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I did a Hyperia coaster climb this evening. There was some chatter when it was made live about the cost being expensive (£120). It is, no beating around the bush. But it is worth it. My experience was about 3hrs all in, and included lots of time spent scaling the ride, time spent in the console and time spent around the turnaround outside the station, with lots of opportunities for photos, fabulous hosts and a great vibe. Find attached a variety of photos (of me). I'll write a proper TPM article later.

Ding dong no The sky is dark, the coast is rocky, the island mountainous. Construction is far away. Wait bugger wrong account

we have all had enough of this thing. nothing cryptic about it anymore. it just doesn't work.

I can't believe we're nearly at four years of this twaddle.

For me, my TP season ended yesterday having jumped in for an extra day due to the changing weather forecast, a great day for me. It could not have happened without the Staff and it would, like life, be easy to thank those who helped me directly. There are many staff whose contributions to that, and all my TP days, are normally not acknowledged. I do thank everybody from the cleaning, washroom, maintenance, management, security, gardeners and ride team, a lot of people. Just like the bus on which I ride to the Park, so seldom do I hear a "thank you". We, as visitors, don't get the chance to wish those well in their futures who, within a few days, won't have a job. Just my thoughts.

I'm really impressed by the ride teams at Thorpe. We really take for granted how hard they work to keep the rides moving so efficiently. It's really telling how good we have it, The Swarm probably had the worst ops but they were still only stacking trains for about 10 seconds per cycle (and that is an exaggeration). The Hyperia team must have been chosen by the goddess themselves, because they run that ride so well, never stacking, always dispatching as soon as they can. Also shout out to Inferno's team who were doing a great job. They need a batcher though as lots of trains going out with two empty seats next to each other. And finally, the older I get the more I see myself preferring Thorpe's coaster line up to Altons. As much as I like Nemesis Reborn, I think the rest of the line up is either gimmicky nonsense, run awfully or just dull. Whereas Inferno is running the best Ive seen it (honestly, it's so good right now), Stealth and the Swarm are just so much fun, Hyperia manages to be open ( ) and I still love hanging out around Colossus and hearing that music. In general Thorpe is just a better experience all round. Better hours, better rides, better food, better operations. I would have never said that 20 years ago, but now, to me, Thorpe is in a different league.

So thoughts and notes from yesterday, which was a "VIP preview" for the season, where the park was open 10-3. -We're light on changes. A couple of tweaks to F&B is really all that is "new" -Repaints for part of Colossus and Depth Charge look nice. The small side of the Beach looks nice, also repainted, but it highlights the grime of the large side. -Hyperia grass is nice. Could be extended more. They've added benches to the plaza which isn't a bad idea, but they're atop the wings on the ground, which irks me a bit. -Many new pieces of merchandise, which are the usual high quality we've come to expect -Hyperia had issues yesterday, in large part due to the cold. Hopefully better today. Stealth had an issue during testing and didn't open. -The park usually stumbles during first day or two of opening, and yesterday wasn't any different, with the cold affecting weather, and reliability being a bit on the weak side, but it did improve. I've been to significantly worse first days. -There's a few other bits and pieces around the park. Solar panels atop Ghost Train (but you only see them if you look for them on other rides). Walking Dead has had creative tweaks to the post-ride section. Some speakers seem to have been fixed. Tweak to end of day of audio. If 2024 was Thorpe's year of improvement, 2025 is their year of stability. That's not a bad thing. But after a couple of years of multiple changes, it will have a different 'new season' vibe to it. The kicker for the park this year will be the quality and reach of marketing. That will be what makes or breaks them this year, with little to shout about in the way of new things

Closed season bingo!

