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This has now been confirmed to be 'The World of David Walliams': https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/whats-on/alton-towers-world-david-walliams-3434435.amp I'd expect a full Press release from the park today. Actually a pretty good choice for an IP in my opinion. Relevant and contemporary, whilst also having enough sticking power to be a classic. Seems to suggest a brand new ride plus rethemes are coming. Of course, there's questions as to whether the park should be relying on another IP and such. However, if they HAD to go for one, I can't think of any better choice. Also, it's nice this has been officially confirmed, after Walliams accidentally leaked it himself 18 months ago...

New top 10 coasters after a few trips to new parks including hansa park today Cant decide between taron and taiga. Taron has the theming, the launch, the overall experience whereas taiga’s second half of the layout is just absolutely incredible. Too close of a decision to call so ranked joint 1st. Also three RMCs in my top 10, that’s crazy. I’ve been converted 😱 Taron/Taiga - Zadra Wildfire Shambhala Untamed Der Schwur des Kärnan Lech Lost gravity Helix

*Blows dust away* 2013 fright nights (and as a year in general) was an incredible year, the park needs to bring fright nights back to how it was around this time. Every maze was good rather than 1 great maze and the rest mediocre.

Legoland says hi

Who remembers the last time time Thorpe Park had a new permanent addition that wasn't some second hand rides? It's getting a touch ridiculous now. DBGTROTD has evidently emptied their pockets and left them with their proverbial pants down. To keep it on topic - good to see a dead area of the park having some investment at Towers.

Did someone say Top Spin at Thorpe?

And let's not forget the meet photo (courtesy of Marc's fancy new iPhone )!

If the ride needs guests to imagine that it is a better ride for it to be enjoyable then I think that says a lot. I was having a read through older pages if this thread when the ride opened. It's very interesting to chart the change of enthusiasts' opinions. From 2016 to 2017 there were generally positive responses and then reactions sour quickly in 2018. It really seems the mid section and the pacing of the ride really glued it all together. The ride experience is very fragile.

And we have some plans... Source So, we have a 34m tall, two launch, 4-5 inversion Mack spinning coaster coming to a park which is like a 45min drive from Calais. Awesome! It's located next to the park's Mack Supersplash and is partially over water. The lake is used for pedal boats at the moment so I assume this is the end of them. As much as I'm looking forward to this, given it's in such a prominent location, I hope it doesn't ruin the vibe of the park.

To be honest the preshow barely connects to the rest if the ride at all. Frankly, everything before you enter the carriage is essentially unrelated to the preshow and hanging train. Derren in the preshow: "And after it's all over talk to your friends you may find they perceived things diffferently" (something to that effect). How? The film on the VR is pretty much identical... For a ride supposed to have: A. Ghosts B. Illusions C. Trains It has literally only 2 of A and only 1 of B (the hanging carriage is an illusion, the rest is just a video on some goggles). Apart from the name and preshow it has sweet nothing to do with Derren or illusions at a basic level. It succeeds only in having trains, I'll give it that. I actually prefer the Dungeons.

Taken from MAP Facebook group. Never experienced this last year so have no idea what it is, but it's back!

100% agreed. Can't believe that Thorpe is pretty much at its lowest ebb right now and yet Inferno looked and rode fantastic last night. It really comes alive in the dark.😍

Chessington seem to specialise in low capacity attractions now. If I were being cynical I’d say it’s done on purpose to boost Fastrack sales. I remember once going on the Scorpion on a quiet day and getting on before the people in the RAPs / Fastrack queue!

