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Forums have unfortunately died away a bit. The rise of social media is a big part of that. And then with Discords, Slacks, Twitches and whatever else (I feel like an old man talking about that as I have no clue on these things properly), it just adds. The idea of signing up for one specific website to discuss one specific topic is just foreign now. Thorpe-specific as well, it's no coincidence that here at TPM the forums dropped off during a time when investment in the park was at rock bottom. We went from coasters every 3 years, and new attractions yearly, to bouncy castles and mazes being the 'big new things'. And yeah, theme park enthusiasm has changed dramatically. 10 years ago, it focused a lot on "trying" to find out whatever you could, but deep down knowing you would just get the odd glimpse here and there. You might hear from / know someone who legitimately knows something, and you got a kick out of knowing it. But it was all a lot more 'wait and see'. Now, influencer culture more broadly means people have quite literally been able to turn their hobbies into a career of sorts. It's their job to find out the information, be that camping out for days on end, working alongside the parks or what have you. It feels a lot more stifled. This point really resonated with me @Inferno We're currently experiencing a double-edged sword of information. Getting 'behind the curtain' is so much easier now, be that through press nights, VIP BTSs, park open-ness, etc. But sometimes a bit of ignorance can be bliss too, or that more scattergun approach feels more natural. Seeing behind the curtain is very controlled, parks will naturally sweep the dirt under the rug before they do that (literally, in some cases). There was something much more exciting about just catching glimpses here and there in a more uncontrolled way. At the same time, just reading your Face it Alone review from Studio 13, it made me go "Damn, I wish we had a POV of it. I would love to remember how it looked during that middle third which is such a blur". Even if we know that a press night POV would be over-egged, it would still be good to see (okay, there wasn't a 'press night' in the way we're used to describing that for FN14, but you know what I mean). We're really in a golden age of being able to document and archive stuff, which I think is positive. Going back to a more TPM-focus now, I've literally spent more than half my life as a member on this forum. I've made life-long friendships here. At one point, I house-shared with a couple of people I met through TPM. Whilst that's stuff that could happen on Twitter / Discord / Whatever, it just felt much more natural here. I always feel like these days I could contribute more to the forums, but as Benin says, growing up means forums slowly subside in the priority list. With TPM, we keep the socials active. The forums and the website have suffered. The main website in particular; backend-wise, it's ancient, and those problems have crept into the look of the website (you can't actually read any news article at the moment, lol whoops). We're looking at fixing that over summer though... We intend to keep the forums running. We're probably long removed from the days of running meets. But we never ran paid-for meets/events (even when we got ERTs, BTSs, etc), and don't intend to go down that way. TPM is just a couple of people who like Thorpe and like sharing that enthusiasm with others, through both sharing updates and discussing things. Don't want to make it a career or anything. We've never gone down the Youtube/vlogging route, simply because we don't want to talk in front of a camera. We're not changing who we are, even if that means we're becoming a bit of relic to enthusiasm of yesteryear. Anyway, that was very tangential to this and rambling and hijacking of the topic at hand. The whole theme park enthusiasm has changed, some of it for the better, some for the worse. I guess the good thing is you can still make of it what you want. It's just a shame it's harder to keep it 'as it was', if you will, when the rest of it has changed around you.

@pluk has posted on TPM again?! We've missed you!!

