General Discussion

This topic is about your favourite ride photos. Not On Ride photos, I mean photos of the actual ride it'self.Mine are some photos I took of Thorpe at sunset. EDIT: Can you try and keep it to a minimum of 3 photos please, I don't want this topic to have about 200 photos a page

Hi guys. I was curious to know; have any of you ever had any theme park related dreams? I only ask because I had a very weird theme park dream last night that I couldn’t not share… Basically, it revolved around my first day at Europa Park, which is coming up in real life in 6 days’ time. And it was one of those dreams where every little thing was stopping me from getting into the park and riding any rides… but far from a regular one. Buckle up, because this dream is weird… Things got off to a good start after a wonderful sleep in Hotel Castillo Alcazar (actually, I’m not sure what hotel it even was… it certainly didn’t look like Castillo Al…

I couldnt find a topic about the newly released theme park simulation game so I created one. The game is £22.99 and is now available on Steam. It looks fantastic and like it will replace RCT on my hard drive. Thoughts?

Which of these famous Orlando resorts do you prefer?Although I love both, I have gone for Disney because of its charm.

Easy thread for today. What rides have you been stuck on and what rides have you been evacuated from? For example I was stuck on Inferno's break run for twenty minutes once. So.. *coughs* - Icon. Stuck on the break run in the pouring rain for ten minutes. Got given a poncho. Nice. - Detonator. Stuck at the top for fifteen minutes. Had to be winched slowly down. We ate cookies that I had in my pocket. Got comped a free ticket to come back. Cheers Thorpe. - Dragon Falls. Boat stopped at the bottom of lift one. Got an exit pass. - Stealth. Kind of launched but then slowed immediately and stopped on the launch track. Eventually made it back to the…

Hi guys. Here in the UK, we have four Merlin parks: Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington and Legoland Windsor. Operations are a contentious topic surrounding the Merlin parks, particularly as of late; people talk a lot about throughputs, ride availability and the like with regard to these properties. However, there’s arguably some variation between the four properties in terms of many of these metrics, so with this in mind, I’d be keen to know; which Merlin park is best operated, in your view? Which one performs best in terms of metrics like throughputs? Personally, I would put Alton Towers at the top of the pile. But if I were to rank them, I would say the …

I decided to put this in General Theme Park Discussion, since this idea could easily be elaborated upon through discussion, but it's also something of a personal request. I'm in my final term of a film and television course at uni, and I've chosen to write my dissertation on the artistic qualities of rollercoasters, using Nemesis (and potentially, for comparison, Nemesis Inferno) as a case study. When I say "artistic qualities", I mean it in the broadest possible way: The architecture of the coaster itself. The ride's theme, both in terms of visual elements and of deeper thematic implications (e.g., what Nemesis' backstory implies about our natural…

Hi guys I was wondering will there be a trip to Blackpool Pleasure Beach for Walk The Big One as I am sure many of you would like to do this its £35 per person? Reply if you think this would be a great thing to do. PS : If in wrong section can an admin move it to the correct section.

Rightio here goes - My niece turns 10 in March (I feel SO old) and my sister wants to take her somewhere - well I suggested Thorpe because my niece is a bit of a little thrillseeker and loves watching vids of coaster and such online (she said to me the other week "I watched a POV of Stealth ). Anyway, as it will be her 10th my sister was thinking along the lines of taking her away - she has looked into Disneyland Paris but told me some ridiculous price for it - so was just wondering, because a lot of you here have been to DLP, are there any reasonable deals or good places to stay? I went back in 2000 with college and stayed in one of the disney hotels but they are a …

I was wondering do Merlin do apprenticeships as I am in my 3rd year at college studdying Electrical installation.

Hi guys. If you do coaster counting, one means that many enthusiasts tend to resort to in order to up their coaster count is riding kiddie coasters. One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that enthusiasts tend to have different mentalities towards riding kiddie coasters and the level of care they have about getting kiddie coaster credits. Some have the mentality of “cred’s a cred”, and will travel very long distances to get the latest big apple or go-gator added to RCDB, while others tend to confine their kiddie coaster riding to when they’re available in larger parks, or even don’t ride kiddie coasters at all in some cases. So my question to you today is; what’s your m…

EDIT: DURING THE HALLOWEEN SEASON

I am currently a final year university student undertaking a dissertation on whether innovation can cause repeat visitation to the same theme park. I am trying to find out how significant an impact innovation has on potential visitors when deciding to visit theme parks. If you have visited two different theme parks I would like to know why you chose to visit a different theme park instead of returning to the first one you visited? Do you think that innovation such as new rides, shows, new areas of the park or improvements to existing rides, shows and the use of mobile applications and devices could have caused you to return to the first park instead of visiting a differen…

