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I hate this guy

I'll be making my television debut and appearing on classic quiz show Countdown! My debut is this Friday (Oct 28th), airing at 2.10pm on Channel 4, and of course available on catch up after. There'll also be a bit of geeky chatter and roller coaster puns, because of course they run with me being a roller coaster enthusiast and turned it into my entire personality (not far wrong tbf). Would be lovely if anyone gave my episodes a watch!

God he's good. Must be why he's a mod. Waff zooooooom splosh splish splash I was takin a bath rub a dub dub things are lookng UP. I'm desperate, so where can I.P. We need more time, lord.

I predict that construction for Project Exodus will go vertical on Monday 9th October. I reckon the first supports will go in sometime between 11am and 1pm that day.

Looks like a load of dumped shingle/hardstanding to me, almost certainly for storage, site offices etc. One would assume the loggers trough that's underneath it next to the CFM/LL station building will be the very last piece of Loggers that'll be removed (and then cut into slices to sell as merch innit). I eagerly await the Peepy Poop guy to say something along the lines of: Exodus has something in STORE, and the ROAD maybe shorter then you think. Buckwheats or out of luckwheats Rocky or just rocks Time will tell. Who's Ghost Train is it? (oh hold up went off on a tangent there)

Hopefully it will be used to show replays of live streams where YouTubers say a ride name 50,000 times.

I would sell my soul for Exodus to open tomorrow just so we never have to listen to this nonsense ever again.

You might want to avoid supermarkets for the next couple of months m8

Not once did D.M.K mention crowds or the park being busy as a source of disappointment. All the issues raised were operational and customer services ones completely in the parks control.

Where have I heard these things before? Let me ask my buddy, Derren: "I don't know Josh, I just don't know..."

I went on the BTS tour of the park today. Great tour it should be said; it was headed up by Russ, who is a fantastic speaker. I did mean to ask about the screen, but honestly forgot. It does seem like it won't be fixed for start of season (I believe the park said this in the passholder group a few weeks back too). A real shame. Hopefully they can hide the dead pixels with whatever they put on the screen. Okay, now time for some updates. Everything is still a Work in Progress it should be stressed Toilets Loo enthusiasts rejoice. All the toilets have received some love. Swarm toilets. The walls have been painted green (originally white), and no more foot pedal sinks Megastore toilets are nicely themed Tidal Wave The rebuilt bridge, with the original Pier 13 style. The fire effect is proving very tricky to implement, but is being planned still Big Easy Boulevard Stealth Colossus The park have released that the entrance is a bit flat, and so are looking to add more colour/depth to it, although this will happen mid-season. The shop front looks nice. In terms of the rest of the repaint, and indeed a Sparkle Project continuation, the park hope to do that either next closed season, or the closed season after. The park want to do it regardless, and recognise they need to keep up appearances - literally - now that they've started to do this. Personally, I hope it happens next closed season, as it does look a little jarring in places. The park is looking lovely though, with the Hyperia area coming along and looking smart. There's other small updates too, such as KFC getting refitted and other new food places. Some parts of the park are still a bit tired looking / haven't really been touched. Rumba/Inferno is the big example I would say. And the Sparkling up does highlight how tatty some parts of that area, and the likes of Swarm and Saw, look. I do wonder if this means that, come opening, some enthusiasts will focus too much on those and not the fab stuff that we've seen heavily documented and shouted out about. But yes, it's clear to see the park have put time, effort and money into things this winter, and they're taking strides in the right direction. I'm excited to see what will happen and hope their plans pay off!

Pretty cool how clearly you can see the inversion from Staines Lane. Just walking to the site now to take some pics. 😁 EDIT: Extra track piece going in This part's gonna be so weird but thrilling 🤩 Other piece going in now Slowly but surely Final photo before I post the rest. They positioned originally but then took it back down after. Looks like they're securing it into place now.

Being serious for a moment though. I sense most of the negativity towards the name is because of it being similar sounding to Hyperion at Energylandia Lets be real though, what percentage of the people walking through the gate at Thorpe on any given day actually have heard of even Energylandia let alone Hyperion??

It'll be called Big Bird.

That's gone well then.

I mean, she had such a huge impact in Haunted House and Duel. Pivotal almost.

You've had some fun silly posts, but there comes a point when you cross a line and it just reads like a spam bot. This is the point. Let's stop the overt obtuseness now please.

Piff paff wipee woo waaa. Upppppp and awayyyyyyy. Someone's knocking at your door, someone's ringing the bell. I'm loving it.

