Marc

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.

It’s not like bag holds are an amazing solution - will it really make much difference to throughputs - I’m not so sure, and the queuing after to get your bag wasn’t much fun either. Would quite like to see merlin to go down the more universal route, lockers before the queue, it will be a job convincing people to part with their bags for an entire queue though.

The Swarm isnt as bad as it looks - iits a good fun smooth experience which im sure you'll enjoy. Compared to Saw, The Swarm don't throw you round quite so much, so hopefully that helps with not making you feel ill!

I assume we are joking and not comparing unfinished entrances to those in Europa park to try dig at Merlin right?

Depends how its done, for example if you choose your rides at the time of purchase then it will come out of the rides allocations they have set for fastrack. I think i read somewhere this system is similar to the one in place at Phantasialand, im sure someone who's been / used it will know more though and how well it works in reality.

Im not sure if one shots are actually gone - but theres no mention of them on the OS anymore.

Think this was the case last year too apart from with one shots - not seen any details if they are still there.

A few new ticketing details have been released for the 2018 season, over Summer the park will sell a special Summer Lates Pass, which will get you into the park from 4pm till 10PM for just £10 during the late night openings which will no doubt help keep the later nights busier and hopefully see the event be more successful than Summer Nights. Along with that fastrack has seen abit of a re-vamp, with off peak and peak packages along with the options to mix and match where you use your fastrack allocations. Full details: https://www.thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/07-03-2018/2018+Ticketing+Details+Released

I noticed that, I'd guess the trains will get new vynals but will see soon!

Off-load area is looking pretty well themed, much like Living Nightmare is where the level if detail is very good. Looking forward to seeing more of it!

Wow..

^Pretty sure I’ve seen pictures on Twitter from the road past the park showing Rush has been repainted - hopefully someone knows where I saw them and can link!