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Neither was Walking Dead The Ride though...

IAC is staying alongside an RMC themed to Dec downing a bottle of Jack Daniels and going drink driving through the jungle/Pinewood Studios, though Merlin only gave the park a budget of £50 so they've just got an old wacky worm and put some nice fencing from B&Q around the area hoping nobody will notice. You heard it here first! #worldsfirsthybridwackyworm

Just pointing out that fastrack has no value on a quiet day and there are better value things to spend £400 on. Compared to the Adrenaline package for example, It only starts becoming better value if you plan to go on more than 5 coasters in a day on more than 8 busy days during the season. Add the Exhilarate and it's more than 10 rides a day on 5 busy days. Or it's more than 4 busy days with Unlimited but missing the Walking Dead the ride. It's entirely your choice on how you spend your own money at the end of the day but hopefully it's a more informed and rounded decision. Feel free to ignore everyones opinions. I'm glad Europa doesn't sell fastrack. Their queues move pretty quickly being able to fill the whole trains from the main queue.

What if Rumba has been left as returning in 2019 for a reason? What if they’re retheming it to a jungle set up? What if they’re actually doing something that is needed in the park? Hmm ?

They don’t even turn them off, when they don’t want feedback they get set to ask where you are from and your email address if you’d like to opt in to marketing. And then it helpfully says thanks for your feedback.

Turning the screens off if it's a poor day probably helps with those guest satisfaction ratings.

I disagree with this. The large collection of consoles, retro gaming and virtual reality experiences on offer won't be found in any home across the country, making this a unique experience that many people can't do at home.

Mystic really does look like the secretly fab coaster of 2019:

An unnecessary expenditure for the park. They are restricted with capital so are unable to build a new half decent attraction and so have no choice but to try and focus on events to bolster the line up and sell as a reason to return. I suspect that they have very little impact on the parks revenue and advertising these events is just a way of reminding the public Thorpe Park exists. These events aren't going to turn anyone away but I doubt they will bring that many people in either. It just seems like a trick to get Merlin to release some capital for advertising so they can draw people into the park on the merits of existing attractions. Tomorrow will be a fun one when Merlin provide the preliminary financial results for 2018. That might be able to give us an insight into the lack of investment.

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.