Has there really not been a post here for over a year, even with Velocicoaster opening. Wow. So I managed to get over to Florida after a two year delay and part of the trip was to give Universal a bit more time to enjoy. I usually give the whole resort a day to do everything but this time each park got a day. Which I think is more than enough as with good planning you can get on everything you want really easily. Whilst everyone rushes to Hagrid's and Velocicoaster, we started with Hulk, Spiderman, the Seuss rides, Forbidden Journey and Jurassic Park before 10:30. Which is the ideal order as it covers over half the major stuff before going into the longer waits. Baring in mind, the last time I went, the Dragons had only just stopped duelling so majority is new. So:- New Hulk- Rides better then the previous version and the soundtrack really adds to the ride. I still maintain that the last third of the ride are a complete waste of time but the first two thirds are so snappy, precisely paced and hit after hit that I am more forgiving than I was in 2012. Spiderman is great, still remains a revolution in dark ride design and is a lot of fun. Seuss land is nice. Forbidden Journey has aged really well. It is a lot of fun and now that it doesn't command an hour queue at a minimum, its so much easier to ride and a lot less is hanging on the ride experience to deliver. My fiancé doesn't understand a thing about Harry Potter but appreciated the effects and ride experience. I'm completely biased in saying River Adventure is one of my favourite rides at the resort. I love dinosaur themed attractions, I love Jurassic Park and I love the variation and story telling of this attraction. It's so much fun and the physical precense of the dinosaurs really adds to make this a 10/10 attraction. So there. So to start.. Velocicoaster. So this is one of the best rides in the world. I think we all saw this coming but it further refines the successes that Intamin have had with Maverick, Taron and Taiga and I think adding this in a Universal park, one that commands huge attention in the theme park industry will bring Intamin a lot of success. We got four rides in various rows and it delivers in every seat. It feels like what would happen if Taron were more refined. Thats not to say that I think its better then Phantasialands ride (The jury is still out on that front) but the two are very similar in terms of sensation and pops or airtime litter both rides. Pacing is important to me and this ride has it in droves. The theming is okay, I think the story itself is a bit forgotten the moment you complete the first launch and it just becomes another rollercoaster albeit this has a beautiful location over the lake. Next Hagrid's motorbike thing. We waited an hour each for both of our rides and this ride is okay. It throws every Intamin trick in the book at you and its frankly a miracle that this works. I don't think its the greatest ride in the world because the Harry Potter implementation is a tad too weak for a Hogsmeade ride and frankly a lot of it is just a bit meandering. I admire the ambition if nothing else. So thats IoA for another decade. A great visit. 26F85C4E-CCD9-4EB2-801F-3CFE4F83D57B.heic

