Marc

It's up to them how they reveal it there just building hype!

Alton towers event hasn't changed...

I think it will stay free, I can see a paid version in the future which will give you faster access potentially replacing fastrack. Quite exciting the potential to become a queue free park!

Think of all the space this could free up of unnneeded queue lines..

There is no general queue this is what makes it quite different to queue bot

http://thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/19-08-2013/Reserve-And-Ride-Trials Well who liked queuing anyway? Massively excited about this.. It has huge potential. Fantastic to see Thorpe once again working ages to improve guest existence.

You'll just have to wait

Dont forget its the mazes open till 10! The rides will remain open depending on demand

http://www.altontowers.com/useful-info/opening-times/#tab-themepark-nov The last week days have been cut to make up for this to 4pm

It is certainly 18+ now.

18 is pretty standard across hotels isn't it? There needs to be somone responcable and to foot the bill if the room gets trashed!

Personally I do agree with the scrapping of the seperate back row queue, it don't seem to work very well atall. What I would do is simply allow guests to queue up as normal, and then simply allow guests to queue for backwards if they wish to do so on the station, as they do on Inferno / Colossus front rows. As for the bag room its a tough one really, the problem being compared to Stealth / Saw the Ride is there are much more people all at the same time collecting their bags at the end of the ride so whilst 2 people in Stealths bag room is fine, 2 in The Swarms can cause a bottle neck. I Wonder how possible it would be for them to have small storage boxes with doors and just fold them over, or better still some automatic system which folds over when the trains dispatched... it must be possible!

I'd be surprised if its not towards the end of the summer, its the busiest period in the summer and would make sense to advertise to those on park.

Dont think you can read to much into that, a marketing department are there to try and make more money for the place!

I'm not sure if they've changed the wheels or somthing recently but my last 2 rides have actually been quite smooth.. Was quite surprised tbh!

Maybe people actually enjoy storm surge? To be fair it's the perfect ride thrill wise for the new target Thorpe seem to be aiming at

I must agree with Ste, as much as I dislike the ride Saw is quite well themed when compared to the other coasters on park, the interactive bit inside / station are very well done IMO.

Sorry I meant the Octopus Gardens rides it replaced are ones you would expect to see in a town centre

Just something what I've noticed more and more recently on not just these forums but various forums about the UK's parks is the slating of Merlin and it got me thinking are they really that bad? I know people don't like things such as paid fastrack but these are things which have been around way before Merlin got involved with Thorpe / Alton / Cwoa, and what business sense would it be for them to come in and but that what must be fairly high revenue stream? I think Merlin have actually done a pretty good job with "The big 3" of our parks since they took over.. At Towers we've had: Mutiny Bay - Much better than what was previously there, well themed and good area IMO Thirteen - Whilst possibly marketed wrongly, its a pretty fun ride which id say generally is well received Nemesis Sub-Terra - It wasnt great at opening, but they listened to feedback and its a decent little attraction now The Smiler - Its problems are well documented but its what the park needed and the public seem pretty happy with it - Along with that X Sector had its re-ferb too. Thorpe: Saw - The Ride - Possibly the parks most successful attraction, it has its critics (including me) but again its a ride the public seem to love Saw - Alive - Was more of a bolt on but it continued the Saw theme going into another year, it offered a different experience to what the park had on offer for a couple of years, its themeing is actually pretty good too. Storm Surge - Ok... its far from great, it looks bad, but is it an improvement on the rides you would see in Staines town centre? Probably.. The Swarm - Pretty much what all enthusiasts wanted from Theming to Marketing the entire thing is pretty well executed X - Since ive followed the parks I think X:\ No way out was always getting a retheme in that closed season, it finally did, Loud music, Lights and a lower hight restriction to start appealing to a wider family market, its not amazing but its a a vast improvement. Along with that thorpe have seen investments in areas which matter with the park looking and running much better than it did pre Merlin. Chessington: ( I dont really know a great deal here!) The Hotel - Pretty decent investment, its a nice hotel inside and out and is pretty popular Wild Asia - Replacing the tired beno land area, a vast improvement Africa Retheme - Area looks so much better now than it did previously Zufari - Its opened up a previously unused area, fits quite well into the target of the park Whilst this year hasn't been CWOA's finest Merlin do seem to be spending money in the right areas in replacing theming across the park which needed doing (not by fault of their own) Along with this, the annual pass is pretty good value for money when you compare it to other annual schemes, whilst its alot more expensive than back when I started visiting (I think a Tussauds annual pass was £70 then!) you do get an awful lot for your money now. The parks all also seem to have a pretty good future planned for them too, with continued investment in them all, I do genuinely feel Merlin get the blame for a lot more than is really down to them, IMO the parks are in a MUCH better position than they were pre merlin.

Yes you can, last time at Stealth Diner and Amity Kebabs

AP tickets are only valid along with an in date annual pass as far as I know.

By the looks of it some automated system. It also has one above fastrack so they can count the amount of fastrack guests in the queue. I guess its some sort of trial at the moment

http://thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/07-08-2013/Summer-Nights-Return Just what we all wanted

They are placed looking straight down on the queue lines so I guess they will be able to do some sort of count of people entering.

They have setup some cameras in the Stealth queue line, it looks like they count the people entering the normal queue / fastrack queue and then theres one to count at the exit also. I'm guessing this could be to do with trying to get more reliable queue times?