JoshC.

I've personally never got where the Underground rumour came from? The only thing I've seen people use to back that up is the signs around the construction site are a circle with some writing through the centre, which looks like the Underground logo. But that's a very common style and feels like clutching at straws, at best.

Ignoring Chessington, I do feel like Merlin have done a pretty alright job at upkeeping dark / indoors rides to be fair. Hex and Duel are both fine, CATCF is still okay, NST is fine effect-wise (bar the actors, which were a last minute addition in fairness). X's effects are pretty consistent, as are Saw's indoors ones. I guess it's difficult to comment either way since there aren't many dark rides to judge on, and the ones they have should be pretty basic to keep up with. I do agree that their trouble, and in particular, Thorpe's trouble, is more ride effects though.

I seem to be lucky with my visits, as I haven't had any bad experiences at the park recently? There's the things like one train operation at opening which are still happening, but (unfortunately) that's no worse than any other time of season at Thorpe I guess. People are saying says like this are the norm at the moment, yet I've been having pretty decent days on park. Just seems odd..

The jetty was cut before the ride was approved, so I think it was due to the council's consultation. The only bit of theming that didn't come to fruition was a crashed car on top of the church.

It's a nice looking layout and will probably offer a fun enough ride experience. But these big, little-themed (which I assume this will be?) dive coasters just don't interest me like the much more themed ones. I guess my opinion might change if I was to ride one, but that coaster just doesn't look as appealing to me as the likes of Baron, Oblivion: TBH, and Krake. :/

Slammer usually closes at around 3pm for checks I believe. I hope they had closed the queue at a set time, cleared the queue line, then did the checks, rather than chucking people out of the queue?!

Face it Alone is extremely different to the mazes during the day, even if you're in them alone. Whilst I would encourage anyone who enjoys scare attractions to try it, just remember it IS an extreme experience.

When I mentioned about Lorikeet Lagoon being closed in April, they didn't say anything and said they'd look into it being stated on the website. Still nothing on there though. During my visit, the enclosure was empty, bar a few rats.

IPs still require a lot of work to do right. Arguably it takes more work as you've got an external company with their own standards to meet. If they don't like what is being done, they won't want their name affiliated to it! IPs are good because they're easier to market. When done well, they attract a lot of attention and can do wonders for parks (Saw is a good example Merlin-wise, but also Peppa Pig at Paultons and Thomas at Drayton). The £3m number was in the plans, but referred to things like the groundwork and the building itself. From what I understood, it did not include things like the ride hardware, theming and effects, landscaping, and potential IP, etc.

0/10 - You didn't even write it yourself.

Nice topic idea - Scruffy deserve some more recognition! I've been following them for over a year now on social media, and I can honestly say everything they've done, no matter what the size, looks beautiful. The quality of their theming is brilliant, and hopefully they can continue to expand and grow and be able to do more stuff. From what I understand, the company are very good with set pieces and stationary theming, but have little experience with incorporating special effects into what they do. I would love to see them develop into a company which could also work on special effects and putting that into their theming themselves; the possibilities of what they could then do would be limitless!

OCTONAUTS INFERNO

Given there's no plans online yet and Chessington has pretty difficult planning constraints, it surely can't be anything remotely big if they're confident enough to be advertising it already? My bets is on a small ride replacing the Lorikeet Lagoon area, which has been closed and empty all season.

This is the sort of post where a picture or source would be extremely helpful http://www.chessingtonbuzz.co.uk/news/new-adventures-coming-2016/

From Theme Park Tourist... So the bus ride isn't technically an Immersive Tunnel, and more a simulator (like Benin says).

Double post Reserve N Ride is not running today, tomorrow or Wednesday as originally planned. It is still running Thursday-Saturday as planned, but it is now running from 2nd October to 1st November (instead of from 20th October)! https://www.thorpepark.com/tickets-passes/reserve-n-ride/overview/

Come to think of it, Bobbejaanland's one had a trough as well. Also, if you look at that picture (and any other Immersive Tunnel, particularly during the construction stage), you notice that they aren't usually constructed in a curved "tunnel"; they're made in a normal building and just have the screen curve round in front of you. So it would be rather odd for them to start doing it like that.. For reference, here's a construction pic of Forbidden Caves: (Image found on parkstrip.fr)

Like pluk, I'm expecting a long drawn out thing. Maybe a step up in marketing soon (more on park things maybe?), followed by loads of cryptic clues which actually will not be of any help whatsoever and we'll only see the relevance of them when the ride is revealed. Sounds boring, but it will be enough to drive to enthusiast community crazy whilst keeping general public interested.

Vortex was down all day yesterday too. It seemed very cornered off and secluded sure to the stage.

It is a possibility I'm over-thinking it! However, I'm almost certain that, from a purely theoretical view, the idea being described does over-simplify the matter! The idea of counting the number of people in a queue and using a real time throughput to work out the queue length is good for people in a real queue at that current time, but it's less good for giving pretty decent estimations for people outside that queue (which is what you want from queue time numbers, surely?). The same idea works perfectly for a virtual queue however, since it knows exactly how long you've got to wait. --- Also, on a completely different note (and maybe a note not really suitable for this thread, but couldn't find a more appropriate one)... Please fix the screen Thorpe!

-Just because it's the last of its type, doesn't mean it's any good. -Thorpe don't advertise this. The average guest won't be aware that it's the last of its type, so it means nothing to them!

Used RnR again today; once again, I had no troubles with the system. It seemed the system was being used more since the virtual waits were around the hour mark during the busier part of the day (which is a lot longer than on previous visits this season). Of course, it could just mean they've reduced the allocation number... However, a slight issue I had today was I couldn't log into my account. I tried logging in with my email address (which I've used every time I've used RnR since it started), but today, it wouldn't let me use that email, and the staff member trying to log me in said it was because I had used that account before. Not sure if they're just having some troubles with the system at the moment, but it seems silly that I couldn't use my pre-existing account even though I've used it a few times this season? It was an easily resolved problem, as the staff member just added a 1 into my email address, and created a new account, but it still seems like a silly idea. I did send feedback off through the system about it, asking for it to be looked into, but I assume I won't know if the issue is resolved since the account is logged into a non-existent email address!

I kind of feel like if this was indeed the end, Thorpe would be saying that, rather than it just being a "scheduled closure". Presumably this is for some pretty big maintenance. Despite views from the enthusiast community about how it is operated, Samurai is still a well-received ride by the public. Given the amount of effort they put into Slammer, I'd be surprised if they gave up the ghost just yet with the ride.

www.phalanxcontrol.co.uk Public announcement about Operation Lockdown, with a few more details.