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I can't blame people for taking hotdogs in flasks when Thorpe now charge obscene prices for them. £12 for a hotdog and chips now. In the same venue that used to sell an entire (amazing) BBQ meal for about £7.50. And they had music. A hotdog on its own was £7.00 and people wonder why they're considered a rip off. On the whole my issues with Merlin aren't the frequency of the investments, but the overall quality that goes into the parks in terms of customer experience. Also, many of the investments that have been made were (IMO) not where the priorities should have been in terms of ensuring the parks offer a well rounded day out for visitors. Wicker Man is an exception and it has clearly done very well for Alton, which is fantastic.

I need to get to a meet soon as I miss you guys! I may bump into you on Saturday as I’m likely going to be at TP with my niece and her friend. If it’s too busy/loud, you’ll probably find me propped up in the smoking area by Inferno talking to myself ? Have a fab day

What's the point in getting tonnes of MAP holders though (for any park), odds on are they are the least likely to spend those extras that the parks are basically positioning themselves into... Indeed, the season passes are only so cheap so that Merlin can show rises in guest numbers... But the parks seem to be unable to cope with crowds that mattered little a few years ago (Chessie is especially bad now)... I'll be interested to see what the costs are of Towers in 2 weeks... But I paid about £16 in Coasters for two meals at Blackpool; £12 for one hot dog meal shows why people are "sneaking" in their own food at Merlin...

Hi all, went to paultons park today and had a lovely day, weather brilliant too and of course being the middle of the week, crowds were quite light. thought I would post a brief construction update, wow I never realised this new land covered so much ground , it’s covering quite a big area that what I thought, I’m really excited to see what paultons are capable of achieving, if lost kingdom is anything to go by, I think we are in for an impressive treat constuction pics are hard to get, there is a bit construction fence all around the area with no peep holes, and no big high advantage points, I could have poked my phone over the fence but didn’t want to take advantage and faced being told off by staff, the only ride that kinda works getting any pics of the scope of the area is on windy castle which works when your car is stopped at the top so here is the best I could get so things we know for sure or rumoured name tornado springs(confirmed) at least 5-6 new rides according to gossip heard (only rumoured to the exact count but we know there will be a few, another new coaster maybe??) rio grande WILL return and will be extended to run through or around the new area(confirmed as the park have said will return in 2020) wave runner WILL feature in the new area and be rethemed to fit in the new area(confirmed as the park was doing work all around the ride putting up timber sheets around the outside of ride. New area opening may 2020(confirmed as the board around the area says so) RIP panning for gold and mini golf attraction which is making room for the new area, it’s all gone Super excited to keep up with construction on this, can’t wait to see how it looks

Table booked for 10 at 7:15, allowing for time to leave the park and get to Staines. Anyone else wishing to come will have to arrange their own table. See you all Saturday!

I think a partial reason why people are experiencing fatigue with the UK parks, and in particular Thorpe/Merlin, is due to the complete change in pace of investment. Look at Thorpe in the 2000s - large investments regularly, and good mid-sized investments every year. It was unsustainable in my opinion - in that they couldn't continue doing that indefinitely - but it's now gone the other way and the investments are small and feel short term (even the likes of Ghost Train 3 years later feels ultimately limited in life span now). Really, what have you missed if you haven't visited Thorpe in the past 5 years? Chessington has always struggled with new investments: 3 *new* rides since 2005 (I think?) in Peeking Heights, Kobra and Zufari (excluding shows and Adventure Tree, since that was a like-for-like replacement of a carousel). Everything else has been a retheme, which can only captivate people so far, even if the quality is great. Again, compared to the early 2000s, and the promising resort developments it made in the early 2010s, it's a shame. Towers has been topsy-turvy, not helped by Smiler, though I do feel that the crash at least masked some problems which were coming their way anyway. Legoland is the only one in recent years that's made more captivating investments imo. Mia's, Ninjago, Monster Party have opened the park up to a wider audience, and despite their problems, I think it's a positive on the whole. On the other hand, they still have limited appeal as a park. And aside from Paulton's (which, in fairness, has been rather child-focused until very recently) and Icon, this past decade has been very meh in the UK. And compared to last decade, where Drayton, Flamingo Land and Blackpool had some decent-ish investments, it feels a bit worse. You then only have to look across into Europe to see the quality and quantity invested by parks of similar (or smaller!) sizes to feel all the more disappointed. I think the UK is on the up though. Paulton's is growing into a true family park. Flamingo Land might be throwing themselves back into the mix. Dreamland is making a slow recovery for itself. Yes, Merlin still have their problems, but there's still rays of sunshine in their dark clouds. So yeah, rambling post I know. But I guess yeah, I can see people's disappointment and fatigue. But equally, I think there's cause for - cautious - optimism for the future.