I can give insight here. A few years ago (well, more than a few years now...8 years ago...I'm old), I had a job at Thorpe which was focusing primarily on 'looking after queue times', if you will. I had to update queue times that would appear on the boards, along with some other things. At the time when I joined, it was simply a glance and estimate. It was a two-way operation: the ride operator was required to contact the 'queue person' (ie: me) via phone once an hour (at a minimum), saying what they thought the queue time was. The queue person would also walk around the park, visually looking at all queues and updating the queue times. How is it physically done? All updates were done via a secure webpage. The queue person walked around with an iPad and could update directly all queue times from said webpage. Other people (park managers, etc) had access and ability to as well (will get onto this later). How would ride operators know what the queue time is? This was done by looking at the length of the queue, which for many rides, they could only see through via the ride's security cameras. The security cameras ride operators have access to focus primarily on ride areas (making sure no one is entering them), meaning coverage was mixed. Ride operators would sometimes not see much of the queue. Note: Queue lines are still covered by CCTV cameras, but ride operators won't have access to them all necessarily. The ride operator job is to run the ride safely. And that's a key point, the ride operator is there to run the ride safely, look after the ride hosts, etc. Updating queue times can go quite low on the list of priorities. Also, ride operators generally didn't have much knowledge of queue times. It would all be based on own experiences, either from when they might have visited the park and queued themselves, other operators, what guests say, etc. Generally they would get good ballpark figures, but when you hit busy periods, that experiential data is less helpful. How would the Queue Person know what the queue time is? Same idea. They would walk around, see the queue time, and update it. The advantage they had is they could see the whole queue, and have knowledge of what else is going on around the park. Eg: Colossus operator might not be aware that Saw closed down recently, meaning more people might flock there if they're nearby and want to ride a coaster. Queue Person would know this, and could keep a closer eye as a result. So it was all guesswork? Going onto my experience of working in this position as the queue man. I noted straight away there was very minimal written down information about how the physical length of a queue translates to a queue time. Of course, everyone was aware that this is a very muddled science: it depends on operations, number of trains, number of Fastrack / RAP users, delays, etc etc. Many of those things ride operators will not be aware of explicitly. Some of those things are out of a singular person's control. However, there is a way of turning it into a science. "Queueing theory" is a very rich area of maths, for example, which gives us many lessons we can learn. There's a lot of social science studies into how people will fill up a given space with strangers. There is access to lots of data about the rides; their uptime, their throughput/utilisation, so on and so on. You can combine all of those factors together to give a better estimate for queue times, one which relies on data, rather than just guesswork. Taking the Guessing out of the Guesswork I'll chuck in a bit of the numbers and theory here. Feel free to skip over. When thrown into a barriered queue, you'll find people spread out in similar ways. Except in extreme scenarios (very wide or very narrow queue lines), about 11 people will fill up 3m of space. This is to do with how groups of people will huddle together, groups will leave a space, etc. That data comes from a published research paper back in 2014/15 I believe and focused on UK audiences. Would be interesting to see if that's changed post-Covid, or is different in other countries. Anyways. If we know that, we can work out how many people a physical queue line holds. For example, if the Colossus queue line was 300m long, it would hold roughly 1100 people. And you can split that up; if the queue line from the airgates to the tunnel of Colossus' queue was 90m long, the number of people between the queue line and boarding is 330. (NB: Lengths made up). Now, we know what Colossus' theoretical throughput is. Internally, there is also a target throughput. But even better, parks track their throughputs for each ride. So you can see what they're actually achieving. If, over the course of last week, Colossus got a throughput of 550pph, and it had a full, 300m long queue line, you could see that it should be a 2 hour queue. Obviously that ignores Fastrack and RAP users. But again, you know the number of RAP and Fastrack users each day. You can take those into account, in some way. You don't know when they're going to use, but you can take it into account. For example, if there were 700 Colossus Fastrack tickets sold for an 8 hour park day, and 500 RAP users expected, you can account for that. If Colossus was getting a throughput of 550ph, over 8 hours it would get 4400 riders. But 1200/4400 of those riders came from Fastrack or RAP. So that means only 73% of riders are coming through the main queue, or rather the throughput of the main queue is 73% of 550, which is 400pph. Now if that 300m long queue of Colossus is filled with 1100 people, and you know 400pph are going through that queue, you can advertise the queue at 2h45min, rather than 4 hours. (Again, all numbers are fake here) On top of that, you can also take into account the chance of a shutdown. If Colossus has an uptime of 95%, then that means its closed 5% of the time. Of course, this is unlikely to spread evenly across the day, and usually occurs in a chunk, but if you add on that extra, you create a buffer which allows for a 'chance of shutdown', or just anything going wrong (slower operations, etc). I'll take this chance here to say: ride staff do not artificially inflate queue times to sell Fastrack tickets. I've no doubt it happens whereby a queue is advertised much longer than it is, and people have ended up buying Fastrack. But the queue time is not inflated to drive Fastrack sales. In saying that, I think it's better to advertise a queue time which might be 5-10 minutes longer since it will: 1) Create a buffer in case of issues and 2) Create happy guests - "Oh, the queue was advertised as 50 minutes, but we actually queued 40...result!" So, the way that I planned to calculate (note the word calculate, not estimate/guess) queue times would be: (N*(1+D))/(T*(1-(F/R))), where: N is number of people in queue D is percentage downtime T is throughput F is number of Fastrack and RAP users expected R is total ridership expected for the day Those 4 last variables would be based off numbers from how the ride has