Marc

To be fair I think the park have been more honest and upfront about this all than usual - they have said they tested it out and are not happy with some show elements of the ride and want them to be corrected before opening, whilst that not a huge amount of technical detail, its more detailed than a park would usually be about a attraction (Certainly Merlin ones anyway) I get the point re the tech - but there has to be a stage where someone bites the bullet takes abit of flack and takes tech to the next level and I think that applies to much more than just rides - look at the first few smartphones! Out of all the "Merlin" open days I've really only really followed the ones at Thorpe, which really seem to have a fairly good record as far as I can tell, Saw opened for previews and opened on its scheduld open day (Yes it shutdown after a short while - the fact it required Gerstlauer to fly back over make modifications would indicate to me that wasn't any fault of Merlin's planning) and The Swarm which again opened on time and for previews and is probably one of the most reliable rides in the country.

I totally get why people are upset about this - ultimately we are all enthusiasts and should all be looking forward to getting on the ride when ever that may be. But I don't think going around calling the park everything under the sun is fair either - ultimately to us the delays are no more than an annoyance, to the park there will be huge financial implications and of course their reputation which they obviously want to protect. I've no doubt in my mind that when they announced the launch date they were 100% confident of achieving it, and when this was not reached and they announced the end of May they would again of been certain of reaching it, they have nothing atall to gain by picking random dates based on nothing and missing them. Reading over the comments on FB it's quite refreshing that a fair amount of people are being supportive and understand the delay is out of their hands. It will open, we will all get on it soon and hopefully it will be worth the extended wait!

Can you imagine the rage if Thorpe just opened this with no warning?! People not being the first people ever to ride it id hate to imagine it!

What tired and tested rides at Thorpe do you think have awful reliability out of interest?

The bars look like a restraint - some of them are down some are up.

What's your point? The newly painted beach which has just been filled up in the last couple days? Staff are sweeping it as we speak.

I don't think it's fair to say they don't care - they obviously do, you can tell that from how they have repaired theming across the parks over the past few years, obvlion had a repaint just a couple years ago Nemeis this year. What they don't have are the budgets to spend multi millions on referbs. I think Merlin do a better job at up-keep than we had under Tussauds.

Agree with this lets not give this guy the attention he's clearly after! A few updates from today - bins! They are now throughout the queue, the fencing has been finished near the bush bbq

To be fair with the exception of burger kitchen Merlin food is generally of a decent standard - paying a small premium for a good experience would be well worth it imo.

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Feel free - I just think maybe we should look forward to experiencing the attraction when it opens instead of assuming things will be cut in years to come?

So cutting the experience by "50% will either make it 3 minutes shorter or 2 minutes longer.... Right Dont think we need to be worrying about it being cut.

This should now be working Cheers

It would just suffer the same issues...

Can we not just be happy it's up and running again... Or would we rather it was just replaced with some turf... Or a hb leisure game?

There will be much more news when the press event is on! Wouldn't read into the more delays!

I do agree, and whilst you say a lift stoppage is nothing to write home about - thing is though if its pouring of rain and theres guests stuck its not good for the guests - media attention or not. I have personally seen Inferno shut down in the rain before - just as I've seen it run fine in the rain too over the years - I'm not sure what the deciding factor if it will run or not is.

Infernos lift adjusts to the speed of the train - it uses 2 small wheels at the bottom of the lift to do this. Sometimes in the rain these slip and will cause the ride to shutdown and stop on the lift - the last thing they would want right now - perfectly understandable. This was explained by an Engineer at an inferno BTS tour.

True it took a while but my point was more that the vast majority of the effects across Thorpe atleast which failed/ broke whilst the park was under Tussauds control have slowly been fixed under Merlins control.

Indeed - maintainace at Merlin.

I think it's also important to remember With the Colossus and Saw fastrack queues whilst thy are overflowing, the fastrack queue time is probably still 15 mins or so - both rides have very short physical fastrack queue lengths along with inferno compared to stealth / swarm for example. I do agree they could hand out better compensation than fastrack which does no doubt add to the problem.

Saw both rides shutdown this afternoon which may have contributed!

Few other shots from today - there was also a screen saying "You are here" with all the differnt park areas highlighting the Domes logo

Saw has just opened