JoshC.

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.

2/10 Half of it is something you didn't even come up with yourself. You spelt Bellewaerde wrong too.

The system you describe Zach is fine working out a queue time at a snapshot in time. As you say, if you've got x number of people in the queue and you're getting y people through per minute, the queue length is x/y minutes. The trouble is, queues aren't like that, you've always got people constantly entering the queue as well as leaving it. If you don't have a way of predicting the number of people entering the queue, you can't get an accurate estimation of the queue time for the people who are thinking about joining the queue. To use some numbers... Say we take your numbers - 300 people in a queue, with an average of 10 people leaving the queue per minute. You advertise a 30 minute queue. But say, on average, 20 people enter the queue per minute. In a 5 minute period, 50 people have left the queue, but 100 people have joined it - there's now 350 people in the queue, and (assuming the throughput is the same), there's now a 35 minute minute queue. The last people to have joined that queue would have expected a 30 minute queue, but have now got a 35 minute queue. Okay, it's only 5 minutes, but the exact same problem would arise on a larger scale. It's also worth noting the same 'problem' arises if less people enter the queue than who leave it. This is the trouble, unless you can predict the number of people entering the queue, you can't give a truly accurate queue time. You can use it to make a rough estimate, and maybe then add a bit extra to that time just in case, but then you get complaints that the queues aren't accurate enough / parks are trying to sell Fastrack. There's also a problem of how often do you update it? If you update it too often, you risk confusing or even frustrating guests. Don't update it often enough and you get inaccuracies. It's a difficult game to play. This is the ingenious thing about RnR. RnR eliminates the need to predict how many guests are going to enter the virtual queue. The virtual queue tells you exactly how long you need to wait, based on the throughput and the number of people ahead of you - it's a snapshot of the queue line. And so the system you describe actually is the perfect theory for why RnR should work and gives more accurate queue times!

The virtual wait removes those variables since it is just a 'pure' queue - the numbers won't incorporate things like Fastrack, pass use, etc. The theory would be that you would get on more or less straight away (which was actually the case during the very first trial I did in 2013...except on one go when the system mucked up the numbers completely), but the 'up to 15 minute' thing allows for leeway I guess, in case of unexpected numbers of people using Fastrack / access passes or breakdowns and the like - it's almost like a backup. I guess it's wrong of me to say RnR removes the variables - it more just makes them less of a worry. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, which could well be why what I'm saying isn't making as much sense as I'd like it to! One thing I think we do agree on though is that RnR would be better used as a Fastrack replacement than a real queue replacement. It seems like a better and simpler idea to work on! Whilst in theory this is a fabulous idea, I don't think it works in practice. Calculating the average number of people leaving the queue (ie: going on the ride) is fine, but you need to be wary of the average rate of people entering the queue also. Because if the rate of people entering the queue is more than the rate of people leaving the queue, the idea you describe is inaccurate as it underestimates the queue length. The trouble is that working out the average rate of people entering the queue is a lot more difficult, since it depends on so many things (current queue time, time of day being major ones, but even other things like location of ride, how long its been open, etc could feasibly be a factor). I'm sure if a park was dedicated enough to giving very accurate queue times, they could collect data over a long period of time and find out the necessary trends to be able to get a truly perfect estimation system - but for the effort, its not worth it really; even though it does sound really interesting to me.. That's why I think the best system - in terms of practicality and good estimations - is to just work out times from experiencing them, see where a certain queue time is in the real queue, and then just add a little bit extra to take into account any small problems that may occur.

It's a little hard to tell from the photos how much has been built, but my guess is something like this... (Apologises for the crude, low quality picture) The yellow section appears the be the part of the building currently constructed, and the starred section is where I think this tunnel segment is. There's still a lot more to be done - don't judge the attraction by a bit of the building!

With regards to the speed - the launch hits a top speed of 45mph, but the actual coaster reaches a top speed of 73mph, making it the first launched wooden roller coaster and the fastest wooden coaster outright. It looks like an interesting idea; will be interesting to see how it rides and whether this will take off and see further developments of wooden coasters, or whether this will just be a gimmick that only gets rolled out onto a couple of coasters. The ride itself looks fun either way though!

Has a love for Chessington, somehow.