run over a period of several days / weeks prior, giving it a good outlook at how it should operate in practice. It wouldn't be perfect, but it does the job. And of course, number of people in a queue is again estimated, but can be done reasonably well. Of course, this isn't something that can be done in your head or anything, but can all be programmed to be done automatically, so long as you say the number of people in the queue roughly. When I trialled this system, it worked well, with overall accuracy of queue times improved, and less complaints about inaccurate queue times, which also saw a reduction in complaints about queue times altogether for a short period of time. (Those two might not be linked, but I'm gonna claim it's because of me). I'm a Celebrity was one which hugely benefitted, in part down to the huge buy in from the Entertainments Team running it. The issue here is, simply put, getting buy in from others. I required a bit more help setting up the automation and implementing it on a broader scale. Some people are opposed to change, some people are opposed to change where they don't understand every detail, some are just happy with the way things are. Some of Matt's analysis here is exactly the sort of thing which would be excellent for the operations teams at Merlin theme parks to see, so they can have more detailed data to help them determine how they're performing and the reflection on advertised queue times. But from my past experience within the parks, you would find yourself encountering people who: -Don't understand the analysis behind this, so immediately disregard it, -Would love the bottom line, but wouldn't use the data to help improve it, -Disregard everything and say everything is fine, -Agree with everything, but don't have the time/resources to action upon anything that would help. Obviously, with shifts in Merlin, this may be different now. But it's such a difficult thing to achieve. There are (naturally) some excellent data-driven minds who work in Merlin, who would love this stuff too, but they are used in other roles, usually outside of day-to-day operation / outside of attractions entirely. So Merlin know the importance of these things, it just hasn't trickled down to operational success. My time within the queue person job ended back in 2017, and this isn't the place to discuss that. But ultimately, the system devolved into operators phoning a central figure in an office to update queue times, with managers also chipping it. Likely with zero consistency. I don't know how things are this season admittedly, and I've been impressed with the accuracy being better than it has in the past. So maybe they've got something a bit better now. FAQ Do all parks do this guesswork? Within Merlin, I believe so yes. I think Towers have staff at rides update queue times, and Chessington was similar. Why did Thorpe need a central figure to update queue times? Couldn't it just be done by each ride through the website? The issue with the website and multiple users would be the constant need to refresh. If, say, there were 2 people on the website, and Person A updates Colossus' queue time from 10 minutes to 50 minutes, the site according to Person B would still have Colossus' queue time listed as 10 minutes, even though it was displaying on boards as 50. Then, if Person B updated Swarm's queue time from 30min to 20min, without refreshing the website, they would also update Colossus' queue time back to 10 minutes. So yeah, clunky system. I don't know if they've updated this. *This park* advertises queue times super accurately, how do they do it? I don't know. I would love to know how parks like Efteling, Europa, etc do it. Why can't parks just count the number of people going into a queue and going on a ride, using barriers, infrared, whatever? These work nicely in theory, but are open to abuse (people spinning barriers) and prone to error. The Alton Towers app had some Bluetooth tracking tech a while back, where it could see where guests were spending more of their time, etc. I don't know if they still do that, but I believe attractions.io (the company that does the Merlin apps and more) have loads of cool backend features. With Saw though, they had a very cool (rather complicated) piece of software they trialled. The name escapes me, but I'm sure I'll find it sooner or later. Basically though, it would track people in all queue lines, to see how long people were spending in the queues, and use it to give accurate queue times. It would update regularly, and give to the minute readings (eg, 47 minutes). This software was just installed to work with existing CCTV cameras. And, it worked well. Very well. Queue times were accurate. The system wasn't prone to error or breaking. It just worked, so you could leave it. In saying that, there were operational issues: -If you ever needed to over-ride it, you had to reset all the cameras to get the system back -It would never display a queue time lower than 10 minutes -It didn't work when the queue became external (ie out of the main queue) -People were weirded out by the exact numbers The middle two are the bigger issues here, but again, not huge in the grand scheme of things. There were bigger, more damning issues: -It was expensive. I don't know how much, but given every other queue time system is free pretty much, spending money on one is an issue. Spending lots of money is a bigger issue. -It required static CCTV cameras on the entire queue line. Whilst the entirety of Thorpe Park is covered by CCTV, many of these have the ability to change angle, which can help in a security situation. If you needed static CCTV cameras for the queue lines, it meant having to buy, set up, operate and maintain more new ones. And for some queue lines, this would require an awful lot (Colossus would be nightmare, with its sprawling queue line, going through tunnels, foliage, etc). Ultimately, whilst it gave accurate queue times, the initial outlay cost, and ongoing maintenance costs, weren't justifiable. Do accurate queue time really matter? Just to round off on this very long, tangential post (sorry Matt!). How important are accurate queue times? At the low level, yes, it's handy to know if a queue is 5 minutes or 10-15 minutes. At an extreme level, it's good to know if a queue is 1 hour or 2 hours. But beyond that? Does it matter if a queue is 30 minutes or 35 minutes? 110 minutes or 130 minutes? I think sometimes there's an overpush on queue time accuracy: if a queue is advertised at 110mins and I queue 130mins, I've still queued about 2 hours for a ride, with added annoyance that I've queued an extra 20 minutes than I was told. It might be better if there's ranges that are advertised (0-10, 10-20, etc, 90-120, 120-150, etc). It buckles you up for the length of the queue, tempers expectations, but gives leeway for a park too. You can have the most accurate queue times in the world, but if they're long and / or slow, that's all people will care or remember about.

