JoshC.

Air (6) Battle Galleons (5) Charlie & The Chocolate Factory (5) Congo River Rapids (5) Driving School (5) Doodle Doo Derby (4) Duel (5) Enterprise (5) Frog Hopper (5) Galloper's Carousel (5) Heave Ho! (5) Hex - The Legend Of The Towers (5) Ice Age The 4D Experience (5) Marauders Mayhem (5) Nemesis (5) Nemesis Sub-Terra (5) Oblivion (5) Ripsaw (5) Rita (5) Riverbank Eye Spy (5) Runaway Mine Train (5) Twirling Toadstool (5) The Blade (5) The Flume (5) The Smiler (6) Th13teen (5) Sonic Spinball (5) Skyride (5) Squirrel Nutty Ride (5) Submission (4) Submission + Doodle Doo Derby -

No Swarm backwards? Chief Rangers Carousel (5) Colossus (5) Depth Charge (5) Detonator (5) Flying Fish (5) Loggers Leap (5) Mr Monkeys Banana Ride (6) Nemesis Inferno (6) Quantum (5) Rocky Express (5) Rumba Rapids (5) Rush (5) Samurai (5) Saw: The Ride (5) Slammer (5) Stealth (5) Storm In A Teacup (5) Storm Surge (2) The Swarm (6) Tidal Wave (5) Vortex (5) Zodiac (5) Swarm + Storm Surge -

Banned for bringing this game back from the death. [/ClosedSeasonAntics]

Sidders wishes to Spice up this thread.

42. lol.

Taken from the T&Cs: For a free competition, that's alright. Thorpe might want to change the date of when the winners are decided though! EDIT: On a semi-related note, I noticed earlier today Thorpe posted a picture of one of Stealth's trains showing the first two seats having the OTSRs partially taken apart (photo 11 of 16 from the TPM update in the Closed Season topic). The caption was along the lines of 'Can anyone see why Stealth isn't ready for launch today?' or something. However, it seems like a lot of people thought it was unsafe or something and it's been taken down now? :S

What a difference a couple of years makes. I remember when Swarm opened and it was met with raving reviews, of which the only negatives were it was a little short and a white tent ruined the feel of the place. Swarm's theming goes for quite an ironic sense I find. We have these flying alien creatures attacking us, so we have a destroyed aeroplane (a flying transport system) as well as two fire engines, ambulance, police van and a coast guard helicopter (emergency services) scattered around. The usage of a news reporter van (which is brilliantly tied in with the queue line videos, which are nicely done, in my opinion) and a lorry which could presumably transport supplies adds to it all so well. I know some argue the billboard is out of place being next to a church, but when you consider Swarm is set AT Thorpe Park itself, the church seems out of place then. I get why people would want a roof for the station, but I feel that had it had a roof, it would have felt like the church was too much of a safe haven. It's meant to show (at least, how I understand it) that a church, a religious symbol for safety, is no longer safe - The Swarm is everywhere, and we are under attack. I think having a partial roof covering the left hand side of the station, and the right hand side looking like it had been torn off near where the inline twist is could have been more effective, but we have what we have. The weak spots in my eyes are the lack of anything near the finale (which I hope to the high heavens gets sorted out when the island adjacent to Swarm opens up) and the fact you can't really interact with the helicopter. Hopefully when the new island opens up, you will see it a lot more as you have to walk relatively close to it I think, but it's a shame the originally planned rickety jetty was axed from the plans so soon. So yeah, it's no surprise I have a soft spot for Swarm, but I genuinely think that it's an incredible ride. The trouble is, it;s hard for Thorpe to create a 'full' ride due to the fact they literally start from the ground up. They can't take advantage of much landscaping unless they use the lake due to being so flat. So considering what they had to the do and the budget they had, I think it's pretty damn good.

Wouldn't there be limited numbers for how many people can do a lift hill walk though? I dunno how it worked for the Inferno birthday meet, but surely not everyone could go up at once and it would take a while to get everyone done?

I very much doubt it. The current MTDP goes up to 2016, so anything after after that is probably very much up it in the air (even the hotel which they've had planned for god knows how long doesn't have a concrete date), so I doubt they have a date when they can build a coaster of certain height. I highly doubt it would be approved anyway. Stealth was granted special permission, and has a colour which isn't too intrusive to the surroundings and has minimal supports. The only way a 300ft coaster would be built, in my opinion, is if it was a coaster with a top hat and quite low after that, which is pretty pointless I think. Never say never, but do say probably not...

Because they can add backwards rows on a year or two later for an added gimmick!

This is a brilliant idea!

The site has been updated with a little bit more info about the £50 experiences:

I wouldn't use the concept art to judge the manufacturer by any means; we all now how little it can mean. However, best guess would either be a B&M or Gerstlauer Infinity. Will be interesting to see. Great to see a Hansa investing once again; hopefully it's as successful as Fluch, which from reviews I've read, sounds like a great coaster.

