JoshC.

I was on park today. Depth Charge opened late due to a fault which was dealt with quickly (worth noting that the queue board said it was meant to open at 10). Stealth seemed to be having troubles in the morning but opened before 12 I believe. Whenever I was near Colossus, it was running fine. Slammer seemed to have a lot of trouble during the day however. The other rides above listed as closed opened at 11 and ran fine during the day. The spread of people during the morning saw most people go to Swarm or Inferno and then spread around afterwards. Once Stealth opened that saw a lot of people go to it, naturally. Colossus see-sawed a lot between short and long queues, which I found unusual. The queue boards seemed quite inaccurate at a lot of points - Colossus stated a 40 minute queue at one point when it couldn't have been longer than 15 or 20. Samurai was sporting a 50 minute queue when it was about 10. Rush's queue never seemed longer than 15 minutes either. It was certainly a weird day for queues on park. The first hour wasn't helped by having Stealth out of action, and the usually reliable Depth Charge (the first ride you see) being fenced off. Not to mention school trips are coming in thick and fast and Saw being closed and fenced off make it feel a lot worse than it actually was to be honest.

On park advertising usually starts in August-time; I expect that this year will be no different. We'll probably get info on new attractions (if there are any) and maze locations in September-time.

I hope the next ambiguous clue they release revolves around trees and plywood now.

Horror fans can rejoice - the new Paranormal Activity film will be the last one! http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/movies/2015/06/22/paranormal-activity-ghost-dimension-sneak-peek-first-look-exclusive/29069709/ Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension (aka PA5, but then the weird but alright spin off happened and worked its way into the story) will answer loads of questions about the series and round it off. Personally, I've never been a fan of the series and have never been too impressed with it, but have always followed it; almost feels like a guilty pleasure of mine in a weird way. Curiously, the people behind the franchise have said in the past they had an end game in mind, but would take a few films to reach to it, and yet they're now going to try and end it off now. Bit worried really that it will feel rushed.. Also find it funny that the producer doesn't want to run the franchise "into the ground"; some may argue that's already been done... Anyway, we also have a short teaser, with another coming tomorrow apparently:

Not a wholly shocking or surprising move, but there's something about staggered openings in a park of Thorpe's size that I just don't really like to be honest. The park did staggered openings on some of the quieter rides a couple of years ago if I remember correctly; the idea didn't seem too popular and didn't last too long either.. Will be interesting to see how this goes down.

Alton Towers and Thorpe Park have different amounts of leeway they can have with the planning applications. A general rule of thumb would be that Alton Towers is more restricted with what they can apply for, but have greater freedom once something is approved. Thorpe, however, are much more free to apply for what they like - and will likely be approved - but once they have a planning application approved, they have to follow it to the letter. Look back at previous plans for the likes of Swarm and Saw. Bar a couple of features which the council denied them for various reasons (namely the jetty and windmill respectively), the plans were a VERY accurate representation of what we saw in real life. This will be no different. Maybe it's because I'm tired, but this doesn't make sense to me... What exactly is your point here? Part of the building isn't themed as well as the other part. Why this is, who knows (probably budget, but hey-ho). But the parts that are lesser themed will be made less obvious / concealed. Hopefully they will be concealed from the offset, but it may be a case of they have to let the greenery grow out a bit first.. Looked at the plans again - looks like I had gotten a bit confused between general greenery and trees. Still, there will be some trees and greenery with the general aim of distracting / concealing the lesser themed parts of the building. Let's hope that the actual experience itself will mean that there's no need to fuss about a lesser themed building anyway!

They will get them in for when the ride opens, especially since part of the application requires them to plant trees as compensation for the ones removed. They will no doubt be aware that part of the building would be an eye sore and the park are more than capable enough to plant some trees...

The plans do indicate there will be (tall) trees hiding the lesser themed parts of the building.

As some might be aware, ScareCON took place this past Friday, and Thorpe gave special runthoughs of Saw Alive to everyone there. Some photos from inside the maze were take and have been uploaded to their FB page. Doesn't show much more than other previous photos from inside the maze, but still nice to see... https://www.facebook.com/ScareCON/photos/a.10152994919556716.1073741845.269404796715/10152994923451716/?type=1&theater

You have literally just ignored what I wrote! Ride operations and Fastrack sales are completely unrelated departments. Completely unrelated. Those who control the queue times will not artificially inflate a queue time "to sell Fastrack". It will either be that they haven't updated the queue times or are wrong. Both of these things should not be happening (queue times should be as accurate as possible all the time, to the best of the parks' ability). However, those things happening are not there to sell more Fastrack tickets. When faced with a Fastrack queue, the batchers have to get through the Fastrack queue - they need to make sure that the people who are paying for the privilege of skipping a queue get what they pay for. It's not great, but they still have to deliver the service. I totally agree it's an awful feeling, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to Fastrack not being sold properly, and NOT the park artificially inflating queue times.

Thorpe have been selling 'Ride Me' merch for years. Biggest non-story of the month. Well done media, well done.

Whether this is a joke or not, seeing this mentioned time and time again is just frustrating. I don't know how many times it has to be said that Fastrack selling and ride operations are different departments and the parks don't close down certain queues or run rides on lower capacity so they can sell Fastrack tickets.

Just to reiterate my point (which Tommy did as well) - I don't think people with severe ADHD should be denied a ride access pass. Indeed, it is the case that people with severe ADHD will have other disorders as you so; coupling those together would likely be more than enough to warrant a ride access pass. But there are people with mild ADHD who, if we're being honest, can probably cope with the concept of queueing. However, if they can, they will push the system and get a ride access pass anyway. There is a line that needs to be drawn, but of course, it is difficult to know where that line is (especially with mental illnesses). I think the current system is fair enough. The amount of evidence required isn't absurd, but it's not too lenient and it should be quiet difficult to 'beat' it. The case above shows that anyone who tries to beat it will be dealt with accordingly. Hopefully that case in particular led the park to be a bit more careful with reviewing evidence though.

Not surprised at all. Look back at other major Merlin projects in the UK... Smiler: Advertising started in late 2012 with the logo Zufari: Advertising started in late 2012 Swarm: Advertising started in April 11 (Lez Cougan) Th13teen: Little more than posters around the park until the name was released in December 09 Saw: First teaser trailer came out in July 08 Given also the lack of any details known about the ride by anyone (usually enthusiasts would know a lot from planning applications), and the fact that the plans allude to a summer 2016 opening, the lack of advertising doesn't surprise me. Indeed, it sort of makes sense - release next to no information, keep everyone intrigued whilst not creating hype - perfect for a major dark ride in my opinion!

Worth noting that Th13teen was on three trains yesterday and was running well for most of the day. Handled the lack of Rita in the Dark Forest.

LG95 and I are still needing tickets. Including you Mer, we just need one more person for the family rate.

I wouldn't want to watch a full-length feature film animated the same way that Angry Birds 4D is (AB4D is fine for a 10 minute thing with the special effects, but I just couldn't see it working in the full-length film). Given that the film is actually going to personify the characters, seemingly give them voices and whatnot, it makes sense to give them a beefed up look too. It'll be interesting to see how successful this is...

That accident just screams to me that the girl had some form of underlying condition that she was unaware of. It's still tragic, but no fault can be blamed on anyone really.

From Merlin Annual Pass Facebook Page: Do they STILL have to keep with the stupid wizard/magical idea? By now I'd have thought they realised it just annoys people.

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...