JoshC.
-
Posts
9202 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
416
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Events
Blog Comments posted by JoshC.
-
-
I must be in the minority who likes Hollywood Tours. I know it's dated and sticks out like a sore thumb compared to their recent dark rides, and I won't be sad when it bites the dust, but it's at least easy to enjoy. The China dark rides and Nighthawk are poor all round though.
Phantasialand have invested brilliantly though in the past few years. Chuck out the deadwood, and improve operations a bit, and it'll unquestionably be up there as one of the best places to blend quality rides for everyone and quality theming into one.
-
Lost Gravity is very different to the two Eurofighters I've done. Lost Gravity wasn't particularly intense, just fast and fun, with some nice pops of airtime. The Eurofighters I've done focus more on intensity, and of course the signature drop. The restraints also create a completely different feel to the ride as well.
So really they're pretty incomparable, but if you had to point a gun to my head and ask which coaster I preferred (ignored theming), it would go in this order: Saw, Lost Gravity; Typhoon.
-
Please say you did Hotel Tartuff of hilarity too?
I really hope that I can get the better setting on Mystery Castle when I next visit. What I assume was the shorter cycle just feels a tad underwhelming.
-
-
Forbidden Caves is fab though (well, the pre shows at least) </3 Suprised you didn't just give the WTF Award to Bobbejaanland in general; such an odd place...
Nice to be able to relate to some of your awards this year. I think Toverland is a bit overlooked by many, but with rides like Troy and Whirlwind, it's a great little place.
-
Interesting to note on the coaster climbs, how do they compare to Swarm which is the first and only one I've done this year?
Each climb offers a different experience, as you'd expect.
Swarm is (perhaps obviously) the best for general views. Being the tallest, newest and arguably most popular of the three, it's not surprising that it's the most commonly climbed coaster.
Inferno gives the best views for the park itself, what with being in the centre of the park. The freedom of not having a harness is really nice as well. And you're offered the choice of which side to climb (or both), which is a nice touch.
Colossus, however, was my favourite. Being a narrow staircase, it feels a lot more open and free. You get great views of the park and general area (you'd probably get some views of London on a clear day). However, nothing can beat the experience at the top, when every step you make gives a slight - but very noticeable! - wobble. Slightly scary; totally awesome!
-
Curious that you call Efteling an under rated park, when basically everyone who goes sings its praises till the cows come home.
Ravelijn is a weird one. Great effects, sets and the like, and I didn't find the story that hard to follow in all honesty, but it's let down by the fact there's too much going on at any one time for you to truly appreciate it all. It's definitely a bombardment on the eyes to say the least.Aquanura is fab as it is, but if the original version is much better, gutted I missed out on it..
-
Spookslot I guess it depends what you expect from it... As an show, it's very well done, with lots of things to look at throughout, but the lack of idea of what is going on (especially whilst waiting) is a problem...
We genuinely had no clue what to expect from it, and I guess the waiting did build a lot of suspense. But it just ended up being very anticlimactic and disappointing. Will be interesting to try it again and see what I think of it knowing what to expect.
-
Just looking at those mini airtime hills on Freestyle makes my male region feel sore...
Surprised that Cinecittà World was so quiet. I thought it really was the next big thing for Italy and was being given huge amounts of attention, though I guess it's hard to judge these things when being an enthusiast and this getting attention for it's 10-looper.Awesome-sounding trip though; thanks for the report!
-
Yeah, definitely my main issues were with the park were clearly older parts of the park. I could at least appreciate the quality and effort in some of the newer rides I didn't like (Mystery area, Talocan, etc), and Taron already looks fab, so it's great there's a positive outlook.
If Temple and Hollywood get replaced, I'm not even sure my wildest dreams could come up with sort of quality attraction they could do in that space...
-
Nice report again Josh, and I completely agree with you on Loup Garou - it's a really underrated woodie, and my favourite sort; one that puts a big grin on your face.
I think the Park have made the best of a bad situation with Psyké Underground; it's had more than its fair share of issues including riders stuck at the top of the loop, a 4 year SNBO period, and numerous noise complaints meaning the Park had to first enclose the loop section, and then continue to enclose the entire rest of the ride structure. Given that there's fewer than 10 Schwarzkopf shuttle loops operating today, kudos to the Park for keeping Psyké alive... even in the strange themed form it's in today!
And who couldn't love the launch soundtrack... Start the Systeme!