Hi guys. In recent memory, two (as far as I'm aware) theme parks have won the Golden Ticket Award for Best Theme Park in the World. They're two pretty different theme parks, but they share the award in common, and they are Europa Park in Germany and Cedar Point in the USA (or Ohio, to be more precise). So my question to you today is; which of these two GTA winners do you prefer? I obviously can't pass judgement, having never visited Cedar Point. For what it's worth, though, I have visited Europa Park, and I have to say that I think the park is more than deserving of its high reputation; it's unbelievably versatile! You have awesome coasters (for me at least; S…

Hi guys, I'm Ellie and I'm an undergraduate student in my final year of study at Edinburgh Napier University. As part of my final year I need to write a dissertation and mines is focusing on challenges facing the UK theme park industry either currently or in the near future. As a result of this I'm undertaking primary research in terms of a survey in order to gain perspective on how UK theme park visitors perceive their visits. I need as many responses as possible and hence, would like to ask you all to take a couple of minutes to participate.The survey can be found here: https://survey.napier.ac.uk/n/zz4p6.aspx Any response is greatly appreciated.Thanks in advance!

Thoughts and opinions? I just purchased a Premium Membership for £15.99 a month

Soo just wondered really, what people prefer most? Scarefest Mazes, or Fright Night Mazes? Why/who/what/where/how?

I just found some footage shot by CoasterForce of the "World's Oldest Operating Steel Coaster" and wow, it even further proves the point that an attraction doesn't have to have a 'highest' or 'fastest' or 'loopiest' record attached to it for it to be a good ride. I just thought that there should be a topic where people could share rides like these that are brilliant but not massive or well known attractions. Enjoy

Great article posted by Theme Park Tourist with details of a park planned by Tussaurds before they took on Alton instead. Really worth a read through, one thing particularly worth mentioning though... What's that? It's a racing woodie, that's what. Shame the local authority were so adamant they wouldn't allow any of this development, I'm sure in the long run it would have been great for the local area. Planning really is the scourge of theme parks in this country.

So there's no denying that some are cred chasers. So here's the cred thread. Talk about any cred aims here and stuff. I'll start by asking, whats your coaster credit that you think no one else will have? Mine are Gebirgsbahn(12) and Grand Canyon Bahn(13) which burnt down at Phantasialand in 2001. I rode them in 2000 on a school trip. (RCDB) Burn baby burn.

Guys I wanna know your choices on this!! This could be a close one!

Recently I visited Warwick Castle and with it The Castle Dungeon which now leaves me only needing to visit York to complete the full set of UK Dungeons and as I left, I was asked what my favourite of the Dungeons is. So I'm going to ask you all your opinions as to what your favourite one is!! For me its 1st Edinburgh 2nd London 3rd Blackpool 4th Warwick Castle I will squeeze York into that list if I ever get round to it!!

Disclaimer: This post is extremely long, and if you don't like data analysis and geeky maths talk, I'd suggest you run for the hills and don't look back, because this post has quite a bit of it! Hi guys. There are a lot of theme parks in Europe, as well as a lot of roller coasters. So naturally, people (myself included) tend to ask questions like “which park has Europe’s best roller coaster lineup?” or “which parks are quality-over-quantity and which parks are quantity-over-quality?”, amongst others. As such, while it’s not really a discussion thread as such, I thought it might be fun to try to take a quantitative look into some of these questions and try to answer t…

Hi guys. Ever since Disneyland first opened in 1955, the idea of "magic" has been a cornerstone of much of the theme park industry, and over the years, theme parks have become almost intrinsically linked with the concept of "magic", particularly in the case of parks that err more on the family-friendly and/or heavily-themed sides. Nowadays, "magic" is quite possibly one of the biggest marketing clichés in the theme park industry; many, many theme parks use magic as a key selling device within their advertising and propaganda. Building upon this, my question to you today is; what are some of the most magical theme park moments you've ever experienced? What are some of thos…

Calling all you Londoners. What is it? Good question. It is arty stuff mixed with pretty lights Wher is it? 4 locations around London ( "across the West End and King's Cross" Mayfair, King's Cross, Piccadilly, Regent Street and St James's,Trafalgar Square and Westminster) When is it? Starts tonight and runs for 4 nights (14th to 17th Jan) Why the hell am I mentioning it on a theme park site? Ohh lots of reasons. 1) People who make theme park rides get there ideas for lighting from some where - I went to a similar arty thing called the Bell and bumped into Pete Cliff (guy who designs all the scarefest mazes and ents for Alton Towers). 2) If you have a go…