JoshC.

For the most part, 2 trains on the major coasters wasn't needed. The events I went to, the was no queue for any of the coasters with one train on them. Having two trains would have probably been an unnecessary expense on the whole and been a bit pointless. Granted, on the one or two nights that there were queues, it would have been nice to have extra trains, but there may have been reasons this was not possible (maintenance, budget, etc.). On the whole, I don't think it's totally fair to judge an event (in its debut experience) on one bad night!

There's clearly not enough demand for the park to open until 10pm during summer. It would be nice if the trialled it sometime again in the near future, but in the past, it just hasn't worked out. Okay, some parks like Oakwood stay open until 10pm, but Oakwood is a very different to Thorpe, for example, with a much different location, market and aim. Summer Nights became more popular as time progressed; no doubt this was due to word of mouth. The earlier events were literally dead, no queues and just what they advertised. They'll have improved from last year and will get the right number of staff giving tickets out and ensure that queues are absolutely minimal. I don't see any problem with paying a small fee to get next-to-no queues. Yes, there were a couple of nights when it didn't work out, but Thorpe will have learnt from these mistakes and make sure it doesn't happen again.

Some fears will probably be about 'What happens if a ride gets a 4 hour booked queue?' as well. I doubt that will happen though. I still think it's worth giving the system a chance. I certainly had reservations over it when I went last year and it was on Swarm. However, on a rather busy August day, I got 3 rides on Swarm, when I otherwise would have only gotten 1. Give it a chance and a try, and it may grow on you!

ROLLER COASTERS HAVE FEELINGS TOO

No one's arguing though? Just a discussion - people have different opinions and they're being discussed. No one is being shot down, or told their opinion is wrong. Some will not like what Thorpe are doing, others may do. Others may feel that there's things that are said which are unrealistic / unfair towards the park. There's no arguing going on. So just grab a nice cold beverage and enjoy the debate!

But the shift in target marker was huge and very noticeable. They didn't spend millions on it, but they opened their appeal to many, many more people, which can only bring people through the gate. Swarm backwards and X no doubt helped, as they had something to cater for thrillseekers that was new, but also a new thing for younger guests too.

Swarm backwards, X and a big, noticeable change in target market is not 'doing nothing' in my opinion!

This is why I think they should be trialling this system during a quieter period of the season, as opposed to June (or August, like last year). If things go wrong, it will cause less problems. But yeah, as SCB says, the system can be stopped and revert back to the ordinary system at any point and cause little problem, as was shown on Monday!

Really? I never would have guessed! It was the first time the system was used with the 5 major coasters, including front row on Stealth and on Saw (Saw front row screams of 'WHY??' to me though). There could well be a fault with the system which was not expected. Or maybe they got some algorithms wrong or something. Who knows? But at least they realised the mistake and decided to take the time to fix it. Just like any new ride, there will be teething problems, it's to be expected.

Merlin won't dictate to the park's how to carry out maintenance though. I doubt many people at the heart of Merlin have enough knowledge to say 'Your maintenance schedule should go like this and that'.

To be fair, Thorpe had a bad year in 2012, so it's easier in a way for them to get a bigger percentage increase in visitors. Chessington is a weird one, since it seesaws out of the Top 20 (it was in there a couple of years ago; in response to SCB below ), but Zufari probably had big pulling power. Smiler would have brought in guests, but since Alton are consistently in how many guests they could physically get through, it's not surprise they didn't get as big an increase as the other two. Merlin seem to be in quite an unchallenged second for the time being...

Ah, the 'rollergoalster' train, which brought such good luck to England in 2010...

Attendance figures for parks around the world for last year have been revealed - http://www.teaconnect.org/pdf/TEAAECOM2013.pdf For people interested, the European figures are on Page 27. Merlin park's to feature in the Top 20: -Gardaland; 2.7million (8th) -Alton Towers; 2.5million (9th) -Legoland Windsor; 2.05million (10th) -Thorpe Park; 2million (11th) -Legoland Billund; 1.8million (12th) -Chessington; 1.5million (17th) -Heide Park; 1.4million (19th) Chessington had the biggest jump in attendance, going up over 15% (though I'd be interested how satisfied guests were with their experiences...), and Thorpe rose 11% (I guess that's what happens after a bad year and a big change in target market). Some interesting figures all in all!

^To be fair, environmental issues should be a big issue, especially around Alton. It's a shame, but I'd much rather water than have them risk big fines (or worse)! Hopefully there's some creative way they could solve the issue though.

How do you propose they find or make room? Stealth already has its own workshop for these sorts of things and it's not particularly feasible to transport an entire Stealth train to the engineering area. It's not the best situation, but I don't think there's a lot else Thorpe could do...

