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So the audio now plays out like a radio station? I mean, stuff like that can work (see: Amity Cove / WWTP), but I'm not sure it fits here. But heyho, whatever. Maybe people will like it. tbh I would have been happy if they literally just used the Swarm Invasion loop from last year. An evolution of the old soundtrack that worked. Not a fan of shoehorning everything around the area into the audio. It feels desperate / awkward, rather than just letting everything flow. For the obvious comparison, it's not like WWTP Radio tries to shoehorn in all the theming features around, because it doesn't need to. It's the same with the Ghost Train sections added this year. There's loads of heavy-handed, shoehorned sentences chucked in to try and fill in gaps and problems and issues. Just feels awkward and doesn't work for me. Maybe the wider audience / new visitors will respond to it much better. But from my perspective, it feels very forced and janky. For what it's worth, I've always liked Swarm's area. I know people aren't fans of the basic nature it has of chucking vehicles around and such. But I like the crude simplicity of it. The Swarm are flying aliens, so of course things like planes and helicopters (flying things) will have been targeted. Emergency services bring safety, but The Swarm have attacked the fire, police and ambulance services, so they're not safe. A church is usually thought of as a safe haven, but that's been ripped apart and almost serves as the base of The Swarm. It's simple, crude and not very subtle. But it conveys the message and theme effectively: we're in an apocalypse and no where is safe. And that's fine.

This story is also sort of now laid out by the new audio, as seen here: Although I think this time the church is supposed to be in the 'village of Thorpe', so at least that's explained. And also the Swarm itself apparently came from a research facility. The audio is very, very strange. 'The world is literally ending around us, quick, organise an interview with the reverend of the church, and in the meantime, play You Me At Six!' At least the Swarm Invasion audio is back in parts.

The Swarm's area and theming isn't that great IMO. It's really just a bunch of vehicles and theming items plonked around the ride with no cohesion, it isn't visually nice to look at either. Why is there a huge motorway billboard right next to a church? What's a helicopter doing in a lake? It's just bizarre. I do feel that it was better when the ride first opened and it had the special effects, triggered sound effects etc. As with most Merlin investments though it's been left to fall apart, had random items added and many items of theming are now missing or have been replaced with generic, un-themed items (e.g. the queue fencing). To be honest, I was never a fan of the queue videos being throughout the entire queue, it would have worked much better having them in one section IMO. It just became pretty grating during long queues listening to it I thought. And of course, it all got naff when the screens stopped working, speakers broke etc. There's also that ugly wooden cover around part of the church that totally detracts from the look of the station. Things like that are such a shame; if they'd picked one idea and put all their efforts into that (e.g. a destroyed church as the main centrepiece), it could have looked much better. The area as it is now is just a jumbled mess IMO.

They go very fast on peak days, not sure about off peak weekdays (though they too have been busy lately). Best place to get is from the self service tills in the ticket centre. This opens from 9am.

Really and truthfully, the area theme for Swarm makes no sense. At face value, it seems to be some sort of attack from alien creatures that can fly. They've bought down planes and helicopters because they own the sky. The emergency services are under attack and useless too. Great. But, if you follow the story laid out by the TV screens, this mysterious attack is happening at Thorpe Park. Okay, cool. But this leads to a variety of questions: Why's there a church at Thorpe Park? Or a billboard advertising paracetamol? (Actually, this is the park with Colossus in, so that makes sense.... ). And why are there TVs reporting the news at a theme park? And why is it being reported in such a blasé fashion? And why are we willingly going to ride these creatures? Obviously I'm going OTT here and this is all light hearted. And none of it really matters, when at its core it's a classic destruction theme. But it highlights again the mish-mash of thoughts that are going on. And if you want to create something that has 'immersive storytelling' throughout, you can't have that going on. The TVs and news report were likely a late-on decision done to try and add something to the queue line to make it more interesting. Arguably the main queue line doesn't need it as there's enough to watch to keep people entertained. I wonder if they've just given up on them after realising sticking TVs in a queue line exposed to all the elements isn't the best idea. On a related note, which I might be incredibly slow in realising, but is the woman from the news reports in the queue line videos...Kay Burley?!

I mean it isn't the woke brigade that jumped on this, it's just bots and trolls trying to cause division. The fact the original poster is an anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown, anti-mask conspiracy nut tells me all I need to know about the original tweet and in this example, its best not to engage at all as it spreads the rubbish further.