Sheepie

So are we going for Monday 11th April? Seems like most people who are interested are up for that date.If so then can a lovely Mod change the title and description of this topic please?

Track is now complete for the Cheetah Hunt at Busch Gardens. Themeing work continues. RCPro has a great update, which can be found HERE.The image above shows the ruins that the first launch takes you through, before turning left and diving into a trench.

Hey Ellie- if we go on Monday 11 April, here are some suggested train times and journeys:7:24 Reading Arriving at Chessington South at 09:19.You'd change at Clapham Junction and catch the 08:55 service to Chessington South.Or, you could catch the 07:46 Reading train, arriving at Chessing South for 09:49.For this one you'd change at Basingstoke to get the 08:35 train to Clapham Junction and then the 09:25 to Chessington South. These are the same for Tuesday as well. http://ojp.nationalrail.co.uk/ Find some more that are convenient for you.Completely up to you hun!

What station would you be travelling from Ellie?

Off topic alert....Then why bother investing £18M next year? That's not a small amount of money.

This happened once on a meet and hasn't happened since. I did not attend said meet, but I can personally promise you that nobody will leave anyone on this meet if you attend (same for any other members who want to go), I'll make sure of it.On the bigger meets, some people do split off, say, for example, people don't want to do an attraction. They often then re-join the group later on. This is what happened during the London Meet back in December.This is likely to be a small meet though (I can't see any more than 10 people attending, maximum), so we will definitely all be able to stay together.

Great to see a few members are interested. What are people's thoughts about Tuesday 12th April/ Wednesday 13th April? Just over 3 weeks away.

I've been thinking about where best to put this (I have nothing better to do at 4:30am) and decided to put it here. This is for people who were on TPM chat these past few hours. I'm posting this in the hope that you find it uplifting and inspiring. "When you feel the knife stick,And you just can't take it,When you're heart is breaking, yeahYou still won't know what it's like, what it's like:You haven't seen the ghosts that I've seen,You haven't lived enough, to know what it means.To feel the pain in love turned cold,To taste the year before it's over." This woman can explain it better though:

Well even if meets are small, it doesn't matter, as long as the people that go enjoy themselves. And if they do enjoy themselves then this will encourage people to come to more meets. Let's be honest, quite a few members who regularly attend meets aren't going to Thorpe tomorrow as they're opting for Chessington instead.

Well exactly! People studying for exams- remember you need to take time to let off steam as well. Don't over do it.

I've noticed there are no official meets planned for our award winning, "theme park of the year", Chessington.Basically, please post any time period in which you would be interested in attending. If we can get enough interest then it would be a fantastic alternative to the Thorpe meets for some variety.I was thinking of during the Easter break. Yes it'll be busy but I imagine the majority of people will have more chance of attending during this time.Post your views below. I've decided not to make this into a poll, but one could be posted after a general time frame is decided and if there is demand for it. Edit: Trip Date: Monday 11th April. Full details to be announced soon.

Whilst I agree with the majority of your points Rob, I have such low expectations for effects/ visual aspects to attractions at Thorpe, I find myself not really caring. We have an £18M attraction to look forward to next year, all my attention will be on that and hopefully Storm Surge will be gone by the time a certain 2015 coaster arrives.

Here's a video for added cuteness! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax64RmkaYh0

There are some absolutely amazing pictures over at Parks Mania. Photos from inside the park, which is still an ongoing progress and will open at the end of May. Check out the link below for more of the sexy times above. Who wants to take a trip? I'm drooling. Rainbow Magicland

The Magic Kingdom are soft opening the new interactive Haunted Mansion queue at present. Inside the Magic took video and a ton of pictures (click the link below). Reading on various forums, some of the comments are really quite harsh, a lot of them saying it's not really fitting for the ride and some of them comparing the style to Alton's Haunted Hollow.My personal opinion- American fans can be so spoilt at times: us Brits would be jumping up and down with joy if we received an interactive queue that's themed as much as this. Some of the effects pictured and videoed in the link below are so cool- especially the book. It's also interesting to point out that there will be a couple of weeks to adjust some of the features before they open officially to the public.Haunted Mansion Interactive Queue

HAHA the lyrics to that song. Written by a 6 year old? FUN FUN FUN!

Yes, it reminded me of that first testing video we received back in 2009! I love the roar.

