Marc

I’ve noticed you’ve had this problem with them a lot - it’s certainly not great customer service and closing 2 hours earlier than advertised is bad, there’s no real other way round it. Have you ever complained to the park direct to see if the shed anymore light onto why? I suspect it’s just when they feel it’s too quiet to stay open later but they really should do things the other way round, advertising an earlier close time and then extending if needed.

The vast majority of new rides have teething problems - unfortunately that’s the way it is. If testing only started at 9:30 it would have been because Work was being done to it up till then, not to spite guests. I do think possibly in situations like this though towers should look to open a coaster due to open later to help make up for the loss.

Towers have snow today - Causing the majority of rides to be unavailable. Pic from Merlin AP group

Yeah agreed - I guess you could have a herd of Walkers in there - although not sure theres the space to make the effective enough. On the subject of Living Nightmare theres a skip outside it full up.- not sure if its related to the maze or not - I guess we will see in May!

No that’s the trains it’s always had since it opened!

As it will be the only maze open and one of the “pulling points” of The Year of The Walking Dead and of course an “Extreme” version I’m sure we will see more actors in there than you would of a standard Fright Nights night - there’s quite abit of open spaces within there which you could fit in a decent amount of actors!

Originally on my first rides on ghost train there wasn’t an actor in scene 2 with the train crash, an infected actor was added later on, which isn’t part of it now, so from what I can tell there’s only one less actor from the changes. I agree it looks like the fences into the tunnel have been done cheaply / on site, the crashed train at the end of it definitely hasn’t and is new. I think the corridor could do with more smoke and an “infected” actor in there to give it abit more effect possibly.

I think the former - the boxes are pretty big and ugly attached to the train - but they did light up the more vibrations / noise there was. Agree with what Ryan said, it’s important to remember this coaster is X, a couple of the block sections have been re-programmed to sync up with the theming but other than that the ride it’s self is the same. I’ve always found X pretty fun, even back to X:\ No way Out days, and again this is a fun experience, there’s a complete story throughout and the theming is good, especially in the queue / exit area, really like the amount of Easter eggs too with throw backs to old members of staff, old advertising for X:\ No way out etc. I think it will do pretty well for the park but time will tell!

The battery packs were on one train for the phone charging - they are there for a week. Some pictures from queue, station etc here:

Straight through the first and 2nd, stops on the 3rd and stops on the one before the offload station even if there’s not a train waiting

The battery packs are on one of the trains, lighting up the more noise / vibrations there are!

Walking Dead signage is now up

Maybe things have changed this year, I love PA but their operations on every visit of mine are easily the worse of any park I’ve been too - certainly no efforts to fill seats / quick dispatches so hopefully they’ve realised for a park of their popularity they really needed better operations.

The train you see as you walk down the tunnel isn’t the one which used to swing out - the one which swung out was literally made from metal bars / lights, through the smoke looking just like a train - the one you see down the tunnel now may have been the one which used to sit opisite the tunnel?

The Walking Dead: The Ride will open this Saturday 31st March m! First look at the new TV ad

It’s an interesting one - i can see why they are trying it, one of the biggest complaints from Merlins own food outlets is speed of service, there’s no doubt a contactless tap is quicker than cash 9 times out of 10. As for it cutting off the parks target audience I’m not so sure - to be honest I can’t really remember how old I wasn’t when I got my first debit card but i certainly wasn’t that old, long with I’m sure the park has data on card usage to be able to work out just how successful it will be - be interesting to see in a month or so’s time if it’s it’s still a policy is as many of the parks outlets.

Whilst the tech maybe real, I’m not sure we will actually see it on the ride, or if we do in a very limited format. There is a walking dead themed mobile charger! As with all Merlins PR stunts, everyone say how stupid it is etc whilst it’s getting coverage in national papers across the country

https://www.thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/23-03-2018/2018+Open+Day+Roundup a full round-up of all the changes for the 2018 season here!

Hopefully a sign of things to come but park ops were good today - relatively quiet but coasters (apart from Colosuss) all running 2 trains - hope it continues.

Ghost Trains had some pretty major changes to scene 2 over the winter - addresses some of the issues they’ve had with that part over past.

Open now - although it is one swing.

Rush is testing but hasn’t opened yet.

Yeah rumba is open.

Invision - the suppliers of the forum software dropped the support for their chat application a while back now, which was the main reason behind its removal. If the demands there we can certainly look into alternatives.

Is there not lockers at Obvlion? Or are they gone am not too sure.