Sidders

Playin' it cool there, Phill... Like a boss

Well, it says I do not have access to the photos or that they could have been deleted/removed by the user. Whether that's just me is unclear.

Shhh Mark, it's clearly her lucky day. She gets to sound like Cilla Black and dance like a piece of driftwood ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Oh, the irony of that link ;)Where indeed...

Thanks for that Josh, saves me from doing my dodgy maths.

Yeah those packs can be very unreliable. In the same Student Resource Pack they claim Inferno's height to be 115ft.

Considering each train only holds ten passengers, I'd imagine the real throughput is closer to 360pph, due to there being three trains of ten people that take roughly five minutes for each cycle including on-load, the full cycle with stops and trim runs, and the offload. If you do the maths, I don't think even Thorpe would try to exaggerate the real number.

And suddenly it all comes sweeping back... ;)Gt so anoyed wiv evry1 tlkin lyk dis tho lol.

I remember posting that on my Bebo. Ah, those were the days...

I always did think the turret and the chassis look like two completely different hunks of metal just stuck together. That'd be in keeping with Merlin's themeing expertise *cough*. The chassis looks like it came from a real tank but the turret does look very cheap and nothing like a proper tank turret - as Adam said, there's no lifting lugs to change the barrel's shot height, and of course it's pencil-thin compared to your average tank barrel..

Well, it wouldn't be too hard to simply paint back over the white paint.

I see a theme developing.... GO BEAR GO.

Not obvious she's broken a leg at all, is it? :L I'm not her biggest fan, so I'm resisting writing a whole full-length review of that song. In fact, I am going to write a review for my blog now.

If in the very likely event that Thorpe's mystery tank is on loan or isn't decommissioned, yes, I can see soldiers making an appearance at Thorpe in order to make sure there are experienced operatives who use tanks such as the one at Thorpe because let's be honest, the military wouldn't just lend Thorpe a tank for a few months and not want to look after it in the prossess - it is a very dangerous and expensive piece of equipment after all.

I wonder if the uniformed men in that photograph are real soldiers or more actors? Soldiers would mean that the tank if definitely temporary as it appears to be under frequent observation from those who know how to use it. Actors would be ideal because it means Thorpe are already paying the finer attention to detail; a promising sign for further developments.

Odd that some pieces of track (however few) have already arrived with no sign of the support footers being poured, although there are a number of pre-poured concrete cylinders already on-site. Go Merlin say there's large cement mixers on-site which is a good sign though, and Coaster Force confirm that the station foundation have been poured and can be seen from Amity Speedway and Tidal Wave (may need some corroboration with this).

It's hard to say, but the cynical me would say that Thorpe won't re-theme Stealth at all. The Swarm looks to be set on it's own island; it's own themed area, with possible flats joining said area between now and 2016, as outlined on the 2010-16 MTDP. The only reason I can fathom that Alton would've wanted to re-theme Rita slightly was due to the close proximity between the coasters and the fact that both Rita and Th13teen are in the same area of the park.

Just dropping in to say that if your posts "disappear", you might've forgotten where you originally posted them and/or have posted irrelevant information/offensive remarks that did not contribute to the topic at hand and/or broke the terms and conditions of the forum. I only know of one of your posts that has been deleted due to it being irrelevant to The Swarm discussion and because it contained offensive language. If you'd like further information as Benin said, please PM one of the Moderators, and please keep the forums on-topic in the future.

When people claim that "sometimes they winch you up Stealth really slowly and launch you downwards".Hmm... I'd love to meet "they".

I really do love ice poles. I've eaten so many this summer. Nom cola flavour

Benin's right - it could just be a decommissioned tank with no ammunition/fake turret. But I'd imagine what pluk says is true either way; it's obviously a very expensive piece of equipment whether it's decommissioned or not, but seeing that Thorpe have gone to the lengths of nabbing a plane, a fire engine, a helicopters and numerous other vehicles to theme The Swarm's area I wouldn't be too surprised if the tank did stay. Even to 'rent' this tank would cost money Thorpe could easily save by printing off more fly-posters and hiring more crazed crack-pots, so it seems unusual they would do this even for promotion purposes if they hadn't purchased it.Mind you, all this is nice and pleasing: it promotes the ride, gives enthusiasts something to chew over, and contributes to the realism of the theme, but it'll all amount to nothing if Thorpe replicate Saw-style themeing. We can't really argue that there was some brilliant pieces of themeing for Saw (the rotating saws, the boiler tank, the traps) but the efforts are diluted because none of it was implicitly connected with each other, nor are they placed very well (the traps particularly do seem very randomly placed among cattle-pen queue lines). I'd rather not have a tank at all if Thorpe intend to dump it somewhere barely in view when the ride opens with some vague connection to other themeing, especially seeing as it looks very new and doesn't bode with the destroyed theme the plane, the helicopter and the fire engine share. I don't want to see it randomly placed amidst little or no other themeing and I'm sure others would agree - it needs to be something consistent. What I'm saying is a dirty tank half sunk in a pot-hole or crushed under a fallen wall are credible as a piece of "urban devastation" than a nice clean tank sat comfortably on some fresh green grass, or even gravel. This attention to detail is taken into account with the other pieces of themeing already, so if Thorpe do intend to keep the tank, at least make it look like it wasn't a (relatively) last minute decision.

It's quite shocking to think that that is the first custom-built B&M to be built since 2007. From a ride manufacturer who's inverted coasters were so popular during the last decade, to see that slowing demand for them is cause for concern surely? Not in the sense that they're about to go bust; that'd be ridiculous, but it'd be awful to see them simply drift out of popularity. The last one built was Phaethon, in 2007, in Japan, but other than that this new one at Parc Asterix is the first one in five years.