It's loggers, isn't it? 😄

I believe it is currently waiting on a part. I think it's been removed from the app, so will probably be down for a while. Rotten timing given the weather and it being half term. This is a dreadful idea in my opinion. Despite what many people think, queue prediction is hard. Few parks actually manage to do it well in my opinion. At the moment, it is even more volatile thanks to Covid and social distancing (or lack thereof). I imagine this idea is being tried for the following reasons: 1. They don't know what the queue times are when they're very long 2. They're getting a lot of complaints because of long advertised queue times When it comes to solving problem 1, there's not much they can do short term. The park is busy, queues will be long. But that in itself is a problem. A quick look on social media suggests that plenty of people feel that numbers aren't being restricted enough for Covid. Should the park, in future, be restricting numbers more? Should they now be looking at relaxing social distancing measures on rides (filling up all seats / rows)? The second problem is more insightful to their thought process. Anyone who's filled out one of the park's survey machines will know that you're asked a question to the effect of 'Did queueing spoil your day?'. This is a pretty big KPI that all the Merlin parks (and likely parks outside of Merlin) are interested in. Presumably, at the moment, they're getting a very high percentage of people answering "Yes" to 'Did queueing spoil your day?'. They've probably also noticed that "Rides per head" (the average number of rides each person has ridden) is low. As such, one possible conclusion that could be drawn is that "People aren't riding rides and saying that queueing has spoilt their day. We're advertising long queue times, so maybe people are put off by the long queue times". The solution there is then to not advertise long queue times, but instead advertise a minimum waiting time. That might not be what has happened. To be honest, I'd be surprised if there's people looking into KPI scores and probing in that way to come to that conclusion in that way. But it's a possible thought process. Equally, it could just be that they're getting a ton of complaints of 'The queues are all saying they're 2 hours'. As Matt says, people will not see the '+' here, and just assume a 90 minute queue. People leave common sense at the door when going to a theme park. There's another problem I've skirted around here. Operations in general. In my experience this year, they've been a mixed bag. Certainly not as bad as they have been in recent years, but not as good as they should be. Why that is, I don't know. But they need to come up with practical solutions to be able to get more consistent operations that are sensible and in line with what the rides can achieve, and with what the park needs. As for the more specific topic at hand... 1. If this is a trial to see if '90+' works, I hope they see it doesn't work, and they see that quickly. 2. If there's concerns about accuracy, introduce broader time frames, especially for higher values. 3. Work on actually make queue times accurate. More on this below. 4. The park need to understand that, ultimately, long queues are happening To expand on these points... 2. Perhaps they should introduce ranges like '90-100', '100-120', '120-150', '150-180'. When a queue is at that high level, it doesn't matter if it's 120 or 140 really, it's still a 2-2.5hour commitment of your day. Next to no one is going to enter a 140 minute queue, and then check their watch just before boarding and go 'Ooh, well that queue only took us 137 minutes, great job!' 3. I'm sure some remember a trial that happened on Saw a few years back to improve queue time accuracy. This would display queue times accurate to the minute, rather than in increments of 5-10 minutes. There's more details on this technology, provided by a company call Headmapper, here: http://www.headmapper.com/case-studies Interestingly, there is also a report which outlines how successful the trial was in 2015, which is largely positive. The technology was again used in 2017 for another trial. One reason why it didn't seem to carry on was costs involved with the product. Another is because it's a bit of faffy system which requires fixed cameras at certain locations (when usually, cameras are need to be moveable for security purposes)....so it would involve the costly installation of more cameras. So if the park really wants to improve queue accuracy and have a positive impact on people's day out, they could put their money where their mouth is and fork out for this. But then that still doesn't address the above point. And why spend out so much for something that doesn't tackle all the issues here. There are alternatives though, which are much cheaper. However, getting people within the park to get on board with the idea that queue accuracy is important is much harder than one might expect. So unless there's a shift in philosophy on that, this will never happen. 4. I'm not saying that the park don't know that long queues happen, or that they're bad or anything. But from my experience, there's a certain fear in acknowledging that the park will have long queues, and that this impacts that all important aforementioned KPI. Instead, there's an over-focus on improving queue accuracy, short term incentives to ride staff for improving throughputs and other weird stuff. Instead, there should be an acceptance that queues will be long as it stands and looking at ways to sustainably ensure that this causes minimal impact to someone's day. This should include making queues more interesting to be in, investing in the park so there's more things to do and making the park a more pleasant place to be in outside of the rides. And that should happen on top of the park improving queue accuracy and throughputs. Even if that should be a secondary focus. --- Wow, that was a bit of rambling rant. I'm sure some people on here know this is something I've had prior involvement in in one way or another. and even if not, it's probably clear I have some level of interest in this at a deeper level. Obviously there's many issues here, and many of them are long term, costly things to sort out. It's worth looking at short term alternatives, as well as little things that can be trialled in the short term to get a gauge on if they work. But honestly, this is the equivalent of sticking a used plaster on a wound that needs stitches. In short, the park need to acknowledge that they will always have long queue times, invest in the park to improve the number of things people can do, have queue lines be more interesting to be in and put some actual thought into how to estimate queue lengths over just picking a number out of thin air

2021 Edition Part two. The other day, someone said Steel Vengeance was over-rated. I'm going to stand out here, shout to the world that if you decide to refer to something as over-rated then you have no critical discourse whatsoever and you need to pick up a thesaurus and learn some new descriptive language. Saying something is over-rated is the laziest critique anyone can possibly muster up because it requires no explanation and only looks to disregard peoples opinion. It says to others, 'sure you like a ride but thats only because you're following the crowd. No, I am the only true oracle, the only one that can see past the rose tinted glasses of hype and I stand before you now to tell you that you're a blind sheeple. Follow me, I declare that Steel vengeance/Taron/Nemesis/anything people quite like isn't as good as you think it is'. Under-rated is different. There are so many attractions out there (Alpina Blitz at Nigloland for example) that fall completely under the radar and deserve to be spoken about more. The term under-rated is actually quite nice because it can be used to inspire people to try something or go somewhere they wouldn't necessarily go to without the recommendation. Over-rated is an awful awful phrase and looks to just belittle others viewpoints and enjoyment.

Have removed a couple of posts from here - Regardless on your opinions on Nick’s music - fair play to him for organising this - just looked and I saw he’s raised almost £600 to donate to a mental health charity and no one deserves to be berated for that - that’s significant amount especially during these times from such a niche market. Whilst I get it may not be everyone’s cup of tea I think it’s great people when people l come together and do things like this which will ultimately benefit others more in need, especially in times like this!

