JoshC.

And here it is ladies and gentlemen, the post of the year.

If anything happens, don't expect changes to the ride system. The standard winter maintenance on the ride has already commenced, which means that the ride system will return. I am under the impression that the Derren IP was originally 6 years long, which would mean it would expire this year. There were some unknowns there, with the ride having opened late in 2016, and not opening at all in 2020. But I imagine its in both parties interests to just wrap things up with it and move on. The thing with Ghost Train is it would be very easy to remove Derren from it. Replace the pre show and edit his voice out of the start / end of the VR. Stick a different video in the finale, if they even keep that, and boom, done. Just drop the 'Derren Brown's' part of the name. Very easy, very cheap. Given the state of the VR headsets and the general mess they are though, it would make sense for them to attempt to do more. New VR. The long-suggested have screens in the windows instead. Have it as a completely actor led experience, turning it into a more Dungeons-esque experience. There's lots of more costly options there if they choose to do anything substantial to it.

Except people weren't saying that. With Fish, the ride went into storage, with an intention to possibly sell it. The plan then changed and the park reintroduced it, with a new train. Being in storage, the ride was protected from the elements and well looked after. This is very different to Rocky, which has been effectively abandoned for a year now. Rocky Express is not returning.

So track is now complete on this. Annnnnnnnd it has not one, but TWO inversions?! What is this thing.... It's very odd too, as it looks like those inversions will end up being taken at a slow pace. Meaning lots of hangtime. Not something I'd associate with a 'my first inversion' coaster, which is what I'd expect from a Legoland park adding a coaster going upside...

It still feels mental seeing this at Chessington. B&M track. At Chessington. Like wake me up I must be having a fever dream, right?

Water park is a good investment for the Chessington. I hope they look at how Towers operates their one and choose to not operate it like that (ie: actually have parts of it open outside of park opening hours lol) I'm not a water park person at all, so can't comment on its possible quality. But even an average water park is, as said, a good investment for the park

You joke, but the toilets by Slammer definitely need refurbishment! All other toilets on park have seen upgrades in the past few years (Swarm aside, but they're new and seemingly hardly ever used), so the Old Town ones could certainly do with a refresh. Especially since 2024 the area will be much busier. So certainly wouldn't mind seeing them upgraded next year.. Thorpe had posters on park stating their intention to have Mardi Gras, Carnival, Oktoberfest and Fright Nights as their core event line up. So it doesn't feel like there will be any new events. Given the park's continued focus, growth and success with events, it would be good to have a permanent stage area with seating set up. This allows the park's event line up to grow in quality too. The Wet Wet Wet / beach site is an obvious location. The Saw Alive pathway could work too, albeit with more work (and more expensive work at that). 2023 really could do with a new ride. The last time a 'new' ride was added to the park was 2017, and that was in the form of Timber Tug and Lumber Jump. The last time a new 'ride experience' was added was 2018, with Walking Dead The Ride. In the years since, we've had events and a maze. And yes, we've got Exodus coming in 2024 (or 2025...). But the park needs something new and fresh, and just generally extra support. I don't expect it to happen, but that's what I want to happen. 2023 also has a big question: What do you do with Derren Brown's Ghost Train? As I understand it, the IP contract is either up, or in its final year. In terms of upkeep and technology, it feels like it's falling apart...in the case of the headsets, completely so. They could easily keep the experience the same and drop Derren from it (effectively just record a new pre show with some crazy psychology professor, and call it Professor FakeName's Ghost Train). They could drop the VR and go for in-train screens possibly, but that would be expensive. They could rip it out and put something new in. But those options get exponentially more expensive. Whatever happens, one thing I know for certain: if Ghost Train continues to run and operate the way it did towards the latter half of this season, it would be shambolic in my opinion. In any case, here's what I think we might see happen: -Some progress towards a permanent, custom-made event space -Drawn out Exodus teasers -New Fright Nights maze to replace Creek Freak -Possible new toilets -Generic minor improvements across the park

As I understand it, a few pieces of track are being removed, with some being totally replaced, and some being refurbished. The refurbished track will be repainted too. This is not a full retrack. Given the location of the pieces removed, it makes sense too. There's long been talk of 'sinking' of Colossus, and the inlines are particularly prone to that given the location and the fact they had to fill in the land around that and the vertical loop. Would mean that the track is put under extra stress, strain and reaches the end of its usable life quicker. I believe that there is additional recognition that more pieces of track will need such work in the future too, so expect this to be a common occurrence for the next couple of closed seasons at least. Don't expect a full track repaint yet. Hopefully when the powers that be see how vibrant new track is and how bad the patchwork job will loo, they can green light that though. Good to see this is being done, and puts to bed any rumours of Colossus being removed any time soon. I haven't ridden Colossus in a long time, but the inlines were never a problem for me when I did ride them. In fact, they were the least rough parts of the ride. What's it like these days? Whilst this helps extend the lifespan of the ride, I wonder if this will make any actual improvements to the ride experience?