I have some throughput timings from my trip to Thorpe Park yesterday that I’d like to report! I managed to grab the following timings in the park yesterday: Colossus (Theoretical: 1,300pph on 2 trains): 717pph (unknown number of trains, average of 3, 20th September 2025) Hyperia (Theoretical: 1,050pph on 2 trains): 833pph (2 trains, average of 10, 20th September 2025) Nemesis Inferno (Theoretical: 1,150pph on 2 trains): 977pph (2 trains, average of 5, 20th September 2025), 1,024pph (2 trains, average of 4, 20th September 2025) Saw: The Ride (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 8 cars/2 stations): 742pph (unknown number of trains/2 stations, average of 10 singular cars, 20th September 2025), 788pph (unknown number of trains/2 stations, average of 4 dual dispatches, 20th September 2025) Stealth (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 2 trains): 975pph (2 trains, average of 10, 20th September 2025) The Swarm (Theoretical: 1,100pph on 2 trains): 1,046pph (2 trains, average of 9, 20th September 2025) In terms of some specific insights: Stealth had possibly the best operations I’ve ever seen on there; these operations were phenomenal! The staff were sprinting down the platform, and they were very frequently outpacing the 40s dispatch timer on the platform, something which I’d largely thought redundant in previous years! 70-75 second dispatch intervals were being hit very consistently, and the slowest I saw was about 80s, which is incredible! The Swarm was also operated very well given that it seems to have been a tad inconsistent as of late. When I was in the area, the ride was consistently achieving minimal to no stacking, the staff were efficient, and I saw some dispatch intervals as quick as 90s or below. Great job! Hyperia was operating well, and seems to have improved compared to its opening year, with 80-90 second dispatch intervals being attained pretty consistently where closer to 100-120 seconds seemed par for the course in 2024. From what I could see, the ride was consistently not stacking and was very often dispatching before the train in front hit the brake run; at its quickest, I saw them dispatch when the train in front was negotiating the final outerbank after the splashdown. I do think the slow brake run on here makes throughputs slower than they could be when the ride isn’t stacking; if the brake run was faster, I think it would shave at least 10 seconds off the dispatch interval! Nemesis Inferno seemed to be operating well, with minimal to no stacking being quite frequent. I noticed the staff were trying to hurry people along on here. Overall, then, I thought operations were broadly very good at Thorpe yesterday! Stealth was phenomenally operated, I also thought The Swarm was particularly well operated, and overall, most things seemed to be doing well! I’ve given up hope of Colossus ever attaining a particularly decent throughput at this point, but even that didn’t appear too slow by Colossus standards.

I visited this park three weeks ago and I had some thoughts. You can tell this was a Disney park on a budget and was obviously planned in the days where Disneyland Paris was seen as a failure and budgets were tight. When it opened, its major rides were Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise and at a push, The many adventure of Winnie the Pooh. Investment has come with an outer ring basically built on the left side of the park with it starting at Grizzly Bear Mountain Railroad, into Mystic Point, Toy Story Land and finally Frozen Land. The right side of the park hasn't been left behind though with the removal of Autopia in favour of the Ironman Experience, Buzz lightyear re-themed to Ant-man and a rumoured Tower of Terror ride themed to Spiderman. I will say this, it is most definitely a one day park, maybe even a half day. The queues here are minimal (which is refreshing for a Disney park) and a lot of the rides are basically filler (again, quite refreshing). The longest waits are for the Duffy and Friends characters near the park entrances. If you aren't interested in queuing an hour to meet Lina-Bell, you have a problem. Grizzly Bear Mountain is the parks Big Thunder Mountain equivalent and It's a really good family coaster, it lacks the jank of thunder Mountain and its backwards section is pretty weak but the rest of the ride is great. The bears are used for comedy, one rubbing its bum on a points changer, another two setting of the dynamite in the mountains. The launch is pretty powerful and there's great forces on the turns through the valleys of the mountain. Mystic Manor was closed. This absolutely sucked. Toy Story land is exactly the same as Paris's, just slightly bigger. Jungle Cruise is excellent. When we went you could wait for either mandarin or english skippers. Because the English was done in slightly broken English, it made it an absolutely hilarious time. The skippers were so fun and over the top. The finale is sublime and puts this as the best Jungle Cruise in the Disney parks. Frozen Land was fine. It still pains me that this Frozen Ever After is the big new hope for Disneyland Paris when at its heart, it's a very mid fantasyland reject and isn't really good enough. The Disney Sea equivalent is far superior. Onkens sleds is fine if a bit basic. Its best bit is the lift hilll animatronic. The rest of it is junior rollercoaster fluff. Small World is the best of the five and was in good condition. All figures and effects are working. Hyperspace Mountain is the same as the Disneyland version and is pretty fun if unremarkable. Its permanently hyperspace mountain so does need a proper refurbishment. Antman and the Wasp is dull. All the sets are just grey and brown as you are shrunk down to destroy micro-chips. This leaves you with a very bland experience. Iron Man experience is pretty good, a more modern version of Star Tours. I personally.. prefer star Tours as it feels more mechanical and less fluid. However there's no denying it is a fun and unique experience. When we went there was no parades or special entertainment as the trip was during the parks off-season. The only offering was the fireworks display at the end of the night, called Momentous which was fantastic and a beautiful display. I was pretty emotional towards the end.