I love it when Jack comes back every year or so to complain about Fastrack at Thorpe. It's like when Steve posts every now and then to tell us how **** Merlin are. It's like a comfort blanket.

Sparkle Project update here, courtesy of Jack Silkstone's Twitter - lovely to see an easter egg of a mini replica of the Swarm station being installed outside Tidal Wave 🤩

Ban request.

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

The twisted outerbank dive is complete!

Nailed it 😎

Just had the message straight from the groundworkers on site - and am incredibly excited to reveal as a MTYMOO83 EXCLUSIVE that Project Exodus will be going vertical on REDACTEDday the REDACTED of REDACTEDber! About time!

Note: I intend to keep editing this post as time goes on and more years are released. Hi guys. During the coaster consultations in 2021, Merlin released an attendance graph showing all their parks' attendance figures since the early 1980s. I had some time on my hands yesterday evening and decided to try and extrapolate some slightly more precise guest figures for each park from this graph to try and determine the precise(ish) attendance trajectory of each UK Merlin park from the earliest year listed here (1984 for Alton Towers and Chessington, 1983 for Thorpe Park, 1987 for Windsor Safari Park and 1997 for Legoland Windsor). For some idea, this is the original graph I was working with: https://www.cwoa-consultation.com/proposals?lightbox=dataItem-komw1163 To make things easier for myself, I divided each million on the graph into 8 rows (thus leaving ~125,000 guests per row, as my rather crude MS Paint annotation indicates): As such, I then decided to extrapolate a precise(ish) figure from the graph by looking at what row each park's figure fell within. All of these figures are rounded to the nearest 31,250; I know that sounds oddly specific, but it's 1/32 of a million, and a quarter of one of these rows, so it's the most precise figure that remains easy to determine by eye. It also keeps the margin of error to only 1 or 2 percent in most cases. The precise(ish) trajectories that I managed to extrapolate for each park, including percentage increases and decreases for each year, were as follows: Alton Towers - opened 1980, first year on graph 1984 1984: 1,843,750 (first year, #1/3 on graph) 1985: 1,812,500 (-1.7%, #1/3 on graph) 1986: 2,250,000 (+24.1%, #1/3 on graph) 1987: 2,312,500 (+2.8%, #1/4 on graph) 1988: 2,875,000 (+24.3%, #1/4 on graph) 1989: 2,437,500 (-15.2%, #1/4 on graph) 1990: 1,937,500 (-20.5%, #1/4 on graph) 1991: 1,843,750 (-3.6%, #1/4 on graph) 1992: 2,625,000 (+42.4%, #1/4 on graph) 1993: 2,843,750 (+8.3%, #1/4 on graph) 1994: 3,312,500 (+16.5%, #1/3 on graph) 1995: 2,843,750 (-14.2%, #1/3 on graph) 1996: 2,875,000 (+1.1%, #1/3 on graph) 1997: 2,875,000 (0.0%, #1/4 on graph) 1998: 2,875,000 (0.0%, #1/4 on graph) 1999: 2,593,750 (-9.8%, #1/4 on graph) 2000: 2,437,500 (-6.0%, #1/4 on graph) 2001: 2,187,500 (-10.3%, #1/4 on graph) 2002: 2,656,250 (+21.4%, #1/4 on graph) 2003: 2,562,500 (-4.7%, #1/4 on graph) 2004: 2,086,750 (-18.6%, #1/4 on graph) 2005: 2,187,500 (+4.8%, #1/4 on graph) 2006: 2,218,750 (+1.4%, #1/4 on graph) 2007: 2,250,000 (+1.4%, #1/4 on graph) 2008: 2,593,750 (+15.3%, #1/4 on graph) 2009: 2,656,250 (+2.4%, #1/4 on graph) 2010: 3,062,500 (+14.0%, #1/4 on graph) 2011: 2,687,500 (-12.2%, #1/4 on graph) 2012: 2,406,250 (-10.5%, #1/4 on graph) 2013: 2,593,750 (+7.8%, #1/4 on graph) 2014: 2,312,500 (-10.8%, joint #2/4 on graph) 2015: 1,968,750 (-14.9%, #2/4 on graph) 2016: 1,750,000 (-9.7%, #2/4 on graph) 2017: 1,875,000 (+7.1%, #2/4 on graph) 2018: 2,187,500 (+16.7%, #1/4 on graph) 2019: 2,500,000 (+14.3%, #1/4 on graph) 2020: 968,750 (-61.3%, #1/4 on graph) 2021: 2,343,750 (+141.9%, #1/4 on graph) All-Time Peak: 3,312,500 (1994) All-Time Low (excluding 2020): 1,750,000 (2016) Peak Within Merlin Era (2008 and later): 3,062,500 (2010) Low Within Merlin Era (2008 and later, excluding 2020 and 2021): 1,750,000 (2016) Chessington/Chessington