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Yes, but its. Still a valid point! That gravel end of the car park has remained the same for a few decades, bar taking out the wooden dividers! Actually they did refurbish the tarmaced section last year!

@Ringo, you are wrong - last year the money raised from the car parking WAS reinvested into the car park as when I went, they had spray painted bays onto the gravel. You know, gravel that moves around and isn't fixed to the ground. Genius. #betterthannothing

Interesting to see that Disney are holding a gaming event - because no one goes to a theme park to play games they clearly have no idea what they are doing... ?

There are much much worse car parks around than at Thorpe! Probably a long time - expect it’s one of the major attractions of the premium upgrade to many!

The gravel car park is to help with drainage. Sustainable urban drainage systems will often use gravel to slow down the rate water enters the ground and sewage systems as well as lakes and rivers. If the car park were to be tarmac then it would need significant drainage systems put in place which would cost a fortune for very little reward. The price hike seems to be money grabbing in the name of sustainable travel. If they want to encourage sustainable transport then they should use the car park money to improve public transport to the park.

People assume that this is a cash grab - but in reality it has more to do with discouraging driving to the park because the local roads are already stretched... Future developments such as rollercoasters will always have an increase in traffic accounted for within the planning application and at some point Runnymead Council will have a tipping point to saying "no" because the local infrastructure can't cope with an increase. So, how do you curb that and keep it below that tipping point....? Discourage driving and promote free transport from public transport hubs...

When does the IP run out/when does Derren want to disassociate himself from the mess that it is?

Chessington says hello

Because people are thick. Next question? It probably is part of that slightly more visually prominent position (in comparison to Rapids), and is nowhere near as wet as Tidal Wave (in theory)... From a guest perspective, there's more to appeal to, especially when you factor in the central location where pretty much everyone walks past at some point... Why do people with kids join an hour long queue for Truckers? Because it's there...

The difference is how many problems it has each time!

The trick is that you've queued for hours to go on it in the vain hope it has been "continually invested for years to come" when it hasnt

Thing is as well, these are things that are pretty plentiful in loads of places now... Can't fall over without finding an Escape Room company (there's about 5/6 in city centre alone up in Leeds), there's numerous trampoline/activity places opening, and gaming stuff is starting to come in due to esports... But if you're interested in these things would you do them at a theme park? It's a similar question to having a Dungeons attraction at Towers (though at least at Thorpe the hours are slightly better), why would you take 45 minutes out of your day to partake in something like this after paying whatever the entry fee is? Would people rather this, or the park replacing Slammer with, well anything? These additions scream of a park under the thumb of a company giving them little money to spend, and the worrying thing is it's only going to get worse apparently since the focus is on building Legolands everywhere in the world... Towers has an attraction foisted upon them, Thorpe have no money to spend on anything worthwhile and Chessie are getting another retheme of an attraction which was mothballed... Here's the thing, these events would be fine IF (and I cannot stress the IF enough here) the rest of the park wasn't in dire straits and in desperate need of picking up, getting a dusting down (or a repaint) and generally sorting out... But the parks aren't given enough money to do this because of KPIs or ROIs are directly noticeable from such things, even though having a park that looks the part is one of the most important factors in terms of guest satisfaction... If it looks like a cheap death-trap, then likelihood is guests will come away with that viewpoint...