Saw it testing a few times today

Just got back from first trip to Europa. Wow. Where to start. Stayed in hotel Colleseio which was impressive, and to be honest a strange experience in itself that such a lavish hotel was linked to a theme park. 3 days on park and 1 day Rulantica. &nbsp The aesthetics of the park are incredible, it’s impossible not to feel the passion and pride that the Mack family have for their park. Everywhere you look it’s packed with hidden gems and is fresh, vibrant and visually stunning. More so, even after 3 days I know there’s so much more to discover, and the rich theming throughout really does elevate this park. The ride selection is second to none. I went for the coasters, but fell in love with the dark rides! Pirates detail was impressive, but live all the little hidden gems throughout the park. In terms of the biggies. Voltron was my no1 followed by Wodan and Silver Star, but also really enjoyed blue fire, the last inversion really something. Heard people talking up the ops for years, and was always questioning why people went on about them so much. Well not any more! Absolute perfection and efficiency. So obvious that the park is all about guest experience, the no nonsense approach in the stations is so refreshing to see, and keeps the queues down to sub 20 even on popular rides on a fairly busy day! Overall can’t wait to get back, going to be hard to find a park to top the all round package that Europa provides, yes there’s parks with better coasters etc, but it’s the combo of the selection of rides, theming, cleanliness, food and beverage offerings and most of all OPERATIONS! If you havent been. Get out there!!

I was lucky to experience a valley on Mandrill on Sunday, we just came to a stop at the boost launch area before the helix. I found it quite exciting as we would have to experience the rides swing launch to get it going again. I really enjoyed it as well. Mandrills launches are quite punchy as it is so going back and forth through the section was pretty satisfying. I am actually quite a big fan of Mandrill tbh, I've heard all the arguments about it being the wrong fit and whatever, however every time I go on it, it gives me a lot of joy and the queues for it never seem crazily unreasonable.The team always seem really on it when it comes to batching, loading and dispatching. It also has the B&M quirk of being incredibly reliable, 3.8% downtime for the last 7 days, and beaten only by Nemesis Reborn.

Just a post about some Thorpe Park history some people may not know. In the early 2000's, the park installed its first fast track system, which was very similar to the ones used at Disney. You would put your park ticket in the machine and receive a printed fast track ticket. The system was free to use, and ran for about 1-2 seasons until they decided to follow Universal and charge for the service The machines were ripped out but you can still see remnants of the system today. Tidal Wave: The steel structure with the red roof covering the F&B kiosk was the original covering for the fast track machines Nemesis Inferno had an actual area for the machines included as part of the design. You can see this to the right of the queue line entrance, where the retail kiosk is now located. The ones for Colossus was located where the F&B unit at the bottom of the hill (near Samurai) is now located. Loggers Leap also had machines installed, and these were located next to the entrance to the queue line. Hope this was some fun bits of information from the parks history!

