thought anything of this rattle despite having a relatively low roughness tolerance. The ride felt perfectly smooth to me; I hardly felt a thing on the row 7 inner seat ride, and while the rattle was slightly more noticeable on the row 4 outer seat ride, it was certainly nothing that even vaguely impacted enjoyment for me. I'd liken it more to the relatively benign "Mack rattle" on Icon than the rather distracting bounce on something like Mandrill Mayhem. So overall, then, my view of Nemesis Reborn is profoundly positive. I think the project deserves all of the plaudits it is getting, and while I can quibble all I like about not rating it quite as highly as many, it's simply great to have Nemesis back at Alton Towers. She really is back with a vengeance! Here are some photos I took of the ride and area:
  22. It's from 2017 from what I can gather.
  23. Keen to find out what version you have as I have one from around the same time.
  24. I know they needed to update the app icon for the new logo, but this is definitely not it… Come on Thorpe at least get the logo to fit in the icon.
  25. The park need to decide whether they prioritise the main season or the winter season. If they want to do both, the engineering team need to be expanded. They also said a week or so ago that some rides like Rattlesnake and Griffons Galleon will not be open on off-peak days. Poor decision as Rattlesnake seemed to be one of the few rides that was running well over the weekend. Merlin theme parks really test my patience at times. The general expectation at a theme park is to go and rides will be running. At Merlin it's currently a gamble if anything is open on time or for at least half the day.
  26. LK_

    Samurai

    Crazy to think a few years ago it was constantly in pieces and everyone thinking it was the end of the road for it. that being said it's only been open once in 8 times I've visited in the past 3 years. Really do hope they make it virtually identical to Chessington, though, pure red would just look off. pic from attraction source
  27. Although different circumstances, it is crazy how in half the time Scorpion has been closed, Towers have rebuilt/plushed Nemesis and Europa have replaced their largely fire damaged version of the same ride. As part of a whole area rebuild. Meanwhile at Chessington, we still know nothing more about the fate of the ageing Scorpion Express. Which has been SBNO for almost 2 years now, but looking increasingly likely to be permanently closed. I guess this isn’t the first time this has happened at a notable park. When we see what with the Hollywood ride at Phantasialand and various closures over the years at Blackpool.
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