JoshC.

I think people's expectations of the You're Next characters were far too high. They're roaming actors, no different to the clowns from 2011 and the prison inmates for 2012. No one really complained when they didn't see those actors. They're not an attraction in itself, they're just actors going round the park. Their greatest success is also their biggest flaw - they go around in a large pack of people, which makes intimidating, but at the same time, not easy to bump into. I do think the park put a bit more emphasis on the characters than they perhaps should have. Hopefully next year, there'll have roaming actors who go around in smaller groups, so there's a bigger chance of seeing them, or there'll put less emphasis on them, so people see it as a bonus when they find them.

12-9pm over winter? That would be pretty darn cold! Would be nice to see it sometime, but I'd personally want to park to develop a little more, have a couple more enclosed rides / attractions. That way, you're not constantly freezing your butt off outside, but can still make the most of it. Must admit, 'Winter Nights' would be a great thing to do, and they could create a nice feel to it. I'd love to see a February Half Term event re-appear; I think they're getting to the stage where they can have more rides available which are reliable in the colder weather. I'd personally prefer to see them return for 2015, as I expect / hope there'll be a fair amount of general sprucing up done this closed season, and would much rather not see that rushed. Hopefully the 4D cinema will be in use again if the rumours are true, and then there's another attraction to add to the line up. I think after a couple of years of getting a Feb half term event to work, the park would be in a situation to at least try for small winter openings if they wanted to.

From what I've heard, that is the plan. I can see FN slowly developing into our own HHN.

Said it before, and I'll say it again - whilst it's nice to see the park gearing towards an entire family market, I hope they don't gradually lose the 'thrill capital' idea. I still think a park focusing mainly on thrill rides is a great idea; they just need to be a bit more family-friendly about it and still have a few relaxing rides. Also, Thorpe do like to push the fact they have 5 water rides as well. Maybe an Intamin Aquatrax is on the cards?

One reason for the 6 row trains could possibly be the tighter elements, especially when compared to other wingriders. Always surprises me how European parks get their coasters testing a lot sooner than ones in the UK as well..

Didn't Towers have their 'extreme' run on just Sanctuary last year? I think that'll almost definitely return. Face it Alone will have a very small target market, so the park probably aren't expecting many people from it. On my visit, about 10 people did Face it Alone - which doesn't cover all the actors' wages for stay to do FiA. In fact, they probably lose money from running it in the long run. But almost everyone I know who's done it is very happy with it, so I expect it'll continue!

I won't be, unless the park specifically say on here people are allowed (which I doubt). From what staff told me, they were really keen on having the experience return next year, and I expect there'll be similar tactics used each year, so it's best to not have it spoilt.

Bet it'll be open this evening or tomorrow. Smiler has had loads of these accidents, bet the park are used to it.

I did it for Saw Alive! It really is an amazing experience, and it's great to hear other people are liking it!

Gawd, really not with it this morning! Basically what I was trying to say was I guess there's a chance they could try and link it with Swarm's story, but to do to that depth to link two rides together would require a story which requires knowledge of a back story. Swarm and Smiler have back stories, but you can understand them fine and dandy without knowing their back stories. I was thinking that there would probably be a need to have a bit of knowledge of the back story to 'get' it fully. So, err yeah, probably just better to ignore me now; not even sure what I'm trying to say now... XD

Oops, did mean to say it probably won't. Vague idea is some monster attacking a town and locals sacrificing people or something? Probably could have a slight link to Swarm in a back story if they wanted, surely? Mutated aliens and what-not. Though Merlin don't do back stories, so that's why I doubt it. Just something I thought I'd throw out there really

Don't get me wrong, I totally appreciate it's only going to be noticed by the minority, but still, it would be nice to see a whole new train design, right? We want the Merlin parks to be the best, but I think pretty much duplicating theming elements of other rides they've used feels like they've cut a couple of corners (though probably saying it's lazy is a bit of a step too far...) It does feel almost perverse to be complaining about something like this. Not even a few years ago, any theming detail of this calibre on a coaster train would be instantly loved. For all we know, this wing coaster may even have a slight link with Swarm story-wise (which would be amazing). This is, in my view, the best design of a wing coaster yet as well, so it's not even a bad choice But if this coaster ends up with a separate identity to Swarm (which it probably will won't, I guess?), then of course I'd like to have seen a completely new design; would just be great to see. Okay, it's not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, but every little detail counts.

For comparison, here's Swarm: Literally the same bar a different colour on the fangs, and fangs replacing LEDs. How lazy. Unless they're going for a continuation of Swarm, building on the story of how this alien race is spreading (which I would actually LOVE, but no doubt), it will be disappointing to see Merlin reusing things like this - even though I feel really bad about complaining; after all, it is a fab design <3

Where did you find that?! Nice to see Merlin being nice and creative if this is the case. Don't get me wrong, it's a great design, but basically copying Swarm's train is just silly...

So, I had a lecture timetabled for 6-7pm at uni today. It was meant to be a one-off, information lecture about the 'Second Year Essay' all Maths students have to do; giving us ideas for topics and a chance to ask questions and such. Yet, no member of staff turned up. No email saying it has been cancelled or anything, just a complete blank of information. It's quite frustrating really, as even though I've chosen my topic, I have conflicting information from my Tutor and the updated Module Webpage, meaning I can't actually start doing any work on it (after planning to start it a couple of weeks ago). There are people who are in worse off situations, as they still are unsure about what they even want to do their essay on... Now normally my Department are excellent with organising things and they usually are really friendly, informative and everything you'd ever want from a university department, but it's just been a complete muck up with this which is just really annoying...