Hello. How was your year? Here's mine- Parks visited Efteling X5 Animal Kingdom X3 Hollywood Studios X1 Southend Adventure Island X1 Chessington X1 Schwaben Park X1 Tripsdrill X1 Legoland Deutschland X1 Hong Kong Disneyland X2 Ocean Park HK X1 Himeji Central Park X1 Parque Espana Shima X1 Nagashima Spa Land X1 Fuji Q X1 Disneyland Tokyo X2 Tokyo Disney Sea X3 Thorpe Park X2 Wiener Prater X1 Fantasiana X1 Epic Universe X2 New Rollercoasters ridden - 62 I'd say my top ten new rollercoasters of 2025 are as follows- Flying Dinosaur - The most intense flyer out there. It is absolutely fantastic. Stardust Racers Green - I love this ride, the flowing elements and air time are excellent and the duelling with yellow is so good. Stardust Racers Yellow - I mean come on, they are both so good and theres very little in between them in terms of quality. Steel Dragon 2000 - Aside from the really frustrating loading, this is a really long ride that does deliver. The air time at the end is also excellent. Pyrenees - An Inverter that sits under the radar, this is a very good rollercoaster, it just has a really odd ending. Hals Uber Kopf - The vekoma STC is so good. Both it and Fienna Force are so class. I thought this was a surprisingly forceful rollercoaster and really enjoyed it. Hollywood Dream - A surprisingly good hyper coaster. I only got the chance to ride this backwards but I thought it was excellent. Harakugei - A very good RMC but I find the loading procedures really take away the fun from a lot of Japanese parks. This is still awesome but its tiresome waiting for it . Diavlo - I don't really care that this is just a batman clone, it really is an excellent version of the ride. It looks a little rusty and run done and its amazing that the park have bothered to keep it running. Glad to have got on it. Zokkon - An excellent Intamin straddle coaster. Full of unique elements and excellent pacing. Landmark moments from 2025 Rollback on Mandrill Mayhem where we were stuck just before the Statue helix. Star of some B- tier tiktok vlogs. Loved it. Evacuated from the break run on Stardust Green. Lots of fun watching Stardust Yellow continue to run. Also managing to get on it after the death in September. Finally making it to Tokyo Disney and getting on all the major rides multiple times. Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Sinbad, Indianna Jones, Winnie the Pooh and Beauty and the Beasts felt like life changing rides in my theme park career Reclaiming the 'ridden all B&M's in Europe' after getting to Legoland Deutschland Saying goodbye to way too many attractions this year. Kingda Ka, Muppets 3D, Six Flags America, Tough to be a Bug, Scorpion Express, Blade. Also our last ever rides on Dinosaur before its closure in 2026. So please share your 2025. We love content.

I know it's the red tinted glasses but I love looking back at the videos of Thorpe from the 80's and 90's. There's an innocence to the park that doesn't really exist anymore.

Glad to see that they've now changed the soundtrack on a lot of the rides for Fright Nights, after not doing it for a number of years. They're in the same/similar voice as the advert for this year. Unfortunately no change on Stealth or Samurai though, and you can hardly hear it in Colossus' station as its very quiet. The park is looking amazing in the dark this year. Lots of lighting changes and additional smoke machines making the park look the best it ever has done at night. A lot of Swarms effects have been restored and Infernos mist is pumping. I love this smoke effect on Colossus. StreamableWatch IMG_3720 | Streamable Hyperia is lit up in red from 7pm, and the lights go off as each train goes down the first drop. Really not a fan of the music that starts blasting out at 9:20 park wide though, including in the Hyperia queue 🤣 StreamableWatch IMG_3747 | Streamable Also really not a fan of the new scare zone and just seems like that was added for the sake of adding a new scare attraction. Would love to see another Crows/Towers style scare zone. Why not use the old Blair Witch route from Trailers to the Nemesis Inferno exit like before?

Love that Hyperia is lit up red this year for Fright Nights, rather than bright white. Looks brilliant 😍 https://www.facebook.com/thorpeparkmania/posts/pfbid026Rwstrftd6WfrWixrpci43qLc6PCPfHZrQTEve5Dyyrd12rC2fFvyDURntJCsK6Cl

I'm not really feeling it for FN this year, normally by now there is a bit of excitement, and although I think that trailer isn't bad I can't put my finger on it as to why i'm not feeling it. We shall see!

Stealth is back open today 😃

Colossus being closed would improve my visit 😉

There was a post on LinkedIn from an BALPA event hosted at Thorpe Park. This graph shows the direction they want Thorpe Park to take. It’s quite simple and fairly obvious but also I’m glad they are taking that direction in becoming the thrill park, nothing else. The graph also shows the way they want to improve revenue and the way they’ve done it. A few things: 2021-2023 it says “event led strategy” and in 2025+ it says “event development” to me it suggest Thorpe management want to and the plan is to bring back events. It was never the plan to drop them from Thorpe’s side. Also they state multiple times how they are keen to remove IP. I hope the management outlasts the cuts as when funding does come back, we need them to push forward with these goals as ultimately this is the correct way forward.

