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I think it's time to state this simply. There has been no confirmation by the park that Tomb Blaster is receiving any work, or a re-theme. It might happen, it might not. Until then, rumours are just that: rumours. It doesn't matter if Nick Hutson, Theme Park Giraffe, Doughnut Dan, Gil Lible or Professor Pepsi Burp have "confirmed" or said stuff. The best thing to do is to wait until a park confirms something before believing it. Until then, it's best to take anything else with a pinch of salt and not think something is definitely happening just because some guy said so.

Ah its all good. My source has told me its a done deal. He wishes to remain anonymous so he goes by the alias of "HP source"

They are gonna be pushing it tight with getting Forbidden Tomb open!! *credit to theme park guide

Construction of Croc Drop as of today. Progressing really nicely, interesting ride hardware hasn’t been installed yet. Photos courtesy of Theme Park Guide.

If you struggle with when and when not to take things literally maybe look at a posts reacts to give you a steer. 🙂

I guess it will all depend on the wording of the contracts and things like that. With something like Olympia, I'd have thought the contract would be for bringing the coaster for 5 (or however many) events, with an expectation of annual events. But obviously if an event doesn't run in a specified year, then the ride can't be bought to the event, so it wouldn't count. With the parks, their contracts would count years/seasons, and since the attraction is in situ all the time, it would be different. ie, the contract would be for the ride to be in situ for 5 years, not necessarily for it to run 5 years. This is where the wording and fine print of the contracts would come into play. Could an IP specify they want an attraction to run a minimum number of days in a season? Would Merlin agree to that? Does the IP still get paid if an attraction doesn't open? To what extent does having an attraction closed affect the brand name of an IP (I'd suspect it's minimal, but who knows)? All of these things could be different for different IPs too. I remember when Saw first opened that there were rumours floating around that Lionsgate had stated that if less than 90% of the special effects were working, the ride had to be closed until they were fixed. I believe it was absolute rubbish, but many people believed it. Personally, I'd expect the set up to be pretty basic at its heart. Thorpe/Merlin pay a fixed amount each year, and the IP get a certain percentage of the profit of merchandise related to that IP too. That would last x amount of years, and then discussions would reopen. Obviously there'd be other stuff, but that'd be the heart of it. I could be way off of course, but just what seems sensible. At this point, with Ghost Train, I'd've thought that Derren would rather not have it run a year beyond the original planned contract ending, and just cut ties with it. It certainly feels like he's no longer connected with the project.

Wicked Witches Haunt coming 2021 to Thorpe Park You heard it here first!!

As others have said, I think this is still a pretty solid offering, especially given the free parking and minimal restrictions (bank holidays and Halloween). At £120, plus free parking and discount, you're looking at needing to visit 4-5 times before it becomes worthwhile (assuming you use discounts for entry otherwise). That's fairly standard and in line up with other individual park passes across Europe. Plus, being an Annual Pass (ie - valid for 12 months rather than till end of season) is a much better option. A Season Pass is ultimately flawed in that its sale value becomes less as time goes on. Pay the price in March and get access all season, or pay the same price in September and get access for two months (minus exclusions). The issue with Thorpe and Merlin is they have aggressively focused on trying to get as many people have passes. They'll have felt the problems with that this year, but it's always an issue. With such a large number of passholders, it's harder to predict numbers for each day (as they didn't have to pre book). You're also left with a larger market who think they're special and should be rewarded for their loyalty. The trouble there is with such a large number of people, any perks aren't actually that special as they're accessible to so many people.. The main issue is the pre-booking thing. For whatever reason, Thorpe's system ultimately didn't work this year (as pre booking wasn't checked for passholders). Hopefully they have a better checking system, and have an improved method for checking numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if Merlin are hoping to a degree that come summer time they can have less restricted numbers at their parks and the passholder prebook can become relaxed / not a necessity.