Zoo - opened 1931, first year on graph 1984, first year as CWOA 1987 1984: 625,000 (first year, #3/3 on graph) 1985: 562,500 (-10.0%, #3/3 on graph) 1986: 500,000 (-11.1%, #3/3 on graph) 1987: 875,000 (+75.0%, #3/4 on graph) 1988: 1,187,500 (+35.7%, joint #3/4 on graph) 1989: 1,250,000 (+5.3%, #3/4 on graph) 1990: 1,062,500 (-15.0%, joint #3/4 on graph) 1991: 1,437,500 (+35.3%, #2/4 on graph) 1992: 1,218,750 (-15.2%, #2/4 on graph) 1993: 1,531,250 (+25.6%, #2/4 on graph) 1994: 1,687,500 (+10.2%, #2/3 on graph) 1995: 1,875,000 (+11.1%, #2/3 on graph) 1996: 1,812,500 (-3.3%, #2/3 on graph) 1997: 1,843,750 (+1.7%, #2/4 on graph) 1998: 1,843,750 (0.0%, #2/4 on graph) 1999: 1,656,250 (-10.2%, #2/4 on graph) 2000: 1,562,500 (-5.7%, #3/4 on graph) 2001: 1,531,250 (-2.0%, joint #3/4 on graph) 2002: 1,281,250 (-16.3%, #4/4 on graph) 2003: 1,312,500 (+2.4%, #4/4 on graph) 2004: 1,218,750 (-7.1%, #4/4 on graph) 2005: 1,093,750 (-10.3%, #4/4 on graph) 2006: 1,031,250 (-5.7%, #4/4 on graph) 2007: 968,750 (-6.1%, #4/4 on graph) 2008: 1,250,000 (+29.0%, #4/4 on graph) 2009: 1,343,750 (+7.5%, #4/4 on graph) 2010: 1,437,500 (+7.0%, #4/4 on graph) 2011: 1,500,000 (+4.3%, #4/4 on graph) 2012: 1,406,250 (-6.2%, #4/4 on graph) 2013: 1,531,250 (+8.9%, #4/4 on graph) 2014: 1,562,500 (+2.0%, #4/4 on graph) 2015: 1,437,500 (-8.0%, #4/4 on graph) 2016: 1,437,500 (0.0%, #4/4 on graph) 2017: 1,500,000 (+4.3%, #4/4 on graph) 2018: 1,593,750 (+6.3%, joint #4/4 on graph) 2019: 1,656,250 (+3.9%, #3/4 on graph) 2020: 500,000 (-69.8%, #4/4 on graph) 2021: 1,281,250 (+156.3%, #3/4 on graph) 2022: 1,468,750 (+14.6%, N/A) All-Time Peak: 1,875,000 (1995) All-Time Low (excluding 2020 and 2021, including pre-CWOA years): 500,000 (1986) All-Time Low (excluding 2020 and 2021 and pre-CWOA years): 875,000 (1987) Peak Within Merlin Era (2008 and later): 1,687,500 (2019) Low Within Merlin Era (2008 and later, excluding 2020 and 2021): 1,281,250 (2008) Legoland Windsor/Windsor Safari Park - opened 1970, first year on graph 1987, first year as Legoland Windsor 1996 1987: 812,500 (first year, #4/4 on graph) 1988: 875,000 (+7.7%, #4/4 on graph) 1989: 968,750 (+10.7%, #4/4 on graph) 1990: 1,062,500 (+9.7%, joint #3/4 on graph) 1991: 1,031,250 (-2.9%, #3/4 on graph) 1992: 968,750 (-6.1%, #4/4 on graph) 1993: 937,500 (-3.2%, #4/4 on graph) 1994: N/A (-100.0%, N/A on graph) 1995: N/A (0.0%, N/A on graph) 1996: N/A (0.0%, N/A on graph) 1997: 1,468,750 (first year as LLW, #3/4 on graph) 1998: 1,312,500 (-10.6%, #3/4 on graph) 1999: 1,500,000 (+14.3%, #3/4 on graph) 2000: 1,687,500 (+12.5%, #2/4 on graph) 2001: 1,531,250 (-9.3%, joint #3/4 on graph) 2002: 1,593,750 (+4.1%, #2/4 on graph) 2003: 1,437,500 (-9.8%, #3/4 on graph) 2004: 1,437,500 (0.0%, #3/4 on graph) 2005: 1,500,000 (+4.3%, #3/4 on graph) 2006: 1,625,000 (+8.3%, #3/4 on graph) 2007: 1,500,000 (-7.8%, #3/4 on graph) 2008: 1,875,000 (+25.0%, #2/4 on graph) 2009: 1,906,250 (+1.7%, #3/4 on graph) 2010: 1,906,250 (0.0%, #3/4 on graph) 2011: 1,906,250 (0.0%, #3/4 on graph) 2012: 2,031,250 (+6.6%, #2/4 on graph) 2013: 2,312,500 (+13.8%, #2/4 on graph) 2014: 2,312,500 (0.0%, joint #2/4 on graph) 2015: 2,343,750 (+1.4%, #1/4 on graph) 2016: 2,187,500 (-6.6%, #1/4 on graph) 2017: 2,312,500 (+5.7%, #1/4 on graph) 2018: 2,125,000 (-8.1%, #2/4 on graph) 2019: 2,062,500 (-2.9%, #2/4 on graph) 2020: 687,500 (-66.7%, #2/4 on graph) 2021: 1,562,500 (+122.7%, #2/4 on graph) All-Time Peak: 2,343,750 (2015) All-Time Low (excluding 2020 and 2021, including pre-LLW years): 812,500 (1987) All-Time Low (excluding 2020, 2021 and pre-LLW years): 1,312,500 (1998) Peak Within Merlin Era (2006 and later): 2,343,750 (2015) Low Within Merlin Era (2006 and later, excluding 2020 and 2021): 1,500,000 (2007) Thorpe Park - opened 1979, first year on graph 1983 1983: 843,750 (first year, #1/1 on graph) 1984: 1,031,250 (+22.2%, #2/3 on graph) 1985: 1,093,750 (+6.1%, #2/3 on graph) 1986: 1,093,750 (0.0%, #2/3 on graph) 1987: 1,093,750 (0.0%, #2/4 on graph) 1988: 1,187,500 (+8.6%, joint #3/4 on graph) 1989: 1,343,750 (+13.2%, #2/4 on graph) 1990: 1,000,000 (-25.6%, #4/4 on graph) 1991: 968,750 (-3.1%, #4/4 on graph) 1992: 1,093,750 (+12.9%, #3/4 on graph) 1993: 1,281,250 (+17.1%, #3/4 on graph) 1994: 1,218,750 (-4.9%, #3/3 on graph) 1995: 1,125,000 (-7.7%, #3/3 on graph) 1996: 1,187,500 (+5.6%, #3/3 on graph) 1997: 968,750 (-18.4%, #4/4 on graph) 1998: 875,000 (-9.7%, #4/4 on graph) 1999: 906,250 (+3.6%, #4/4 on graph) 2000: 937,500 (+3.4%, #4/4 on graph) 2001: 1,187,500 (+26.7%, #4/4 on graph) 2002: 1,437,500 (+21.1%, #3/4 on graph) 2003: 1,531,250 (+6.5%, #2/4 on graph) 2004: 1,468,750 (-4.1%, #2/4 on graph) 2005: 1,562,500 (+6.4%, #2/4 on graph) 2006: 1,812,500 (+16.0%, #2/4 on graph) 2007: 1,843,750 (+1.7%, #2/4 on graph) 2008: 1,843,750 (0.0%, #3/4 on graph) 2009: 2,125,000 (+15.3%, #2/4 on graph) 2010: 2,187,500 (+2.9%, #2/4 on graph) 2011: 2,125,000 (-2.9%, #2/4 on graph) 2012: 1,843,750 (-13.2%, #3/4 on graph) 2013: 1,786,250 (-3.1%, #3/4 on graph) 2014: 1,843,750 (+3.2%, #3/4 on graph) 2015: 1,531,250 (-17.0%, #3/4 on graph) 2016: 1,625,000 (+6.1%, #3/4 on graph) 2017: 1,562,500 (-3.9%, #3/4 on graph) 2018: 1,593,750 (+2.0%, joint #4/4 on graph) 2019: 1,500,000 (-5.9%, #4/4 on graph) 2020: 562,500 (-62.5%, #3/4 on graph) 2021: 1,218,750 (+116.7%, #4/4 on graph) All-Time Peak: 2,187,500 (2010) All-Time Low (excluding 2020 and 2021): 843,750 (1983) Peak Within Merlin Era (2008 and later): 2,187,500 (2010) Low Within Merlin Era (2008 and later, excluding 2020 and 2021): 1,500,000 (2019) To sum up each park's trajectory: Alton Towers may have been top dog for the bulk of the years since 1984, but it has also had the most volatile guest figures. It has had peaks as high as 3.3 million in 1994, but also troughs of only slightly above 2 million in the mid-2000s or even slightly below in the early 1990s and mid-2010s, with a nadir of 1.75 million being reached in 2016. At that point, it was well away from #1 and almost rubbing shoulder to shoulder with #3 park Thorpe. Interestingly, its peak was early, in 1994, and only 2010 has ever come close to that since. Merlin have attained fair growth at Alton Towers; between 2007 and 2019, attendance grew by 11.1%. Chessington started off fairly well, attaining steady growth from 1987 up until 1994, where it stayed at its peak until about 1997. However, attendance dropped through the floor from 1998 onwards, hitting a low of under 1 million in 2007, so it's fair to say that Chessington's trajectory has been far from uniform, although things improved notably under Merlin. Interestingly, Chessington is the park that has thrived most under Merlin, with attendance having grown by 74.1% between 2007 and 2019. Nonetheless, the high water mark was hit quite early on at Chessington, with that near 2 million peak guest figure being all the way back in 1995, and no year post-1997 has yet come close to it. Legoland Windsor has had the most consistent growth trajectory of all the parks. With its low back near opening in 1998, its peak in 2015 and no particularly catastrophic attendance drops (COVID aside), it's grown fairly consistently over the years. It's also a park that has thrived pretty well under Merlin; between 2005 and 2019, attendance grew by 37.5%. Thorpe Park has had a bit of a roller coaster of a growth trajectory. The 80s and 90s were a little bit choppy at Thorpe Park, with peaks of close to 1.5 million and lows of under 1 million. The park really hit its stride from 2001 onwards, maintaining a near perfect growth trajectory right up to the park's 2.2 million peak in 2010. However, things have been a bit of a struggle since then, with guest figures having almost consistently declined since 2011 right back to a low of 1.5 million in 2019. The park has comparatively struggled under Merlin, with attendance having fallen by 18.6% between 2007 and 2019. I hope you find this interesting! If you don't agree with something I've done or notice any errors, however, don't be afraid to flag them to me.

