JoshC.

YAY, EVERYONE JUMP ABOARD THE MERLIN-BASHING TRAIN FOR THE LOLZ AND LIKEZ. Also, Scream is built on car park. No amount of paint can excuse that.

Nah, they'll want to make it as accessible as possible, so I'd be pretty confident they will do it on a weekend.

The Oblivion repaint got a reasonable amount of attention at the time, but people quickly forgot about that. Unfortunately, I remember a fair amount of discussion (though I don't think on these forums, fortunately) being about how they hadn't painted the track inside the tunnel, which could be seen since the place where they stopped was visible from some angles... Anyways, future of Chessington... Well it can't be any worse than 2013.

I'll be there! I'll hopefully be around for the entire day this time, but unsure if I'll be able to make any post-meet things.

Oblivion had its track repainted for the 2013 season.

Air (3) Congo River Rapids (4) Duel (6) Gardens (5) Hex - The Legend Of The Towers (6) Nemesis (7) Nemesis Sub-Terra (5) Oblivion (5) Ripsaw (5) Runaway Mine Train (5) The Smiler (6) Th13teen (5) Sonic Spinball (3) Air + Ripsaw -

Thorpe Park is open March to November - the Annual Pass covers you for any non-special events during that time. If you're getting to access the park in February, then I'm pretty sure that's a perk. An "Annual Pass" gives access to whenever the park is open, and last one year. It does not give access to the park for one year, and that's something that has always been the case!

I think the idea is that by making passholders pre-book, they can control numbers more easily and ensure it doesn't get too busy. I'm sure they'll still allow people to turn up on the day, but they just want to know numbers and ensure that they have the appropriate number of staff and such to make the day enjoyable for everyone.

The way I see it, an event is something whereby the park offer more than their standard line up of rides during their main operating hours. So, Fright Nights is an event (more stuff), Summer Nights is an event (outside main operating hours), as was things like The Big Easter, Sun Scream (more stuff), etc. So regardless of what there is in the line up or what happens, opening during February Half Term is an event in my opinion, since it's outside the main operating hours of the park. And Thorpe/Merlin say they can charge passholders for Thorpe's events if they want.

They are charging £5 for the event. The event includes Brainiac Live. This does not mean they are charging for Brainiac Live. Also... -Merlin. -What's this got to do with Merlin? It's more a Thorpe thing charging for events like these.

Hope everyone has a great day today!

http://www.justshowingoff.com/site/websites/saw/ Looks like 'justshowingoff' made the Saw minisite (which is now offline). It doesn't include all the videos or the delightful Disciples of Saw game where you had to saw off your own leg, but shows how nice the site was. Just a shame they couldn't recreate a similar tone for the ride's building! (NB: If you're planning on opening link, make sure your volume isn't up TOO loud! )

A headless monk who is disappointed that he cannot haunt Storm Surge?

Thorpe's video advertising their half term event is much better than Alton Towers' and Chessington's videos advertising their respective half term events...

Hasn't posted in a non-Off Topic thread for ages (and hence why has had a post count of 80 for ages).

Hasn't been to Disneyland Paris Resort.

I assume (read: hope) there will be more rides in the line up; as SCB points out, it still says the line up includes those rides, not is those rides. It could well be the case that the park aren't wholly certain if some rides will be ready in time, so are just holding out a bit. I'd guess that once the entire line up is confirmed, Thorpe will make an announcement over social media about it - after all, it's been a question most people have been asking Thorpe for several weeks!

CoasterDude

Nahhh, can't see it happening to be honest. Don't think it's worth thinking about really. There's no need for them to do it. Swarm's situation was different, due to the fact they need to up the "thrill factor" of the ride and make it more appealing for people to come and visit. Inferno is a trusty ride which (I assume) has good guest satisfaction. Okay, it's the 'least special' of the main coasters (as in, no gimmicks compared to the rest), but that does the ride some favours, perhaps making it as a more accessible major ride. Adding backwards rows would take that away from the ride, and isn't really necessary (in the sense of the ride doesn't need any more attention than what it gets - not saying Swarm's backwards rows are necessary!). If we see backwards rows on Inferno this year, I'll eat my hat. (Also, we don't know that Inferno isn't on the half term line up yet!) (After such confidence on my behalf, watch as Thorpe announce Inferno's backward rows sometime this week...)

