JoshC.

Yeah, SRQ needs a dedicated queue for it to have a chance of being effective. You then also need it to be in a sensible place to works well with batching procedures. That's why it caused faff on Stealth. The only ride SRQ actually worked well on I thought was Saw, as by using the Fastrack queue, it did kinda work. As for Fastrack, someone asked the park via email about this a couple of years ago: http://forum.maniahub.com/topic/9845-park-operations/page-3#entry143624 The response for those too lazy to click a link: Whether this is still the system they use now I don't know. It's worth saying (so we don't go into a time machine and have the same argument as we did then), this is not saying that Fastrack is unlimited. What's being said here is that there's no upper bound to the the number of tickets sold; the number available is proportional to the time of the queue. There's no 'target' if you will that says 'We want to sell x number of Fastrack tickets today'. It is still possible for tickets to sell out though, since if the queue for a ride is consistently the same, then they can reach this maximum number. Given the suggestion that a Fastrack queue is meant to be a third of the waiting time of the ordinary queue, this is where problems to the system could come in, due to the simple fact the queue times change so, so much. It's not too hard to imagine a situation whereby one Fastrack ticket is sold when the main queue is 90mins. another sold when the main queue is 60mins and they both visit the ride at the same time. Then how should that be handled? It's a difficult one... I still don't really know how I feel about this system. It tries to take into account the fluidity of the queues, yet that's also a big flaw in it. I think one thing which needs to happen with Fastrack is that time slots need to be as strict as possible; this can minimise the number of people in the Fastrack queue at any one time, and hopefully control it better.

Prepare to endure the full throttle, rotating, free-fall experience of Banner.

Road-side picnic area. Milk chocolate coated raisins or milk chocolate coated peanuts?

I assume they didn't mention the BWP Overnight thing since very few people would have done it, what with the high costs and small target market. The large majority who went to FN for the mazes will have done Cabin in the Woods though, so makes sense that they mention that. As for the camping thing, I did hear it was terrible the first couple of nights, but they did improve it dramatically as the event progressed, as Scare Tour's reviews show: First night - http://www.scaretouruk.com/review---blair-witch-overnight-experience---thorpe-park.html Later in the event - http://www.scaretouruk.com/review---return-to-blair-witch-overnight.html

Yes. Thorpe read these forums y'know, and I expect that they respect member's opinions (especially if they give reasons for them rather than 'Lolz. Forp Perk is rubbish cos it is!1'). There's members on here who are well-travelled, and have seen some of the best and worse theme parks around. There's some who have worked at the Merlin parks before. So I have no doubt that Thorpe will listen to some of the views on here, and could even trickle down into being implemented... And with music in particular, Thorpe's Marketing Director even said over Twitter that the park were 'Looking into the entrance music', and took the time to listen - and respond! - to tweets from enthusiasts about their views on the entrance music, which included the bringing back of the original. Of course Thorpe would have felt it was time to get rid of the chart music. But I do think that the views on here are at the very least listened to, and could well make a difference.

Happy birthday to the one and only Mark9!

I don't really like the font in the video. Thorpe do have some pretty decent ride logos, so why not show them off in the video? Would create a more complete feel and show how the major coasters have quite separate identities even further!

They only created a single and appeared at the media night. There was no opening ceremony where YMAS preformed live at the park. But yeah, Merlin seem to like going for media / VIP events and get a small gathering of celebs. Then they can say 'Look at these people who came and loved it!' (or, like with Jonathon Ross and Swarm, mention it before the ride opens to build up hype). Angry Birds Land had a very minimal opening ceremony by the looks of it, with Mike Vallis (the park's divisional director) cutting a ribbon to the cinema. Would be nice to see Merlin try and do something slightly bigger and see how the public react.

Paddington Bear anyone?

From Scruffy Dog

From Facebook. Link to ScareCon - http://www.scarecon.org/scars---the-scarecon-annual-recognition-awards.html

Two things Sidders: -Why are you even looking at TPR tweets (or, worse, following them!)? -In fairness, it could indeed be a stunning ride. And everyone's opinions are different. Just ignore TPR...

The idea was to have old 'junk' from the park which was dumped in the lake wash ashore I think. There's Ranger County and Detonator stuff, as well as what looks like some Neptune's Kingdom (blue sign by the mouth) and Amity Cove ("You will get VERY WET in this area") signs. The shark shape I guess is because of being by the water. It's a shame that there's not more 'old' Thorpe signage there really. I don't think it's generic - how many other hotels are there are about entering through a shark! The other two main proposals - a pier-like area and entering through a washed up ship - felt more generic, less quirky and less memorable to me.

