Marc

Didn't think fastrack was sold for iac - last time I was there all the signs had been removed.

I never stated merlin or our parks were perfect - they are not the best in the world either but for the size of the UKs industry / target audience they are in my opinion overall good. Sorry I disagree there - the parks / merlin do listen to feedback and where needed act upon the feedback - just because they don't address every criticism on somewhere like here don't mean they don't listen to the feedback from the majority of their audience. Imo the budget cuts are a total separate issue here - as a business they have to look at ways of limiting damage so to speak in a way to affect guest experience the least - unfortunately if the parks are not hitting targets then money has to be recovered from somewhere. I don't think you can assume that overall the parks have low customer satisfaction - you can't base that from posts on here. A good example is reserve n ride - the majority on here hate / are against it - where as the majority of guests who fill out the surveys at the end of the day of using it praise the service - sure that's just one example but I think you would find that's the general picture across most things. Your right - I'm sure they could match anyone - ultimately it's down to the money spent - but I'm not convinced the UK industry is big enough or has enough interest in it for that level of investment

Wasn't really aimed at you or anyone in particular! We know shutdowns happen and always will do - generally Thorpes reliability is pretty good over recent years (apart from Samurai!)

I really don't understand the whole bash merlin at every opportunity on here. Has anyone considered that they actually do know what they are doing and are a hugely successful company for a reason? Just because there are better parks elsewhere across the world don't mean that they would be a sucsess in the UK's industry.

At the end of the day hours being cut is always far from ideal, but they are ultimately a business, if the numbers to justify 7pm closures are not visiting then they obviously have to address this. Thorpe have always been good at extending hours when needed and ive no doubt if the park is busy enough they will extend back to 7pm when its needed. Also gives us an extra hour of Summer Night queues on Fridays and Saturdays!

Most of them had people using them when I got here early this afternoon!

There's obviously a good reason for them to make these changes - I don't see the issue? Sure the fence don't look great but then they hardly have time to remove / rebuild a fence whilst the park is open.

The most recent trial seems to be going much better than the previous ones - feedback seems generally positive from the majority on social media!

Reserve n Ride will be returning form the 6th July for a further weeks trail. Thorpe Park will be holding a Q&A with us and we would love to get some of your questions to the park - please message me directly with any questions you have and we will get the best put to the park!

As has been said the wait times are minimal thanks to the design of the attraction anyway... If you put into perspective these is only 250? of these passes, its not going to make a blind bit of difference at all and makes the VIP holders who have paid alot of money for their passes feel more valued.

Of course that depends on the queue board instantly being changed when the ride opens... which we all know isnt always the case.

A full rumba queue holds little more than 25/30 mins, so unless its stretching back to Stealth I think its safe to assume thats not quite right!

As long as they dont end up trying to open major coasters late its no huge deal to me. I expect all the rides opening late got little / no riders before 11 anyway.

Yes and no.. Stealth is designed to roll back and isnt an issue in its self, Smiler stalling will be a much bigger deal as the train needs to be craned off the tracks. But as Pluk said - the stall wasnt really the main issue here.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alton-towers-hit-more-problems-5847745 Unfortunately not quite!

It's open now. :-)

I imagine they will be more concerned about how 2 trains ended up within the same block section rather than what caused the initial stall.

They dont. You see the people walking around the park with a tablet updating the queue times and they are generally pretty accurate. Depends how you look at it - I was in PA a couple of weeks ago and the longest queue was no more then 40 minutes but the unlimited fastrack was well worth the £60 or what ever it cost.

Thorpe will have a much better idea of gurst feedback than we do. Everyone who uses the system are invited to do a questionnaire so maybe the feedback there is good? The way they are implementing it is just like queue bot with a free version and you can pay for quicker access - I'm sure Blackpool do similar.

I think there pretty different to be fair, from what I remember slammer had many significant design changes.

To be fair I'm sure the majority of businesses in the world would rather shift the blame away from them selves publicly in them sort of situations.

Can only be a good thing - despite what people think Tp do care about the presentation of the park and they won't just have random bits of grey track.

I thought that 2011 was their best year attendance wise, followed by 2010 and then 2009 The answer to this is we clearly need more Storm Surges!

Looks like Clegg and Milliband have already found new employment

Yes musics playing and very loud!