And favourite FB comment of the year goes to this... It's a shame that, once again this season, the weather is adversely affecting the park, especially at such a busy time of the year. Hopefully the park will be able to open up later!

I was hoping to get a little Trip Report done for my FN trip last Friday, but don't think I'll be getting round to it any time soon, so may as well just chuck in a few words about the operations-side of things from then... -The park did seem quite busy when I arrived just before 6ish, but everyone was evenly spread around the park. All mazes seemed to have 60+ minute queues from what I could gather. -BWP seems to open at 7? Website still says 6, so they probably should update that. -Speaking of BWP, I noticed Rocky was still open long after I got there, so it looks like the various closing times for rides aren't set in stone. -People may shoot me for admitting this, but I cashed in my Priority Passes I got from last Fright Nights (which, somewhat ironically, I got for complaining about Fastrack...). When it comes down to it, with only one visit to FN a year, and really wanting to do all attractions this time, I felt it as a necessity. Now, the park actually seemed to handle Fastrack quite well; there were very minimal queues for Fastrack queues (as it should be), and usually it was just one Fastrack group let in at a time. Naturally, this led to only a few minutes wait. This IS how Fastrack should run; a premium service whereby some people are able to skip queues, whilst the masses use what should still be a quick-moving queue, with no noticeable affect to their queue experience. It's a shame as, based on what I heard from people who went, this was not how Fastrack was running yesterday. -Most of the ride queues seemed to die down after 8/half 8ish, with only the mazes having substantial queues (ie 30+ mins). Despite this, the coasters still seemed to have trains flying out pretty quick. -When I did Swarm at about half 8 (I think), there was no queue outside the station. Speaking to a couple of people in the station area, they said they had bought Fastrack for it, and the staff member "refused" to accept it, as there was no queue. They said they were going to GS after their ride to see if they could get a refund. Good on the staff member for refusing it, as it does leave them with a chance to keep something back from it (I dunno if the staff member recommended they got a refund though!) -After half 9, the park seemed quite quiet, no queues looked above 10 or so minutes. Hopefully this isn't a regular occurrence; it's a shame to see the park reopen till 10, and yet many guests not take full advantage of it. So all in all, park operations for this FN were A LOT better than last year's event!

Posted yesterday on TST's Facebook. Hopefully the 'the higher the price, the less people will buy it' logic applies it, and works well in keeping the main queue as quick moving as possible, especially when Smiler was getting a full queue, and full overflowing queue, yesterday!

Certainly a daring move, and one I applaud Chessie for doing as well. What we do have to remember is the park are now literally losing out on 'free money' because of this. It is definitely good to see something positive from the park which has had so many failures this past year. I doubt it will spread to other rides or other parks though, I bet it'll return next year, though probably after a bit more thought about the system to ensure guests are kept happy.

Still 100x better than last year's Experiment 10 logic: "Let's let 30 people from the Fastrack queue in before even looking at the 2 and a half hour main queue"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xniR1GN69U&feature=youtu.be&a Love these; so good!

I'd have thought it would have classed as a special event, especially where standard AP holders have to pay extra for it. It's probably very vague on purpose to cover special, one off events they may decide to do (like when they did Ride n Rave last year for example). Probably the safest way to check is to ask Thorpe on FB / drop an email to guest services and they'd be able to confirm

When it comes to records, I think with some like the steepest, fastest, tallest, most inversions, etc., we're pretty much at the limit now. The thing is, with records like that, you need to strike up a balance between getting the record and making a ride comfortable and enjoyable. Would anyone really want to go on a 20 inversion roller coaster if you're stuck in a seat for 4 minutes, go up 3 lift hills and get put on a couple of breaks? Maybe, but it certainly isn't going to be as enjoyable as it sounds to people. Ditto with tallest and fastest - no one will want to go up a 500ft lift hill, and being rocketed to 160mph, say, to climb up 500ft vertically isn't efficient, and probably isn't worthwhile enough. Cost will always be an issue, but there are big companies out there who can afford to spend large amounts of money on new advances. We won't see an end to to progress or anything, I'm sure. I would say we've currently see progress slow down a lot (when was the last truly innovative roller coaster built? I'd argue X in 2002(?)), and progress will stay low for a while, especially with current economic climates. However, things will pick up again, as technology advances. I'm sure that 40 years ago, types of coasters we have now would have been classed as pipe dreams... For the time being, I expect we'll see current things developed and perfected. For example, B&M developed their own wingrider, and thus wildly improved on Intamin's version. If rumours are true, they are also looking at developing their own 4D type, and then will focus on perfecting that. There's probably loads of technical stuff going on behind the scenes too, making ride systems more efficient, cheaper and such. Perfection is the way forward at this time. No doubt, we'll also see more developments to other aspects of coasters, like adding on gimmicks (LET'S MAKE RIDES GO BACKWARDS), special effects, theming and so forth. What better way to make something 'new' then adding on a cheap gimmick to something old? It's a short term solution, yes, but arguably that is what we'll be seeing for the near future.

What I don't quite get is the park are going for all out scares, and recommending that FN is not for under 13s, and they then create a purposefully less-scary attraction? Maybe the park knew they couldn't go for the all-out scares for BWP, so tried to create a tame one. But, because the way FN is marketed, people still expect more?