Sorry for the double post.

I just think it's great that Thorpe have bought back rollbacks on Stealth.

WTF were they thinking with the BK destruction? Just as they put in a highly themed railways station coffee shop, they tear out a highly themed burger bar and turn it into generic shopping centre? Spending money to make things worse is my biggest hate in Theme Parks, especially when getting funding for anything that isn't a big new thing has been neigh on impossible for decades, but with this and the teacups we have two big lumps of that here. Who the hell is running this place, and can they be sunk with the Thorpe Belle?

I can't believe the ride that everyone hates is being adjusted and everyone hates its even more.

The "we're a small park" excuse is rubbish. Go back 20 years, when the park was (excluding The Farm) technically smaller, and they had defined areas, with portals and signage. Look at a park like Phantasialand, which is small and compact, and they have some of the most well-defined, high quality themed lands out there. The simple and honest reason why the park don't do themed lands is because they don't want to. That's fine too, if that's the case. But let's face, it's not because they couldn't.

I will not be contempt until I see JK SLKSTN in a neon Thorpe branded T-shirt riding a wrecking ball into Loggers Leap shouting “EXODUS EXODUS EXODUS EXODUS EXODUS EXODUS EXODUS EXODUS EXODUS…” 1000 times. I hope Shane Sandwich gets first dibs on the obsolete signage.

Interesting.. I think I’ll go with Colossus is a good roller coaster

I dunno, I think it was a nice refreshing addition to the thread.

Natural England have today Withdrawn their objection(s) to project exodus. If I have got this correct, this is separate to the environment agency’s objection which relate more to flooding then anything else. One less hurdle and hopefully stuff starts to pick up as we reach September. Maybe a sign of things to come…. Or maybe not 😝

Just to say what I did on Twitter - this drilling is for soil sampling so they know what they are dealing with when putting in footers/excavations etc. It will categorically, 100% NOT be being used to drill holes for construction itself and is purely for investigative purposes. Still - progress is progress, and is exciting to see.