Just a general observation/thought. I find my enthusiasm & excitement for Thorpe Park/ Merlin parks muted this year. It’s just simply “open”, no new things to do, no events to change things up every few months, no dramas or issues. No 2025 TV advert, no real advertisement. No communication from parks e.g passholder page. Simply there’s nothing going on and nothing going to happen in the near future (excluding fright nights). There’s no evolving, it’s a difficult one as we had a period of investment and events. To simply going back to basics and providing what they have already. This is my first season since becoming a passholder which there has been no events or new attraction to keep it entertaining. I suppose what I’m asking, is this normal? Down periods in years gone by, with not much happening.

Well having it closed will do no 'arm to the line up.

So to bring some additional clarity to the situation... -The park are awaiting a part. This is evident by the fact staff aren't working on it actively. This means it'll be closed a while. Even when the part arrives, they will require time to test it. -It is likely a bigger / more expensive / specialist part, hence why the park didn't have one already. This takes time to acquire; it's not like they ring up Intamin and say "Can we have 1 [thing from catalogue] please?" and Intamin ship it out the next day from their warehouse either. -Time frame is unclear at the moment. How long is a piece of string. -Thorpe have no intention of getting rid of Stealth.

I've had my suspicions all but confirmed in that Stealth's and Rita's are indeed unrelated. Thorpe will do their utmost to keep Stealth going, and I don't think we're anywhere near the point where they're considering getting rid of it. For those old enough to remember, Thorpe literally clung onto dear life with Slammer. It was closed more than it was open for a couple of years. S&S stopped manufacturing parts, so Thorpe sourced things elsewhere. They dedicated a lot of money and man hours into getting the thing running. Only once it had absolutely gone past the financial point of no return did they give up the ghost. And Stealth is obviously different; it is still such an iconic ride for the park, is a genuine reason that people visit, and generates money from merch sales. I'm not saying to take Stealth for granted, but at this point, there is no reason to think Stealth is facing an imminent closure in the next couple of years.

Went to the park last Thursday after grabbing an overnight stay deal on Black Friday for Wednesday (when the park was originally meant to be closed), breakfast included, plus unlimited FastTrack all day (including Hyperia) for just £72 total (£36 per person). I never usually stay over, but that price for unlimited FastTrack made it an absolute no-brainer. I was pretty much on Hyperia for most of the day, and managed over 30 rides on it, as well as a couple of other rides too. Saw it testing before 9am and it was open for 10. Should be standard but nice to see they’re making the effort to get it running on time this season - it’s a big improvement over last year’s late starts. As the day went on and the ride warmed up, I did notice it started to get a little jolty/rattly from around row 4/5. Might be down to the different wheel compounds they’re using, but honestly it wasn’t anything major and didn’t really take away from the ride experience. Operations were absolutely flawless all day, the team were smashing the trains out and I didn't see it stack once, trains were even dispatched before the other hit the break run which I hadn't seen before. There was a lot of people who had the same deal also lapping Hyperia, and with RAP usage on top, the main queue for Hyperia definitely took a hit. Bit of a problem when RAP and FastTrack is allocated for the whole park but people are just using it on Hyperia. Since I was staying over, I was actually there for park opening for once (normally I don’t bother till the afternoon. I hate how they keep all the gates closed until 10am. Other parks like Chessington and Towers let you in the park earlier, not sure why this one can’t do the same. Back in the day, they used to open the gates earlier (around half 9) and if rides were ready, you’d open them before opening. Much better procedure than having a bottleneck and lots of people running in my opinion. This was on a quiet day too, can’t imagine what this is like on peak days. Shame not to get on Stealth again, still not been on it this season yet. Didn't see any visible work going on last week but hopefully the issues will get sorted soon. Rumba Rapids was testing and there seemed to be a lot of staff over there training, the ride availability page shows this will be open on late May now. Vortex is running really well, and has done for the last few seasons. It still has its smoke machine from Fright Nights too, doesn’t have much effect without it being dark and the lighting etc but still nice to see.

