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Galactica track is being jetwashed.

The Dr Archibald was another VR ride that felt like more of a demo. Not worth £9 a go. The best parts of it were actually the real world theming in the queue and the exit tunnel. To me its conclusive that no matter how good VR may be, it does not beat the immersion of real world, old fashioned theming, animatonics, smoke, lighting, sound effects & UV.

Haha no offence to out of touch hipsters everywhere, but after going in to DBGT with an open mind and usually loving attractions rides like this, that is exactly how I feel and seemingly anyone Ive chatted to as well (enthusiasts and non enthusiasts). The arrogant attitude Thorpe Park still have about it, like in the recent behind the scenes video ("nowhere else in the world does anything anywhere near the scale of what we do"), is just plain silly. You don't entertain people by forcing this 'impressive soundingness' on them. They know it's their most complained about attraction by a long way, so why don't they dial it back a bit? Hopefully Merlin has learnt from their mistake..! Could have been awesome in different hands.

Investors are starting to become worried that underwhelming economic performance is not due to current market conditions and is more to do with the quality of the attractions. In April when the latest financial data is released and another underwhelming year is revealed the share price will either fall or flatline. Investor predictions will most likely turn to sell and Varney will be under pressure to make changes or walk. From what he has said in the past he doesn't like change and blames standard cycles in the economy. What I feel Varney has failed to take account of is that the current economic cycle has just past its peak and it is very unlikely they will be able to increase profits in the coming years with the eurozone heading towards recession. With any luck the board will oust Varney and someone with a refreshed vision can take the reigns. You really have to question if one person can continue to come up with new ideas to drive forward the company for as long as Varney has been there. His current direction is suffocating the parks and I see issues on the horizon as major assets reach the end of there service life.

Yeah, there's not really much of a marketing campaign for Thorpe yet like Chessington and Towers. I have a feeling that Thorpe is going to focus on it's anniversary in a big way. Maybe have more throwback type stuff. They're certaintly targeting us as enthusiasts this year with the maintenance videos and old references. That's the problem with Thorpe though, it has an identity crisis.

This is very true these major problems couldn't have been foreseen by enthusiasts, but they should have been by the project managers. I study building design/production and project management, I'm not an expert but I can say these are certainly bread and butter for any project. Same for a lot of Merlin projects, these things are known about but corners are cut relentlessly. Same for Ninjago's lack of air conditioning at Legoland – cut from the budget to save money and now we have staff fainting in summer and cheapo air cons added at the park's expense. But anything to cut MMM's project budget. Or countless other scenarios at Merlin parks, that later cost them more. But the irony with DBGT is the project budget was so ludicrously high anyway, they could have rebuilt half the park with that! As well as cutting corners and not value-engineering their projects, Merlin are extremely wasteful. "Efficient with capex" they are not, unlike what Nick Varney believes they are. But probably more important than all of that is the entertainment factor. DBGT is a pretentious, unentertaining load of nonsense, designed by self-congratulatory out of touch hipsters. (haha) Despite all the problems behind the scenes, it had the beginnings of a great theme and should have at least been fun! I totally agree the core idea and the way the illusion works could have been phenomenal. But it missed every single opportunity to entertain, and squandered that amazing train system.