You could say that about any ride with a decent length. From all of the pictures I've seen this ride interacts with the terrain brilliantly, has the speed aspect, interesting elements (whether they ride well or not is to be decided) has some good landscaping and themeing with a carefully thought out backstory. It also interacts with non-riders much like some of our better rides in the UK.Of course nobody can be sure what it's going to be like until it actually opens, although I feel that there is negativity just because this ride is an Intamin. I also have my reservations- particularly the restraints, but we'll see I guess.

BGTNation has a great update on Cheetah Hunt. Themeing work for the ride station and trenches is coming along very well, also the track coming from the tower is being constructed. There have been some worries recently about the project being behind, however this proved to be fanboy panic and the ride is on schedule. The Sky Ride towers are being altered so that the track jumps over it during the ride. Cheetah Hunt UpdateAlso, here are some updates on the process of Hulk's track repaint from Orlando United.

I think somebody uploaded that to show what can be quickly done to improve the appearance. It was a paint/ photoshop job. :oEdit: What Josh said.

Not sure if anything is different for today. But yesterday, the ride and queue was in complete silence. Two of the brake runs had their Fright Nights tracks still playing, but other than that, nothing. The old baggage point had been painted and blocked off. It really does feel shoddy and beyond any point of refurb, without serious money being spent on it.

I thought I'd write a proper trip report after my trip yesterday as I came away with a lot to say about it.The day started appropriately, with a Kirspy Kreme from Tesco in Wimbledon, waiting for Marc to arrive and take us to the park, nom. Marc arrived on time and we were on our way to the park, with various park tunes to get us in the mood. We arrived at the park with about 15 minutes to spare before opening, so we joined the queue waiting to get in. New screens were on the admission kiosks which looked very smart and advertised things like prices and Annual Passes. We were in the park, we wandered about for a while, checked out Storm Surge and the Amity area, before taking our first ride of the day on Detonator. It was a decent ride but no where near as good as it was later in the day once the ride had warmed up. New speakers around the ride were very loud, although sadly the speakers at the top have seen better days.I liked what they had done with the Magastore- it looks so much better. You can tell that there is a section yet to be painted, and a sign frame still attached, but I'm sure that will be completed by Thursday.I was also pleased to see that Tidal's entrance sign was still in good shape and working how it should!Unfortunately, though, this is probably where the positive things to say about the park end. It seems with every step in the right direction they take, the park make several steps backwards in terms of park appearance. You can see, moreso than ever this year, which rides aren't being shown attention and love that they deserve.Inferno's volcano is green this year, it's mouldy and disgusting. You can also see the frame for the volcano underneath the concrete facade in places in the queueline, really bad show. Nothing was on, apart from the queue theme. Even then, that stopped working when the ride broke down and when it restarted, the music didn't come back on either. Complete silence. Sadly, this is the ride I enjoyed the most all day. It may not be as intense as the other coasters, but the amount of enjoyment this ride provides is brilliant. I'm hoping that things such as the tunnel lights and vapour will be switched on by Thursday, but I'm not holding my breath.I was so looking forward to riding Colossus, but sadly, it broke. Twice. Some other time eh? I've always enjoyed Colossus and believe it's one of the few rides at Thorpe that have that "magic". I don't find this ride rough like so many other people do. Perhaps I'm just lucky. It looks as though the Cobra Roll pit was getting ready to be cleaned.However, the ride station was in silence, still. The track looks awful as well. In fact it looks so gross, I'm tempted to show it to these people on Orlando United who have been moaning about the state of the Hulk's track, which was only bad in certain places. On Colossus you can clearly see paint fade and rust appearing all along the route. Please sort it.Saw- The Ride. No interior music, but most of the effects were working on our first ride. Even if they are a bit wtf. You can't see the man in barbed wire in the queue properly now; I'm not sure if he had a light on him before? It's a shame that out of the two effects that I liked: the strobe spikes and the dead bathroom man, the strobe spikes were still not working to their full potential. I seem to remember quite intense strobes on my first ride, which lit them up brilliantly and was a great effect. Now, you'd be forgiven if you missed them. I don't understand all this countdown business either, but they were all counting down if that's what they're just meant to do. :DThe ride is painful. Especially at the front, though once the main drop is out the way I do enjoy the coaster. I think Saw is too intense for me at points though and is breaching on the unenjoyable.Oh and X. Sadly, none of the improvements that are planned for the main season were in place today. The whole queue and ride was in silence, apart from some Fright Night tracks played on some of the brake runs. You really can't polish a turd. Walking through the queue and exit feels no different to me than walking through a council estate at night. Just blow the whole damn thing up already.Whilst I enjoyed the day yesterday with Marc and James, I failed to come off of any of the rides and think "that was amazing, I want to do that again". It was brilliant to get back on some of the coasters after the closed season, but I have no urge to go back there again, and that is no reflection of the company I was with today. I could sit here and write about how it's the small things that make a big difference and just a little attention in places would make the world of difference. Though sadly, the park have ignored a large majority of the small things and over the last few years have become quite major and now probably need quite a lot of money to put right. Things like ride stations can be dusted within 10 minutes with a duster and a stick. These things can be done during the morning checks and would require minimal effort from staff. Small things such as that could have been done over the years, but it is very obvious that they haven't and have now lead to larger, harder problems.

