JoshC.

Source (in Dutch) - http://www.vijfzintuigen.nl/forum/136/24466.186 I think this really shows the scale of the building we're looking at!

( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-32297367?ocid=socialflow_facebook )

First weekend is preferable for me, assuming I can get transport. Also, I might be able to have some people stay round at my uni house, which is about 30 minutes from Drayton. Though I'll have to wait to let you guys know on that one..

Too much hype is a bad thing though. Th13teen's original marketing was awful: "World's first psychcoaster!", "People have to sign a waiver to ride", "No under 16s allowed", etc. It was way way way too over hyped for a family attraction. You don't want the same for this. Anyway, for a dark ride, you want to build mystery and intrigue, not hype. You don't want to be hyped up before the ride, you want to be curious about it. Very different feelings and emotions.

You see, with this whole Chronicles of London thing, it doesn't sound like something you'd hear at a theme park. More specifically, it doesn't sound like something you'd hear as a ride at Thorpe. "After we've done Colossus, let's go ride that Chronicles of London thing!" Just doesn't sound...Thorpe-esque? However, it does sound like an attraction / thing you'd hear at say the London Dungeons or Madame Tussauds. It comes across as something a bit more educational in value in my mind; a sort of story of London's past. Is it possible this is just a new bit for either of those attractions, or even a retheme of the Taxi ride at Madame Tussauds (I've never done it, so don't really know how possible it is)?

Well that rules out one good IP; I was really hoping for it to be Step Up too

Though the article doesn't mention it, the fireball did land in its usual space. I'm a couple of miles away from the castle and it was a bit windy yesterday, but nothing major, so maybe a bit of bad luck! Hopefully the boathouse can be restored.

Yeah; Cannibal, at Lagoon in Utah - http://rcdb.com/11579.htm May as well chuck in a video of it testing, because it looks cool:

Nope; this is Gerstlauer It's the same colour scheme and has a similar 'twisty/turny' bit of track. That's where the similarities between this and Helix will probably end.

3)?

I'll go with 4, since that's how many times Paige posted her answer.

Double post, but whatever: Saucey: https://www.facebook.com/hapaforum?fref=photo Track is making it's way up quickly now. Nice to see some progression away from the concrete tower of ugly.

Opening till 7 is great for the park, I just hope enough people actually decide to stay that late for it to be sustainable for them. Still don't get the whole 'Open the park at 9:30, at open the rides at 10:30' - there's nowhere near enough to do to occupy anyone for an hour without any rides open.

I guess it's one of those things in horror that has a small market. Much like how there's a small market for people wanting to try things like McKamey Manor and things like that. I thought the first one was pretty average in my opinion and ridiculously over-hyped. The second one, however, was pretty brutal and 'better'; if that's the right word to use for these films! Third one will no doubt be more gruesome and disgusting in some ways, but I think it'll struggle to have the same impact on me as the second one did.

From what I understand, after the Pizza Pasta extension and the dark ride building, Thorpe have very very little 'allowed building space' as agreed in the current MTDP. So to build a new building / extend the current one, whilst not impossible, would be quite difficult to get planning permission for. In a sensible move, Fastrack isn't avaliable on the maze yet (unless they've started to do so in the past few days?). They're probably waiting until they get more consistent actual throughputs / the inital hype dies down before they actually start using Fastrack.

Odd - the net was just something you crawled under up an incline. Maybe they've had feedback from it and people didn't like that part or something? Or some people were climbing over it possibly? Hopefully it's not a permanent thing; I wasn't a fan of the cyclone, but I can imagine it'd be worse without the net. Okay, I get what you're saying now. I see where you're coming from with the blank slate, but to duplicate the trials just isn't possible. They've likely used most of the space they have available to them; I can't imagine there's enough room for them to be able to put in another Chamber of Horrors room for example. If they had more space for more scenes / to accommodate for more people per scene, you'd hope/expect they'd be using it. Throughput has always been a concern for this, and it seems at the moment, they've got it wrong. Let's just hope that, after more time, they can play about with it and reach a happy medium between throughput and experience! [Also, with my experience of Studio 13, the queue ran fine - it didn't feel significantly slower to Asylum's really. I'd be very surprised if the throughput was literally half of Asylum's though; Asylum averaged somewhere between 600-700 I think, and Studio was definitely getting through more than 300 people an hour!]

Using the exit is a disastrous idea in so many ways. Out of curiosity, what's an estimated throughput for Skyway these days?

I'm more getting at the "You would think that after all these years, Thorpe would learn to focus more on throughputs! Absolutely hopeless." I enjoy the maze, but I'm not going to queue 2 hours for it either!

What's the fourth ride closed at the moment? According to their Twitter, Slammer, Vortex and Detonator are closed.

Not trying to be rude here, but what point are you trying to make here? It's the Easter holidays and it's their new attraction; it going to be busy. Are you suggesting they should focus on the the throughputs over the maze's experience? Or that they should have designed it so that the throughput of the maze was higher? Or something else? I genuinely can't understand the point you're trying to make here - all I can see it 'THORPE PARK ARE HOPELESS, BUT I'M VISITING THEM ANYWAY'...

Okay, this is weird. The tank is already there; it was on the plans showing how the area looked last year: Given it's proximity to the BBQ, and the fact there seems to be a pipe leading from it to the BBQ, would suggest it's for that. The tank is then included in the first set of plans released back in October: (This is just another view of Angelo's picture). Very close to the queue line! But in the latest set of plans which went online today, the propane tank has disappeared... The 'pipe' can still be seen, but the propane tank is definitely gone (indeed, there's a queue there instead!). Very odd; not sure what can be taken from it!

Bit of a construction update: Progress is progress, though it doesn't look the prettiest of rides to say the least. Looking more forward to the theming for this next year than the ride itself to be honest!

This would be a great idea given how well received the characters are. It would also give quite a bit of freedom for the story since they're not main characters. It also solves the obvious problem about a Doctor Who themed attraction: what happens when the actor playing the Doctor changes? Focusing on a spin off means the actual Doctor character can have a very limited part in the story (say, in the pre show or something), making it easy to change as the character changes. As for cattlepens, it's not wholly surprising that they've had to resort to one again given their options. They're working from a blank landscape and don't have any natural interaction with the ride to consider, so a cattlepen queue with TVs and theming features (there looks to be space for at least 4 in this queue line), seems to be the case once again. A cattlepen doesn't necessarily spell a terrible queue line, it just makes it a lot harder for it to be any fun.

More plans on the council's website have gone up today. Don't get too excited though, it's just about how they've changed the size of the building ever so slightly and need to show how the new building will look in the park compared to the old one (spoilers: it looks basically the same). Only thing of any real note is this plan, which shows roughly how the queue line will look (click to enlarge)...

Worth throwing it out there that Warwick Castle have had a few family-aimed Horrible Histories events the past couple of years, and they've been quite successful from what I've gathered!