JoshC.

Velcoiraptor looks so fun!

Going to lock this thread guys; we've already broken two rules.

I do think that IAC is meant to open at 10 every day regardless of when the park opens. Other rides though is hard to comment on.

There is no age restriction though, just an age recommendation. 'Scary' rides (by which I mean rides with a dark / horror theme) always have high height restrictions, so that no one under that height can ride it; something covered by the park's T&Cs. Height restrictions are easy to control, since it is easy to check if someone is x height or not. There's a nice age-height correspondence too, so on average, kids hit 1.4m when they're about 10, like Adam says. Age restrictions are a lot more difficult to enforce (how can you prove if a kid who says he's 13 actually is 13, for example). So to have a strict age restriction comes at a cost of a lot of hassle, so is never worth it on a large scale. It's also something that isn't really covered in a park's T&Cs (usually, only special events are age restricted, not all year round attractions. Changing the T&Cs to cover this would be a huge pain). Having the height restriction and age recommendation works well. The height restriction means that kids who are tall enough to ride are a couple of years away from the age recommendation (as opposed to several years out), meaning that they themselves, and whoever they are with, can make a better judgement as to whether they are suitable for the attraction. Sub Terra had a recommended age restriction of 12+ I believe. Hob's Pit and PWH has a 12 age recommendation is a 1.5m height restriction for similar reasoning too.

Completely random point, but one thing I've noticed is how the wooden panels in the queue line have been 'aged up' in recent weeks, with green paint to look like mould I assume... From TPM From TPG, a couple of weeks after the TPM photo.

To be fair, it has come up and was discussed on the last page Plans for this version were submitted a couple of years back and all the necessary obstacles have been cleared this time, so all is good!

Look at it compared to other attraction signs across Thorpe. And even compared to other ride signs across European parks. It ranks as one of the better, cooler, more original, signs that I can think. (I fully expect people to post pictures of Tidal's sign and other awesome-looking signs now, but still, you get my point). If you want to be facetious and pessimistic though, your favourite (steel) roller coaster is just metal shaped and joined in a certain way.

From rolicoli8 on TTSP...

Them supports though.

The through just has loads of pumps and the like to remove the water, yeah. It takes about 6 seconds to fill (so leaving plenty of time between the final launch and the reaching of the splash) and 50 seconds to empty (which is convenient timing for how long it will take to get the new car out). Apparently, the water level can also be adjusting depending on weather conditions and the like too, which is nice. Also, the theoretical throughput for this is apparently 950pph. Whether it'll actually reach that is anyone's guess at the moment, but if they can reach somewhere near that, then that'd be pretty darn good.

What do you mean by similar situations though? Cases where the Fastrack queue is busy? If so, that's hardly surprising on busy days. What I mean is, I haven't seen situations where the Fastrack queues are much larger than I'd anticipate on a given day - this is the first time I've seen that situation in a long time. In the past, Thorpe have mentioned that Fastrack aims to make the user's queue time a specific fraction of the current queue time (I can't remember what that fraction was and don't have time to check right now. However, for a crude example, the general idea would be if the aim is for Fastrack users to wait 1/100th of the main queue time, and the queue time for a ride was 100 minutes on average, they would sell - at most - a number of Fastrack tickets that meant every user waited only 1 minute). Assuming they still use this system, the Fastrack quota would indeed be reduced if a ride was on reduced capacity. The Priority Pass thing is purely speculation on my behalf; it is possible there were very few PP users today. However, it is a possible reason for the problem in my opinion. The trouble is, if you were in Thorpe's shoes, it's not really worth saying "Let's reduce the number of Fastracks we sell today, and so reduce our profit, just because there might be some more people using Priority Passes than usual". It's not putting money before guest experience in that case, it's just making the correct business decision at the end of the day. I also wouldn't be surprised if they stopped selling Fastrack tickets before they reached the maximum number anyway, to cover themselves for Priority Passes and the like.