By jamming a (pretty overblown) theme down your throat and trying very hard to be dramatic as you walk down a concrete path to nowhere. Honestly the old music had more character at the end of the day. The amount of times a new park marketing director (or whoever) comes in and says, 'you know what will turn around this park? New font, new catchphrase and new music!' It's just papering over massive cracks at the moment.

Alright, I've had a day to think over what these dungeons are like after experiencing it last Sunday and are going to be brutally honest with it now after the experience I had and will present my opinion of it as a paying customer who dedicated nearly an hour of their 10am - 5pm day on this thing; not as a theme park blogger who is in Merlin/Alton's good graces and paid zilch to experience it. Contrary to all the positive reviews that are going around right now for it from all the theme park bloggers/vloggers/YouTube "celebrities", I'm sorry, but this is without a doubt the worst Dungeon I have done and I would go as far to say the worst attraction Alton Towers have ever given us in the 21 years I have been visiting this place year-on-year since 1998, and that's saying something. It goes almost entirely against what makes all the other Dungeons enjoyable attractions and it falls flat on delivering a comprehensive experience for guests with no proper thought or imagination put into the product and here's why. All the other Dungeons I have experienced immerse you properly into each scene with details and theming across every corner, from the flooring, walls, scenery and the actors. Despite many of them having bare roofing such as the London one for example, you tend to forget about it all with every scene and focus your attention on the actor and surroundings, as per you should, so this missing detail never really posed a problem for me with the others. With the Alton Towers one however, the very opposite occurs. For every scene you go through, I kid you not, there are flat black walls literally everywhere you look from the sides, behind you, the ceiling and even amongst the theming where the actor stands. It look horrendous and every room made you feel like you were in a big black box that had been assembled quickly and cheaply with timber wall panels. There was no texture to any of them, no deformation and no disguising of the walls in any room to make you feel as though you are in a dungeon. It just looks incredibly lazy and cheap and no attempt whatsoever was done to immerse guests 360 degrees unlike all the other Dungeons. The entrance to the attraction I still hold the view looks disgustingly ugly and cheap. Whilst in-person it looks a little better than through a screen, you can tell it was built on a budget with the randomly placed barrels and crates outside the entrance, along with the temporary fire torches fenced off. Most unforgiving of all is there is still an entire section of the entrance to the left in front of the lift towers with nothing but a giant 30ft black wall. Clearly the park ran out of wooden supports to cover this up properly during construction, so their solution to this problem was to pop down to the local B&Q and buy 50L of Dulux EasyCare Rich Black paint to cover up the shadows of the deceased Oompa Loompas peeking through the 2D windows. I'm guessing with the amount of black walls inside the attraction they had plenty to spare to cover this up too... Take a look here at what I mean. Taken on Sunday 24th March. It's so revolting to look at: As for the Black River boat ride, it's the same story - paint every wall black and leave it. The ride follows through the same route as Charlie, but believe it or not, it's now even barer than before with very little decoration or theming present in any portion. There are a few projectors on flat walls as you go round showing the shadows of victims being tortured, a couple of water jets to get you wet, a single animatronic which just bobs up and down ever so slightly in a cauldron, a single projector on a mannequin head and a single oddly-placed smoke machine. That is quite literally it for 4 minutes straight. There are no proper special effects anywhere inside, many zones had no audio playing, there are just black walls and tunnels for 80% of it and most unforgivable is the park were too lazy to remove the old theming from Charlie such as the water wheel in the station and the mirrored section towards the end where Sonic used to be on Toyland Tours. There is so much empty space and wasted area on this ride now that it makes Charlie look like a masterpiece compared to "Black Walls - The Ride". It's so, so bad. From here, it's pretty much your bog standard Dungeon attraction where there are various scenes stolen copied from other existing ones. Each scene did have its