I do miss the old days however I'm very appreciative of the accessibility of theme park enthusiasm now. When I first got into rides it was a very white male dominated environment. Whilst that is certainly still true to some extent, I'm glad that meets through Towers Times for example seem much more diverse then before. I miss the discussion on forums though and twitter is certainly no replacement as opinions there are very much ingrained. The amount of people that tell me Zadra is top tier RMC... it just baffles the mind

I think with the expansion of Facebook and then Discord the groups on forums just migrated to those places. Being able to make posting footage of things a job also has made a massive contribution to the way the media of it all is consumed and distributed. How many construction updates were just someone taking photos on a random visit rather than being camped out for days on end or a 30 minute video with an asinine presenter and a click bait title? Also many who used them in the "heyday" have grown up, gotten jobs and lives that take precedent over forum times. I will say though some things do irk me about modern enthusiasts. Which isn't solely a theme park based issue. The almost cult-like following of certain "influencers" where their word is law, the way in which everything must be amazing or terrible with zero nuance to things. On the other hand, I do think some places had some very unwelcoming "veterans" and often internal politics/cliques/issues that did not help matters for newcomers or regulars. As mentioned though, this is not an issue solely in this hobby. There's a lot of forums I used to frequent which are very dead, even with there being constant new stuff happening. Discord is king now I feel of the old forum life.

Still have a pair of DR Pepper pants from this event. These were the days.

Thank you everyone who’s responded! Some really interesting points. I agree with the point raised a couple of times here that visiting Thorpe specifically + half term was only ever going to exasperate it, and it’s true that it is Thorpe where I get the feeling of being “too old” the most. It’s not so much an issue elsewhere, especially abroad weirdly. Josh, that is utterly terrifying that a 15 year old joining the forum today would be younger than Stealth 😳 I too remember being on forums and at the park around that age watching the construction of Stealth. It doesn’t feel that long ago does it! I’ll be honest I still see Saw as “pretty new” 😂 👨🏼‍🦳 I REMEMBER WHEN IT WAS ALL FIELDS 😂 To be honest I agree with you all - I too don’t think you can be too old to visit and enjoy theme parks, and I have no plans to stop! This forum alone is evidence that there’s a keen following among a slightly older audience. Just interested to hear if others ever felt the same occasionally.