Last week, I visited Movie Park for their Halloween event: the 21st anniversary of their Horror Fest. The park has 8 mazes, 4 scare zones and a variety of other things to bolster the number of attractions up to 19, with the park claiming the event to be the biggest Halloween event in Europe. We visited the park on Thursday, hoping it would be quiet: the park is open 10am-10pm for Horror Fest, with most Halloween attractions opening at 6pm and closing at 9.30pm. So it was a LOT to do. So, without further ado, let's get to it (with light SPOILERS)... The Walking Dead: Breakout The park's year-round upcharge horror maze, and it turns out this year is its last year. I did it on my previous visit in 2017, and didn't rate it much. As it was still upcharge, I skipped it, but I hear it hasn't changed, so I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it any more. From here, it's worth pointing out how the park's mazes work. The standard setting is that they let groups of 20 in every 60-90 seconds, are free flow and don't allow touching. There's a couple of exceptions which I'll point out when I get to them. All of their mazes have age restrictions, which varied from maze to maze, and these are enforced strictly: they DO do ID checks! Hostel Themed around the Hostel series (more specifically, the first film), and rated 18+, this is the park's goriest maze. It starts off with a tour round Amsterdam - you even walk through the Red Light District, which once upon a time had screens showing some, ahem, rather explicit sex scenes on them, but alas no more. And the maze continues quite happily for the next few scenes, with a party atmosphere and everything seeming happy; the actors do nothing to scare you. But, like the film, it takes a very sudden, very dark twist. Scares come thick and fast, with very gruesome scenes all around you, and plenty of actors in every direction. The finale sees the group locked in a large white room stained with blood, with speakers blaring out chainsaw noises, and the room flashing between pitch black and red lights. It was a solid maze ending, though it felt like it needed an actor with a chainsaw in there to really amplify it. A shame, but still a very strong maze! Wrong Turn This is the park's upcharge Halloween attraction, at 5 Euros a ticket, and you go through in groups of 6, and is also based off the Wrong Turn series of films. And it also won Best European Scare Attraction at this year's ScareCON award ceremony. This also uses Haunted Lantern (like Skin Snatchers at Alton Towers), but literally gives the group a lantern rather than a helmet. The maze is based in trough of the park's old Ice Age dark water ride, and likely makes use of a lot of the old scenery from the ride. Following 2 pre shows (which I didn't really understand because they were all in German with no way of offering English translations), the maze begins. Being in the trough, the actors regularly positioned themselves above you to get really good jump scares. There were some awesome effects around too, and some clever pieces of misdirection to add to the scares. The end was quite chaotic, with loads of actors and a huge sparkler / firework style effect as well which caught me off guard. My main issue with Wrong Turn is that, because it has such a huge space to work with, is that it sometimes felt a little too open and that you were a little too removed from the sets at times. This meant the maze felt like it was missing that final ingredient to make it truly exceptional. But it was still fantastic for the most part and I really enjoyed it. Insidious 2 The park's final IP-based scare attraction. Amazingly, this is located underneath the seating area for the park's stunt show, which was a great use of space! Unsurprisingly, the idea of the maze was to be creepy and build up suspense to try and get scares that way. It also made use of lots of big open sets to build tension as well. For me, it was a bit hit and miss. There were some unsettling and creepy moments, but these didn't last long, and often the actors took away from the atmosphere. This is a maze which would benefit from less (visible) actors, but instead has quite a lot, making it difficult to truly capitalise on the atmosphere. A shame, but a good effort. Circus of Freaks An outdoor clown maze - a set up with a lot of potential. However, this missed the mark. The maze felt a lot like the outdoor sections of Do or Die (things draped over fences), although better themed in fairness. There was some good bits and nice bits of humour (and a nicely executed animal area with gorilla costumes and the like), but ultimately this was one of the weaker clown mazes I've done in my time. And when compared with the quality of the park's other mazes, it really does miss the mark. The Slaughterhouse This is a maze crying out to be a Chop Shop style maze but, surprisingly, it wasn't! This was some weird beauty development laboratory that had gone rogue and cut people up instead..or something. It was nicely themed and had some good set pieces, and a couple of nice jump scares. The ending was a real highlight of the maze. It took place in two rooms with incredible dense smoke (you literally couldn't see more than 30cm in front of you), with actors then appearing out of nowhere. It was confusing and clever and just really worked! Campout Another outdoor maze, but taking place in the woods. Very Blair Witch esque in story, but a lot more open and with more 'actual' theming. It wasn't exactly memorable either. A couple of neat special effects but nothing exciting or special. It's worth pointing out this is rated 12+ (and is the only maze with such a low rating, as all others are 16+ or 18+), so I guess it isn't designed to be scary, but it's a shame there wasn't more to this. Project Ningyo - NEW FOR 2019 The park's big new thing for the year is Project Ningyo, and replaces a previous maze: Deathpital. They made a big deal out of this: this was the only maze where Fastrack was available (at 10 Euro a pop!) and was the only maze where actors were allowed to touch you. This was also the maze with - by far! - the longest queue, at 50 minutes. We realised this was because of a terrible batching system: the maze takes place in a build the other side of a service road; groups of people are batched to the service road every 5 minutes, but these groups were usually cleared in like 2 minutes, leaving long periods of time where no one was entering the maze! Anyways, onto the maze itself. It starts off with your group of 20 being given a guided tour of a medical facility which (from what I understood) was dedicated to creating a serum to make people happy. You're guided into a room all together and locked in. An actor in a hazmat suit appears from the other side and gets you out, and you then walk through the carnage of what's behind the scenes at the facility. There's some nice theming, and some good smells (in particular, there was an animal testing scene which really smelt of rabbit poo!), but there just wasn't enough substance. Despite there being a lot of actors, it still didn't feel like enough, and the scares were just non-existent. The touching was effectively 'medical staff' frantically trying to guide you along and out of the way of danger, which I always find dull. In general, the maze was rather lacklustre, my least favourite of the night. A shame really, but hopefully it'll continue to grow. Scare Zones The park had four scare zones, which actually covered the majority of the park (the kids area, Nickland, is a "monster free" zone). Sadly, only one of them felt defined, so it made it difficult to understand what exactly was going on. Acid Rain: Some sort of nuclear apocalypse area, with sirens going off and a variety of weird stuff. Horrorwood Boulevard: A collection of famous Halloween characters Dead West: Wild West themed, but dead Fear Pier: No mazes round here so never actually got a chance to go there. Apparently all the actors in the scare zone are just given an individual budget and a loose story to stick to, and they then get to create their own costume. Really gives them ownership, but definitely adds to the disjointed feel. All the actors in the zones did 'roam' very well though, and many had shovels to bash against ground for jump scares, which was different to say the least! Other Stuff -The park apparently transform their drop tower into something scarier at night time. All we saw was a flashing light. Yay? -There's a hypnosis show which we didn't see. -There's kids stuff in the day (kids maze, face painting, etc) which looked nice. -New for this year was an IT 4D experience - basically highlights of the IT Chapter 1 converted into 3D with your standard 4D effects. Solid 20 minute show which was fun. There's also a closing show, which was originally meant to be fireworks, lasers and fire, along with a video playing on the screen in the entrance plaza. Due to noise complaints, the firework aspect of the show had been cancelled when I was there. The show itself was pretty neat (the lasers were cool!), but it's fair to say that fireworks would have added to it. I hope that they can find a way round it! So all in all, Halloween Horror Fest is a very solid, very full Halloween event. It's not something I'd go out of my way to do again, but it's got a lot of positives going for it, and the headline mazes really are something. There's clearly a lot of thought put into all the mazes and what level they should be at too. Hopefully some of my experiences were just bad runs rather than the norm, and I'm intrigued to see how the event develops over the next few years!

