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Simply transporting it and putting it in place would be sufficient enough! Would certainly fit the abandoned, run down theme Merlin/Thorpe love!

Gardaland bring back Sequoia Adventure after a couple of years being SBNO Heide Park bring back Colossos after a couple of years being SBNO. Alton Towers bring back the CATCF space into use after a couple of years being SBNO. Chessington bring (back) a 3D glasses maze after a couple of years (of 3D glasses) being SBNO. Your move Thorpe?

It's the most wonderful time of the year - it's the Thorpe Park Mania Awards! Once again, we are using SurveyMonkey to collect the results. If you've never used it before, don't worry - it's dead easy! We've condensed things down a bit this year, to spice up the competition... PARK AWARDS: -Best UK Park -Best UK Coaster -Best UK Flat Ride -Best UK Water Ride -Best UK Dark Ride -Worst UK Ride -Best International Park -Best International Coaster -Best New-for-2018 Attraction (can be in the UK) -Most Disappointing Merlin Moment 2018 -Best Looking Attraction for 2019 -Best Manufacturer FORUM AWARDS: -Best Member -Best Team Member -Best Quality Posts -Most Knowledgeable Member -Most Dedicated Member -Most Sarcastic Member -Most Likely to be Banned in 2018 -Funniest Member -Biggest Fanboy/girl -Sexiest Male -Sexiest Female -Storm Surge Award -Member you'd like to see more of  And here's some clarifications in case any of the above are confusing... You don't have to vote for all the categories if you don't want! Please you forum usernames rather than real names - makes things easier For the park awards, feel free to vote for parks / rides you like the look of the best (especially the case of International Awards, where members might not have been on many / any foreign rides). Storm Surge Award: Vote for the member who you think reminds you of Storm Surge or should be awarded a Storm Surge for their efforts in TPM. Member you'd like to see more of Award: Vote for the member who you'd like to see post on the forums more often / see at meets / generally get to know a bit better! These are of course meant to be a bit of fun, so just enjoy the ride! Link is HERE and an alternative can be found here Voting will close Sunday 23rd December, 8pm, with winners announced at a point after. Get those votes coming in!

Submitted

Let’s not forget: 1/ VR 2/ Pre-show 3/ cattlepens 4/ shipping containers 5/ ‘another variation of the Island theme’ 6/ Another disaster/abandoned/horror theme/story Boom! I will see myself out

I’m just saying hi, as the rewards go.

My suggestion: bring the Knightmare roller coaster from the abandoned Camelot theme park, to the island, and place it, behind Swarm Island. What would you think of my suggestion? Comment if you like it. You can ask for a retheme if you want to. XD

its a cool video, so funny to see staff larking about on the ride's supposed closing down day. A couple pretty strange things in there if you watch the whole thing, haha! Shame it doesnt show the station under the show lighting but even in work lights, shows how fallen the brilliant station is now. People said Wicker Man set an amazing standard for a themed coaster in Britain (which it did) – but truly Chessington had it even better years ago with this incredible Vampire queue and preshow!

Have any of you guys seen this? It really shows what the vampire station used to look like before it was massively butchered. This is how I remember it from my childhood.

The Disney / Universal are the biggest, wealthiest entertainment companies on the planet and are also in competition with each other, so I wouldnt say that's a fair example. It needn't be as good standards as Disney, it just has to be decent. A better comparison would be the likes of Europa Park, Efteling, Phantasialand, which are all run by companies infinitely smaller than Merlin, but they maintain their parks fantastically. A trip there costs you about the same as a Merlin park but is infinitely better value. True it's not Chessington's choice that they get no budget or structure for this kind of maintenance, it is Merlin's method. Like you say, if it isn't able to be rebranded then they just don't care, this is their strategy. Even with new rides, once the press launch is over they rapidly stop caring. It's not the attitude of a real entertainment company interested in return customers and long term benefits for their parks. However, Chessington is particularly bad at maintaining its effects and attractions, compared to Alton Towers for example. Sometimes it feels like, top down, Chessington are totally unaware that audio, lighting, etc even makes a jot of difference to guests. You would very soon notice the difference in guests' reactions if these attractions as good as they were originally. The fact that "not many" of them actively complain about specifics is true but not really a valid reason to not maintain something. Why should it be the guests' perogetive to know the details of lighting, sound, animation, etc? They are paying for a good experience and instead getting a sub par overall experience. IL Bubbleworks had plenty of regular complaints about how poor it was long before it got removed, nothing was done about it for years until they could get a new brand in. Also, the fact the park looked shabby and run down for years was a frequent online complaint from your average guests, but all that happened was they got the local painter decorators in to paint one facade per year. The only excuse Merlin have is they can just hype up the brand and monopolise the UK market so nobody knows the parks could be any better.

