JoshC.

With regards to construction and secrecy, I guess it depends on the ride system and just how secret the park want to keep the project. Since the site is easily viewed from the likes of Inferno and Storm Surge, they'd have to cover the top of the building as well if they wanted to keep the inside of the building totally secret. But then again, if the ride hardware doesn't give away anything in particular, then I guess construction of the inside can easily go ahead.

Where have Alton / Merlin criticised Paramount over their hotel space, just out of interest?

Ooh, nice updates guys! It's interesting that you feel like this the most drawn-out construction at Thorpe. Maybe it's because I haven't visited as often this year compared to other years when major construction was happening at Thorpe, but this feels a lot more pacey to me! Being able to look at it from pretty much every angle, see deconstruction and groundwork take place quite up close has made it feel less drawn-out, especially compared to recent major projects. in saying that though, I'm not so sure we'll see a March launch. I just feel like if Thorpe really do want to keep this a secret (which does seem to be the case), they're not going to be able to do anything substantial of the inside until after the park closes. And I'm not entirely sure if the closed season could be long enough to construct, theme, test and finish off that much of a ride!

Oh God, don't let the papers find out, please don't let the papers find out.

Was also like it today - apparently someone damaged the slide or something? Would explain why it was closed a couple of days ago, and the park have seemingly taken the decision that it's better to have the attraction with no cyclone finale instead of not having it open at all. Must make the attraction feel quite incomplete though!

You've NEVER seen Swarm get an hour queue in the afternoon?

With all due respect, a graph - presumably - showing average wait times of all rides is ludicrous. Alton Towers has many more rides and attractions than Thorpe (almost double), of which many have shorter wait times anyway. Thorpe have less rides and they tend to have longer queues. The average wait time for queues at a park is no indication of how busy a park. To use it to compare two different parks is even worse and doesn't make any sense to be honest. EDIT: Thinking about it, how exactly do you calculate an average queue time for a week?

Mark literally just said what I was going to say - first week or two of summer holidays are the quietest and usually the best time to go between June-August. The park has been busier in the past couple of months, and will no doubt get busier. If anything, articles like this could hopefully act as a bit of free advertising for the park.

Construction update... Source: http://www.themeparkreview.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=20496&sid=d70610596eb640b42105873008031fe1&start=1060(warning: TPR) Flying Aces is making progress, and it's making progress quick. It's rumoured to have trains like Skyrush at Hersheypark, which gets pretty decent reviews across the board. Haven't seen anything much about Mission Ferrari, their SFX coaster (all the details in SCB's post seem to be all that I can find on the ride still...)

My hair has grown approximately 0.2cm? I'm sure that's just as exciting as the changes that have happened in the past 5 or so days; feel free to prove me wrong though...

The Krypt was located in the hospitality marquee I believe, which is behind the shops and such in Wild Asia I think. Then again, Krypt was Kobra themed, so it made perfect sense for it to go there!

Thorpe's Twitter said it was down to "technical difficulties", and it wasn't planned to be closed today. So I guess it was some fault with some of the effects or something which prevented it from being open!

Maybe I've misunderstood you here, but are you suggesting that Merlin's cost cutting is a potential reason for Smiler crashing? Because if so, that's a very bold and extreme thing to say with no findings as to the cause of the incident!

Given there's going to be a green screen photo op point in the queue line, I'm expecting a retheme. Air's current theme doesn't lend itself to having a worthwhile photo point like that in my opinion, so a photo point like that must be tied into a new theme / a sponsor for the ride. The half price sale has been going on for a while on Air merch (it was at the AT meet last month), so has been on sale longer than Rita QoS merch was in 2009. The theming and station enhancements don't excite me that much. The one of the lift hill is essentially just a large, very thin, hole that you go through (potential sponsor point?!), and the other seems too small to be of anything of note. Still nice to see things happening though of course. Station enhancements should at least give it a bit more atmosphere for whatever they've got planned.

Construction update: https://paultonspark.co.uk/lost-kingdom/2015/07/3114/delivery-on-track We have track people!

Didn't even realise it was still closed; thought it was only down for a short period and reopened at the same time as Fury. Probably hasn't helped Chessington much, especially with the the slightly older guests.

Wasn't any last week. Presumably it will start later in the summer period as they'll still be focusing on Island Beats at the moment. Believe me, when advertising starts on park, someone will post about it!

A quote from Towers Street's Facebook... No source is provided for the figures, however I assume they have been pulled from today's trading update, found here: http://www.merlinentertainments.biz/results-and-presentationsThis shows just how badly affected the parks are at the moment due to the incident. This would explain some of the parks' decisions of they are trying to minimise such drops in profits.

^To be fair, I think this is the first time ever I've seen someone on this forum make a comment which could be seen as ungrateful about a construction update. Even then, I don't think the comment has anything to do with greatfulness or anything. Speaking from a personal preference, I find videos of a selection of photos a bit annoying - YouTube is for videos, things like Photobucket and Flickr are for photos! But that's a different topic.

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. 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?

CUE EVERYONE PANICKING.

Surprised this hasn't been mentioned yet, but following bad weather on Friday (including lots of rain and wind), Dreamland Margate has closed all outdoor areas this weekend, but is hoping to reopen on Monday. http://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/dreamland-shut-all-weekend-40695/

Very weird about the 10 person rule - last month I did it in a group of 6 and they seemed to have no problems. It was at the start of the day and we must have been either the first or second group to go in.

One thing I've noticed in The Sun / Thorpe Park promotion currently being advertised on TV is how they now refer to the attraction as the 'I'm a Celebrity Experience', rather than the 'I'm a Celebrity Maze'. A very small point to raise I know, but many - including myself - were worried calling it a maze rather than an experience / attraction wouldn't reflect fairly on the attraction and cause false hopes, so it's nice to see this subtle change in the marketing of it in my opinion.

*cough* Slammer *cough* Just as a passing comment - anyone can tell that you must enjoy the parks to a certain extent, otherwise you wouldn't keep visiting. But for the most part, your posts just seem to be criticism after criticism, moan after moan, niggle after niggle. It becomes easy to see it as Merlin bashing - there's mostly negativity with little positivity, so of course people will question why you continue to go. Complaining out of caring is a good thing, fair criticisms of a park are a great thing, but you do have to ask yourself: if you're criticising the parks so much on here, do you visit them because you actually enjoy them, or because it's become habitual? I don't think anyone here is claiming Merlin are perfect, or even anything close? However, it seems like every time something goes wrong at any park, or any ride is closed for a brief amount of time - especially at Thorpe - people jump on the wagon and start bashing and hating. Doesn't always seem fair, does it? Merlin do have many flaws, from some of their investments, possible even to to their budgets and operations, and some may even their whole ideology of how to run theme parks is flawed. But they still do have a lot of positives - some of their investments are very good, some of their attractions are great, they do provide some fabulous - and unique - experiences, they do give good opening hours for the UK, etc. It's easy to forget the good things they do at times though.