JoshC.

Sorry, I didn't word it particularly well, so just to clarify what I was trying to say. There are plenty of places where people can discuss their honest views. Forums, social media, blogs, vlogs, etc all exist, and all have people sharing their honest opinions on various topics. So if you want to find out people's opinions, you visit those places, maybe follow particular people who you're interested in hearing from, and go from there. But if you're trying to set up a small scale blog, how many people are going to be interested in signing up / following for you to just give the same old opinion they can get in bucketloads elsewhere? Unless you've got a very good, persuasive opinion, not many. So if you create a blog which focuses just on the positives, it helps give the blog a bit more purpose (and a break from negative stuff), seperates you from the crowd a bit and helps build relationships with parks. You don't have to lie either. Say you hated a certain ride, you just don't talk about. Say you find a ride boring to ride, but beautiful to look at, focus on the aesthetics and write a blog about rides that look good. It all helps in creating a unique brand for a blog. The minute you start looking at negatives too, you're just another person sharing an opinion on stuff. It gives you less views, less of a following, less park connections, etc. That's why it gets them nowhere. For the record, I totally agree with you about not trusting some blogs' views. Some blogs' are effectively free marketing tools for parks - they say the best things about parks, and all those parks have to do is let them go on a ride a day early and give out some free food. Other blogs and sites are a lot more selective with how they present their opinions (or are like us and just provide news! ), which is fine. It's simply a case of trying to figure out which sites you like best because you feel you can relate to their style! We try our best to just provide facts and unbiased opinions, as well as short reviews on the site. No doubt as people are aware, we go along to some preview events - we never like to base our opinions of attractions on these preview events, as there's always a bit of a buzz around them. Equally, we always give honest feedback to the parks about them, as well as what we'd like to see. I'm sure there's other sites like us too (though obviously not as good as us )

From SkyScraperCity... They haven't got anywhere near the full height for this and it still looks huge at the moment.

Jordan has worked for Merlin, more specifically, Thorpe, since 2015 (she has said so in comments on her blog). That actually predates when her blog really kicked off. As I'm sure many have realised, Merlin, though again more specifically Thorpe, love to do these stories where they give someone a very specific, crazy-sounding job. They did it in 2009, where they gave some bloke a 'sick cleaner for Saw' role, coaster testers in around 2012 for Swarm, etc. Chessington do it with their zoo too. Towers did it when they launched Th13teen too, with another "roller coaster expert turned tester". The stunt with Jordan is no different - they've got someone to pretend they've got this awesome job, so they'll get people talking. Instead of focusing on the ride, they focused on Jordan's expertise, so when people read the article, they think "wow, she's done a lot, and she thinks this new thing is great - let's go". It's as simple as that. It just so happens they had someone who would fit the role of a 'roller coaster expert' working at the park, so it's easier to get her to talk about real things than make something up. It also happens she has a blog on theme parks too. If anyone reads Jordan's blog, you'll realise she rarely posts anything negative about any parks. As is common with many small-scale blogs, they post positive stuff only, and add a personal touch by saying whether they like it or not. They may have plenty of negative thoughts too, but it gets them nowhere posting them, as there's far too many criticism blogs (constructive or otherwise) out there. We at TPM actually had an interview with Jordan back in November if anyone is interested in giving it another read - https://www.thorpeparkmania.co.uk/articles/27-11-2017/Jordan+Middleton+Q+and+A Tl;dr - People can keep their professional and personal opinions seperate if they choose to. Try not to be so pessimistic guys! Also a gentle mod-type comment: we at TPM love to keep conversation flowing and don't like to discourage people sharing their opinions, but try to keep things not-rude, especially as we're talking about a person within the community who can't really defend themselves. Cheers.

Not everything Alton Towers does is to save money or make money...

Same again today. Fair play to the park for opening and doing what they can, plus the free return ticket.

The retheme by itself? Probably not. The whole 'Year of The Walking Dead', huge push on Annual Passes, multiple events throughout the year, and lack of anything of note in the south part of the country? That will, almost definitely.

A selection of photos posted by Pablo A over on Coasterforce... Lift hill going up... Picking up the pace now. Don't see any reason why this won't be open for summer tbh..

'Theme Park Updates' has another update with loads of testing photos. Here's my favourite one: That gap between the the wheel and track on the left hand side

I don't see how including live actors in promo material is any different to when Towers did it with Th13teen... Find it funny how people moan about Merlin adding and relying and live action experiences, then when they add one which doesn't, people still moan.

I'd be pretty cheesed off if I watched a video which contained spoilers, which didn't say it had spoilers. Pretty common internet etiquette these days. I'm sure people are frustrated / annoyed about the situation this weekend, but that is different.