I'd be curious if this is a general feeling you have, or a feeling which is highlighted when you're specifically at Thorpe? I know sometimes I feel old whenever I visit Thorpe, sometimes too old. Another thing that makes me feel old is that I joined theme park forums when I was 15. If a 15 year old was to join the forums today, there's a good chance they would have been born after Stealth opened. I remember watching it being built, as well as The Flying Fish and Model World prior pretty vividly. Jeez. I know you say when you visit a park these days, there's a couple of moments where you feel like the odd one out. But that feeling was expanded at Fright Nights (during half term too I think?). It certainly makes sense that the feeling would be highlighted more in that case. It could also be one of those psychology things. Are you feeling like the odd one out because you think you are, and so are looking for evidence to support that? And so, in turn, you notice all the younger groups, and don't see many people who look a similar age to yourself / are older? For anyone reading who doesn't quite get what I mean: you don't see many yellow cars on the road these days, do you? But now that thought is in your head, you will be more acutely aware of yellow cars and notice them a lot more, and realise that - whilst they're not common - there's certainly a fair few about! Maybe during your Towers visit have in the back of your mind to exclusively look for groups of adults in their later 20s/early 30s...maybe you'll be surprised with how many you see? To stop with the psycho-analysing and answer the more direct question: no, you can't be too old for theme parks. I think there's certain social norms which can be at play (for example, going to a children's park alone can seem suspect in some people's minds...but that's completely different). Theme parks (and moreso rides) are a unique blend of escapism, thrill, story telling and holiday all in one, along with other options - such as the idea of 'collecting' ridden coasters/visiting/number of rides - if you so choose. Few hobbies offer such a blend, along with additional versatility and flexibility. I don't think you can be too old for any of the things theme parks offer. It's just whether you feel like the combination it offers is what you want, or if you want a narrower focus. One thing I've noticed over the years of being on forums is some people who were (and still are!) really interested in theme parks have similar other hobbies too. A couple of examples... -Live theatre and similar (escapism and story telling) -Skydiving / mountain biking / more "extreme" sports (thrill) -Travelling (self explanatory) Maybe that's another reason why there's seemingly less people who visit parks? As people get older, they get easier access to / realise other hobbies which share similar traits to visiting theme parks, and focus their attention there a bit more? That diversification then means they spend less time at parks, and then the concentration/percentage of younger people visiting parks decreases. Another thing which I note as well, is that specific park enthusiasm is much more concentrated with younger people. Unsurprisingly, there's very few 15 year olds which are interested in theme parks more broadly: their focus is on one or two parks, and usually their local park. But after say 15 years of continual visits, that local park won't have the same appeal or interest, and are likely more interested to parks more broadly. Again meaning they spend less time visiting their local park, and instead visiting a broader range of parks (again meaning that the average age of certain park visitors feels very young, and the late 20 / early 30 somethings all feel very old whenever they visit). I feel like I've waffled an awful lot and not said much. But in short: -You're not too old for theme parks (and if you are, I only have a maximum of 3 years left before I am...) -Thorpe Park is probably the park in the UK which would highlight this feeling the most -I think people's interests in theme parks spreads in one way or another as they get older, which can mean there's a skewed view as to how old park visitors are

As Matt said, we are never too old, but our feelings for things change. I am more than twice your age and love rides and roller coasters but I have often commented on how different people are, both emotionally and physically. Our appreciation and need for things change. Some would never consider using the rides, me? I have never been interested in basketball. If we were all the same, there would be one heck of a queue for the ride we love. The demographics of society affects the type of people attending parks, I.e. The majority of youngsters are not in the type of employment from which there would be difficulty in having time off. Again for me in the past I worked shifts, so that helped. Don't let your age control whether you ride or not, let your feelings decide that, and whatever you choose, enjoy it.

Agreed on most of your review. Phantasialand has moments of class mixed with areas of complete rubbish. For every Taron there's three rides begging to be destroyed. I can't say the same for Europa Park where every ride has a purpose and is looked after to the highest degree. Yes even snow bench the ride. I value capacity highly and I could rip my hair out waiting for either of the Winja brothers.

In my defence I'm not just a wimp! 😃 Goudrix has been retracked since I visited and supposedly is immeasurably better than it was before. Imagine your second ride magnified. I'm not going to forgive that contraption its sins. Sad to hear you didn't like Zeus, I thought it was incredible. Hopefully it's just you having bad taste and not that they've let it deteriorate!

Very interesting read up as always Whilst Kings Island to me is not a park to travel all the way to America for on its own, it is most certainly worth a visit when combined with days at Cedar Point. I actually enjoyed the atmosphere at the park when I visited but certainly not an atmosphere on the level of Cedar Point. Mystic Timbers to me was by far the star of the show at this park. Whilst front row on it isn’t really that great, the back row felt utterly frantic and the ride at night is sentastional and as such made it my number 1 wooden coaster (even ahead of Wodan and Balder) I do think Diamondback is probably one of my least favourite B&M Hypers but I was quite lucky to have had some solid rides on it airtime wise. I do agree that that trim is utterly stupid though. Banshee...where do I even start!!?? Can somebody please tell B&M that NOBODY LIKES THOSE DAMN VESTS!! Honestly was it not for those vests, it could have been up there with Raptor and Montu as one of my favourite inverts. Thanks to those vests it’s possibly my least favourite and that includes Nemesis Inferno!! I do think the park desperately needs a true WORLD CLASS/ELITE level stand out coaster to go with the current line up. Hopefully the 2020 Giga coaster will give them that.

