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Tomb Blaster needs binning. What a horrible version it's been turned into. Shows how crap things are when certain sections were waxing lyrical about it. I heard from a good source that they might be looking at car park stuff next year. Not that I used that one because Blue badge spaces but it's needed doing for decades.

Of course, agreed. End of season for TP has always been extremely busy. I think the issue is whether the park focuses investment to meet the demand for 1 week of the year. I remember doing Universal and it took us 3 nights to get around all the mazes. The Studios park was heaving and we couldn't get near the place on actual Halloween. I think my biggest issue is the upcharge (however I'm biased as I come from a time when the mazes were part of the entry ticket price). Universal charges an extra ticket price for the evening (or did when I visited in 2009), and I think it makes sense that Thorpe should. However, I think the way the mazes are currently designed don't meet the demand for this last week of the year from a throughput perspective. (I.e. batching in smaller groups, pre-shows etc). I think its nice that Thorpe are able to offer these experiences, however at some point as the park expands they would need to start looking at volume and throughputs. Granted, the conga line method may be a lesser experience overall, however I think it would be a great challenge for the design teams to do something different with it? Or they put more mazes on. I'm surprised that as part of the Hyperion development site, they didn't factor in a purpose built fright nights building as part of that development. Somewhere to store everything throughout the year and then maybe use the space for 1/2 mazes.

I'm not sure we can really say the park is struggling with capacity most of the time. Thorpe has overall been run pretty well most of the year, far better that Towers and CWoA, but always faces it's largest crowds this week and into the last couple of FN weekends. It's a similar state of affairs all over. Look at King's Island last Friday for example. It's the experience on those days that needs improving such as a slightly lower cap on their 'capacity' and Fastrack much more limited. However, that is money which they won't want to lose as FN brings in a fair proportion for the years income. Think we need to look at the year as a whole for judging capacity and operational issues, rather than a couple of almost sell out days. Last week and the first couple of weekends (aside from a specific Sunday) crowds were completely manageable and park ran well.

I think you misunderstood me. What I meant was, if the park closes at 10pm, some staff could potentially be working until 12pm. I remember when we had 10pm closes, and Megastore was still heaving at 11pm. I didn't get out until 1am. Luckily I lived locally and had understanding parents. If I lived in London or relied on public transport to get home, not sure I would have many options open to me. Regarding mazes, I think its a tricky one. Do you go down the conga line route (Universal), increasing throughputs, or just add more of them? If the park is struggling with capacity, I should imagine it would need to change it up a bit over the coming years, especially with Hyperia on the way.

Once the world realises that capitalism is evil.