To my understanding, the H&S sign offs of a maze include: -LTC signing off before the maze opens to the public (and, I believe, before actors are allowed to even rehearse in the space). Like with rides, that has to happen every year. -Tech team do daily sign offs: they'll check that all the effects work, the area is safe (ie, no nails poking out, no loose flooring, etc) and so forth -Sign off from the Entertainments team, ensuring there's enough staff, all areas that should be locked are locked, all fire exits are clear, see if there's any potential hazards which may have been missed, etc. As has been said, if a problem arises, it should be flagged immediately to someone working at the maze or nearby. That way it can be checked by actors / staff and appropriate action can be taken (Benin's right in that it's basically only tech/maintenance teams who can use a hammer). Actors should also look out for these things, but they don't always notice them immediately given everything else they have to do as well. It's the same with a roller coaster imo: if you were to catch yourself on a belt buckle which somehow has a sharp bit, for example, it would be something you should mention. Staff should also look out for that but it's not something they would necessarily spot immediately given how many other things they have to do too. Don't quote me on this, but until you get quite high up, I don't think there's no specific qualifications you need. Obviously, standard experience and courses you can take to learn how to write risk assessments, understand H&S investigations, etc, which are advantageous to have prior to being in those roles, but there's not formal qualifications required. Going higher up you need them (stuff from IOSH), though most people will undertake those qualifications whilst in a H&S in the first place as a way of stepping up. I guess this is the major discussion point. Mazes naturally receive a lot of wear and tear at an accelerated rate. In the space of a group of 15 people, you can go from a nail being firmly in place to sticking out ever so slightly. And that can progress slowly as each group goes through. Of course the park has a duty of care and is responsible for whatever happens, but at what point should a line be drawn and we can rationally say 'The park aren't in wrong'? Or - to circle back to where this discussion stems from - how can we rationally say it's "horrendous that these things aren't checked"? Not that there's a clear cut answer to either of those questions, just musing..

