Dan9

My technique at all the Pizza Pasta's was always just continuous slice stacking. Like my own castle of cheese and pepperoni. Anyone else? Best discussion of the year so far deffo.

If an engineer isn't smacking something with a spanner, it doesn't mean they aren't working on it.

Like how Pepsi Max was on one train today? Swarm and Stealth have had next-to-no queues for 90% of the week. There haven't been any complains regarding people not being able to do as much as they wanted because of queues. Storm Surge has not been signed off. Inferno has not been signed off. X has not been signed off.

What basis do you have to suggest Thorpe haven't carried out sufficient maintenance? This whole 'more time = good, less time = bad' thing has no actual substance to it. Checks are carried out by Thorpe and several outside companies every winter before a ride is allowed any people on it. Rides are not like people requiring a certain amount of sleep before they can function properly. I'd be interested to know how happy you would be to ride Expedition Everest knowing it hasn't had a proper refurb since it opened 8 years ago.

BBQ is currently in the middle of a building site and nowhere near any of the open attractions. I would doubt it.

But thinking like that is how you end up with Storm Surge.

Such a promising start until I ran over my own banana...

So less than 4 months until this and still no one really knows what it's going to be about, apart from the fact it looks 'all pretty and stuff'. At this rate it'll probably either be worse than John Carter or the best blockbuster of the decade. But 'cause it's Brad Bird I'm still holding out hope for the latter.

Why bother even making your original comment then?

No idea if any of them will be open or not, but if they were ready having the Lost City flats open for one week would have no effect on the long-term 'lifespan' of any of them.

If you're put off by outside rides it would be madness going to Thorpe Park in the first place. Obviously it depends on winter maintenance needs. If X is ready to open I doubt they would ever choose not to open it

The Swarm itself is fine, if it's held back by anything it's the batching area design, as well as the whole backwards thing and standard fastrack woes (but less of a problem here with more premium pricing and a higher throughput ride in general). I don't mind backwards though, just the station design never really accommodated for it in the first place. Bigger problems come from relying on rides like Storm Surge, Depth Charge and Samurai to be the major filler rides outside of the top coasters.

Weird comparison. With the problems (a lot of which are self-made) they intend Rn'R to solve, pushing staff to get an extra 100 an hour isn't really going to change much. Staff usually attempt high throughputs regardless of which system is being run more for morale-purposes. Bigger issues than that are a) Fastrack allocations b.) Priority passes c) The types of rides they choose to build in the first place.

The same attitude that created Thorpe's current complete lack of identity. Not that I'm claiming Rn'R has been completely worked out, a 'queue-less park' is a pretty big advertisement... so what do you propose that you think they still have the time to install this season which would grab the general public's attention more?

Again I mentioned it was just a risk, I'd heard from somewhere else that the Space refurb might last a bit longer than first suggested and it's opening would run pretty close to the start of the BTM refurb. But of course that might end up being completely wrong!

The dates of refurbs haven't been confirmed, not even Space's re-opening month. BTM would more likely either close around September/October this year or January next year. But again, speculation...

I really like Space but I agree it shouldn't be the make or break of the trip, waiting until it opens just means you're likely to miss out on something else anyway (Big Thunder arguably being an even more key attraction). There's plenty of great things worth going for if it's your first time; Dreams, Tower, Ratatouille etc...

Bear in mind Big Thunder's meant to be having a pretty lengthy refurb soon so it'll probably be difficult to find a perfect solution, date's not set in stone though.

In addition to what Marc said Adventure Island has no entrance fee and is incredibly accessible. You can come and go as you please and when you do leave you're in the centre of a pretty big seaside town. Means in the summer you can just turn up for a few hours at whatever time and when you've finished what you want to do you're in Southend already. The two aren't really comparable.

It makes perfect sense. Best asset would be your opinion, I would argue something like the London Eye is a stronger asset considering it's position as a London icon attraction. If you're trying to advertise diversity why would you only focus on one thing? Not everyone is a fan of rollercoasters and they're trying to advertise to all members of the family who will all have completely different tastes, so focusing the advert on rollercoasters more so than anything else would be off-putting to a massive portion of the market. From the advert you can still clearly see rides are part of their make-up so that part of the market is already taken care of, there really isn't any need for more.

^ How is this even a thing? She's doing a college project, they're not going up against eachother at the Oscars. No one has doubted the quality or effort put in by electricBill for his own project, and if Amy wanted to include anything on dark rides she'd be perfectly entitled to.

Because it belongs in hell.

The Hobbit then... First one decent, second one good, this one... is kind of summarised quite well by the way they keep throwing Lord of the Rings references at you at the end, as if to say 'we know you wish you were actually watching that instead'. Sigh.

Appreciate Interstellar even more on second viewing, IMAX helped of course. I'm still not a major fan of the last 25 minutes, but I think that's more down to it not living up to the previous 2+ hours, but by then I've already been impressed to the point where it just about gets away with it. The docking sequence is probably one of the most exciting and ridiculous pieces of cinema I've seen, goosebumps. Mackenzie Foy will go far. Strong 9/10.