JoshC.

I look forward to seeing "AQUATRAX" posts for the next 2 years.

By the looks of Thorpe's updates this winter, it seems as though Rush had a LOT of work done to it this closed season, like it does every 3-4 seasons. When this happens, it usually opens late (last time it happened it opened April-time I believe?). So to be opening a day late is pretty good going. Seemingly the time it takes for that amount of maintenance to occur is just a bit longer than the time they have during closed season. Given that Thorpe have posted videos of Swarm testing, and it has been the most reliable major attraction at Thorpe the past 4 seasons, obviously something unexpected has cropped up for it's slightly late opening. Obviously rides opening late is a bad thing, and given that things like this have happened before, it could be an indication that they need more budget for maintenance, or they need a longer closed season. But given what we, as enthusiasts, know, I'm not going to hold the slightly delayed opening of Rush and Swarm against them.

To be fair, some of Merlin's investments are pretty fair when you look at it. Swarm's £18-20m included the infilling of the land (presumably not that cheap), the ride hardware (which I heard was around the £9m mark?), the theming, a new set of toilets, marketing, etc. etc. Not too bad value for money all things considered I'd say! But yes, for the rumoured £8-9m, this is a brilliant investment for the park. I've run out of good things to say about to be honest.

I don't believe there's a non-VR station. You simply choose whether you want to have VR or not; if you want to, you put it on. If not, you put it in the pouch in the sear.

Read over on TST that there will be one staff member per row, presumably to ensure that throughput is as high as possible. So, this means on 2 station operation, there will be something up to 20 staff on this...

For the record, Thorpe don't actually try and enforce their smoking areas per se. There are set smoking areas around the park, and these are the recommended / preferred places for people to smoke. However, people are allowed to smoke anywhere in the park, as long as it's outdoors, not a queue line and not Angry Birds Land. The other Merlin parks enforce it and it seems to work well; I rarely see people smoke outside the smoking areas at Towers and Chessington to be fair. And I thought smoking was completely banned at Legoland these days too?

It's been changed.

Challenge is fab to be fair, but the guns and lasers felt so clunky and awkward for me. Looking forward to doing it again actually..

Angry Birds Land is a sub area of The Jungle, as seen on the map in the picture above.

^Yes. Areas are: Old Town: Saw Samurai Slammer Rocky Express Lost City: Colossus X Rush Vortex Quantum Zodiac The Jungle: Inferno IAC Maze Mr Monkey's Banana Ride Rumba Rapids Angry Birds Land Amity Beach: Stealth Flying Fish Teacups Tidal Wave Storm Surge Depth Charge Amity Beach and Wet Wet Wet The Swarm Island: Swarm Port and Basecamp: Entrance Derren Brown appears to be in its own area at the moment, since on the map it is written in a different colour to everything else.

I wonder what the response would have been to this if we hadn't heard it was receiving "improvements" and £800k was being spent on it? Hearing that it's Sally Corp guns had made me sad though; really not a fan of them.

The tower was meant to be a large feature, placed roughly opposite the exit to the arcade. So we can only assume the tower won't be happening. That location is likely for plants. On a different note, to the people complaining about the lack of anything in the ride's plaza: Does this *actually* have a plaza? Surely everything outside the queue line is just a major walkway for the park, and not a plaza in the sense of Stealth, Swarm and Saw?

Like this: Which is as old as the ride itself

There already are some VR scare experiences about: http://virtuallydead.co.uk/ So no world's first there

That is truly fantastic. Nice one Chessington.

Who's to say it is down to budget cuts? Maybe they've simply had a change of heart? And if it is down to budget cuts, I'd much rather them cut a (run-down looking) tower which is just there for show, than something inside the building.

It appears I'm due an eye test...

Well that's an unexpected turn of events.

Loggers is still standing I believe; you can't see much of it though mind!

Cheers Thorpe!

Warehouse and signage look fab. More photos on TPM's Facebook. By the looks of the map, we have a min height restriction of 1m and a recommended age of 13+.

Can't believe I missed that...

So Containment doesn't appear on the park map. It's not on park either. False alarm?

Lol at Slammer not being on the map at all.