Marc
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Posts posted by Marc
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Whilst imo it’s still not the best attraction - it’s a lot better now with some part of it not being hooded. The annoying audio constantly saying to not remove your hood has also gone now thankfully.
Big improvement on what it was.
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More changes on the ride - the Zombies in the cages on the last block brake run now fall towards the train when the trains stopped, in the exit there’s a new cage with barrels which move and bang against the cage.
In the queue line the barrels behind the fence seemed to be trying to do something but didn’t seem to be working tonight.
Nice to to see the continued improvements!
I do wish the smoke machines could be re-adjusted to fire at the train as they did when it first opened!
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https://www.merlinentertainments.biz/investor-relations
Merlin’s summer update is well worth a listen - some interesting points about struggles staffing the parks in the south east with hints they may look at the pay structure.
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12 minutes ago, A Lost Zookeeper said:
Normally adding layers of story to the area music wouldn't be that bad, but at Thorpe (and more importantly Amity) where less than a half of all speakers actually still work, having guests have to wait around 15+ minutes to understand why the same music that plays all year round is playing is laughable. Especially in queues like Stealth where only two of the speakers in the plaza actually work.
Thats not quite true - Tidal Wave finally has music back in its queue line and station, Stelath has had it’s plaza speakers which were removed put back into place and the rest repaired.
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There’s a lot of focus on WWTP which is a shame as a lot of the park wide audio is quite good - as has been mentioned the Colossus track is probably my favourite - especially in the station (video below) although I did notice sometimes the normal track plays - I don’t agree with there should be one / two tracks park wide - even with speakers not working during normal season we have themed audio for the areas and it works so I think it’s good this year we’ve seen the areas go back to having their own Individual Fright Nights tracks.
Goung back to WWTP I do see what it’s trying to do though it is subtle - back in 2006/7 maybe we had a fright night themed WWTP which had Halloween songs between the standard Big Bob voice overs which worked but was pretty cheesey.
Agree with comments on the lighting - would be nice to see the LED lights set to just one colour in the areas which they are used.
For all the bad points regarding the mazes this year one good thing to come out of this year IMO are the roaming actors, the guys over at Amity do a great job of generally being pretty freaky, always interacting too which is nice to see. The Big Top clowns also I feel would have a lot more praise if they weren’t a “replacement” for one of the best mazes the park has had, on their own the show does a pretty good job of scaring anyone in the dome and causing general havoc in there whilst when there roaming park wide they do a good job - it’s just a shame it’s at the expense of The Big Top. There was also a Zombie Flash mob there on Saturday - saw some videos which looked good hoping it returns next weekend!
Overall for me id say the biggest problem with Fright Nights this year is the lack of a stand out attraction - we’ve always had one (The Asylum, Cabin, Big Top) where even if you had bad run throughs on the other mazes - these are almost certain to deliver, this year im not certain what the headline attraction would be.
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I think WWTP is overall quite good - there’s one bit where the “wwtp radio” jingle has been edited and sounds slightly odd but that’s the only real bit I’d say don’t sound good personally.
Song choices are down to opinion, as has been said the songs on there now have a meaning to the vocals, I can also see an argument for a more Halloweeny choice of songs (although could argue this would be too cheesey) but overall I think it’s a nice idea - it’s nice for the individual areas of the park to have their own themes again instead of the same loop playing across the whole park as we’ve had for 4 or 5 years now.
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Got there at around 9:45 and security was nice and quick for us luckily - the queue was about half full but we got through in around 10 mins.
Didnt really have an issue with the queues on park - it was busy but that’s no surprise for a Fright Nights Saturday, thought operationally the park ran fairly well for most of it, losing Swarm didn’t help but the queues we did queue in all moved fairly quickly.
Agree with comments about Car park, took almost 2 hours to get out, things started to move when a load of staff turned up at around 11 to try and move things, at around 11:30 they opened all the barriers and only looked at tickets which further helped - but think this should of been done earlier!
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3 minutes ago, Coaster said:
Rumba closed until next year supposedly?
Indeed - similar to last season.
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All the time I think - I’ve seen the sign in the week too!
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Got to the park for opening on Saturday and have the buffet breakfast a try - was £5 (£4 with ap discount) for the cooked buffet - absolute bargain and the food was decent too - will definitely do again!
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Those who are keen to try out the mazes before they open on Friday can book into the Shark on Thursday and get access to Fright Nights and the mazes on the press event ?
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Those who are keen to try out the mazes before they open on Friday can book into the Shark on Thursday and get access to Fright Nights and the mazes on the press event ?
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Feel free to organise something in the appropriate topic!
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1 hour ago, Coaster said:
Did you actually read that seriously... ?
Also easy for you to say considering (as far as I'm aware) you never rode it.
I mean, the mist was on yesterday for some of the time, so it seems to be more a case of switching it on. Also the audio being off is just not good enough, Wicker Man manages to keep its queue audio working.
To be fair it’s possible for something to be working yesterday and broken today - same for mist and audio.
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Sometimes things are not in the parks control - would you rather they closed Icon till they could fix the PA system / Mist? ?
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41 minutes ago, James said:
What are they meant to be playing? I just assumed it was anything goes these days!
The same music as around Colossus !
On the flip side it’s good to hear the full length entrance track back!
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Noticed that Lost city flats area has been playing The Domes music for last couple weeks - guessing not intentional hopefully can be fixed soon!
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I think (am pretty certain) if colossus and inferno opened with their imascore music and had been changed to their old ones recently we would be having the exact same conversation tbh!
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1 hour ago, HermanTheGerman said:
I really don’t like the park’s decisions regarding audio recently. Removing the original Inferno, Rumba and Colossus/Lost City pieces in favour of very bland, generic and unatmospheric IMAscore tracks was a very poor move. The entrance theme is certainly very nice, and a vast improvement; I just wish there wasn’t this brand-obsessed idea of redoing all the music to feature that one park jingle. Homogenising the park for the sake of fan service is not a good idea...
Whilst I can see your point on Inferno / Colossus - Lost City used to play 3 minutes of colossus statuon ambiance with air hisses on top - the imascore stuff is a huge improvement!
2018 General Discussion
in The Past
Posted
First hints for next year - sounds like we will see events over the season similar to what we did this year. Fingers crossed for more late night summers!