JoshC.

Meh, I prefer the 'fresh; fizzy drinks over the stuff from the bottle; I'd feel more cheesed off if they were giving it to us from a bottle to be honest... I guess the only good thing right now is the fact they might re-design the bottle again, so that it doesn't leak / break.

Two words: Exam stress. Worst. Thing. Ever.

To be fair, when they updated they're website, there are crosses for 'Unlimited Refills' for Standard and Premium holders. So they haven't technically lied, but have been very underhand in the change. But yes, I'd be very interested to see their "market research", and why that makes them think they can be somewhat patronizing in their reasoning behind this all.

New Drinks Capsule conditions, sourced from Merlin's FB: Not a fan. -The whole point of the quencher, to me, was you paid a one of fee, and got unlimited drinks. -Quenchers are meant to be easy and convenient. Having to muster out 75p from my wallet every time I want a refill, or having to deal with 25p change every time I pay with a quid, doesn't spell convenience to me. These days I don't really have that my change to hand, mainly paying with card and what-not. -Smaller capsules = boo. I never had a problem with my drink 'not staying fresh'. For me, this will likely end up costing more than the £16 flat rate from last year. I made 12-14 trips to Merlin parks last season, and would usually get 4 refills each time (average guestimate there of course). That's £3.50 a trip under the new rules, so working out at about £48 roughly. Eurgh. Thinking about it, I may not even bother with a capsule this year then. Just trying to work this. If people are going to end up saving money (according to Merlin's research), then that means people were buying a capsule, and fill it up less than 18 times in the year. Dunno how reasonable that sounds to be honest. So yeah, bad thing for me personally; will have to see if I end up actually buying a capsule this year then... Quite possibly this has been done to enforce stricter fair usage policies...

First look at the new-style restraints. (From KI's FB)

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...