I'd definitely be interested in this! Quick question - is there a specific set of dates when we have to have the experience, or can we choose our own?

Yeah, pretty sure Speed and Rage are off the shelf, but Saw is custom, and hence wouldn't have a code. XD There are LSM Infinity Coaster available; with Karacho at Tripsdrill being the first - http://www.gerstlauer-rides.de/products/roller-coasters/infinity-coaster/. I'd be surprised if they tweaked a Smiler clone (if one were to ever happen) to have a LSM launch though!

In a brochure of the Infinity Coaster, Gerstlauer give technical data for Smiler and call it 'Infinity Coaster 1170' - http://www.gerstlauer-rides.de/assets/downloads/brochures/Infinity-Coaster.pdf I don't know much about it, but it seems strange for them to have a specific, one off coaster, with a standardised code like that (I don't think Saw, for example, is referred to as 'Eurofighter 300' or whatever). So I wouldn't be surprised if, theoretically, a park could order one, if you will, though it does heavily rely on a certain terrain and such. Also, I wouldn't be surprised if AT struck a deal of some sort with Gerstlauer to say they could make another one for a another park for x years as part of the deal. (Basically what EC said )

My point was how they haven't approached with any crazy ideas; an answer they gave in the video when they were asked if anyone had... I quite like the thought that B&M consider every idea that a park proposes to them isn't crazy, and that they'd presumably be willing to either give it a shot or happily say that whilst it's a good idea, they wouldn't be interested in pursuing it.

I noticed these had appeared towards the end of season (apart from the £50 ones). Yes, they're expensive, but I bet some people will do it; after all, not many people should be able to access a VIP experience. The £50 ones seem okay and will probably be quite popular considering, though! Nice to see the park doing more and more out of hours stuff.

Here's the video, for anyone interested... Skip to 16:25 for the part about the AT woodie. He seems to refer to the cross-valley woodie proposed a few years ago; saying it had good terrain and a couple of 'special features'. Also says he'd love to see one there. I also love how early on in the video, B&M say they've had no crazy ideas!

Thorpe Park Doge

The entrance was always planned to be behind Depth Charge, but the Swarm stuff was put by Stealth as more people went there, and you could see Swarm from there. Sunken Gardens was still accessible at the time; if you went through the Stealth tyre, there was a small pathway to the left of the main Stealth queue line made (which has now been filled with plants and stuff)

The path by Sunken Gardens would link onto the currently unused land next to Swarm; there's no other logical way it could work really! So I highly doubt that the second entrance to the Swarm island will open up until the other island opens up. From what I've been told, Swarm's island was considered to have the Sunken Garden link from the go, but it was scrapped very early on in the project so that the entrance to Swarm's island was much more grand and spectacular; also making you explore the entire island island before you get to the entrance.

A short article about a Hunger Games theme park and what potential attractions could possibly work... http://entertainment.time.com/2013/11/18/that-hunger-games-theme-park-here-are-5-attractions-we-want-to-see/ One thing which stands out massively to me is the large amount of space required to make even just one or two of those attractions successful. However, I think it's achievable and could suit itself to a family environment to some degree. Whilst I hate the possible deductions that could be made from this, but Thorpe Park's marketing director did tweet this link on his Twitter page, so who knows?

After a few lengthy discussions, I've sorted out my uni accommodation for the next academic year! I'll be staying in the same house I'm at this year; the 23 person house of amazing-ness. Surprisingly, pretty much everyone has got on with one another and there's been no real problems (apart from a couple of 'teething issues' when we first moved in). Unfortunately, out of the core group of 17 of us that moved in, 6-7 are deciding to try and look elsewhere to move into a smaller house for various reasons. It's a shame, as I do want to live with everyone, but after weighing up the pros and cons, staying in the same house with the 10 or so people from the main group I was with seems like the best option. Even then, the people looking may not decide to leave; they're just actively looking for somewhere else to go. So yeah, I haven't signed a contract or anything, but the group of us wanting to stay have emailed the landlords with out intent to stay, and it's part of our current contract that we're given priority to rooms over people if we decided to stay on. Took a few long talks with everyone, but things have worked out.

As I said earlier, I'm not sure there's many types of attractions which could work for it. Even a scare attraction would require a lot of space to be executed well (I think in some ways turning the park into a 'battle arena' and have roaming actors fighting, and picking on random people, in a similar fashion to the You're Next characters would probably be the best way for Thorpe to go about it if they wanted to explore that route). Some form of dark ride where you're in the training zone and trying to get your 'score' from the judge could be one way of going about it. You could even be in a battle arena, and just being attacked from all edges leading to loads of special effects and such, and you're just trying to defend yourself. Then you'd incorporate the feel of the film and not have a need to actually see the deaths (or just minimise it as much as possible at the very least). It definitely could work, and it could indeed be tailored to a family market with older children, but I do agree it is difficult to do. Difficult, but not impossible.