Try not to laugh in first 15 seconds challenge: https://youtu.be/0RyqNJamtpE?si=zCpnRAN5XGgW7ZUh

You know things are bad when the joke account is being serious.

Apologies for double post but by all accounts, Hyperia has operated successfully since opening. Hopefully the issue is now sorted...

Some would say it's the past of theme parks.

Sonic Spinball had to be rethemed for similar reasons, the allegations that Knuckles filed meant they had to quickly drop the brand in closed season so it's definitely possible they could reopen as just David Land and drop the Walliams.

Ah love these. Unfortunately my lists are very short nowadays, but I've had a fair year theme park wise (considering how life is now!) Thorpe Park x1 Alton Towers x1 Legoland Windsor x1 Disneyland Park Paris x3 Walt Disney Studios Paris x2 I do miss the days when I had huge lists, and I was at Thorpe & Towers 10-20 times each! Sad to have not been to any fireworks events or halloween this year, for the first time in... I don't know how long. Still, could be worse. Paulton's next year for the first time in 20 years!

Whilst I don't anticipate there to be significant discourse on here this evening, the Fright Nights Launch Event is this evening, so I'd expect there to be spoilers floating about ahead of the official opening tomorrow. Please share anything that could be considered a Spoiler here. If you want to follow along and get some updates of the event, and insights into what might have changed and the quality this year, follow along with your favourite fansite (that's Thorpe Park Mania, in case it wasn't obvious) on all good (and bad) social media!

The park have released an hour-long interview with Fright Nights management about this year's event. There's some cool insight about things and is well worth a watch. Will share my thoughts about some things discussed at a later point.

Pretty sure it still has its cable - can see it’s 2 cables going into the launch shed here and the one cut up on the floor will be the old one. It’s not completely unusual for it to be a bit temperamental right after a cable - just a shame it had to be done at fright nights!

This is a perfect summary of my thoughts as well. It’s quite an interesting subject really, because now that they’ve chosen to go down this new route of highly themed walkthroughs and dance shows etc I imagine it would be difficult to change course. The Asylum, Experiment 10 and Cabin in the Woods are examples of excellent Thorpe mazes in my opinion at least - but I imagine they would be poorly received if they “came back” exactly as they were, even if they were still “free” (or included in the event ticket price as I prefer to say!). I think now people have grown used to what a Thorpe scare maze “is”, and something like Asylum would probably now be seen as lazy, as it had next to no theming and just 2 stock songs playing in the queue, even though it could be an extremely intense experience. I also wonder if these sort of “more basic” attractions won’t be able to compete now adays due to the need for things to look good for social media etc, especially with Universal a few years away, Thorpe need to have impressive looking attractions I suppose so they can directly compete with HHN. I expect however, the real reason is that they need to justify the prices they’re charging for a run through, so it needs to look like it’s worth paying for, more so than the need for it to be scary. As you say Cal, times have changed I suppose.

