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Depth Charge (5) Detonator: Bomb's Away (5) King Pig's Wild Hog Dodgems (4) Mr. Monkey's Banana Ride (5) Nemesis Inferno (6) Rocky Express (5) Rush (5) Samurai (5) Saw - The Ride (5) Stealth (5) Storm in a Teacup (5) The Swarm (5) The Walking Dead - The Ride (5) Tidal Wave (5) Nemesis + KPWHD -

My nearest Merlin park is 2 hours away so I guess that plays into it a bit. After I've had holidays with my partner I don't normally gave more than 3-4 days of annual leave left for parks as my partner hates theme parks. Admittedly that last part has a lot to do with it!

MickerWan confirmed!

A genuine question, have you visited this winter? The original soundtrack has been restored and the bad cassette recording is finally gone. Not to its orginal 1990 state with the corridor audio and zoned organ, but definitely to how it was at the time that video clip was recorded, the way it was in the 2000s. If you have visited this month and think it still sounds bad, it may be more to do with the aging state of the sound system, or that it needs tweaking now that the original audio is back. Although I still think having the same music outdoors on those PA speakers numbs the impact of hearing it the first time in the station, hopefully they will change this to an ambient track outdoors. IPs are purely for business purposes and really nothing to do with thematic storytelling. The motorway service station type ads in Chessington's queue are super tacky, gives a really commercial impression about the park. Yuck!

It's true all major new attractions need to see a decent return, because of their huge cost if anything. But I suppose the difference is Merlin invest only for instant hits, they never invest in the value of the actual park, beyond basic maintenance. Big money gets invested in headline rides, anything else is sidelined. So other than new rides, the state of their parks is pretty poor, including not investing in proper operations to keep queues down and generally not creating a place to be. Then their new rides are also left to decline once they've stopped serving that instant return. Even when new land is added like the Swarm's island expansion, it's just a minimal dead-end, when it had opportunity to add much needed value to the park and create more throughfare. This stuff all has an impact on guests experience. But Merlin's marketing depts still think yet another quick 'rebrand' with new signs, music and logos will do the trick, instead of proper long term investment. Icon at Blackpool was more beneficial to the park's overall value I feel, as well as a headline attraction for that year. It should have been advertised more (beyond the previs videos on BBC that made it look boring!), but it adds a modern element to the park's offering, making the Pleasure Beach a much more rounded day out. I hope BPB sees increasing appeal from here on and gets back on track, but it won't if it lets the momentum die. Looking at parks abroad that began the same way as Thorpe Park in the 70s/80s, you can see how they've taken a much more holistic approach over their history and today are altogether much better places to visit. But Thorpe Park has become so confused by cheap rehashes and short term investments, that I feel it doesnt deliver a solid appeal with many people anymore. Other than Derren Brown, which was probably intended to be a long term investment in the park, but because of its bad development it ended up so esoteric, with costs so out of proportion to its actual entertainment factor. I agree that stronger focus on good events would really help the park. Fright Nights still excites a lot of people in the region, but then why is it getting worse each year? Why is it advertised so much, but then so minimal in reality? You could have a far better Halloween event almost anywhere else, like the brilliant events at farm parks as mentioned earlier. You actually need to put the focus on entertainment for once, instead of the lazy minimal approach currently.

I don't personally, just merely making a point. It would be a silly decision (and won't happen anyway) when something brand new could be brought to the park. Although I'd love to be proved wrong I Can't see anything new for a few more years now.

A fair point, and certainly Thorpe / Merlin should be taking note of the successes of Winter Wonderland. However, the attendances aren't really comparable. WW is a free event, with a significantly broader market, and a very different focus (Christmas). Theme parks ultimately exist because of the rides. Winter Wonderland ultimately exists as a Christmas market with rides. Very different things. Tulley's doesn't get anywhere near any of the parks. A busy day for Shocktoberfest is in the region of 4000 people, and they get about 60k visitors across the whole event in a year. Thorpe can get that in 4 days. Towers get that many in their fireworks event (over 2 days). I've never known if it's true, but one rumour which floated about when it was introduced back in 2010 was that it was an agreement with the council, to help ease traffic on public roads. Of course, that doesn't give reason for the high price or the chaos that ensues in the car park, and that's something which needs addressing. Practically every major theme park charges for car park these days. It's just a thing now. Doesn't mean it's necessarily right, but that is the situation. Bringing this back to Icon / BPB.. I wonder how the park performed financially? Attendance is of course one way to measure success and popularity, but it's hard to gauge (and they never publicly release stats). But if attendance is down, it might not be all doom and gloom. If the park is making more money per person (and based off the significant amount of Icon merch I've seen about, that alone could have helped), or seeing improvements elsewhere, it's a good start. Of course, we'll never know, but I wouldn't be surprised if BPB have seen some form of a small, instant hit as a result of Icon. As a general commentary though, it's funny seeing people express concern about Icon's lack of instant success. It's well known Merlin follow the thought process of 'any (major) new ride needs to be an instant hit'. And many people mock that philosophy. Yet when a different park does something which isn't an instant success, and very easily could be a long term success, people panic.