JoshC.

Just as a point to bare in mind: Had she broken any rules? Had she done anything wrong? The answer is no. Yes, the interview is awful, but there's nothing stopping her from conducting an awful interview. Just ignore these sorts of interviews - giving it all this publicity is the worst thing we can do!

Alton Towers' Twitter are now saying that X Sector (bar Smiler of course) has now reopened.

All reports I've read have stated about there being a stop on the lift hill for about 20 minutes. --- About the bystanders thing, I can understand his anger about it. However, I think it's only natural for guests to think that the park would call 999. Certainly not defending anyone's decision to not call 999, but I can see why in the heat of the moment whilst at a theme park, people's first reaction isn't to call 999.

An interview with one guests who was in the front row of the crash: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3123056/Our-agony-Smiler-Alton-Towers-victim-reveals-hell-waiting-hours-rescue-comforted-girlfriend-lost-leg-change-them.html(Yes, it's the Daily Mail).

Find it interesting/curious that after all your criticism of the system and declaring that you won't go to the park when the system is being trialled, you still go for a seemingly on-the-whim visit... When the system first came about, it was stated to be a walk straight on thing. But I think they've realised that's not realistic - especially with a standby queue too - so it's meant to be that you don't physically wait for more than 15 minutes. Even then, that can be a bit difficult to achieve, since people have a 30 minute slot to arrive within, they need to juggle the standby queue too, etc. However, I think they can achieve that after a bit of tweaking with the system.

Don't wish to jump to conclusions, but is it possible this is someone trying to cash in a bit after Smiler? It just sounds very unlikely that staff wouldn't notice such an incident, that the ride would keep going straight away after such an incident was reported and that Merlin would only give them a £10 voucher in response...

Maybe the point of the trial is to see if people will use it, as well as to see if actually works when it's used?

Let's not forget that Saw is closed at the moment, so we'll no doubt see an increase of queue times around the park. With RnR, an hour long virtual queue means you could reserve it and then do two other rides before doing Colossus though, assuming the queue times are accurate.

I don't think it's been mentioned, but there is a minisite for Lost Kingdom - https://paultonspark.co.uk/lost-kingdom/. It features a new trailer for the area, and there's also a game which can be downloaded onto phones to win stuff. There's also an aerial view of the concept art: As well as the new coasters, the land also includes: -Boulder Dash; a Zamperla Demolition Derby (the the left of the helix of Flight of the Pterodactyl). -The Dinosaur Tour Co; a safari-style ride to see dinosaurs (top of the picture) -Temple Heights; which sounds like a Frog Hopper (top left of the picture) -Dino Chase; "A prehistoric junior roller coaster, perfect for young adventurers who love dinosaurs." (Retheme of an existing ride? I don't know enough about Paultons to know to be honest) -A Dinosaur Show -A dinosaur play area. This all sounds really exciting for Paultons, and I really hope that this investment works out for them. They're certainly pressing all the right buttons so far!

Entrance to the coaster; taken from the park's FB: 7 Now THAT'S how you do an entrance!

I've never been asked for ID when buying or collecting an AP. Just as long as you have the card details, you're fine. You can collect the pass on the day.

Who wants a testing video? Everyone of course... https://www.facebook.com/hapaforum/videos/vb.143169289058717/886145764761062/?type=2&theater Looks like it will keep up a decent speed throughout. Also been confirmed IMA Score are doing the soundtrack for this, which is nice.

Don't get all the rage/fear about these announcements. -Homer and Marge have legally separated a couple of times during the shows run. They've gotten back together. This will be no different. -Bob kills Bart in a Halloween specials. Yay, finally. It's nothing ground breaking. Look at any TV show where one character chases the other - they eventually get caught in one episode for the humour of it all. Also, other characters have been killed in other Halloween specials - Homer springs to mind a few times. Nothing wrong with 'killing' a different character in this special. These announcements are clearly there to get the show talked about in the public again (and not about what's going on behind the scenes). And that's worked a charm. Personally, I still love the show. Yes, the overall quality isn't as good as the earlier seasons, but that's almost to be expected in a show of this kind lasting for so long. There was a really bad dip in quality around Seasons 18-21, but the past few years have been a lot better in my opinion. Indeed, some of my favourite episodes have come from Seasons 22 and 23. The show will go on and I can't see it ending in the next few years at least.

If I could like this 100 times I would.

