JoshC.

Fair enough. It's possible that took some inspiration from there then. Could also be purely coincidental. The 'creepy toys' idea isn't exactly original in the world of scare attractions. Neither is 'things from childhood becoming scary'. Thorpe could have seen the successes elsewhere and thought that they'd try to replicate. Equally could have just even their own idea and they didn't take inspiration from anywhere.

We can see in these photos from Silkstone that the weight of one piece of track is 2074kg: https://x.com/J_Silkstone/status/1707435850827497911?t=sHW_LBlLJpOckgy93D81aQ&s=09 So yeah, a good couple of tons per piece.

I don't know when the Doctor Who Toymaker/Emporium stuff came into the public domain, but it could also be purely coincidence.

"record throughputs" sounds like a slight exaggeration. Or, at least, for a very specific definition of 'record', as I doubt they're getting the best ever. Still, positive to see they're getting good throughputs. Realistically, I'd've thought the introduction of a single rider at Stealth wouldn't make a negative impact to train dispatches, but given at the moment they don't really batch and people just sort themselves out, I can see why a SRQ may cause problems. The fire effects comment goes back to something I've said before. Even though they're saying no promises, there's obviously no indication as to when they may be able to get them operational, and just wishful expectations. Feel like they should just keep stum on that.

It looks like deliveries are taking a *step* in the right direction...

Colour me pessimistic but until said upgrade happens, I won't believe it till it happens. That said, it's a good and necessary thing to be investigating and will definitely help. It's ultimately a cheap thing to do too, so whilst something like new trains would be better, this does the job for now.

Here's an alternative view: It doesn't seem like the bus will be capable of moving with those stands there. I'd also be surprised if that was ever considered, just from a H&S perspective. I guess the main reason for its inclusion is to allow for the controls for the AV equipment to be stored somewhere. It's on theme and also somewhere for actors to pop to as necessary.

I predict that construction for Project Exodus will go vertical on Monday 9th October. I reckon the first supports will go in sometime between 11am and 1pm that day.

I eagerly await their 2am tweet at me, thanks for the heads up.

Yeah, no.

Oh definitely. But when I said significantly more white than gold supports, I really meant it - I could see maybe about 5 or 6 gold supports to a sea of white. Obviously that's just from a quick glimpse and there could be more elsewhere, but that few gold supports wouldn't take long to install, and wouldn't be enough to sustain many white supports on top either!

Sadly no clue. I know it's quite a recent change (last couple of years), so not a result of the Smiler incident, or any other theme park accident that I'm aware of. It could just be a 'Stealth-like' scenario where they choose to rotate the annual maintenance of cars. So they have 7 cars available, with the 8th being serviced / used as a quick spare part replacement, a la Stealth, where the 3rd train is always being serviced. But again, I stress I have no idea. Definitely cynical, in that this wouldn't have been the reason. The park would not have gone "Inferno is running too efficiently, never has a long queue queue to sell enough Fastrack, we need to slow it down". The departments in charge of Operations and Fastrack are completely different, and beyond communicating throughput numbers, will have little interaction with one another. And certainly the Fastrack department would not be able to ask them to slow down, nor would anyone higher up. However, whatever the reason for the slowing in operations and reducing throughput over the years, it is certainly a by-product that Fastrack is more appealing. And I'm sure they're likely to sell more tickets as a result. A recent change on bigger rides I've noticed is that staff now have headsets to communicate with each other, rather than the phones. This means they can be in constant communication with each other, and don't have to stop to do so. This has pros and cons, but there's now no longer this scenario of people walking over to a phone to have a goss with each other.

It's not really any different to any other pirate ship. However, everyone reacts differently to different rides. It's not too uncommon for people to be okay on larger pirate ships and feel queasier on smaller ones.

From what I've seen from Swarm, there's significantly more white supports than gold? Is that pretty accurate? Could still be a while before installation if there's not a lot of gold on site

Whatever it is, I'm sure Tulleys will end up tweeting me saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, since their social media team seem to have an unhealthy obsession with me. #BigShot

