Marc

I think when reviewing these rides its important to step back and look at who they are aimed at - IE the general public. It isnt as good as some of the Disney / Universal rides (which had 10 x more budget) - The every day thorpe guest is unlikely to have ridden / know about these rides and will enjoy Ghost train. I see your point regarding the theming - but I disagree it cant be appreciated - the only part of the theming blocked by the VR headset is on-board the train its self - which looks like a tube train - its done well but theres plenty more theming to take in at the start of the ride during the pre-show / entering the floating carriage and the middle section. the amount of people you see running out of the way of the "lights on a stick in a tunnel" prove its quite effective. Agree the ending could be better mind. No idea on the leg ticklers / air jets but i've seen the smoke machines working on the trains. Whilst the story's are not different - the different characters certainly get people talking. "Questioning what you saw" maybe? Have heard plenty of groups talking about "the guy on the first train" for somone else to say what are you on about - i had a old woman etc. I agree the story's all stay the same but it gets people questioning what they saw and talking about it. I was actually lucky enough to ride it with out the VR during the media evening - watching middle aged aduts cowering into their seats as a deamon appears out of no where suggests to me it does scare people - but its like all rides - I can go on Stealth no problem where as others will be scared, this is no different. If it continues to get overflowing queues of people im sure the park wont mind the staffing costs - the maintenance issues will of course improve over time like alot of new rides. Whilst I appreciate its not for everyone - everyone does have different opinions on rides - would be boring if everyone liked the same thing! Also - Welcome!

I think you answered your own question - Staff do every morning, not just the GP. The same reason why the Lift Hill walks are so popular which again is something staff will do on a daily basis. Regardless of peoples personal opinions on the ride - its clear theres still great love for Bubbleworks from the GP from the reaction of its closure, im sure there will be many people more than happy to pay for a tour.

Ghost train does seem to be suffering a fair bit in recent weeks - particularly compared to when it first opened during its Tech rehearsals etc where it seemed fairly reliable when it was up and running - hopefully its latest closure wont be too long and it will be back up and running soon.

It's free marketing for the new ride - im sure the park won't mind!

^ im fairly sure the area where the track went under saw is considered its ride area - unless that's changed.. At the same time I'm not sure I can see them wanting scared guests on the bridge over the lake at dark.. will be interesting to see how it plays out!

Haven't seen Crust open all year so I assume so. Was always a weird one - I assume a franchise at Thorpe isn't cheap and it never seemed to get busy but it was there for years!

I expect they just don't want the queue to be full and it break down rather than they have anything to do with it's throughput

Yeah of course I agree - I meant that any throughputs in its first few weeks of operations are likely to differ to those long term with this sort of attraction compared to say a coaster which only really has one way of operating it.

Perfectly possible it's getting a lower throughput as staff get used to it and find the best way to operate it Thaf said the queue always seems to move quickly - no doubt helped by very few fastracks at the moment!

There were signs out the front from opening - I'm guessing they are trying to tackle the problems it's been having over the last week! Edit: looking at Twitter it's just opened

Because they are both fine examples of reliable rides which suffer no down time? That said if it remains closed all day it will be only its 2nd day since opening its failed to open - there are rides with much worse records!

Yeah colossus used to do similar and some footers are / were in the lake.

From what the letter says it's for those affected by yesterday's issues with Ghost Train but I'm not 100% sure

All 3 were loaded last night.

this is explains all'

What ever the issues were seem to be resolved as X is runnung 3 trains

There's not a queue over 5 minutes and all rides (apart from Derren at the mo and stealth are open on max capacity) if there are - it's not really causing any issues Edit - just saw a group of 4 turned away from Detonator without bands!

I maybe wrong but I don't beleve that The Smiler has ran on 4 trains this season, despite it getting a lengthy queue so can only assume it won't run 4 trains any time soon - even if they have 4 they can operate.

I've definitely seen smoke on the train.. happens just before the evac

Not a huge amount compared to if they need to replace the catch car!

This event is to celebrate 10 years of Stealth, not 10 years of TPM (TPM is technically 12 too!)

^Hopefully by choosing the Vive and not cheaping out on the headsets theres plenty of room for improving things like the VR as the tech moves on - it would be pretty marketable too. As for the maintenance, i agree that it is very complex and im sure it will have its issues, but like all new rides these will get irone out and i'm sure it will run reliably in time.

I think it would benefit a lot from some sort of noise cancelling headphones - I guess then could come with issues with staff getting you to take them off though!

Yea Slammers open - probably sounds a lot worse than it was

I guess your comparing to NST? Hasn't that been closed since they had to replace the restraints and after that had a load of issues with people struggling to ride it? That and NST is one of many closures at towers so I don't think it's a white elephant as such.