Ahh, confused myself - thought you couldn't view the ride queues until you had signed in. I agree that an app would work better. Could possibly be something for the future.

Not sure how you're accessing the site off park, but only the main coasters can be used for RnR. You can buy Fastrack for rides through the website though, hence why most rides are displayed.

For Swarm, the RnR queue uses the old Backwards Queue and merges at the bag drop. The normal queue and Fastrack queues are used as normal. So, they have someone scanning at the entrance to the RnR queue. For other coasters, it's a bit different. For Nemesis Inferno, they send the people for the standby queue down the second extension and let people using the RnR queue go through the first extension. There's a staff member batching between the two extensions, so you would simply just walk through towards the station. Colossus uses the old Fastrack queue for RnR, and have a batcher at the appropriate point. Not sure about Stealth Depends on the circumstances. If I'm by Rush and I make a reservation for Inferno on, say, a 15 minute virtual wait, I can make the reservation, ride Rush, then head over to Inferno. In the space of 15-20 minutes, I've done two rides, whereas in the standby queue, I'd have done one ride. It's worth remembering that once you've done your virtual wait, you have 30 minutes to activate the QR code before losing your spot. This gives plenty of time if you're caught in a queue / to get to the ride. The first trial wasn't a total failure; surely if it was, they wouldn't have carried on with the system. I used it on the second day of trials; there were technical faults which did result in an hour wait after a 50 minute virtual wait. As soon as the fault was recognised, they stopped any more reservations being made and then fixed the system. It worked well later on that day and I saw people happy to use it. One of the reasons for a standby queue is because, regardless of how much Thorpe try, some people will want to queue normally. It shouldn't be a reason for Thorpe to not try the system in my opinion - after all, the point of the system is to minimise queueing - but the standby queue is there as an alternative. I still stand by the opinion that the system could work with no standby queue, but hey, if people don't want to use the system, then you can't really force them to! It really is simple. Once you've filled in details on the website, you go to the RnR kiosk in the dome with your group's tickets/passes, and get them scanned. Then you can start reserving rides. You can't set it up all by yourself since you need a member of staff to confirm how many people are in your group. If you decide to not sign up in the dome, I did notice some people roaming around the park where you can sign up. On busy days, I'd expect they'd have loads of staff in the dome and around the park to get people onto the system - they'll have enough organisation skills to make sure people won't have to wait long. I doubt they'll have anyone by the turnstiles signing people in though - that area is hectic enough as it is, and it's not practical to get people to wait around in groups to sign them in (even if the process only takes 30 seconds). They'll probably use the bridge to have people handing out leaflets, mentioning the system, etc.

There will be a spot where a staff member with a scanner is waiting. They scan the QR code on your phone and you then merge with the main queue at a certain point; it's separate from the Fastrack queue though. They've made it so you shouldn't wait long after the merge points though.

Did the new and improved maze today, and I liked it. The execution works well and having one actor guide you round certainly adds to the experience. All the effects seemed to be working and I noticed a couple that weren't around in March too. I feel like it's improved the life span on the maze, as it surely requires less actors, but worry what the throughput is like at the moment. Thorpe have clearly taken feedback on board though since they aren't utilizing all of the original maze's routes and tasks, and have opted for new ideas. They were asking for feedback at the exit too, so hopefully the attraction will end up being tweaked with here and there.

Yes.

I never saw any queues that looked 60 minutes long. Could of course be that I wasn't around those areas at the time, but it just doesn't fit with how busy the park was today.

Little update from TPM from today. Not much different to James' update, but gives a couple of different views: Unfortunately all the interesting work is taking place the other side of the site, but there's no easy way to get any views of that side. Does show how big the site is though!

Bare in mind the queue board was most likely wrong. I should also add that the 30 minute queue I mentioned was for I'm a Celebrity. The coaster queues weren't that long in reality; 10-15 minutes top. Being a quiet day, there were probably plenty of people that were happy to just queue normally / the park weren't pushing the system that much. I don't know why people weren't using the system, but not using the system wouldn't have really affected your day.

I've heard that the pit could be cleaned up and sorted out over the closed season!

It now has one of the Tetley characters (Gaffer; the oldest character I think) giving the start-of and end-of ride announcements, and new music playing during the ride. Whilst it's of course different to the old music, it's still quiet upbeat and doesn't really change the ride experience at all.