Apologies for the long pedantic post, but to save misunderstanding, here's the full story behind Vampire's audio over the years! Obviously all the following is more technical info, no guests are gonna go in Vampire thinking 'hang on this is the wrong mix' – but the point is for the music to sound good and have good effect, and clearly this is not happening today. The ride currently sounds awful. Here is where it gets pretty complicated and you need to consider how technology has changed massively over time to get your head around it. Let's break it down to: Production tapes (pre dubbing, pre downsampling) 1990 Ride 'dual zoned' mix 1990 stereo cassette mix 2016 Smart mix The original music would have been produced from tapes as a high quality production master by the composer in 1990. A standard mix for listening would have been in stereo obviously, but for use in the ride it was mixed differently. Theme park audio is usually always in mono mix, or 'multi mono' if its a score for a whole ride that changes as you move through it. This is because a stereo image requires a left and a right speaker, but in an attraction you're constantly moving around space with usually multiple speakers playing the same track, so it makes more sense to have it in mono. Vampire actually had a 'dual' zoned effect where the same music played throughout the station, where the organ stage played the organ instrument, and the backing track played through the rest the station (guitar in both). This opened up the sound a bit more and gave the effect of the organ playing the actual organ part. To do this effect, a mix with split organ and backing was sent to Sparks (who produced the Vampire station), with one on the L channel and other on R. This wasn't a traditional stereo mix, it was more of an installation mix, so would sound great standing in the station, but would sound bizarre played on a home stereo. Sparks also dubbed it with the familiar screams and thunder sounds. This mix was unique to any other mixes, which is why all other versions sound slightly different. However, because of the technical limitations of the time, the ride track needed to be downsampled to play on solid state EPROM chips, which could only hold a certain amount of memory. The downsampling means it's lacking bass, but otherwise is good and wouldnt have been noticeable on the big station sound system – as anyone who went in Vampire in the 90s would remember it still sounded great! However, in mono, it wouldnt sound so good in isolation on a home stereo. This zoned effect was lost in Vampire around 2000 when the sound system was changed. From then on it played as one zone throughout the station, but was the same 'mix'. Then there was a souvenir cassette that was sold in the Chessington shop in the 90s, this was a very different mix to the ride version – and was in stereo (for listening). This is the one more commonly heard online. Although a more polished mix, the sound quality has always been dire, because the same warbly digital transfer has been passed around since forever (the original cassettes are hard to come by). Somehow this was the track that Chessington replaced the original with in 2014 when the sound system was changed to mp3 playback. What! It sounds awful due to the poor quality of the transfer from cassette and is not edited to loop correctly. Then a few years back the composer put up his own version (the Smart mix), from his own tapes, pre-downsampling... BUT it was actually yet another mix, half the 'cassette' version and half the 'original' version. This is the best quality version of the track available, but doesnt have the zoned effect or the 'rawer' guitar. After years of trying to find the original track, I first found just the backing part on its own, which only had the guitar and organ on it faintly. This is what's on Soundcloud, edited to sound less 'mono' and with the organ part turned up a bit. More recently I finally found the organ track to go with it, so will update the Soundcloud track soon. Have sent this to Chessington. These are the downsampled, dubbed tracks that played in the ride from 1990 to around 2000. So, not full listening quality and would sound weird played on a stereo, but would sound good restored in the dual zones in the station. Much better than the current dodgy mp3 being played. Ideally, a brand new mix should be struck from the original master tapes (if they still exist with the composer) to recreate the dual zoning and the more 'raw' original mix – but without the downsampling, since this is no longer necessary with today's playback technology. Combine this with a repaired sound system and it would sound amazing. However, the original composer seems to be completely uncontactable. So, there's the saga of Vampire's audio! Once sounded classic, now sounding very lame with the poor recording they're using at the moment. But, simply putting back the orginal mix on a broken, mono system probably wouldnt make much difference. What it needs is a new, overhauled sound system and a full quality zoned mix.