I just really can't see them averaging 53k a day. Even if that's what they predict, I just really really can't see that happening! Then there's still questions of will it actually be any good, will it be well received, how will it fare in the long term, how will it be marketed compared to the Merlin parks, etc etc. At this stage, I don't think there's any reason to say either way whether this will be successful or not. But I sometimes feel people make it out to be the best thing since sliced bread, but I just don't think it will be that good or game-changing.

Given the way Paulton's are going recently, I really don't think Paramount Park should be the reason why some (southern) Merlin theme parks need to be looking over their shoulders. Then again, I'm still not sure Paramount will be as successful and challenging towards as people make out any way...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY thorpelaw.

I agree that the system is designed for busy days, but I still think there's worth in trialling it on off peak days. It helps give the park an indicator of what people will do during the day, what they think of the system and so forth. And if it goes horrendously wrong, then it's easier to go back to 'normal queueing'. I do think Thorpe need to take it slow to get it right. I think if they want to try 'queue free', they've got to first try it on a quieter day before on a busier day. I think you might have been misinformed about Studio 13's throughput - I'm guestimating that Asylum's throughput was no more than 700pph (based on what I've read from a couple of forums) when it was on it's very best. I'm doubting that the throughput was reduced by about half! I agree the throughput was probably reduced. But I think that time-wise the mazes take a similar amount of time to go through, as I think Studio 13's route is slightly shorter. As for the last comment, it was mostly a joke - I was saying Studio 13 was the best maze (which it was in my opinion, as you've probably gathered!) and hence the slightly reduced throughput is fine because of it.

Hmm, maybe boringly themed was the wrong way to put it. Lazily themed might express my view more accurately... Scorpion Express is basically your bog standard wild west theme with a twist of "there's scorpions about". The flamethrower effect annoys me so much (probably much more than it should do). It's coming out of an oil tower / whatever the correct name is, so any fire effect should be like an explosion (like Swarm's fire effect, for example), not a line of fire shooting upwards. The main scorpion just looks awful too. The water effect stinks of pointlessness to me too. It just doesn't really work for me. There's a couple of nice little touches, like the scorpion shapes in the concrete and the mini scorpion statues, which I do like. But on the whole, the ride just feels so lazy and boring to me. Oh, I'm honestly not angry about the differing opinion or anything like that either. I do hope I'm not coming across like that! Haven't taken anything badly either, so no worries. I know a fair few people like Scorpion, but for me, I just find it so, so annoying. As for the £8 million investment last year without the hotel, fair enough. However, to me, it really did not feel like that amount of money had been invested in total. Perhaps some nostalgia plays a part in my feelings, but the park felt so bad to me when I visited in 2014 - it's hard to believe it's the same park I genuinely loved visiting in 2012. Gonna call you out on this, as I assume you're referring to me, where I'm defending some of Thorpe's decisions, yet attacking Chessington... As I said above, last season's visit to Chessington was just bad for me; one of the most disappointing days I've had there, and was mostly enjoyable because of the people I was with. The place doesn't feel the same to me any more. Maybe I expect too much from the place; set my expectations too high. But I look back to the park I visited as soon back as 2012, and it just doesn't give me the same buzz and joy as it does now. Hence why I'm not going to visit Chessington this year - I've been disappointed by the place too much. Maybe a break from the place will help reignite my fondness of the place - I hope it does. I won't go into my views on Thorpe or anything (let's no derail the thread hey!). But simply put, I've lost a lot of love for Chessington recently and it's really disappointing. I may "trash talk" the park, but I've got reasons for it, and I'm not going to be a hypocrite about it and go running back to the park at the earliest possible opportunity just so I can moan about it some more.

Was the throughput of Studio 13 significantly smaller than Asylum though? Genuine question. I didn't visit FN enough to be able to get a feel for throughput, but given the mazes take a similar amount of time to get through (Studio 13 felt a bit shorter to me actually, but that might be because it wasn't a repetitive boring drag of strobe lights and mesh fences) and have similar amount of people per group, I'd be surprised if the throughput was significantly less. Though, maybe they did have high throughput mazes and Studio 13 was the one with a lower throughput, since it was "the best" last year.