Before we jump on board the Thorpe bashing train, let's remember a few things... -A picture means very little unless there's context to be placed within it. -A long Fastrack queue doesn't necessarily imply there are any more negative effects to the normal queue than a short Fastrack queue. -The number of Fastrack tickets that can be sold is dependent on the length of a ride's queue. -A ride breaking down and reopening later can cause havoc with the Fastrack system. -There were likely many guests who had planned visits for today with the intention of riding Ghost Train. There's a good chance that many of those people are AP holders, who quite possibly also visited during AP day and so have some Priority Passes to use up. Today would therefore be seen as a good day to cash those Priority Passes in, which can lead to an inflating in a Fastrack queue since they're not taken out of the Fastrack quota. -This is the first time such an incident has occurred this season. And aside from extremely busy days, such as at Fright Nights, I can't recall a time in the past couple of seasons when Fastrack queues looked that bad (correct me if I'm wrong)? Of course, bad things should never happen, but sometimes these things do happen. I'm not defending (or attacking) the park with any of the above points, simply just pointing out some facts to remember before people go "THORPE NEVER LEARN AND ARE TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING!"

"Yeah hi mate, that James Allgood is back again. Best come quick because he always photographs my good side..."

Wasn't the discussion more of the shop signage awkwardly covering the chipboards and them being replaced, as opposed to the chipboard themselves? Speaking of the ship signage though, they are the same shape as in the plans, so they won't be replaced by a different shaped signed. Given the look of the queue info board, I doubt they're being changed at all.

Odd. I don't have a subscription to FT; I just Googled 'Derren Brown Ghost Train' and clicked News. That article was the fifth one down and worked for me fine, so I assumed linking it would have worked. The full article though...

Interestingly, this article on the Financial Times says that Ghost Train cost £13m... https://next.ft.com/content/c1eac800-12e5-11e6-839f-2922947098f0 Since we've had the "largest investment ever made" talk for ages, I'd assume this is a mistake and the number was either misheard (£30m) or a typo (£23m?)

I don't see a woodie for them to RMC-ify years later though. :/ Unless the coaster top centre is meant to look like an RMC, even though it looks rather steel-y? *Insert RMC joke about what's the difference here*

Not going to lie, but I fully expect this to be a terrible attraction. McKamey doesn't know how to make scare attractions. McKamey Manor is not a scare attraction, it's a shock attraction which essentially appeals to anyone interested in some sort of sado-masochism. They're two completely different things which need two completely different trails of thought to be successfully created. If this is going to be "watered down" and "suitable for all", that suggests McKamey is trying to create a scare attraction, but living off of the hype / name of McKamey Manor. That only spells disappointment for scare attractions fans, "fans" of McKamey and basically anyone in between. If that's just a lie and it is an extreme shock attraction, then it's just going to be terrible like all shock attractions are (in my opinion). Cracked was very different to McKamey Manor from what I've read, but was still a very extreme event. However, I believe the creators have mentioned they're taking a break from scare attractions now?

On a different note, here's an image from swooddow on TTSP... Nice little update to the rotating wall, which will of course read 'Mind Gap' when the wall is turned around.

I read that quote as referring to the length of time you were wearing the VR, since the build up to that paragraph talks about Galactica's ride time - and hence time wearing the VR. Since we know that VR only plays a part of the attraction, it would make sense that they're not revealing how long you spend wearing it.

I'm fairness, if they haven't seen it removed from the ride line up it's not too unreasonable a question to ask.

A look at the press release on Thorpe's website reveals that the reasoning for choosing 1871 as the year is because Derren was born in 1971, and by rolling back 100 years, they reached a a Victorian year. Also... The use of the word "seems" is very striking to me. Obviously we know there's more to this than meets the eye, and that grand illusion plays a part. However, the photos from yesterday do make it seem very bare inside. So, wild speculation suggests that we will board the train in an abandoned warehouse, have some different dimension VR stuff happen, then leave the train in the same physical area, but completely new surroundings? Would be a very awesome effect if so!

Maybe it's just me, but I don't have a problem with it? Fastrack is a service the park offers to save time on queueing. It's only natural that they'd want to advertise it to some degree. Saying they've got a service you can pay for to reduce your queue time next to queue times makes sense.

From TPM Facebook...