JoshC.

Was only a joke weg...

If you need to ride a ride in a certain way or a certain seat for it to be good, then it's not a good ride.

So did Gruffalo yesterday, and it's a good enough attraction. The set pieces are good, the animations are good, there's a nice balance between screens and 'real' theming in my opinion, it flows like a book would (which I assume was the aim), and it just generally sets out what it should be achieving. The spoken audio was a bit hard to hear. This shouldn't be too hard to fix and is one of those things which sometimes can only be got right after several tweaks. And it is quite dimly lit so may freak out the younger younger audience. But again, something which I'm sure can be tweaked if necessary. However, I do have a big problem with Gruffalo. Each scene has one set in one certain position. If your boat is spinning, or you're facing away from the set, it involves awkward head-turning and re-positioning to be able to see the scene. And given the nature of the ride system, this is likely to happen a lot for every person. This is unlike Bubbleworks (old and new), because there was always something to look at, and you only moved your head because you wanted to see what was behind you, not because you had to. I get that with the theme / story they were going for, to replicate the sets either side / theme everything wouldn't 'make sense', but it just doesn't work with the ride system. It would suit a more traditional 'face forward in a boat' style ride than a circular boat one. So yeah, it's good. In terms of theming, it's some of the best we've seen at Chessington this century, and certainly a great investment for the park. I'm not completely sold on whether it'll appeal to the younger end of the target market, and it has a couple of flaws, but it's good and a hopefully a worthwhile long-term investment.

I get your point about Slammer, but listing in the same manner as the other rides a bit unfair given it's been dead all year and removed from the website.. Timber Tug Boat did have a sign put in front of it saying it would open in Easter, bit that was changed to 'Coming Soon' after 2 days. It seems word got out quick about Easter opening but not the change in time scale. The other ride isn't listed on the map and has never been said to be opening at Easter (or indeed given any opening date).

Have hidden a couple of posts which linked to the person's social media. We don't condone the actions of the group of people who trespassed onto the park, and as such we do not want to generate traffic and attention towards their social media. Needless to say that the people have been banned from Thorpe for 2 years and face further action if they try and get into the park in that period. If anyone had any questions or concerns about us hiding content, please contact one of the team. If not, let's try and move on and not give these idiots any more attention. Thanks!

Sourced from Towers Times' FB... New plans give a better idea of what the large theming element will look like. Certainly appears Wicker Man inspired, with the head of some sort of animal.

DBGT has been more reliable than Colossus and Stealth this season so I'm unsure why people are always attacking it in that respect. Not saying it's a race to the bottom or anything for the record, but when people are constantly moaning about the ride for being unreliable, it's only fair to point out there are other rides which are less reliable than it.. The 'future of theme parks' spiel seems to have been taken really hard as well. Plenty of parks use those sorts of lines in marketing big rides and half the time it's always bog standard marketing speak. To be fair, it could be in relation to the VR (which, like it or not, is playing a part in the theme par future), to the more personalised experience (which, again, is happening more and more, especially with dark rides), etc., so it's not a wild claim to have made..

Stick me down as a yes for now. However, if Ninjago is delayed / not open by then I may reconsider.

Luck or good planning from yours truly?

Kanonen is rumoured to be going to a small-scale American park. Which I've no idea, but it's going stateside.

I seem to be the only one the forum actually interested / excited for this, but NeuroGen is having it's media night tonight. Couple of images from themepark.nl Facebook, which might be classed a bit spoilery by some... Entrance 'Waiting room', which I assume serves as some kind of batch point Also, a video from the park of the opening ceremony... Skip to a couple of minutes in for a nice 'live video stream' between the park manager and the 'designer' of NeuroGen. And go to 3 minutes in for a nice little show...

^Probably one for the Blackpool thread...

Only ever rumoured. Internally it was always the planned opened date (and is Efteling's preferred opening date, with Baron and Joris both opening then), but this is the first time it's been officially confirmed / advertised.

The views from the top will be pretty fab. Also liking the wingrider-esque inversion at the end. Aside from that, looks like a pretty standard dive machine.

For those sensible enough to wait until a date was announced before booking a trip, Efteling have confirmed that this will open on July 1st...

Given how long it takes to get out of the car park, I suggest that any post-meet meal serves up a good breakfast.

A page for NeuroGen has gone live, and booking is available (if you're the super keen enthusiast who's already planned their visit and wants to guarantee entry now): https://www.walibi.nl/nl/rides/fun-cool/neurogen Translation of the page The attraction has a 16 age restriction, and warns that it'll contain bad language, sex and drug use. Time slots for online reservations are in 15 minute intervals, and Loopings is reporting that the expected throughput at the moment is about 60pph. They have also said that the VR film is roughly about 5 minutes. And for anyone interested, a photo from inside the attraction:

I've voted for Saturdays but I can't do Sundays. Do we know the exact date when Ninjago is planned to open yet? Last I heard it was opening "in May", but if it's opening after the 20th and before the 27th then I would much prefer the 27th for obvious reasons.

To be fair, Icon is a quick and snappy coaster name - Shambhalalalala is not Coaster has hit the nail on the head though - the name feels very forced. Blackpool do have iconic rides (not necessarily in the sense that they're good, but they are well known / have stood the test of time), so it feels like they're just trying to cash in on that with "we have loads of iconic rides, but this is the ICON"

Though they have since replaced that sign with a sign which simply says 'Coming Soon'.

Had to double check the date to make sure this wasn't an April Fool... Poor name and a weird logo.

This sort of thing is always difficult to deal with for the park. Obviously the point of the disabled queues is to ensure that those who can't queue are queueing for as little time as possible. But when 40 minutes worth of disabled people are waiting to go on it, there's not much the park can do to stop it. Even if Colossus was running 2 trains, that's still a 20 minute wait which is still too long. I'm certainly not excusing the situation, but just saying it leaves the park in a difficult situation really - if people decide to join a long queue of people for something, that's their choice. Personally, if I was using the disabled and saw that the Colossus disabled queue was from the station to the shop (as I saw it today!), I would go 'I'll try again later', rather than grin and bare it. As far as I'm aware, Samurai, Storm Surge and Rumba Rapids are the only rides that are scheduled to open late. All other rides are meant to open on time. However, if those rides are ready and the staff are in early, the park open them up early. Rush was only on one swing due to technical issues I believe and not due to the park deliberately reducing capacity. Unlike with the coasters, they cannot save staff costs by reducing the capacity, and the impact it makes to engineers for getting 1 or 2 swings ready is negligible. And as it stands, I believe the second train on Colossus still isn't ready due to problems with Intamin and not the park, and Stealth similar was due to timings caused by external groups.

Obviously the questions of why yesterday was so bad, how the park seemed so underprepared and the incredibly poor start to the day need to be asked. And there really is no excuse. However, I think it's worth highlighting that at least Thorpe acted appropriately. Not selling Fastrack for the coasters, giving anyone who wanted a refund a refund, handing out free return tickets, etc. Of course, this action should never need to be taken by a theme park, but it's at least good to see that when things do go bad, the park accept it and compensate as best as they can. Now let's hope nothing like today ever happens again...

Heide Park opened for the 2017 season yesterday, and Ghostbusters 5D was meant to open along with the park. On Thursday the park announced over Facebook it wasn't ready and would as soon as possible. So, Heide Park, who you gonna call?

To be fair, Stealth is the 3rd quickest accelerating coaster in the world (I think, haven't checked recently), so maybe not the best to do a base comparison of.