JoshC.

Fright Nights is up for 3 awards at this year's ScareCON: -'Best Overnight Experience', with 'The Extra Cut' -'Best street team', with their roaming actors -'Best Halloween event', for Fright Nights in general Linkys: http://www.thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/04-04-2015/Fright-Nights-up-for-Awards/ http://www.scarecon.org/scars---the-scarecon-annual-recognition-awards.html It's a shame that none of their attractions were nominated for best Halloween attraction or best original design/concept, especially since Cabin won best Halloween attraction last year. But then again, there was a dip in quality for Cabin compared to 2013, and I guess none of the others were quite good enough for the cut. Would love to see Blackout at Warwick Castle win best Halloween attraction though; very clever attraction!

Monsters Inc. - easily 8/10

One thing with IPs that I always think about is how Saw is one of Thorpe's (and Merlin's) 'best' attractions to date, in the sense of it created the biggest buzz and brought in a ton of guests (I'm pretty sure the park reached capacity on several days during the Easter holidays?). With that fact there, it must be very tempting for them to keeping exploring other IPs. As proven with Saw, if they get the right IP, it doesn't matter if the IP is current or nearing the end of its life outside the park, if it's big enough, it will work. Despite Smiler's particular success as a brand, I'd assume investing a large sum of money into an IP + dark ride is seen as 'safer' than the same sum into a totally original concept (and that view probably hasn't been helped by Swarm's so-called failure either). Chuck in the fact that, for this attraction, they want to keep everything as much a secret as physically possible, I'd be very surprised if the park didn't go for an IP for this - it just makes it so much easier to draw people in without saying what the attraction does. Though, as ever, would love to be surprised!

Massive bump to thread... No Liseberg for me this year after all, but Efteling, Toverland, Phantasialand (and Belgium too) are now 100% confirmed to be happening in early summer! Already excited.

Would you rather they chucked you in a tank full of tarantulas, cockroaches and goodness knows what else and let you eat kangaroo testicles? It sounds like they're having trouble balancing between experience and getting the throughputs to be acceptable. A shame really, as when they focus on the experience over the throughputs, it's a nice fun attraction. At the same time though, this is something that should have been accounted for when designing it. I do think that when Reserve and Ride trials return, they'll have to try this on the system. It could help control the flow of people a bit more and allow for the experience to be less rushed.

Doesn't know that gullible is not in the dictionary. (Go grab a dictionary and look - it's really not in there!)

Chessington are in a lose-lose situation at the moment. They can either open it on reduced capacity (which we assume is the one train) or keep it closed longer to wait for two trains to be ready. Neither are great, but I guess that in their current situation, they're at least doing the lesser of two evils. For Chessington's sake, I really hope they're not busy these Easter holidays.

That's just a rumour at the moment, though has come from a couple of different sources. Thorpe haven't given any indication whatsoever about the budget!

Don't worry, the non-believers will have the egg on their face when the concept art is released!

I think it happened once last season too? However, the reason for its closure will be because of the high winds, so not really a lot the park could do about it!

Really hate to be THAT guy, but I think this is one of those posts which requires a source...

The chambers are a weird one. On both my goes, I purposefully got the questions wrong to see what would happen if I 'lost', and I did have things happen to me. The first go I had stuff dumped on me (as seen in the advert), and the second go I had some air blown around, and I think there were leg ticklers too(?). So things definitely do happen! I think the idea is that it's designed to have different things happen in different chambers (the chamber where stuff was dumped on me had a grating to allow the stuff to fall through, whereas the other chamber didn't, though both had holes at the top). I think Thorpe have shot themselves in the foot with the advert and the pre-show intro though, showing how the Chamber of Horrors will dump stuff on you :/ How exactly it works, I don't know. The thing that is meant to happen happens after both questions, but it seems to only happen to select people. Perhaps if you get at least one question right, you're safe? Or maybe it's just the 'worst' contestant that gets bombarded with stuff? Personally, the way I think it should work is that the fastest person who gets the question correct (whose cubicle number is displayed on screen, and who the actor should congratulate) is safe, and all other cubicles have things happen. It really is a weird one! (For anyone interested, I was in the second cubicle on the left hand side when I had sawdust and junk dumped on me, and the most right-hand cubicle when I had air blown on me )

IMAScore have announced via their Facebook that they're producing music for the Enchanted Village. *Covers ears from the squeal of fanboys everywhere*

Ate at Fin's the other day and I have to say it was brilliant! Fabulous service, friendly staff, nice feel to place. Most importantly, The Swarm burger meal is quite possibly the best meal I've ever eaten at Thorpe - loved it so much! On a less positive note, with Easter weekend 5 days away, I've noticed there's no advertised event for it. Is one not happening this season? Would be a shame to not have one, especially since I've thought the Easter weekend events for the past few seasons have been pretty decent and well received!

Saw can run all 8 cars at once; it regularly does. I have no idea why they were running on reduced trains/cars on the coasters yesterday. The park was busier than a normal weekday, and the park would have benefited from it. The social media team saying it's because there's "not enough demand" is very much shooting themselves in the foot.

So I also tried the maze out today, and it wasn't as good unfortunately. It's a shame, as just as we'd done the intro, the maze was evacuated following a technical fault. A good 20-25 minutes later, it reopened, but it felt very rushed (no photo point, a scene or two walked through, etc), and I'm not sure if that's because they wanted to get people through quickly, whether they thought we had more done, or what. In saying that though, I did still enjoy it today. Granted, not as much as yesterday, but I do think some of that is because I was making comparisons to a less-rushed through version. I do hope that that my experience today is not a more accurate reflection of how the maze will always run. A bit more detail from me with my views on certain aspects; I'll stick it in spoilers just in case... All in all, I do think it is a fun attraction. Yes, one should be concerned about how long this will last. Yes, one should be concerned about throughput (at a guess, I'm thinking it will be 300-400 people per hour!). Yes, the actor issue is something we should be worried about. But this is a fun attraction, and something where you can have a bit of a laugh. It's a nice experience, and something like this has been needed at Thorpe in my opinion.

The place to discuss all things Celebrity! WARNING: This thread will contain spoilers - read at your own risk. --- I found the maze a really good laugh to be honest. It's fun and an experience. Inside, the maze looks great and has some cool effects too. There's certainly a few things which need tweaking here and there, but I think that's only natural at this stage with an attraction of this type. Look out for a more in depth review soon!

Group photo from the morning! (apologises to Mr Fish, who was cut out of this photo, and appeared in the other one, which unfortunately is way too blurry on my behalf )

Detonator is currently waiting on a part, and will be closed for this week. From what I was told on Sunday, it shouldn't be any longer than that (fingers crossed!)

95% of guests probably don't even know about single rider queues, let alone use it. I genuinely doubt hundreds of people rely on SRQs, let alone "thousands". Getting rid of an SRQ won't affect guest enjoyment on the whole; only a vast minority of people will be disappointed by it. In this case as well, you do have to ask yourself - is paying someone £7ish an hour to try and fill up a couple of seats REALLY worth it in the long run? Not really. I really don't like to see these cuts, but I really don't think seeing the SRQ go is a big issue, especially when SRQs tend to have their own problems.

Was a great day today; lovely to see some new faces around! Till next time folks!

Corrected this now; having a roast for dinner now instead. I'll make it to 6pm though; so I'll technically survive to the end, ey?

I meant the post he was quoting...