This is nothing like the situation that lead to the Wild Mouse's closure. No similarity whatsoever. I agree that a lot of new measures are OTT but in this case it clearly isn't the fault of the guest, if a nail is sticking out of the floor and able to cut into someone's leg in the pitch black I think that is quite serious.

It was a very fun trip and it nice to see that Thorpe have finally come up with a good new maze with the Creek Freak Massacre that was well themed and has good scares!

I don't know, I thought it was rubbish from day 1 and so did most people who went in it apparently.

It's reasons like this that have led to the ridiculous OTT health and safety measures that end up being why we can't have fun these days. Petit things like this that lead to these things then getting closed down. I mean, it was this attitude that led to the closure of the Wild Mouse for goodness sakes. Injuries can and will happen everywhere!

I stand corrected, but I still believe it will be a half arsed job, it's Merlin. The park needs a large investment, and not a refurbishment of a current ride or a second hand ride from a Sea Life

No one mentioned RMC, especially when a Mack Big Dipper would be a much more suitable choice for Chessie given a lack of space and everything else... Or a Lech Coaster could be an option? Or maybe if they want another water ride get a Rapids or Supersplash? Plenty of options that would suit the park more than 2nd hand log flume (drop tower is a fair enough addition/replacement for Rameses)...

So, Untamed then. I've always been wary of the RMC hype train, but it's fair deserved. Can only imagine how ridiculous Steel Vengeance is if Untamed can feel like it's going to violently eject you out the front row at 11am. At night after it rained a chunk it became obscenely ridiculous. Should be illegal really. Didn't mind the shin guards as much as I thought.

Thorpe probably needs less closed SBNO flat rides to be honest.

Don't think the two examples above can be solved with a double knot... With stuff like this though unless people raise the problem instantly to those in/around the maze then not much will be done until the next day (I.e. once first aid have processed the incident report onto the right people)... Though I'm sure knowing Merlin you need to be qualified to use a hammer or duct tape to sort out things like rogue nails...

I'll try and get around to writing a full review soon, but Tulleys Shocktoberfest was absolutely incredible this year. The mazes were all on top form and Wastelands Penitentiary is unlike any scare attraction I've ever seen before in terms of both the exterior show and interior. The atmosphere around the attraction is phenomenal and I would highly recommend a visit for fans of scare events. Whilst I felt like last year was a bit of an off-year for the event, it feels refreshed and at the top of its game this year. Just amazing.