PLANS HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED. Some highlights: -The ride will feature trains of 20; 10 rows of 2. The trains will have lapbars. *Not too surprising, but nice to know. -No manufacturer is confirmed; this is not of interest for planning permission, but it is acknowledged it is of interest to roller coaster enthusiasts. Equally, the application just mentions ride comparison are done to a 'similar ride in Europe' -The ride will reach a maximum speed of around 130km/h (though this is not definite) -The ride will have a light track colour high up, similar to Stealth *This was mentioned in the consultation period. I haven't found confirmation of *what* the colour is for the high points, or the low points. This is usually contained within there somewhere. -The ride's highest points are: 72m, 50m, 48m and 43m *This puts to bed an initial thought I had that the park might try to go for the world's tallest inversion record. -Lots of trees will be planted around the station building -During construction, the lake will be infilled partially. Originally, the supports were meant to go into the lake, but it looks like they will go into a small part of land within the lake. I guess this is a compromise between having a nice looking lake and ease of maintenance. -The expanded construction area appears to just be for the *full* demolition of Loggers Leap, as opposed to just the bits in the way. So no extended layout. -Construction should start late this year, and the whole process should last 16 months. So Spring 2024 opening Now some more photos: An interesting look at an alternative layout Trees In past applications, we have gotten a look at the design of buildings, etc. But I can't find any of that. Usually we'd even get fencing plans, saying the style, height, material of every fence in an application. Again, doesn't seem to be here. Interesting, in a geeky sorta way. All I can say about the station is it has walls and a metal roof (a roof shouldn't be taken for granted). So there's no clarity on theming, style, colours or anything. Random note: the transfer track is after the station and at the start of the ride, as opposed to at the end of the ride / before the station. Somewhat different.

This seems like as good a thread as any to post this in... I passed my PhD today!

Roses are Red Violets are Blue I have limited patience... ...for lame cryptic Clues

Oooooh, I think I get the honour of writing the first full Black Mirror Labyrinth review online. What an exclusive! I should start by giving a disclaimer: Yes, I attended a preview event which invites celebrities and influencers, and the intention of these events is for such people to share positive thoughts about the experience. If you want to see that stuff, check out TPM's social pages, and a review will be live on our website later. What follows is a balanced reflection of my genuine thoughts of the experience. As always, whenever I attend these events, I try to give my feedback to staff/managers/creators too, good, bad, or ugly... Slight spoilers follow. --- "It's...interesting" That was my immediate reaction. It doesn't sound very positive, but it's also not very negative either. I guess a good way of describing it is a grown up Hocus Pocus Hall. And that's not a bad thing. It's a multi-route experience, with dead ends and multiple special effects. There is a mirror maze in there, yes, but that is just one part of the experience. Your name and face is used at a couple of points too. The story is that the Labyrinth is an AI creation which has become self aware. It's stolen all its information about you, and now wants to 'delete' you. So the premise is original, but slightly Black Mirror in tone. It's a fun experience with some quirky moments. We got lost a few times. We became disoriented. There were some moments which were a bit of a surprise. There's nothing special, but it all works and flows pretty nicely. After having done the experience twice, though, I'm not clambering to do it again any time soon. That's just the nature of this experience - there's not enough multiple routes to keep it completely fresh each time, and it is kind of 'one and done'. That's not a bad thing really, as it is an enjoyable enough experience in its own right, but I don't think it's what Thorpe need right now. Some assorted Q&As: -Is it scary? No. And I wonder if that will lead to complaints with people expecting a FN like maze... -What is batching like? You're batched in your household group exclusively. And it seems like it will be a group every 90 seconds. -What would batching be like without Covid? It seems like there's space for 12 people per group normally. That would give a throughput of 480pph in theory. Bog standard for a Merlin maze really. -What are Covid rules like? This is a weird one. You have to remove your mask whilst your photo is taken (this is for a special effect). And inside you naturally end up touching things as you find your way round, and you may come into close contact with people due to the non-linear route. I expect this may make some people feel uncomfortable. Some fun facts: -Figment Productions have been involved with parts of the experience -The experience was rethought and had extra money put into it last year, since they had extra time -Though nowhere near as much was invested as in a new ride, a lot more was invested in this compared to a Fright Nights maze (about 7-10 times the budget of a maze I believe) -There's a couple of little Easter eggs about (and some I probably missed) There's a couple of photos on TPM's Facebook, I won't post them here because effort. So all in all, the premise of the experience is interesting. As I say, it's not something I'm itching to get back to doing again, but it's a fun experience. It's another indoor experience for the park, which is needed, but ultimately it is very much a 'one..possibly two... and done' type thing, which is perhaps not what the park needed. I'm very much worried about how this will cope with the crowds. It seems like an operational headache. However, given it's going to be Timed Tickets for a while, and it should be pretty reliable, hopefully it means physical wait times are minimal for now, if done right. So definitely worth giving it a crack when you're next on park.

Closed by 2023 is all I could think of to be honest.