The history of Psyké is quite something - Adam was mentioning it briefly when we were on park and it's so good they've put the effort into keeping it alive. Looking into it a bit more now, I didn't realise just how much it had good through, and just how few were out there.
Looking at the POV was great; forgot just how fun the launch was actually!
I don't think we had the TV playing pre-launch; instead, we had the staff members getting us to clap along, which was probably more fun. 
They've not got ride of the Music Battle Show have they? OMG disaster if so...
The thing which made it even worse was that around the area, all the signage and advertising for the show were still there. Despite never even hearing of the show before, we could make out what it was meant to be from it and were a bit disappointed by it. As Adam says, the map and a couple of signs seem to suggest it's now just a business / corporate area, which is such a shame for what is presumably a fairly decent-sized space?
-
Find it very curious about the meaning of LC12, since I've long believed that it meant 'Long Count', in reference to the Mayan calendar, as seen by this image (thanks to TTP!)...
Maybe it's just one of those things that has multiple different meanings, and has a given one depending on the situation used?
-
-
Wow, what an awesome sounding trip!
Sega Republic looks pretty cool, and thank goodness that we don't see customer service like at Wonderland in any parks around Europe!
Must say I'm kind of disappointed that the log flume at Ferrari World wasn't open - I've been curious to hear reviews of it for a while now! Formula Rossa sounds pretty crazy, I'm glad the ride experience doesn't let up after the launch; POVs (yeah, not a great source!) seemed to me that the ride became a bit lacklustre towards the end.
Thanks for this report Ben; really enjoyed it! Look forward to seeing what you've got up your sleeve next year!
-
Compared to other years, yeah, this season has been a bit underwhelming. In it's own right, it's been okay, but unremarkable. I'd say that's the case for Chessington and Legoland too, and that we're looking at more of the same for next season across all the UK Merlin parks.
-
It does look amazing, and goes onto the ever growing 'one day' list.
It must be time for the UK to address its lack of Mack, anyone know how they compare cost wise to the omnipresent B&M/Inamin/Gurst trio that seem to have had a monopoly here between them in recent years? There must be a reason no one has gone for a big Mack here.
Helix cost just over £21m, but I guess the difficult landscape could add to the cost. According to Wikipedia, Blue Fire cost between £5.5m-£6.5m without "decorations", which I guess means theming. Alpina Blitz at Nigloland only cost £5.5m as well.
So they certainly seem quite affordable, and at say £6m, it's not unreasonable to say that one of the smaller parks here could splash out and get a smaller one. I do wonder if the lack of Mack is because the parks are waiting for more to be made, to see how good the quality is - I don't think Mack have done many major coasters for example.
-
Zodiac was installed in 2000, under the name Enterprise, as a temporary thing to compensate for the fact they had a reduced line up. I've heard that Thorpe did have in the pipeline the idea of installing a drop tower in Zodiac's location, but due to the above reasons, and the fact that Zodiac was probably proving popular, the park made it a permanent thing and were able to advertise it as a new attraction.
-
I had always thought it was officially confirmed that it was a smoker. But yeah, turns out it's just been a heavily rumoured, but where did that start from?
I think that a cigarette butt seems like the most likely explanation, or an electrical fault if not that. Would be nice to know if they ever did come to a conclusive cause though, or at least where the cigarette rumour began!
-
Was looking forward to reading this report!
Air Meeting looks really nice and the themed announcers is such a brilliant touch; would love to see a similar idea implemented as much as possible. Plus, themed uniforms are just lush.
Alpina Blitz looks sexy as and I hope parks take note of this. Cheap, simple hardware and you create a beast of a ride. People say B&M are the Rolls Royce of the coaster world and that Intamin produce quality rides. But when you look at rides like this, Blue Fire and Helix, you get rides which looks great, can be cheap and ride excellently. Hopefully the next couple of years really puts Mack 'up there'.
Also interesting about Rodolphe's sheer honesty about the park that you mention. Taking Merlin for example, I don't think if a group of 4 Americans, say, emailed asking for someone to talk to about their latest attraction, they'd get someone who's quite as open about the park and where there failings are. Always nice to hear there are people like that..
Seeing the installation of Alpina Blitz put Nigloland on my radar of places to visit instantaneously (then again, what park isn't on that list at the moment for me...). Shame it's so out of the way. Had a look on Google Maps and there just doesn't seem to be any easy way to get to it!