So let's dissect this a bit more / share some of my thoughts... I really like that they're making Lucifer a central figure this year. I've said repeatedly that this is something that park should look to do - have a headline character who is prominent in both marketing and on park. When the park introduced the Director character in 2013 and 14 (and even the Governor character in 2012), it was a nice touch. It didn't necessarily fully hit the mark as there was a lack of consistency due the character (naturally) having to be played by different actors. And the on-park character didn't quite marry up with the marketing character. But the park have had form there, and it worked. One criticism that occurred in 2015 was that the Figaro Bros were featured so heavily in marketing, but had no on-park presence (even in the original Big Top), which is why the park veered away from central characters. They've slowly reintroduced the concept of headline characters with "Fear" in 2021, the Locksmith in 2022 and the Toymaker in 2023. Again, they featured heavily in marketing. But aside from the Toymaker (who was only used for a special BTS tour of Stitches), had no physical on-park presence. Lucifer's Lair - in my opinion - has been the highlight of the past two Fright Nights. And given the plan to have the stage on the Beach this year, it wouldn't be surprising if they were hoping to turn that zone into a bigger thing this year. Having Lucifer has that central figure just works for the current Fright Nights set up. As a slight critique (possibly even a long-term suggestion), I'd rather the park have an 'original' character, as opposed to 'just' the devil, but they can make it work. I've banged on about this enough times on here, but if you look to Walibi Holland, their Eddie the Clown character has been a headline character for much of the park's Halloween event's history. Eddie the Clown and Walibi are synonymous now. And it leads to great marketing (and more recently, merchandise) opportunity. Thorpe can recreate that, in their own way. Now, the actual event. Upfront, I'm not enthused by Purgatory Town. It's being marketing as an 'interactive' scare zone, or a speak-to-characters zone. I'm getting a bit of a Swarm Invasion vibe, in that I expect there will be minimal theming and minimal actors, and guests will 'get out what they put in'. That is, you can walk through the zone and have basically no interaction with the actors, or you can spend time chatting with them and find out their story and lore and build up from there. The key difference is Swarm Invasion had an actual coaster with a backstory to help it, whereas Purgatory Town has...well, no pre-existing lore. Another issue is that Fright Nights has become quite...passive. A common discussion point on here, at the very least, is that the mazes are like walkthroughs of very well-themed sets, with less actual engagement. I'd argue Stitches and Trailers highlight that extremely well, but even DeadBeat has its moments. Now whether that's a good thing, a bad thing or just a thing is almost a mute point. If the reason the park are creating these passive experiences is because that's what guests enjoy and respond best to, then creating a scare zone which is the opposite to that is a hard sell to guests. Again looking to Swarm Invasion, that didn't exactly light the world on fire, and that could be because of the high engagement level required. The fact we're less than two weeks from the event starting and we have no theming or build is also telling of what to expect on that front (ie: not a lot). I'm certainly not writing it off, as we don't really know a lot about it still. But all signs point to this being little more than a nice experiment for the park to try. However, it is great to see Fright Nights further spread out across the park. Next thing to note is Survival Games changes. Hard to know what expectations should be, but the video and promo image make it look like the characters in the maze will be different at the very least: There's mentions of a "toxic twist", and any part of the marketing related to Survival Games does feature a strong electricity motif too. Trailers getting two new scenes is perhaps not unexpected given the new posters that appeared. A little excerpt from the park's press release gives us a bit more on what to expect... Evil experiments could be Experiment 10 (which could be the X poster seen) Forbidden Forests could be a Blair Witch throwback I hope that - unlike last year - the new scenes are more than just a redress of existing scenes. I know it's a less-common opinion, but I'm fine with a quieter year with no major new attractions as a one off. I'd argue that Purgatory Town isn't even necessary this year. But we'll see what happens!

At TP today, as the weatherforecast was so good. Luckily got to ride Stealth and thought it was a little slow going over the top, so (as I am familiar with the them) I mentioned it to the team. I observed the next twelve launches, thought that the transitions over the top were getting even slower, and again expressed my concern. The team offered me a ride and I informed them that I would not, as I believed the next launch would rollback. They launched, and it rolled back, I went for lunch.

The full Old Town soundtrack has just been uploaded on my youtube, go check it out

Actors are in there in the afternoons most days this year in my experience. They always place a sign outside the entrance when there are actors, and there almost always won't be actors in there if that sign isn't out. If you want to experience it without actors, I'd try to ride it before noon.

It is a weird one and I don't think we really know the answer to the question of "Why now?" Obviously having an SBNO ride doesn't look nice. But it had been SBNO for ages, and stood right by a year-round attraction for a while. So it's not like now was the hot time to do it. One point which people might not be aware of is that the park made use of the ride for staff training (work at height in particular) after it closed, which was in many ways more convenient than using another ride. They didn't need planning permission to remove it (even if they did submit an application). I reckon there is some legs to the school of thought of a ride going there at some point. I wonder how much it actually cost to remove? I wonder if that extra cost proved to be a hurdle to adding a ride there in the past, so they ultimately decided to remove it now so when they choose again to add a new ride, it's slightly less expensive. A new ride could still go there next year in theory, but I'd be surprised.