Rita is a decent coaster, fits in well at the park and has its place. Compared to modern launch coasters / coasters with launches, it hasn't stood the test of time, but it's still good in its own right. Despite needing some TLC, I really rated Duel in its current incarnation. Whilst I fully understand and get the hype surrounding Nemesis' send off, I was very non-plussed by the whole thing, and (despite it being my favourite UK coaster and my #1 for a long time) I have no strong emotions about its current closure.

Water ride and dark ride (and indoor attractions more generally) should be the park's next logical steps. They have enough coasters, and enough variety in coasters, to cope without adding a new one for a few years. In terms of next coaster, a woodie is a really obvious next step. Or even one of the family friendly RMCs the manufacturer has touted as possible could do the trick. An out and out thrill coaster would be an interesting and bold development for the park. But certainly can work - look at Plopsaland with their addition first of Anubis, then of Ride to Happiness. I could very much see Paultons becoming the Plopsaland of the UK, and that is no bad thing.

+Ride accessible to anyone aged 6+ +'Group' experience +Not too thrilling, meaning it's a much needed 'rest' ride in the park's line up +People are prepared to queue a long time for it Regardless of how bad it looks, how meh a ride it can, how deep the water in the boats is and it's low throughput, it's a ride which a large number of guests are willing to queue for and ride and diversifies the park's line up. There would be a major hole in the park's line up without it.

Loggers Leap closed because it required a lot of work, and the park didn't have the engineering budget at the time to carry out said work. The longer it was left, the more expensive it became to get it back up to standard (and, naturally, the more problems which arose). It is true that the water came from the lake, and this is fine and didn't break any H&S rules, and the ride still could have run today had the park wished for it to. The issue with sterilising / cleaning / treating water is that that water cannot go back into the lake. This would mean it would have to be a closed water system. That would be extremely difficult to do with Loggers given its location and the fact it went round the lake. As I say, Loggers could have still run today if the park put the money in, but it's not related to filtering the water.

Coming up with some cracking posts the last couple of weeks Benin, even by your high standards. Keep it up

Storm Surge was a good investment for the park.

Rocky Express remained untouched all this year. It will now not be viable to try and reopen it elsewhere. Rocky Express is not reopening at Thorpe Park, or any other theme park.

As a genuine question here, what is the park's current brand identity? Because I honestly could not say, and don't think Thorpe could give you a straight answer either!

Thorpe are doing a survey about their current logo, what people like and dislike: https://t.co/WRV4QQPYYq I know in the past it's been discussed about changing the logo (on a number of different occasions), so this could be a step into that direction. In the past, they've obviously lent onto the infinity symbol (with polo shirts featuring just that, the Infinity Bar and Grill, etc), so wonder if they're thinking of going with that more, or something more drastic.

I'll be making my television debut and appearing on classic quiz show Countdown! My debut is this Friday (Oct 28th), airing at 2.10pm on Channel 4, and of course available on catch up after. There'll also be a bit of geeky chatter and roller coaster puns, because of course they run with me being a roller coaster enthusiast and turned it into my entire personality (not far wrong tbf). Would be lovely if anyone gave my episodes a watch!

Whilst I appreciate the excitement, no. Smiler cost something in the region of £18m. Nemesis Sub Terra, when built new, cost something in the region of £4-6m. So if they're spending say £5m on the Duel refurb, Alton Towers are not going to spend 2-3 times the original cost of the ride to refurb Sub Terra. Next year will not see the park invest more than they did for Smiler. I do agree with your core point though. A Duel refurb and reopening Sub Terra will cost a fair amount of money. The addition of a brand new flat ride adds more to that, especially when Enterprise's closure and removal seems to have come as a bit of a surprise (or, at least, was not the original plan).

Apocalypse is almost 200ft tall. Given Towers' height restrictions, it wouldn't go unless they built a huge pit, which we'd already have seen construction of. Rocky Express is condemned to the junkyard. It will not return anywhere.

This isn't just a ghost train. This is MY ghost train. This is... Noel Edmonds' Ghost Train: Rise of the Deal or no Deal.

There's a difference between suspended coaster and inverted coaster here. Suspended coasters, a la Vampire, have the ability to sway and swing. Inverted coasters, a la Nemesis, do not. Vampire was the UK's first suspended coaster, Nemesis the UK's and Europe's) first inverted coaster. It's a pretty fernickty and largely pointless difference tbf. As for Vampire retracking and potential planning permission. I believe the Nemesis application wasn't a full application, and instead something that was done to check the legality of doing it without full permission. And indeed I believe full permission is not required. So that could be the case for a like-for-like track replacement. The trickier thing is that the location of Vampire is much more contentious. There's a long standing and believable rumour that if Chessington removed Vampire, they wouldn't be able to use that space for a new ride due to its location. Would the council, and locals, really be a fan of a retracking job?

