Everything posted by JoshC.
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I agree about the furniture likely being temporary (hopefully!). The park have said they opened it more up to get guest feedback; presumably about prices, quality of food, the look of the place, etc. Presumably using leftover furniture was easiest for the time being. Hopefully the park got some good feedback and act accordingly!
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See it as an opportunity to create your very own Leaning Tower of Pizza!
Normally if a broken down ride is having no visible work done to it, there's a reason for it (waiting for a part, behind the scenes work, etc etc). Presumably (read - hopefully) it was one of those legitimate reasons, as opposed to something else (laziness, lack of resources, etc). It's a shame that Chessington has been plagued with reliability issues over half term; certainly not the best advert for the park. Hopefully the issues are sorted out for the main season and the park can hit form.
With regards to the one train operation, I'd assume that they've only got one train ready for the half term event. Whilst having a half hour wait on one train is a pretty nasty experience, it very much seems that was an exceptional case. If Swarm and Stealth are averaging queues under 10 minutes for the majority of the half term event, you could argue that 2 trains really was not a necessity. Also, let's not forget that similar things happened at Alton Towers - Nemesis had a 30 minute queue last Saturday on one train operation. The (rare) problem isn't just exclusive to Thorpe. You see, with something like this, when we're literally talking the space of a couple of minutes, it's a bit difficult. Thorpe's clocks might be synchronised differently to your phones'. Or there could have been a small reason which made them feel it was best to just close a couple of minutes early. In theory, I'm usually against rides closing before the advertised closing time. But when you're speaking about closing 2-3 minutes early on a filler ride like Depth Charge, it does feel a bit more insignificant in fairness.
It's possible they might; after all, CBeebies Land was advertised on other channel (though I guess that's different since BBC don't have adverts). If worse comes to worse, Thorpe could run two adverts surely - one on ITV advertising I'm a Celeb, and a more generic one on other channels?
Would be interesting to see the percentage of AP holders visiting the park during half term, and compare it to the other Merlin parks (especially Thorpe, given that reports suggest the majority of people have been AP holders and that's one conjecture for the AP charge..). Also interesting about the lack of stick Chessington have got ride reliability for half term. Seastorm down for a few days, Tomb Blaster down all of today apparently and incredibly long queues in general to top that off. Whilst rides aren't the main point of the event, it's still not good to see the line up being affected quite so badly.
Because other days might have been less busy / had shorter queues?
YAY. POINTLESS MERLIN-BASHING. Oblivion: The Black Hole amalgamates the names of two coasters, one of which also happens to be a a dive coaster. However, just because of that, that doesn't take away from it being an attraction in its own right - indeed, it targets a different audience (the Italian one) and has it's own theme and story, separate to any other Merlin attractions. By your logic here, we cannot compare Swarm to any other wingrider, since it just reuses existing concepts. Similarly for many other rides.
The name of Tayto's woodie is going to be...The Cú Chulainn Coaster. And we've got a look at the train design... (All details from Coasterforce's FB) Named after an Irish mythical legend apparently. Certainly is...interesting...
It's possible that they're only temporary - remember it's only open for today and tomorrow to AP holders to get guest feedback about the new place and to presumably make some improvements.
Filming for either the advert or Ant and Dec intro to the attraction is happening today: ALRIGHT, IT'S A WORLD FIRST, WE GET IT.
I think what people should remember is Thorpe's definition of family is 'adults and children over 8' (at least, that's what I gather from press releases and such). I do think that whilst the line up is limited, there's enough for families within that age range for a good 3-4 hours (which admittedly isn't great).
Banned because even I'm bored of the banning-related puns .
It sounds like here you're suggesting Thorpe would open rides without carrying out full maintenance... Surely you realise that's nonsense? If the park are going to open rides (especially 2 of their top rides), they're going to ensure all necessary work is carried in (indeed, they wouldn't be able to open them if they hadn't!). I'm pretty sure Thorpe are quietly hoping and praying that the rides don't break down, as you're right - it will lead to complaints, and there's no way they can open any other rides to replace it. Just as another hypothetical situation: Say Nemesis and Air broke down simultaneously at Alton during their half term event. All of a sudden, the line up doesn't look much more than CBeebies Land and a couple of fillers. So this situation is exactly the same at Alton; not something exclusive to Thorpe.
Saw and Colossus simply cannot operate under 5C; it's just too cold for them to operate. Arguably, it's not cost effective for them to run Tidal Wave in particularly cold weather (Tidal Wave is a very expensive ride to run, and very, very few people would go on it). Similarly, even Loggers and Rumba won't attract many people in cold weather due to the association of them being quite wet rides. So, you quickly realise it's not really worth even giving access to a good third of the park (space-wise, that is) during cold weather, as it would mostly be to open Rocky Express and Slammer (and the latter needs a fair amount of maintenance itself). In a couple of years time, I don't see any reason why - if given a reasonable enough maintenance budget and appropriately sized team - they couldn't open the current line up, Inferno, X, the dark ride and a Lost City flat or two for a February event / winter opening. That would then be a good line up and very much worth it. Personally, I think Thorpe have been a bit too optimistic opening this year in February. The maintenance team were seemingly over-stretched last season as it was, and they just didn't have the time to be able to get enough open and, arguably, not enough variety. Even as soon as 2017, we could have enough variety, enough indoor attractions and in general a good line up. But I guess the park have got to start somewhere, ey?
The building for the dark ride will extend towards the current CRC location, and then the queue line will also take up a bit of space that was there. This shows the building's location with respect to the locations of everything last season, but doesn't include the queue line with extends the overall location further. It would just be impractical to keep CRC there this season whilst trying to construct the building and such. Remember, it's not been officially announced that CRC is leaving, just very much widely assumed. However, I expect it will be leaving, and the main reason for it is to make way for the dark ride (and the ride's lack of overall popularity and outdatedness being a contributing factor!).
With regards to Detonator... When the park first advertised the event, they did indeed say 'Stealth, Swarm, Angry Birds Land and others...' (which did imply Detonator). However, when the full line up was announced, they did not include Detonator (instead, saying 'Stealth, Swarm, Angry Birds 4D, Dodgems, Depth Charge and Flying Fish'). So, the most recent line up always suggested that Detonator wasn't going to be open, so shouldn't have been expected to be open really.