Posted on TPM's Facebook... Almost done (even if it's later than planned!) Looking good!

Has Shoutbox kicked the bucket? Or have I just accidentally deleted it from my view?

'Th13teen - don't go alone' Single Ride Queue available. Always makes me chuckle...

Pigs chasing a cow? How amoosing.

Why not late August?

Yep, the ERT thing isn't official, and is just a trial. They haven't officially said anything so that it doesn't bind them into opening early every day. The Triathlon is something which I believe is becoming a regular thing; one happened last year and another two are to happen this year. Info - http://www.thetriproject.co.uk/casestudies/view/thorpe-park-triathlon-2013 Starting at 7am gives plenty of time for it to finish by a 10am opening, but, as with any event like this, you can't always be sure. It also gives Thorpe some great publicity for really not doing anything!

So it's my big exam period next week and revision is controlling my life. For one particular module, we were told the best revision would be to do the past couple of exam papers, as the exam would be of a similar style (yay for lecturers being the ones who set exams at uni, and not some random exam board). Did one of the exam papers just now and look through the lecturers solutions (which are marked as the official solutions online, and would have been the adhered to mark scheme a couple of years back) and...they're wrong. There's mistakes like saying 2+3=6, which in turn, make an entire 6 mark question in the solutions wrong. This then carries onto the next part, meaning that 15 marks (out of a 100 mark paper) are completely wrong in the model solutions. There's also other solutions where the lecturer has missed out particular cases / done things ambiguously, and thus not making it clear that his solution actually answers his own question... And, what's more, this has been well known! When people were revising for the exam last year, they noticed the same mistakes and brought it up with the lecturer as well as the guy that updates the website, yet nothing has been done. No warnings, corrections or anything. It just feels ridiculous that something that is so important can just go unattended - there's enough stress going around without finding out the solutions are wrong. I'm going to mention it to someone in the department of course, but from what I've heard, the module is not running next year, so I doubt bringing it up will be of much use... Fortunately, I've been able to get the right answers (after checking with others), so I guess it's not terrible. But it's just annoying really. On a brighter note, writing this post has made for great procrastination!

The look of the ride is just awful. Up there with the likes of Storm Surge. However, my original thought of the ride itself hasn't changed - it does look okay. Nothing special, but it does look okay and maybe even a bit fun. Trouble is, it's a ride that can't make its mind up: does it want to try and be a woodie that acts like a steel, or just an insane woodie. Because if it's trying to act like a steel coaster, it's acting like a meh steel coaster. If it's acting like a woodie, it's missing the core woodie features; airtime, being a bit of fun, etc. So yeah, looks okay on its own merit. But against anything else, I just hear groans of 'Whyyyy'. And it looks horrible. Have I mentioned that yet?

^It was a member on the forum who said that, not Thorpe. Unless something like that is said by Thorpe, don't treat it as 100% fact - even the most reliable members get the occasional thing wrong / aren't always in the loop. But yeah, it's great Thorpe got this issue sorted so quickly. One wonders how long we'd have been waiting if this happened 6-7 years ago...

I was afraid this was going to happen. From what I understand, yesterday had three ways you could queue. Ordinary, Fastrack and RnR. That was just not going to work. If you allot a certain number of seats to RnR, then - when combined with Fastrack - you're dramatically reducing how many people using the ordinary queueing method will get to ride and, as such, dramatically increasing the main queue time. It makes ordinary queueing pointless and anyone wanting to do it have sour tastes in their mouths. The other option of making RnR users virtually wait the real-life queue time (so, if you book at 11am and there's a 90min queue, you virtually wait 90mins) would not work, as there's just going to be too many people at any one time, and just increasing the queue. It then also makes people question to point of Fastrack. Without RnR, you have the choice to queue normally or to pay extra and skip the majority of the queue at a time of your choice. But with RnR in the system used yesterday, you've got the third choice of being given a time to go straight onto the ride. It just comes across as Fastrack with less choice and you wouldn't know what to do. Thorpe should have stuck to their guns with this one. Make sure that the tech behind it was working perfectly and just trial this as a full replacement for ordinary queueing. By not making it compulsory, they've made the system more confusing - both for guests and the system itself - and it just wouldn't have worked. Should have just stuck with it and seen if that worked. Or, if they've lost faith in that, trial it as a Fastrack replacement, paid-for service under a new name. As I say, Thorpe should have stuck with their guns and tried the planned system for a bit longer.

Huh?