I absolutely agree with you that the way Cedar Point takes care of its heritage rides is to be respected and admired. It’s something that often goes under the radar with this magnificent park given the focus on all the newer coasters they have.

Will hopefully be doing Kings Island’s ‘’Fastrack equivalent’’ when I’m hopefully out there again in a few weeks. I’ll let you all know what it’s like. From current experience, Port Aventura is the only park I’ve gone full out on ‘’Fastrack equivalent’’ only because of their diabolical batching ratios and that their clientele can’t seem to grasp the basic concept of queuing.

Any idea when a Part 2 might make an appearance? Always love your blogs to provide some inspiration!

Very much agree, Phantasialand is one of the best parks out there and somewhere I strongly enjoy visiting. My first visit did wonders for me, especially Taron, Chiapas and Mamba. I'm also another who actually somewhat likes the Ghost Train Omnimover, even though it's dated and will probably be the next thing ripped out. I feel a major modern dark ride is the next thing they should build. Hollywood though can go though and make way for something bigger, better and more modern.

Phantasialand isn't the best theme park in the world as there are some areas that need serious work. However, it's well on its way to being that park. It just needs to jettison some of the weaker attractions such as the Chinese omnimover and the Hollywood tour ride. As it stands though, rides like Taron, Black Mamba and Chiapas are simply outstanding, the work they've done on River Quest has massively improved the area. Europa Park and Phantasialand though are some of Europes best. Lucky Germans

I'll be doing all of those (except Screamland) plus Xtreme Scream Park and Legoland fireworks. It will be a first time for all of them for me (except Fright Nights. I think I'm most excited for Scarefest personally.

The lack of write up for Chiapas disappoints me. I hate Log flumes but that ride does things to me that no other water ride does.

Another good report Matt along with good pics. Enjoy your studying, remember, it's not luck but you proving your worth.

Wow fantastic! How odd to see it so quiet though? I suppose the weather could play a big part there

Plopsa is a lovely little park and RtH has obviously been such a wise move for them. I've been to the park 3 times since its opened and never seen it on 2 trains (which included a trip in the middle of summer and it on a 1hr+ queue...), so hopefully they can operate and maintain it appropriately. Anubis is slept on a bit these days. Good ride. I'm intrigued to see what they do next. Their indoor Bumba World has no doubt filled a gap / extending the offering for younger audiences, but I thought it was a bit rubbish in comparison to the Maya Land, with the dark ride being quite weak. The park could probably benefit from a new, more modern, high throughput 1m restriction coaster. Vekoma/Gerstlauer have good offerings on that front. Big issue I have with Plopsa - as you noted - is the cost. Food is expensive and not good quality. Park tickets are reasonable enough, but then with parking, etc, it's not cheap. I've noticed that they've been doing more UK-focused marketing lately, so they do seem to be capitalising on their location more, so it'll be interesting to see what they do next. Looking forward to your thoughts on Asterix!!

Thank you Josh! I’m loving all the details behind the scenes! A proper nerdy enthusiast binge this thread. I kind of agree with that last comment there - I don’t think it matters at all if the queue times are slightly off. At the end of the day, the queue time board really only serves to help you decide “ok let’s do it” or “woah nope not this time” - it’s a nice to know, but an estimate really is enough.

Great write up, I remember frequently reading many of the park forums back in the day, before deciding to join up myself. it does feel strange how different the theme park enthusiast world now is. Definitely more controlled and refine to say the least. Not to mention many of the additional park sites have closed and disappeared now also. Times do change.

In answer to your question re Swarms restraints, yes they have been altered. Before, the vests would lock in place when the train was dispatched. This season they no longer lock in place. Much more comfy and I can actually breathe on the breakrun now 🤣

Thanks for sharing and going into such detail. One of the few parks left in the UK I need to do!

Another interesting and well worded report. If you are looking for a Sunday event to get away from the crowds, I would recommend the Orlando Science Center.

Great write up, I always get drawn to Poseidon's Fury, trying to work out how it's done. Enjoy your time as we enjoy your report.

Awesome TR mate!

The trouble with long cred runs that involve a tonne of driving is if you don't share it you can get super affected by it. Especially when most of the drives in between American parks are stupidly long. Doing 2 full weeks of it in Germany wasn't fun come the end of it. I liked Hershey, definitely good to see love for Lightning Racer.