Underneath the Amity Bugle/ Tidal Photo collection, facing Neptunes Kingdom.

Last year, I slated Saw Alive. From the rubbish queueline, to the random rock music and scenes with characters who were stuck in the confusion of being a victim and still trying to appear threatening and intimidating.I went through this today towards the end and was surprised by what I experienced. The first difference I noticed was the stench. The smells have been amped up (or just replaced and become more noticeable) which was disgusting and a really cool effect. I'd never noticed them that much before.Secondly, there's no rock music. I'm not 100% sure, but I think they're using the interior music for Saw: the ride and it fits well, making it particularly creepy in most scenes.Next, there were quite a few, perhaps more subtle lighting changes (from what I remember, although it could simply be the actors taking more of an advantage over them). It felt a lot darker in there in a lot of places, and this was not due to the smoke, which was still there at a healthy level, but was not used as much as at points last year, when you couldn't see the floor. The most memorable lighting effect was during the pendulum scene, where the lights faded out into pitch darkness. When the lights came back on, the actor that was lying on the table had disappeared, only to lunge at us, unsuspectingly from behind. This brings me onto my next point...The whole direction of the actors and their performance was much improved on last year. Whether this was because it was their first day with guests, new job, ect, or whether they have worked on the direction for the actors and the use of the space, I'm not sure, but the actors were good today. Before they would wave their hand in my face, twitch slightly, moan.... but today, they were violent, twisted and came across as mentally unhinged. If any actors are out there reading this, well done for today as you were all really good. Of course, I could have been totally lucky and you guys will go tomorrow and find the maze unchanged and mediocre in its entirety.

Okay, got to ride this during rehearsal day earlier. Here are my thoughts.Aesthetically:Tthe ride is shocking; it looks horrid in almost every single possible way, including its positioning within the park. Loading is interesting, and as predicted, slowly plods its way through the queue. Lord help us with the addition of Fastrack in the summer. Yes guys, Fastrack is available on this ride even with the low throughput. Although the ride has a nice logo... lol.Water Features/ effects:There are quite a few external water features, including two geysers that explode every so often on a timer. They go quite high- one of them comes from the pipes facing Tidal Wave (and also soaks guests walking past the ride area) and the other soaks guests on the lift and if you're unlucky, the loading area. There are water canons in the queue, which are currently free. They operate in the same vain of Battle Galleons, and are really fun. There is also a water curtain coming down the final drop.These features are fun, although I can't help but feel bitter when a ride that looks so tacky is receiving some nice effects such as the water geysers. But that's just a personal opinion; as I think they could be put to better effect elsewhere.Ride Experience:Well, loading is a laugh, trying to get into the boat! The lift takes an age, although you are entertained by the rollers under the conveyor belt massaging your feet, Very odd feeling. It's quite scary how exposed you feel and it's actually particularly high- I didn't like it. Then the slide.... guys... it's hilarious. If you go on this ride with a few mates, you'll be laughing your head off. It makes you pretty dizzy and feels pretty fast as it comes down. The second time we went on it, Marc and I were in fits of laughter because it's that type of ride where you can't help but laugh.To conclude then, you can say what you want about Storm Surge; in fact, anything negative you have to say about the ride is probably true. However, I feel that Thorpe has been in need of a ride like this that bridges the gap. I would argue that it's needed a new ride that isn't meant to be intimidating and is literally just aimed to be fun. Storm Surge will not patronise younger guests in the way that Octopus Gardens did during their later years, but will provide them with their own thrilling experience with the rest of their families.