JoshC.

As far as I'm aware, if you were to get off the M25 at Chertsey, none of the route from there to Thorpe is affected (indeed, my house is on that route, and is in no way affected, or going to be affected, by the floods - fortunately!). Water is bound to be high either side of Staines Road on the route, but I expect it would take a ridiculous amount more rain and such before it would actually affect the road.

You can (probably) get diverted to go through Chertsey if the roads are still inaccessible Staines way. If Thorpe remain largely unaffected, they'll still open

Found this photo: From my FB in July 2011 - https://www.facebook.com/joshua.coyston/media_set?set=a.2236459274034.133126.1324550230&type=3 (Sorry about the terrible quality) Certainly looks like it was but up then? I vaguely remember seeing the shop after it had opened thinking the sign would have suited a Swarm shop, because the font used looked very similar to that of Swarm's at the time Strange either way though EDIT: Looks like there's two different sets of photos there. There's some labelled as 'Berk09-####' and some as 'JasonHawkes-####'. So maybe the Berk ones are from 2009 and the JH ones 2012? You can sorta make out from one or two of the 'Berk' ones that Octopus Gardens is still about.

Gosh darn it, pluk beat me to it... Meh, I can still sum up Ricky's post with this:

Imagine the busiest Subway you've been to at lunch time, ten times busier. That would be a theme park Subway all the time... *shudders*

It's strange; I always thought the Saw queue shop was added in 2011 :S But still, some pretty sweet photos there!

Ease is less of a trouble for me, but potential costs, time and finding people to go with are bigger and less easily-solved problems to deal with... 2016 can't come soon enough for me...

http://uk.screen.yahoo.com/thorpe-park-surrounded-water-floods-142025892.html Maybe it's just the angle the video is taken, but does Saw Alive's queue line look flooded there? Just goes to show how bad the surrounding area is though...

It was going to stand where the main queue for Stealth lies now. Essentially, it was a glorified cattlepen shaped like a grandstand, so each row would make you go slightly higher up, and you'd always be able to see the ride clearly. Image from TTP. I expect they'll be in place this season. They're not difficult to install, and I bet work will have already started / be starting very soon (for example, with the billboard for Swarm last year, that was pretty much complete when the planning approval came through...). It would be a bit silly, and unnecessarily long-minded, of the park to apply to build a couple of small buildings a whole year before they could actually implement them, in my opinion.

I doubt we'll see the grandstand queue ever surface; it was scrapped so they get a third train, which don't come cheap of course! Thorpe will want to improve little things and the like, but I don't think they'll spend about £1 million (which I believe was the number thrown about around the time) to put a new queue for a ride.

There's also quite a large extension to the Stealth Diner, meaning more indoor seating! http://planning.runnymede.gov.uk/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/Generic/StdDetails.aspx?PT=Planning%20Applications%20On-Line&TYPE=PL/PlanningPK.xml&PARAM0=187208&XSLT=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Runnymede_AA/xslt/PL/PLDetails.xslt&FT=Planning%20Application%20Details&PUBLIC=Y&XMLSIDE=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Runnymede_AA/Menus/PL.xml&DAURI=PLANNING

I remember when Pirates 4D was new...

Nice. Always felt Stealth needed its own shop. Also, by the looks of it, it won't look like a bog standard shipping container. Glad there's going to be loads of little things happening this year.

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-02-10/thorpe-park-appears-unaffected-by-local-flooding/ Couple of aerial photos there. Water is seemingly a bit higher than normal (shock horror!), but the park is fine.

Maybe the ice breaker game should be Wink Murder?

I always thought Walkers had some form of claim that only their crisp packages can be green for S&V and blue for C&O? I don't want to say a patent for it, but it's the best word I think that could describe it! Either way, I prefer to not buy bags of crisps - more air than food in a bag these days it seems...

Yeah, the park have mentioned that on their FB today! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152202782745867&set=a.377923300866.202576.27217550866&type=1&theater

Well, this is the worst flooding we have seen in Chertsey since the 1950s (though might actually be the worst on record soon I believe). Pretty sure Thorpe have taken precautions so that when they build rides, flood risks are taken into consideration and such. The park will be fine.

So it's now open and all that, and there's a Merlin-esque PR stunt to go with it: The option to buy a clean pair of underwear! (Retweeted by Screamscape on Twitter)

Seeinghow other people have mentioned their first ever coaster, may as well throw it out there that my first coaster was THE Flying Fish...

I may pop in for a while; depends how much work I get done in the next couple of days. XD

Monk's Walk is just a footpath that connects the town of Thorpe to Chertsey. It runs along the back of the park, essentially parallel to the old train route to the farm. It's a public walkway, so not owned by the park, and is used by people for bike rides, walking dogs (trying to sneak into the park, hence why security walk down that area), etc. The park use the pathway next to it as an access road I believe (they have a road built now which takes you over the old Treasure Island and some reclaimed land to quickly get to the Engineering building) and a couple of other things. Somewhat surprisingly, I've never been down Monk's Walk all my life (it was only a couple of years ago I found out how to actually get there!), but some fanboys have been down during Closed Season to take pictures: - http://forum.maniahub.com/topic/3156-samurai/page-2#entry38608 - http://www.baffles.me.uk/features/tpg/archives/projdylan/page2/index.html Scroll down to the January 2009 update at the bottom; I *think* those photos were taken from Monk's Walk. - http://forum.maniahub.com/topic/4210-closed-season-2008-2009/ - Probably some of the best photos you'll get of views from Monk's Walk. If you want an actual picture of what the actual pathway itself looks like, then: Yep, it looks like a bog standard path! (Image from Google)

I reckon if it does get a name change, it will still incorporate the word Detonator; so something like what c1hrisin suggested. Thing is, I don't think we're seeing any theming added to Detonator per se, so just an audio change and such so that it's more shoe-horned into the area. A full out name change just doesn't seem necessary to me.

Banned for not following the rules! (You're meant to ban pluk for a reason related to him )

If by 'big coaster' you mean a 1.4m coaster, then my first 3 were: 1) X:\No Way Out 2) Colossus 3) Nemesis Inferno To be honest, no entirely sure about the order of Colossus and Inferno (did all 3 of those coasters on the same day - oh to finally be 1.4m!), but it sounds about right. If by 'big coaster' you mean (one of) a park's major coasters, then stick Antelope at Gulliver's World as the first on that list.