Ahhh, I was on park yesterday (15th October). It was a busy day, though by no means full. In fairness to Thorpe, I was impressed by the operations by and large. Long queues, yes, but most felt well managed. But that's not for the Fright Nights thread. Once again, the park are having issues with timed tickets. At 7pm, Survival Games had a queue which reached back to pretty much the gate by the Swarm toilets. Staff were saying it was 1-2 hours. For people with package deals, that meant if you did Survival Games then, you'd likely have no chance to do the other two mazes. The attitude from a few staff on the ground was very indifferent to this too; little care about the fact that people who bought a package would be out of pocket effectively. Also lots of people seem unaware that Trailers is 'meant' to be the first maze people do with the packages (it is a hidden sentence in the details of the package). It's also completely irrelevant and not something which has to be done. Also seems like the packages don't have strict time slots, meaning people can do mazes whenever (and, for whatever reason, choose to do them when it's dark). It's all a bit of a mess. As I had a one shot ticket for Survival Games, I braved the 1-2 hour queue and it took about 90mins. And I'll give the creative and operational sides their dues here. The queue moved well. They weren't over-batching (group sizes no larger than 12). It is tempting to over-batch to clear the queue, at the cost of creating a weaker experience, but I'm glad they didn't give into that temptation. And the maze itself was good. Was it Press Night good? No. Was it better than the runthrough I had last Friday though? Yes. A good number of actors, all very lively, and everything worked well. I think the main criticism I have about the maze would be the ending. Actors can effectively choose when people leave the maze, especially the ones by the exit. But they have no clue how long they've been in the maze. They can spend 5 minutes in the multi route 'arena' section of the experience before making they're way to the exit, or they could be there for 30 second and get there straight away. It creates wildly different experiences, and can leave those latter people short changed. It would be good if actors at the exit actively turned away people when they first discover the exit area, giving people more of a chance to explore the arena. Obviously that's incredibly difficult to do, as it involves the actors recognising faces in low light repeatedly, but if they can find a way to do it, it would be fantastic. In terms of the other two mazes, I know people managed to get Trailers and Creek Freak done in the same time I go Survival Games done. That's a solid 45mins to dedicate per maze, and doesn't match up with the 2 hour limit they suggest when booking. So some more stuff needs sorting out there. I think, realistically, people should (and probably do) expect a queue for mazes on busy days, even when buying tickets. But the lengths of queues at this moment in time is too long on busy days. And really, no Thorpe maze at the moment is worth £10, let alone £10 and a 45min+ queue. That'll end up having a larger knock on effect if things continue.

I rode Derren with @MattyMoo last Friday and echo many of his comments from that experience. I wasn't overly big on Scene 2 with the actors (the lining up against the wall seemed a bit awkward), but did fully appreciate the actor appearing out of nowhere after hiding under the train. That was cool. For all my sins, I rode this again yesterday. The fake shop ending was running! So seems it's not been totally cut. It's a shame it doesn't have the demon costume, but it does seem to get some people. It doesn't quite have the grandeur it should / did have though. The thing that stuck in my mind from my last two experiences, particularly yesterday, is the state of the headsets. My previous visit was awkward as I had to physically hold the headset in place, but others' seemed fine. This time, it seemed like every headset/headphone combo was not well aligned. They were all effectively falling apart. To make my resemble anything that could be called wearable, I had to fully unstrap the headphones, but the straps through the holes they should be going through, and then go through a few other adjustments. Many others did similar levels of faffing. Not a good look. Another bugbear of mine lately is staff having the radios on loud volumes. When the ride opened, I'm sure they had earpieces. Now they do not, meaning you have loud walkie talkie talk going on over you (and also staff talking loudly into them). Just another immersion breaker. If the park decide to keep this in any way, shape or form next year, they need to put some money into the headsets, to make sure they're actually wearable. And just in general making sure the finer details of the experience are thought about again. And making things a bit more reliable. Though maybe it's time to give up the ghost (train) with it?

I agree, the music this Fright Nights isn't great. So many areas which feel rather quiet / dead. There seems to be little variation too, which is a shame. I know it wasn't always the most popular school of thought, but I always really liked the 'Island changes after dark' motif, where Fright Nights music kicked in when the attractions opened. Something just doesn't feel quite right hearing the generic Fright Nights music at noon in the middle of the park. And whilst I wasn't a fan of much of the 2018 event, it did bring out the nicely themed ride announcements based around different fears. Wish the park ran with that a bit more. It's a real, crying shame though. A few years ago the park's audio had improved quite significantly, and there was a team in place to really look after it and continue those improvements. That seems to have dissipated recently and it really does show.