8 followed by a closed bracket - aka ) - gives 😎. It's an old school way of doing the sunglasses emoji which our forum software still uses. As you note, your averages are across quite a small sample, which isn't the most reliable. But it still gives some useful insight. This is pretty good, especially considering you mentioned there was some guest faff. Again, given there was guest faff, that's not bad. With it's onload/offload platform, batching procedures and the way bag collection is dealt with, Stealth should be pretty consistent. Saw hasn't operated with 8 cars for a number of years, and likely won't ever again. 770 is pretty painful for its popularity, although really not all that surprising for what it is these days. This is going to be hit hard next year being near Exodus. I mean, this is painful, but sadly what we've come to expect from Colossus these days. I can't remember the last time it ever did well, but it simply just doesn't do well these days. Another one that will be hit hard next year. Christ knows what the park have done to Inferno. Quite a few years ago (well, I guess we're getting close to a decade now, but whatever), Inferno was a throughput machine. The 1000pph mark was standard. Nowadays, 700 mark is good. It's better than like 5 years ago, when 600 was good, but it's really a sad situation to see. This really highlights the need not so much for Exodus to be a throughput machine, but to be able to have a solidly high throughput which it can easily maintain for years to come.

On the subject of Exodus, it seems possible that the core beams for maintenance building will be erected very soon. I thought that that route might have been used to move supports and track onsite, so it's interesting that's the first thing to be built (with parts then moved on site out of park hours through the park)

Ding dong, your opinion is wrong. But seriously, a couple of points: -I've had chats with Parma Violet and have removed some complete nonsensical rubbish they've posted. -Parm Prat's posts are every once in a while, and not constant/every other post -Parmesan Pamela posts at this point are a running joke post. In the past, we've had "Topspin", "4.5/10", "If I wanted to look at trees, I'd go to a garden centre". More recently we've had "Jart" and "Tidal Wave's fire" -More importantly, I think the sense of relief we'll get once Exodus opens and Parma Ham's posts become less frequent and annoying will be much more satisfying than us banning Ramp App (and them inevitably coming back as Parm Pap 2: Electric Boogaloo). It's a bit annoying, yes. Personally I find it significantly less annoying than the people on Twitter who are "in the know" and post future stuff as "#spectulation" and going 'it's just my opinion,👀 #Newfor2024'.

I rode Swarm today. Whilst there's certainly more supports, I wouldn't say the island is "filling up". They're also primarily white supports. Of course, they can (and will) store supports elsewhere too, so this shouldn't be a hard indication of how much is on park. I've seen a couple of people talk of track deliveries and vertical construction in the coming week. I haven't seen such rumours come from a usual reliable source. Equally, when supports were first delivered, there was no prior rumour going about. So I think any rumour should be taken with a big heap of salt. Not to say those things will happen this week, but don't count on it.

Mr Monkey is running fine. The replacement part took a long time due to high demand with the manufacturer (they had many projects at the time), increased time on making parts due to expenses in sourcing raw materials and increased time in shipping due to Brexit.

New "Scare and Entertainment" Zone for 2023, replacing Birthday Bash. Sounds like it will primarily be a show, with actors roaming around the area sometimes as well. It's a decent idea I think, assuming it can pulled off well. A similar-sounding experience was at Walibi Holland in the past and was pretty cool.

Well Trouble is Brewing I guess...

I delved into the plans for Exodus and had a look when we might see things go vertical: https://thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/28-08-2023/When+Might+Project+Exodus+go+Vertical In short: -Vertical construction looks set to start mid-next month -Set to finish before Christmas -Testing to happen from late January -Potentially ready to open in time for Easter holidays

Crows scare zone is back for the 3rd time. With the Saw Alive queue gone, it'll be interesting to see how they use the extra space. I'm aware that the park looked at removing the queue last year for the event, so they've had a long time to think of what to do! --- It's interesting see the reaction to Trailers. I think it's got its place in the line up. Yes, it's not the scariest maze, but I think that's needed. Trailers is a more 'fun-scary' maze, which some people prefer over the out-and-out full on scare/gore type mazes. Obviously it's still a scare maze, and should achieve scares, but I'm fine with it being a tamer experience, so long as it can still deliver. I don't think the park are necessarily on a 3 year maze cycle. We're in a new phase of Fright Nights after 2020 completely changed plans. But also the only mazes which we've seen last 3 operating seasons in recent years were Living Nightmare and Creek Freak. Living Nightmare closed because of the Black Mirror, as opposed to a Fright Nights plan, and Creek Freak closed because of Exodus (though it would have been interesting to see what they would have done this year had that not happened). I think it's a shame that Trailers hasn't received any new scenes. It's clearly got the potential, and with the closures of Platform 15 and Creek Freak, they've had ample opportunity to do so. Hopefully they do so next year, should it remain (which I expect). It will be particularly interesting to see what the park plans to do next year. Do they expand the maze line up, adding a 4th maze, or do they keep the maze line up the same and focus on the other offerings on park?

First teaser: The line up seems like it will be revealed over the next week, with a new video at 7pm daily.