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To discuss the official refurbishment project at Thorpe. Revealed in the Christmas video 2023 the following is planned for the 2024 season. Colossus repaint (half initially), control system upgrade, dispatch screen, rockwork and theming repairs/upgrades to queue and long term track replacement. Stealth station/photo kiosk repaint, refurb to entrance & queue, new TV screens Rush & vortex repainted to original colours Samurai repainted red/black (AKA original chessington colour scheme) Refurbished toilets in Amity Cove, Big Easy Boulevard & Swarm Island. Virtual interior rebuild of Old Town toilets including Gender neutral toilets, baby change and a second "changing places" toilet Tidal wave work including new bridge, exit ramp and more open view of lagoon. KFC refurb/enhancements (not removing Shark or theming) New digital screens, park wide audio enhancements, further new food outlets, shade cover in some queue lines Further refurbishments to some classics. Discuss and share further ideas as the are announced. Video below...

Let's hope this happens more than once like every other similar project akin to this at other parks. Reverting back to old Samurai colours is a choice. That's capitalism for you. And why half the infrastructure in the country is in the state it is.

All this is what happens when you put Alice in charge of park operations, all hail my queen.

There’s a clear shift in how Merlin spend money the last couple of years tbf, I would guess the combo of a new CEO / going back to private have made this more possible. Agree all this stuff should be standard but I guess it isn’t in recent times here so it is nice to see. Hopefully once it is done they can keep it up - even just smaller touches up around the park each year can keep it up to a decent standard whilst not costing multi millions which I can only assume all this is costing to bring it up from where it currently is / was.

Discuss all Sparkle Project related stuff here... https://forum.maniahub.com/topic/28860-sparkle-project/

According to this video, Samurai is getting repainted back into its old color black and red scheme, as formerly seen at Chessington Resort. Not only to fit with its own logo, but also to fit perfectly with SAW - The Ride, as both rides are currently in the Old Town. Have a look and see what you think.

Wish granted.

If anyone's interested, I decided to have a bit of fun this evening and cobble together a rough Planet Coaster recreation of Hyperia to gauge a rough idea of the sort of forces and speeds we might be hitting through some of those elements. I'm aware that the profiling and such aren't perfect, and as such, I'd take some of the exact g-forces with a pinch of salt (for instance, I don't think we'll be pulling 5.6G at the bottom of the dive loop...), but I built the large elements to roughly the same sort of height as they will be in real life (lift hill 236ft, Immelmann 157ft, large outerbank 164ft, dive loop 137ft, small outerbank 65ft, final airtime hill 48ft), so I think it should give a rough ballpark idea of speed in particular. I hope you like it! Here's a POV and some cinematic shots of my creation: And if you don't want to watch the video, here is the heatmap of vertical g-forces throughout the ride: As well as the heatmap of speed throughout the ride: And the stats of the ride: And just for fun, here are some shots of the layout in the day and at night: In terms of speed and forces; I think it paints a very promising picture! If my recreation is at all accurate, it suggests that we could be absolutely flying through the Immelmann, with the ride maintaining a speed of nearly 50mph even at the Immelmann's highest point! The other two large elements maintain speeds of 35-40mph at their highest points. In terms of trimming in the splashdown; I erred towards the more fierce end of the trimming spectrum and went for a deceleration rate of 4m/s2, which reduced the speed by 10-15mph. And even then, the outerbank and final airtime hill still appear very potent, with negative g-forces of nearly -1G still being registered in both elements! So overall, then, I reckon Hyperia could pack some brilliant g-forces throughout and hold its speed really well! I hope you like my recreation! I have to say, this has also reminded me just how much fun getting stuck into a good Planet Coaster build is... I really need to get back into Planet Coaster, as I haven't really had too much time for it as of late and it shows. I haven't updated any of my ongoing park projects for the forum in nearly 2 years! If you'd like to play with my recreation yourself, here's the Steam Workshop link where you can download it from: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=3113374891