It was a great meet - my highlight was spotting a wild Jack Sickstone in his natural habitat whilst filling up my water bottle. Also spotted the legend that is POWERS TOWERS PRODUCTIONS too. I suppose it was alright spending time with people from here as well, in a way.

Based on my last visit, there seems to be very little difference to the park in summer vs. the park in FN mode bar the later opening times and mazes (which at least are better than last year). The same very cheap-looking Poundland quality figurines and body bags etc. are the park's attempt at changing this (same as last year). They don't really come across as what you'd expect to find in an "award-winning" event. Currently walking around the park, many areas feel like FN is not running and this is something the park should definitely look at changing (the Amity Highschool thing is quite a good example of transforming the Stealth plaza to a more Halloween-inspired area). You'd also expect to DBGT to have more scare actors during FN's than what appears to be a ride host flicking your leg a few times whilst you're watching the VR. In short, this reviewer summed it up quite well: My overall rating: 6.5/10

I agree. Did Wastelands 3 times at the weekend. Without a doubt the best scare maze I've ever done. I'd recommend boots or wellies especially for The Wreckoning. My review will be incoming soon.

After a revisit I can confirm that wastelands is now the best attraction at tulleys and is also probably one of the best all-time tulleys attractions. As much as it doesn’t scare me, chop shop was filled with actors which was great and made it a lot more enjoyable. Everything else was much the same. The event is really, REALLY strong this year

@Platform15fan I haven't personally been made to kneel since the last time Thorpe ran face it alones. Whilst with my dad the other weekend, I saw people be put on their knees at the beginning of TWD Living Nightmare but nowhere else. I wouldn't have thought you'd have much to worry about :3 I guess a knee pad is a good idea to be safe though! I'm scare acting this year (not at Thorpe) and I started wearing knee pads in my scene after getting very bruised knees xD

Re-surfacing this thread as I'm now happily in a position where I can reveal my handsome mug on this site (damn those social media policies!) Pity back row on Shambhala is undoubtedly the only good thing at PortAventura these days... Funny thing here is not only are the majority of the people behind me under the height restriction for The Walking Dead (seriously)...but one of them has just had their entire photo ruined by my arm. Sorry Swedish kid. Nothing much to say about this one...Valkyria is a VERY good dive coaster. Taking one for the team on Chiapas. Front row is undoubtedly the firing line for wetness but fortunately Germany were also in a heatwave at the time! ...and finally, more or less as a plot twist (but a very fitting one) but this is me on Bob at Efteling (for the last time ever - even if I'd only ridden it twice in its lifetime) along with several of the Planet Coaster community during a meetup back in July.

Congratulations on the success of your campaign.

Just. Why? Much like with the other cast offs from Weymouth, feels more a forced upon park decision as opposed to something thought out deliberately... I just don't get these decisions, they could've just removed Toadies and get a REAL investment instead of this...

Hi all, if you're interested in the original Haunted House: I'm doing a Kickstarter campaign to realistically recreate lost scenes from the Haunted House (and two Chessington rides), as part of an upcoming book about attraction designer Keith Sparks and the Sparks studios. More about the book in the video on the Kickstarter page. After exhausting every lead, I traced most the finished Haunted House ride photos to a fire that destroyed most the Sparks archive some years ago. However hundreds of production records, flash photos, workshop pictures and videotapes did surface, meaning we now have reference for almost every detail in the original ride. This is special because the Haunted House was changed a lot within just 2-3 weeks of opening in 1992 (not many know about this because it was changed so fast). We even found outtakes from when the ride was photographed but not the full lighting pictures. Matching the material with technical layouts, it's now possible to recreate the missing scenes with 3D modelling and digital lighting. The renders will appear alongside any surviving real photos and be checked by the original lighting designers. If you've seen something like Virtual Towers Online you'll see how realistic this can look. So why let a fire keep a piece of British theme park history lost forever?! By funding this Kickstarter we can record these classic attractions to complete the book on Sparks. Any further volunteers will also be extremely welcome! We need to beat the target to get the funds, otherwise no donations will go ahead and the recreation project will have to be called off. The book should be ready summer next year but the plan is you wont have to buy the book to see the recreations. Thanks for reading! I can answer any questions.