-
Those Pax coasters look really...weird. Just checked out Formule 1 on Youtube and looks surprisingly wild for a coaster of that scale. What sort of height restriction / market is that particular coaster geared towards? Certainly seems like it could said to be a 'big coaster' in a similar style to how Rattlesnake is at Chessington.
Obviously difficult to tell from a selection of pictures, but the coasters feel very RCT in how they've been placed. Looks like a cute little park though!
-
The picture of the swans was taking on the bridge going onto Swarm's island. The swans are underneath the main drop.
Sunken Gardens is accessible by walking to the left of Stealth's main entrance.
-
First of all, great entry - really enjoyed reading it!
In some ways, I don't like judging scare attractions on just one run through, simply due to the very nature of them. However, in other ways, it makes it a lot better as, after all, the mazes should good quality all the time. So, based on my one experience of all the mazes...
Cabin in the Woods was great. The tone it created was great, and I didn't think the lighting was weak at all. Each scene was effectively designed and it all worked very well. The latter parts of the maze were poor due to how the maze operates - everyone has choices in the first half, before being rammed down the second. That was the maze's main fault, along with a lacklustre ending which I cannot remember.
As for the other mazes - Saw was lit up very well and effectively. Blair Witch was too dark in some ways, so you couldn't take in some of the theming around. What was worse was the lack of audio - pre-recorded rustling in the bushes, screams and gusts of wind would have been great. This was the one attraction which required atmosphere, and it was ruined by the fact it tried to use the surroundings to create an atmosphere. It was like the park tried cutting a corner and paid the price. Asylum's strobes weren't as annoying as previously, but it is a pretty boring feature after a while. MBV was just rubbish.
Did the IPs improve the mazes? Well, Cabin is certainly an improvement on Hellgate and Passing (even though I quite liked Passing). Blair Witch, which has essentially served as a replacement for The Curse is actually alright. Okay, so it wasn't scary and wasted so much potential, but for a 2 star attraction, I think it was actually okay. Still needs work of course. MBV was just poor and NEEDS a rethink. The beginning speech was actually really good - something I really enjoyed - but everything else was distinctly below par. I mean, I had some sort of inflatable bed pushed against me at one point - like, what?! So, the answer is yes and no.
I think Thorpe need to experiment a bit more with IPs; work out how best to execute them. One thing which they haven't tried is something which actually utilises a story. At best, we get a quick minute blurb at the beginning of a maze. We need something which actually has a story which is strung across the entire maze; a level of interactivity. Hopefully they will try it again next year. I don't think IPs restrict creativity of designers per se: they can still create whatever they want, they just need to work with a story which isn't their own. Based on the levels of theming we saw (which I thought was quite good), we should see the designers become more creative with stories and how to scare people.
I'm going to feel like a bit of a broken record saying this, but I think that Face it Alone shows the Thorpe can create good, effective scares. However, it's a case of they need to strike a balance between doing these scares and getting people through. We saw them try with Passing charging for a maze; unfortunately, the idea and the maze itself were met with mixed responses. We saw them try something wild with Experiment 10 in 2011, but that resulted in horribly long queues. The trouble I'm seeing the park having is that they haven't found the best way to balance scares and 'getting the numbers' - let's see how they deal with that next season.
So I do agree with you in some ways, but I think there's a much bigger picture to this all. Thorpe are constantly trying to improve Fright Nights, even if the quality of mazes we get doesn't improve (or gets worse). They are trying new, and sometimes innovative, ideas to them, and experimenting with what works and what doesn't. Whilst it doesn't mean we get the high-class Halloween event now - which is shame - I can see that being the case in a year or two from now...
- Cornflakes and Inferno
-
2
-
The thing with Face it Alone is the entire experience doesn't just revolve around doing a maze by yourself with 'extreme scares', it in itself has more to offer. Though, it does seem like the actual in-maze experiences use similar concepts and tactics.
-
All the non-working image links for no reason makes me sad; hope you have the time to sort them out!
I've heard really good things about Walibi at Halloween; Project Z in particular sounds like an interesting experience, though I'd have huge concerns about any sort of throughput it could have. From what I heard of it last year, it seems like a slightly tamer version of a Face it Alone experience offered at Thorpe. It certainly does seem like a good scare attraction though.
Closed Season Part 1
in Team Blog
A group blog by in General
Posted
Any idea when a Part 2 might make an appearance? Always love your blogs to provide some inspiration!