I totally agree that paying to park at theme park sucks, but trying to get out of it by “outsmarting” the system or whatever is poor behaviour. It’s like these idiots you see with cameras in Police officers’ faces, not breaking any laws, but trying for hours to catch them out or get a rise out of them. Not breaking any rules, but it’s scumbag behaviour. The reality is, if you get out of the car park somehow without paying, weather that be by tailgating someone at the barrier, driving the wrong side of the road out of the entrance, holding up the queue while arguing with staff to open the barrier, or whatever, I doubt very much that anyone would do anything about it, but if someone does something stupid or aggressive in order to get out without paying, they’re are an absolute piece of sh!t. 🤷‍♂️ The rules apply to everyone. Nobody should do stupid things to get out of paying, and certainly nobody should be trying to lean on the staff to let them out etc - they aren’t there for that and it isn’t fair. There will always be people who try to flout the rules, but I suppose it comes down to the sort of person you want to be. Some in our society simply don’t care. But if we all behaved like that, 1, we’d be in a mess, and 2, the parks would simply make whatever changes are needed to close the loophole. on the other hand however - if you choose not to buy a parking ticket in advance, and take a chance that the exit barriers might be open at the end of the day etc, I think that’s fair enough if you’re let out without paying but were willing to pay at the exit 🤷‍♂️

SAW's station now has a brand new pre-boarding video on the TV. No longer loops Rules Of The Game like it used to.

Yeah, track replacing seems to have been pushed aside for now. Whether it was the issues with the previous new piece of track, a shift in strategy or something else that is the reason for that, we'll never know. I'm not a fan of Colossus - I can tolerate it on the front row (which is the only place I've ridden it in the last 8 or 9 years, and even then, I can count the number of rides I've had on it on one hand). But it does still seem to attract a reasonable crowd and runs reliably enough for now. But yes, it doesn't quite have the draw of a Nemesis or a Vampire. On the other hand, the park still have plenty of other development spots before they'd have to consider ripping rides out, so Colossus may hang on for a good while yet. My biggest concern with losing Colossus would be that we would no doubt lose the fun pathway that goes through the ride. Merlin just don't build rides which interact with walkways these days, and I'd be surprised if a potential Colossus replacement has anything beyond a straight pathway running alongside the ride, as opposed to a nice hill or similar.

I wonder if with the cuts / redundancies, the people who would usually be responsible for things like that (ie app / website updates) have been let go / had their job modified and people there just haven't joined up the dots for what needs to be done?

Find it fascinating how the GP are going oh it’s just ripsaw and the enthusiasts are trying to fight back saying it’s a newer model!

The last time I can recall the park opening after 10am was for Fright Nites 2003, when they did 11am-11pm. Still, a long time ago! In any case, it's been a long time since the park did a passholder day, so it's lovely to see them do one again. The thing with these sort of days (ie ones at the start of season) is that the money they don't earn from standard entrance tickets is sort of recouped by the fact passholders tend to spend more than average on their first visit of the year due to new merchandise. Plus, it helps bring value to the annual pass (despite it already being great value) and added satisfaction. So it is win win. A 7pm close giving the opportunity for a dusk ride or two is a lovely bonus too, and it's good to see the park continuing their experiment of offering later closing times. Hopefully that can continue. I also agree about Fright Nights: it would be interesting to see the park explore 11am-10pm at the very least. I don't know how realistic it is to happen, since one of the things that ties the park's hands is the number of under 18s working at the park. Equally, the park simply seem to have veered away from running rides till 10pm: they don't even do it for buy outs or their VIP/Press events. But it would be interesting to see.

Is anyone feeling particularly positive about the upcoming season?

How was your 2024? Park count Alton Towers X6 Chessington X1 Thorpe Park X4 Animal Kingdom X1 Hollywood Studios X1 Magic Kingdom X2 Disneyland Parc X3 Studio Parc X1 Linanmaki X1 Europa Park X3 Efteling X3 Emerald Park X1 Six Flags over Georgia X1 Carowinds X2 Fun Spot Atlanta X1 Dollywood X2 Holiday World X1 Kentucky Kingdom X1 Kings Island X2 Cedar Point X3 Kennywood X1 New rollercoasters of the year Year highlights - First day visits for Nemesis Reborn and Hyperia - Finally visiting Dollywood and trying the cinnamon bread - Hitting 500 and 550 credits - Riding some absolute beasts this year (Voltron, Taiga, Afterburn, The Voyage, Steel Vengeance) 2025 is more of a rest year but with big hitters like Tokyo Disneyland, Fuji Q and Nagashima Spa land, I'm hyped. 😃