little twist added to the script referencing Alton Towers instead, but 95% of it was exactly the same as all the others. The Plague Doctor was 100% the same as the London one (though with very few effects) and so was The Torturer. The Judge scene was a little different but followed the same procedure - 3 people chosen, 1 found guilty after just saying where they were from. The Highwayman was identical to Ms. Lovett's pie shop mixed with Sweeney Todd at London where it used identical sound effects and audio and had the moving chairs with prodders. Lastly, the Haunting for the last scene was pretty good overall I will admit with some nice use of lighting and sound effects, similar to Witches of Warwick. Was a decent finale. As for the acting though, I've gotta hand it to those in there, they did a fantastic job in every scene. The actors performed brilliantly with plenty of adult humour which I liked and were interacting with guests very well. In fact, I would go as far to say the actors Alton have for this Dungeon are better than any other I have done before, so well done for hiring the right people! But that all aside, even though the acting was brilliant, the rest of it was a total mess. The biggest problem I have is the fact so many areas of the attraction consist of nothing but black walls everywhere in every scene and it's the dominating and most noticeable feature of every room. Each scene I would say is 70:30 in favour of black walls to theming and it looks really rushed in many areas, especially the transitions between each scene which once again are just black walls with no theming or detail put into them either. It is quite literally one giant yet claustrophobic rectangular black box one after the other for the majority of the experience. With the other dungeons, you at least have stuff to see, hear and feel which the London one is especially good at. But for the Alton Towers one? The only thing you can smell is the fumes of freshly coated black Dulux paint mixed with touching the sloppily finished un-sanded walls, and flooring which still has outlines of Charlie's theming and fencing present. It really is genuinely like this inside. The thing to bear in mind is that this is an attraction every guest unless you are an AT Premium Pass Holder will need to pay £5 for in order to experience, and I am telling you right now, I was really cheesed off my money went on this experience after finishing. There is no way in hell this is worth the upcharge the park is enforcing, because you can get a much better Dungeon experience across any other corner of the country for free compared to this if you are a MAP. It's completely unjustifiable in my view given there is a serious lack of quality and finish present in this version and you are frankly better off getting two medium Costa cappuccinos in Forbidden Valley for your fiver. Now, you might say "it's not finished yet hence the black walls", but I would then question why the heck are the park charging customers for a half-baked product if it's evidently not ready? Either open it when it's 100% right (yeah, just like DBGT remember...), or have some decency and not charge guests at all for it until it is fully completed. Lastly, I want to emphasise on a point @Martin Doyle made above a few posts ago. You might be reading and hearing many great reviews out there for the Alton Towers Dungeon right now from all the big and famous theme park fans out there with a massive following, but please take what you hear from them with a massive grain of salt. These are the same groups of people that praised Thorpe Park's Fright Nights last year with some going as far to say it was the "best Fright Nights yet", so it's obviously evident some of them are in Merlin's good graces when writing their reviews and are restricted on what they really think about it. Instead, I implore you to focus your attention and effort on those who have actually paid the £5 admission for this attraction and dedicated an hour of their time in the park for it. These reviews are far more credible and realistic through my eyes as they tend to speak their mind properly with no filters in place and aren't towing the company's line of being overly-positive about everything Merlin creates. To summarise my experience of the attraction, it would be this - a lacklustre, short-sighted and rushed mess that made Charlie and the Chocolate Factory look phenomenal in comparison. Still, it is better than nothing right?............Oh wait, black walls are nothing............ Alton Towers Dungeon - 3/10

Congrats to Thorpe for making the Colossus area look like the Margate seafront.. (Minus the sea..) At least the run down pits used to blend into the area a little, they could of least done something more than just throw a bunch of concrete at it, looks horrendous.