Great blog, what I like most about Europa is that there is no fastrack or priority lanes which really helps move the queueline in my opinion. On the other hand you could argue that it's not as disability friendly as Merlin's parks. What I dislike most about Europa is the lack of free drinking water / water fountains. One thing Merlin offers in abundance at all it's parks (I know it's also law in the UK). That said the detail of theming, great ride selection and great operations makes Europa a resort leagues above Merlin and arguably better value than Disney and Universal. When you buy a Europa admission, you get equal access to all the attractions.

I'll be off over to the East Coast area; Six Flags Great Adventure and Hersheypark, then down towards Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens Williamsburg!

A naughty double post... Here's the extended post I mentioned chatting about Face it Alone: Looks like my write up from my Original Face it Alone is on my old-old laptop, and I dread to think how long that will take me to find and boot up. But still, you've inspired me to re-write it up...keep watching this space!

I thought the exact same thing about Adventureville - weirdly reminds me of the bubbleworks. Ive not visited adventure island since 2017 and gutted about over the hill - I genuinely enjoyed that ride. Axis looks interesting - is it very intense? I wasn’t a huge fan of Scorpion so not really fussed that it has gone and the last time I rode Dragons Claw I had to go to the toilet to be sick 🤢 . As for Time Machine - did it once - never again 😱 - horrific thing! Great review - was hoping to take my nephews there but I think it’s best to stay away after what you mentioned about lack of social distancing etc 👌

Phantasialand on the whole is generally a great park and one of my favourites. A lot of their rides such as Taron & Chiapas I consider masterpieces in their own ways. There is definitely room to improve the offering further and a lot of it comes down to the entrance setup and older attractions. I think China might be getting redeveloped next but the entrance setup is definitely a challenging one as Josh’s points mention. As for food, I consider it arguably the best park for food, from quick service to sit down restaurants. I do recommend Rutmoore’s Tavern if you return or the ice cream place near Chiapas if you fancy a snack.

I hated the batching system on Hyperion, so sad to learn it's been adopted on Zadra too. Just confusion and faff for no real reason in my opinion. A shame you don't particularly rate Energylandia as a park. Whilst it's true parts of it have a fun fair feel to it, I think a good chunk of it is a decent park with enough fun rides and okay levels of theming to be considered on par with plenty of other parks out there. And they're forever improving too, which is great to see.

Glad you enjoyed Phantasialand, it’s certainly a park with impressive rides and some of the richest theming out there. Taron, definitely an impressive coaster with lush surroundings and great pacing. I do see what you mean about the terrible cattle pen queue section though and hope they won’t need this in the future. Chiapas is probably my favourite water ride for the disco room alone and Black Mamba is certainly a solid B&M invert. Shame River Quest is still having so many reliability issues because it’s such a crazy yet amazing rapids ride. Talocan is just as much a show as a ride. Temple is by far the weakest attraction there (alongwith Wakobato) as it takes up so much space yet offers so little really apart from 10 minutes of a slow meandering coaster and three lift hills. It is expected they will remove it (along with the Hollywood ride) for redevelopment in the coming years due to insufficient expansion space. I think Geister Riksha though is going next, because the China area is strongly rumoured to be the next area to be rethemed/redeveloped. Fly looks great though and will hopefully be another worthwhile addition to an excellent park.

Gothenburg is a nice city too. We spent a day going round it and doing general touristy things. If I'm honest, I'm not that into the whole sightseeing / aimlessly wandering round a city thing, but for those who are into it, Gothenburg is no doubt a good place. And as has been mentioned plenty of times on here, easy to get to too...

I went to my first Scarefest last week - already done Fright Nights since 2013, and did Tulleys a few weeks ago. Totally agree with you about The Welcoming. As for Sub Species - that's the only scare maze that has truly terrified me to the point that I ran out and burst into tears whilst having an asthma attack and bad anxiety - I'd probably do it again in the future despite it being fricking terrifying - but it achieved for me an actual scare - the dude with the chainsaw at the end was bloody terrifying ?

Just a normal ticket for the evening was all I had which gave me access to all the attractions and evening entertainment minus the rides. Longest queue was for Hayride but only 30 minutes maximum after it just opened after sunset. Was quite surprised actually how fast the queues were moving during the evening, mostly due to minimal number of Fastrack users I presume. Would be interesting to see what their fireworks display is like after this event, although, Alton's one has me occupied for next weekend this year. Will consider it next time though!