Chessington have remained open today for what is their first day of the main season. Due to the weather, only indoor attractions are open and anyone who bought a ticket for today can still visit, and get a free ticket to return valid until May.

This image appeared on Towers Street's forum, given out to hotel guests...

Thorpe have released a 'making of' video of this year's map. If you're eagle-eyed enough, it confirms that - along with Ghost Train - this ride will be in a new area called 'The Dock Yard'. Furthermore, we can see that: -This doesn't involve live actors. -It has an ORP (X:\No Way Out had one up till 2003-ish) -Fastrack isn't listed as available (though a Fastrack queue is in plans and concept art, presumably for later years).

Supports for the lift hill are going up.

There's been plenty more pictures, including this lovely chap... TLC have confirmed that the update is not finished. Instead of closing the ride for the first couple of weeks of the season, they will be working on it out of opening hours to fine tune things, and also reacting to guest feedback as appropriate / possible to get things the best they can.

I guess it's not that surprising to see Merlin stray away from the mini drop tower rides following the issues they've had in recent years. But gutted we won't get them though. Equally, a madhouse style fits Legoland Windsor a bit more I reckon, and has the potential to be so much fun. So fingers crossed it comes to fruition.

Smiler's exit platform is large, but I seem to remember the space between rows is pretty tight. It'd be especially tight if someone decided to sit down and you tried to get past. At least with Oblivion there's enough room to get through, albeit a bit awkwardly, when people are sat down. Hopefully staff do assist with bags on Smiler, it'd make sense and solve the problem quite easily. If not though..

The most recent MTDP expired in 2016 I think, so those numbers would be obsolete now, since they would have to submit plans from scratch effectively, rather than under that. The actual height ceiling for Thorpe is like 500ft, but Thorpe would never build anything of that height for several reasons. Getting anything above 200ft would be a big ask to keep the locals onside, but who knows. The length thing is self-imposed, and not really a restriction - that was more Thorpe saying to the council "just to let you know, we don't plan on building a coaster over 850m in length between 2010-2016".

The original plan was for the first launch to be enclosed, and there would be some kind of scene in there (probably something linked to time travelling with clocks and stuff), however that was cut. Whether they're planning on building that scene for next year, they couldn't get a rolling launch retrofitted into the tech or they simply decided to just cut the building and keep the stop out of silliness is unclear though.

lol... So, for those who have missed it, during the Annual Pass day this Sunday, the marque will be transformed into 'eXpo:\2018', which will be a celebration of X:\No Way Out / X. Details are a bit scarce at the moment, but we can expect a few talks (confirmed talks from John Burton, Thorpe's creative based at MMM, who will also talk a bit about The Walking Dead - The ride and from our good friend Phill of Memories of Thorpe Park), free pop badges and probably some old concept art, plans, the appearance of one of the old No Way Out cars and a few other surprises... No doubt we at TPM will provide you with all the juicy details...

Putting bags in the station works on some rides, and others it doesn't. Rides where there's plenty of space (both getting through seats and at the exit area of the station) don't see major issues with placing bags in the station as there's enough room. B&M inverts are a great example, but also GCIs and Macks too. Colossus, and presumably Smiler, will be examples where tabt doesn't work so well, simply because it's difficult squeezing through seats. There's no one size fits all approach to storing bags. But the best way to ensure bag storage doesn't negatively affect operations and guests is to think about it when designing the station / queue and working through it like, rather than retrofitting ideas which definitely won't work years down the line...

Looks good. Shame the video had those silly slow-mo bits cut in for no reason, but I digress... Yeah, I imagine this is the slowest it can go, so if anything it'll be a bit quicker / snappier. So good to see Mack goodness grace the UK

And the SPOV, for those interested..

Warwick Castle have been doing some hinting towards something new coming this summer on social media... A rather simple tagline of "A forgotten legend resurrected ... Summer 2018. Official announcement 21.3.18" They've literally been plastering Facebook and Twitter with this all month, which is unusual as - in the rare event they do do something - they rarely push it this much. Maybe they're just changing marketing tactics to get a bit more attention (in which case, it's worked, cos I'm posting it here...). Or maybe it's something a bit more exciting / interesting / expensive than what they've done in the past. It's probably nothing, but maybe worth keeping an eye on just in case...

Well this is opening very soon, and we have a press launch today. Here's a POV of the ride, with no spinning: The cars would be spinning from the moment it leaves the station. Unfortunately, however, the stop on the first launch is a thing for when the ride opens, which really kills the momentum really (the cars won't be spun back into any sort of alignment either, which makes it even worse). Still, looks like a decent enough ride, and it's fantastic to see spinners developing more. I expect we'll see a spinning POV soon enough..