JoshC.

http://www.music-news.com/ShowNews.asp?nItemID=88687 Confirms tickets set to go on sale 2nd May. Also, it seems like Summer Nights is returning:

Never heard of this Ella person either... However, Thorpe have posted a short video on YouTube about the event, and it confirms that Professor Green (who I have heard of) and Rixton (Nope? Me neither) are also performing, as well as daily 'breakthrough' acts. (I'm on my phone, so can't link the video at the moment) It sounds like 'Island Beats' is a full summer event lasting 8 weeks, with the bigger names performing on Fridays or Saturdays. So there could still be a chance of 'normal' Summer Nights returning. EDIT: Just got completely ninjaed here...

Presumably the entertainment budget his mostly used for the music events the past couple of years, MoS and Fright Nights and hotel evening entertainment. And now they'll probably be pumping money into IAC too. So it's nothing new really, but I do agree the park needs a regular show, or roaming characters or something still. I want to see that red Angry Bird roaming round ABL, or Max Thrill make a return!

In fairness, his condition just stops the muscles from working and, by the sounds of it, it was only affecting his legs. So there's nothing stopping him from bracing himself, and it probably wouldn't cause him any pain.

A simple check on Chessington's website; go on 'Plan Your Trip', then 'Disabled Guide'. That gives all the information they would need (admittedly it doesn't specifically say there's a 'Three Step Rule', but it highlights what rides require to be able to walk unaided). The information is very clearly there and if they didn't think to check 'Plan Your Trip' to see if that had any information for guests in wheelchairs, it is somewhat there own fault.. There is something I want to point out here. Try pushing someone in a wheelchair around Chessington. You very quickly realise how many little holes and dips there are in the ground, which make pushing someone in a wheelchair a very difficult task! Whilst I doubt this is the main point she's getting at here, there is actually something worth raising. Now this is concerning a little. The rules are there for a reason. Yes, this family have had a disappointing day, but does that mean they should be allowed to break the rules and go on rides they're not allowed to? No. What if one of the rides he shouldn't have gone on had broken down and required evacuation, and this boy needed to walk to get out? Chessington would probably get into a fair amount of trouble, and also the family probably wouldn't have been happy either..

I'm clearly on the wrong career path right now...

Thorpe Park have released some more details about their new summer event, 'Island Beats': https://www.thorpepark.com/events-experiences/events/island-beats/ Not entirely sure whether this is a rebranding of Summer Nights, or whether the park will be open from 10am-10pm, with say a ticket available for if you enter after a certain time. The 'Lost City stage' is currently being constructed by The Crust, so will be quite small and, as they say, intimate, which would make me think this will have limited tickets and thus be some sort of 'special Summer Nights' event. Sounds quite good, and The Vamps and Rizzle Kicks are two names that I've heard and are quite 'big', so hopefully this is a successful event.

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!