Blimey, that's a hell of a write up; I feel like I've been there myself after reading that! I didn't realise how easy it was to get to, certainly on my to do list.

Euromir can run up to 9 trains! 5 Would be a really quiet day

Europa is a lush park. Very much everything the place does, delivers and provides is purely for dedication to the resort. The likes of Wodan and Blue Fire may be amazing, but it's a park you can happily enjoy regardless of doing any riding and just walking around and appreciating the place with its many hidden gems around. The pictures alone just show how amazing the place is and make me want to return in the near future.

That V2 is so fab as well, damn the spite </3 I liked DK, though I dont' remember thinking it was particularly compact... I'm also not a fan of them spiting Roar cos that was really fun, but jeez a fair amount has changed in that corner by V2 and Joker, Superman is the 3rd coaster they've had there since I went almost 10 years ago!

To be fair back when we visited in 2011 Movieland spited us due to midweek closure, so Mark can honestly not give a true opinion on the place...

Thank you Ben for another exceptional park report. Out of the suspended coasters you've ridden, which one would be your favourite? This is certainly a park I would like to visit in the future. Would getting there without driving be difficult and would this be an expensive trip compared to anywhere outside of Europe?

I share your love for Denmark @Mark9! It really punches above its weight on coasters given its size (the UK is 11 times more populated...), and is a lovely place - clean, colourful, friendly - to boot. Juvelen, Piraten, and Orkanen are all superlative rides in their respective categories.

They basically own Rust though, almost every house is a B&B. Silver Stars queue closes at 8pm but other than that I don't see issues. The park is open till midnight once a year, and the Vampire Club lead to loads of people walking through Rust at 2/3am so I don't quite know why they couldn't get 1am agreed even if it's just for the more peak nights of the event. And Roland wants to have the national rail line extended to Europa plus more hotels and a waterpark, I think there's a good relationship between the Macks, Rust and the whole of Germany it seems

I went to Screamland last year and had a great time aside from the fact that my trip through the final cut and dead and breakfast were ruined by being in a group of 50 odd people to get rid of crowds. I was really looking forward to experience those attractions properly this year and so made a trip there yesterday as well. Its safe to say we had very different experiences in the mazes aside from Bloody Mirror. SPOILERS AHEAD My group didn't meet a single actor within Festino's Forgotton Funhouse until the knife thrower. We were expecting to meet Pearlywhite the clown at the end of the maze yet the advertised character did not appear to be there. Instead there was a single clown above us with a chainsaw which sounded more like a hair dryer and we simply walked straight through and out. The Paradise Foundation was very similar in the sense that we only saw a couple of actors after opening scene. One was a bandaged woman who was standing in the middle of a corridor and screamed as we went past, which would have been scary if we hadn't have already seen her. Then there was just one other actor that let us into the finale scene which left us a little bit let down. We also found that there was far too much light throughout most of the scenes. The Final Cut was by far the best attraction we experienced during the night, loads of actors who seemed to come from nowhere. The sets were pretty well thought out with the entrance through the cinema screen being a personal favourite scene. Dead and Breakfast is exceptionally well themed throughout, and I agree, Fag Ash Lil is a fantastic character. Her boyfriend again did appear to be everywhere in the maze and the ending was carried out very well. Great performances all round. I guess it just shows how two people can have completely different experiences on the same night at places like this. For our group it appeared that because the event wasn't all that busy (despite selling out fast track tickets) that therefore the actors didn't need to try as hard. The roaming actors were very good, they even chased a few groups around parts of the park shouting and screaming. However I feel that they would have been better placed inside of the mazes to allow for more scares where it counts. Hopefully it was just a case of my group and I being unlucky. I should also point out that even though I personally don't rate the mazes very highly and my review sounds rather negative, I did still have a great night. The atmosphere in the park was great, loads of smoke bellowing out from the Ferris Wheel and the Screamland sign. I love the vintage rides within the park and every single member of staff I met was incredibly helpful. Overall a great night regardless of the experiences I had in the mazes and would still recommend the event despite the criticisms.

Glad you enjoyed yourself... I was the Chopshop's mohawk chainsaw hillbilly and I'm glad you have had another fantastic experience at Shocktoberfest! Everyone puts in an incredible amount of work to keep up the standard and improve year upon year... And also thanks for the constructive feedback as you have said this was the first night of real guests and improvements can and will be made.