I was at Scarefest over the first weekend, and I think the event's looking really good. I still won't do the mazes, but my friend did and he thought they were all good. Favourite was Sub Species and he also loved Darkest Depths which I've heard is quite a bit scarier than a family maze (it was very loud from outside!) Apparently nothing was different inside the Dungeons. Atmosphere around the park was good, only saw very few roaming actors, the Dungeons lot outside the Dungeons, including a very intimidating Plague doctor, and some plague victims who were both good at scaring the older ones, and with the kids (I saw one encouraging a kid to stare at an adult with him). I think I saw the Ghost Pirates too, that or some cast members from Darkest Depths. Park audio was good, the same parkwide audio as last year with the addition of a Thirteen section was playing deafeningly loud on Towers Street and Dark Forest had the same audio as last year with the vocals. Darkest Depths has a full 15 minute long song with vocals as it's exterior soundtrack and it's one of my favourite theme park soundtracks ever, and Project 42 had some brilliant audio blasting around the Gun/Drill area of FV. Other than Towers Street, with the usual decorations + some brilliant pumpkins themed around the Big 7, there wasn't much theming around the park, all that really sticks out was some black, white and grey bunting for The Attic around Hex, some body bags on carts around the Dungeons that the actors were interacting with, and A LOT of smoke machines. I can remember one by the Dungeons, one on the bridge between Mutiny Bay and Fountain Square, one under the car in Katanga Canyon, one on the RMT tunnel, one on Oblivion's tunnel exit, one behind the demon things in Haunted Hollow, and one in the Attic queue that can also be seen from the pathway below as well as the permanent ones. I may even be forgetting some. Lighting was also decent, although there was quite a few generators at least the ones that were there were mostly coloured. Oblivion looked really good with it's oranges, and Wicker Man was missing alot of it's lighting from last year although I hear the full lighting package is coming a bit later on. The only thing I have about lighting, is some new bright white sting lights everywhere. It was worst at Wicker Man, where they're all over the queue and way too bright, although I suspect this might be to do with H&S with the stairs. Also there was a bright white generator light directly at eye level in the Oblivion queue which almost blinded me 😂 Operations were good around the park, saw a couple of rides closed over the two days and two hours we were on park, mostly Oblivion, but they were, for the most part, open fairly quickly after and with the exception of the second day when Oblivion, Smiler and Wicker Man were shut at the beginning of the day (possibly down to the rain), Oblivion seemed to be having the most issues, as well as Rita which was closed for a couple of hours the second day. Dispatches were pretty quick everywhere, especially at Thirteen and Oblivion. As for the actual rides themselves, they were phenomenal. I had some of my best rides on Nemesis and The Smiler, my first go on Thirteen in the proper dark was good, Oblivion in the dark was way better than we thought it was going to be and Wicker Man in the dark, wow. While it doesn't look as good without the lights, we were FLYING round that track and it was so dark that I didn't even know what was happening and I know the layout off by heart! I also had two actually decent rides on Rita, and Galactica is there also. Hex was great as always, we didn't see the dreaded "actor" at all apart from one ride, where he apologised for what happened in the octagon and made a joke in the vault, something about "if you have a bag keep it under the seats, if you have a drink hold onto it, and if you need the toilet tough". That may have been the same ride where it felt like it was spinning way faster than usual, creating a very disorientating experience. I think the "actor" is just a ride host taking things maybe too far. Overall, Scarefest opening weekend was one of the best I've ever had at Towers.

God you're miserable.

I know everyone loves an excuse to bash but is colossus really that bad? It went through a stage of being pretty awful - and of course the restraints are not be the best design but it’s hardly unridable - especially in the last 2/3 years the trains are noticeably smoother IMO. Personally I think there are better things the park could spend the money on. There are rides out there which run much rougher!