I guess you could say it's the root of the problem... Serious point - if the Stealth workshop only has room for one train to stripped down, then there's not a lot they can do it seems. Probably a bit of poor planning on Thorpe's part when the ride was originally designed, so they're likely making the best out of a bad situation. It just seems one train has had a problem at the wrong time. So just to ground it in - one train has had a problem at the wrong time. And on that note, I'll grab my coat.

This guy loves this minty biscuit...

When you said "to ease with issues with guests, especially when this is Angry Birds after all...", I thought you were saying there was some families who thought the dodgems didn't look totally safe. I don't particularly see a problem with it, given the differences in target markets. Yes, Thorpe are catering for families, but they're catering for a different 'sort' of family than Chessington, for example. Just how I see it at least.

Perhaps the idea is to improve throughput? Angry Birds Land is aimed at 7-13 year olds primarily if memory serves me correctly, and I'm pretty sure most 7 year olds are at least 1.1m tall. It's in line with Thorpe's target market too, who are aiming more to families with slightly older children (I think I read somewhere 8 years and above?). I haven't seen the restraints in person or know what the general reception to them is, but they don't look particularly insecure and I doubt many people think they're unsafe?

-I'm a bit confused as to how it would work with giving people a choice? Are you suggesting that during the trial, there should be a physical queue as normal, as well as a RnR system, which would allow people to virtually queue, then get straight on the ride? So essentially just making RnR a free Fastrack service? (Not criticising or anything, just curious ) -I think with Fastrack, the thing is, it's never going to be scrapped in its current form. Yeah, parks coped fine without it, but these days, it's just a profit scheme. Yes, it's disappointing, yes, it shouldn't be like that, but that's how it is. Fastrack, at any park where it's now a paid-for system, is here to stay. I think some people sometimes overlook that, and I think that's what Marc is getting at. Fastrack definitely needs improvements, and maybe a RnR system could be those improvements, but it's a slightly different issue I think. -Agree with you here, pretty much. However, there's a difference between criticising the park for doing things wrong and saying that they 'hope the park fail'. I think many here see that the system could work in one way or another and, similarly, most think that a queue-less park is not feasible. But when some (and by no means all) people say that they hope this completely fails, you have to question if they're really someone who wants to see the park at it's best. One thing which I'm confused by with this is why Thorpe are trialling this now. June is a relatively busy period for the park, school trips are starting it, some students have finished for the year, etc. Now seems like a bad time to trial a system which is so ambitious and has potential to go badly wrong. They trialled it last year during August too; another very busy period. Talk about jumping in at the deep end ey? I just don't get why Thorpe would be so willing to try such an ambitious (and no doubt, technologically complicated) system when the park is busy. This sort of thing should be trialled during in the likes of March, early May or mid-September (on weekdays), so if it doesn't work, it causes minimum impact. I think in general, Thorpe have been very ambitious with this. Probably too ambitious. And that's my biggest criticism of the idea of RnR really. It's ambitious, and I fear the park are being too ambitious, too quick with it all!

Meeting in the middle isn't always a good thing...

10/10 - would ride. Is there a C.cret element on The Josher?

According to TS, Smiler only has a throughput of 1000 (linky - http://www.towersstreet.com/theme-park/ride/the-smiler/), and since they're quite reliable, that's where I got that number from. Certainly feels less than that when queueing for it though! The thing is, whilst the cinema was already there, it wasn't been open for a couple of years, so it's still going to get a lot of people through (and I bet it'll be more popular than Time Voyagers too). Think it's a valid thing to take into account. Whilst length of a ride doesn't necessarily affect throughput, my point with Swarm is that they wouldn't have the space to make it have a higher throughput. Oblivion is a very short ride, can handle dual loading/offloading and has lots of cars. That makes it easier to get a higher throughput compared to many other rides. With Swarm, you've got a full length coaster, they didn't really have enough space to hold three trains, and they would have struggled to create an interesting layout which could deal with running three trains, in my opinion at least. Regardless, Swarm still stands as one of the highest throughputs on park, so I don't think having it at a couple of hundred extra pph would make matters any better.

Good point; though I do expect most of Thorpe's visitors use the internet - very few people in the country don't (and even less who would be inclined to visit the park)! However, I expect that more people than not will keep track via social media or the park's website. Given this day and age, it's only natural to expect that. I also think that Thorpe will have done a bit of research into how best to keep guests updated about future visits, especially to ensure guest satisfaction.

I do agree with you. At this stage, I think keeping it on just the major coasters is probably the most sensible thing (even if a bit ambitious), as the park just don't have enough other things to cope (as you say). And, in all honesty, they won't have enough to cope for a good 4-5 years, unless they invest in the likes of multiple shows, attractions and other non-rides in a single, extremely expensive year. I totally get people's concerns with the system, and do share some of those concerns, but I do think that, if the technology works flawlessly, it has the potential to work.