Marc

https://www.thorpeparkmania.co.uk/articles/18-04-2017/John+Burton+Q+and+A Q&A with John Burton from Merlin Magic Making here - some geeky references too!

The park have night security - there's also (maybe) sill engineers around at 10 ish so they could have spotted them.

If scaffolding had been put up that would mean a lot! That said I'm sure that platforms veen there for a long time!

Running alot better over past couple days - Only rides not open for 10 this morning was Rocky Express and Samurai. (And Slammer of course!)

All coasters (Apart from Stealth) are open.. I'm a Celeb opens at 11. Just rocky express.. Significant improvement on the past few days.

Professional as ever

They banned you from their Facebook for commenting on the name? What did you say?!

Not a great name... Going to be an interesting year next year- whilst I've no doubt it will be the best new coaster for 2018 towers will ultimately triumph with their marketing - seeing this just reaffirms that for me.

No not all guests will see - but they are making it as clear as they possibly can using the equipment they have available- I can't think of any ways the park could communicate that to guests any better. As for the 1/2 train debate it's one what's been on-going for years - of course I wish the rides were all on maximum capacity all of the the time - but sometimes that's not positive for reasons way beyond any of our knowledge - Thorpe being as compact as it is it's always been more noticeable - last year I went to towers queued for an hour for galatica running one station before they opened the 2nd and added the additional train.

The big screen in the dome, the 2 big queue boards and the ride boards at the rides in question all state the rides which are opening at 11 - how can they make it any clearer? As a guest your not expected to know the reasons behind ride capacity- why would you? As for inferno and it's 2nd train - see above - we don't know why it was having the 2nd train added at 12, maybe there was a fault, maybe it opened on 2 but needed to be reduced - its upto the park to manage that and when things are not working up to them to remedy it and or take the flack - I can assure you rides closed will bother management at the park much more than it does you or I.

I agree it was reactive - but they reacted in the best way they could given the situation they were in - and most big rides actually remained open till 7 - got out of ghost train about 7:30. As for the reviews section I don't think towers has this on either - up to them how they utilise social media - they are generally quite good at responding to comments on there negative or positive.

None of us really know the answer to that - nor do we know that's the reason behind the closures - certianly yesterday rides opened as they were tested, so they clearly had staff available!

It was not a necessity- I'm sure those in the know will have known exactly what was going on and when things would open - and when things did open the park was pretty quiet - probably a fair bit quieter than it would have been. As I said - not defending what went on - but saying they "don't care" is wrong.

Explain to me if they didn't "give a jot" about guest experience why would they have: 1. Stopped letting people in 2. Stop fastrack sales on coasters 3. Open all rides an additional 30 minutes, others for an hour after advertise close 4. Offer refunds / comp tickets to every guest in the park 5. Have staff working late replying to all guests online Im all for criticism when necessary (and rightly so after a bad couple of days they are receiving this) but the park obviously do care about guest experience or none of them things would have happened.

It's far from "normal" procedure. I believe on off-peak days Rumba, Samurai, Storm Surge and AB4D open at 11. Obviously something's going on the past few days for it to be like this - they will obviously be looking into the causes and remedys - not in their interest for this to be a regular occurrence!

I'm pretty certain management will be looking into what happened today, why it happened and how to prevent it in the future. In the end we had an ok day - ghost train and a few coasters were open till 7, all other rides what did open till 6:30, everyone was compensated on exit.

Stealth was on 2 trains all day yesterday - but was having fair few issues throughout the day, closed all day today.

Obviously been a bad day for the park - everyone's being issued comp tickets on exit and the parks remaining open till 6:30 On top of closing the gates at 11 they also didn't sell fastrack for the coasters - bit of a write of day but they did what they could and I'm sure lessons will be learnt!

I remember when ghost train first opened they didn't put the headphones in the little pouches which made it a lot better - either way as you say the new headphones are such a massive improvement!

They did keep the queue open till 6:30 - hopefully it's just teething issues and it will be ok further on!

The ride was in top form tonight - there has been a tonne of improvements all over - from the new (very good quality and loud!) headphones - improved effects on the trains and new touches in scene 2 (train wasn't working this evening but the improvisions were pretty good (as thoss who watch the spoiler videos will see!

I notice a lot of people mention how their music sounds samey - they did a interview with Cupcakes and Coasters here where they touch abit on that https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/cupcakes-coasters-11633643/cupcakes-coasters-meets-imascore-5525412451 Ive personally never found what they do very samey - the stuff they've done for Thorpe this year so far sounds quite a lot different to what I've heard from themi before. We are going back years now surely? I remember when all the flats had lost city music - even eclipse would play it which didn't suit it atall - now it's all seems to work quite well - none of the flats other than Vortex use the lost city theme (other when there's no audio and the area theme cuts in) but they are all lost city.. as for the path then speakers were all signaled as part of The link back in 2006 I believe? Most of the time they played chart music so to play parts of the lost city theme is definitely a welcome upgrade!

Didnt towers fireworks / entrance music involve a full orchestra too? Pretty sure it did! I'm pretty sure Merlin / those responsible for the audio are hands on in what they want to ensure they get what's right for the ride / park.

TBF I don't think we've seen a great deal of "fiddling" at Thorpe - much of the music on the rides is mostly what they opened with - a few changes here and there mind. Of course lots was changed when the park decided to go down the chart music route but thank god they've stared to go down the more themed music route again. Maybe nostalgia was the wrong word - as I've said im a big fan of the themes at the park, as I was of the old entrance music - but I also think things can always be bettered too - for example the new stuff Imascore have done for the entrance / dome fits in very well with the new "island" theme. I heard what I assume is a new end of day track today (attached some videos) actually reminds me of the old one in some ways. I'm personally a fan of imascore - I think they've created some very good tracks for the merlin parks and look forward to seeing what more they can do. IMG_2118.MOV IMG_2119.MOV IMG_2120.MOV

Fitting in nice now