JoshC.

Never really a fan of these sorts of polls, but that's a different story. Certainly some interesting results. Must admit I'm somehwat surprised by Swarm's high rating, but even more surprised that X Flight has come in as the top wing rider!? Certainly out of all the ones there are, it looked one of the weakest ones. How on earth Stealth is rated as the 3rd best coaster in the UK is beyond me? Good to see some rides, such as Dragon's Fury, do well also - definitely think many underrate it at times. As for two Mirabliandia coasters in the Top 10 - someone take me to Italy please?

Okay, just had an actual nose around on it. There's a little game on which is recalling sequences of animals. Gets a bit difficult near the end, but I've completed that now. Will definitely keep younger kids entertained for ages though, as it's a nice game to play again and again! Then there's an Explore section, giving lots of info on the different species that feature in Zufari. Finally, there's a 'Win' section - a little competition for during the year where you send in a photo of 'someone enjoying Zufari' and have a chance to win 1 of 5 Chessington Family Passes. All in all, a nice neat little app. Certainly designed with families in mind, but it mixes educational features and a bit of fun all in one. Great piece of marketing and in general, just great!

http://www.chessington.com/zufari/app/ Zufari also has its own app! Just installed it now - seems good and suits! Brilliant stuff by Chessington yet again with this project!

http://www.thorpepark.com/plan-your-visit/park-map.aspx The new map for this season has been released. Things I've noticed: -X:\No Way Out is now simply called X, and is now Thrilling and Fun. Seemingly not marketed as new though. -Saw Alive no longer features on the map. -Bigger emphasis on the arena. -More emphasis on partying in the dome. -Crash Pad looking Crash Paddy.. -ORPs no longer on Detonator. Not that they were popular anyway. Shame to see they've stuck with the same style yet again.

Maybe it's just the angle the photos are taken, but it looks like there's a possibility for a second 'near miss' (or at the very least, look quite close) opportunity with the billboard after the corkscrew? Either way, great addition! Certainly fits in and adds to the overall feel of the area.

Definitely not a wind up. Thorpe have updated their website's main page explicitly saying 'There's a sting in the tail', 'The Swarm has mutated'. They've said two rows will go backwards. They have been pushing it heavily on Facebook and Twitter. People would be annoyed / disappointed / shocked / whatever bad feeling if they said 'LOL JK, we're turning X around!' The adverts for Thorpe are never on TV this earlier. Last year, the adverts for the park did go on TV until the 18th March - 4 days after the park opened. They would also receieve a lot of complaints for misrepresentation / lying to the public if this were to be a 'wind up'...

Whilst I hate to play this card, they've had the whole of closed season to get two trains ready. This was rumoured before closed season began, and no doubt Thorpe got in touch with B&M ages ago. In my eyes, the fact that only one train is 'ready' at the beginning of March is very surprising...and confusing. I know there can be issues with these things, but still...

So, potentially, we could see Thorpe open with 1 train operation on their big new attraction, which has a new twist, and without a ride which they'll be heavily changing (X)? Seriously, you have GOT to be kidding me... I've expressed concerns about this in the past. Thorpe have said that the modification isn't a quick 'take the rows off, turn them round, stick them back on again' job. No doubt it'll take time. I'd have thought that there'd then be testing to take place to ensure it's safe and 'green carded' (I think that's the correct term at least?). If it's the case that there's only 1 train has the rows turned backwards on Sunday, that leaves them with 3 days to sort it out before opening. As I said in the past, I'm no expert on these sort of things, but is 3 days really enough? As much as I hate to be pessimistic about this, I'm glad that I'm missing Opening Weekend for the first time in goodness knows how long. It's sounding like there's potential for a train wreck... :/

That track looks quite nice actually. Better than I saw expecting at least. Will be interesting to see how the 'top hat' section looks in real life, regardless of the idiocy of the idea...

Well that's a shame.

But aren't BOTH of the trains meant to be modified?

A new Press Release from the park - http://press.altontowers.com/news-alton-towers-resort-unveils-new-body-and-mind-rollercoaster-11725. Same old stuff really, goes into a bit more detail of what we knew really. Seems as if The Smiler should be the world's second psycho-coaster...

Yeah, Thorpe have been updating their Twitter account with pictures of Swarm whilst filming the TV ad. Unsurprisingly, they've been a tease and not shown the backwards rows in any pictures... Also, I wonder if the billboard will have a different slogan / design on the other side?

Just come back from seeing Milton Jones live. Absolutely incredible comedian; genius is the only way to describe him!

It's just dawned on me that this year's Mash Up event is taking place the weekend after Easter. For the past few years, the park's Easter event has always been during Easter weekend, so why would they have decided to do it differently this year? Also means that the Mash Up event doesn't have extended opening hours, just a 10-6 day. Not that it's particularly important or anything, just curious really..

I recently acquired a relatively old book about Thorpe Park, published in 1981. Entitled 'The Book of the Park', this is one book you can judge by its cover - it covers the park in great detail as it was. Of course, in 1981 the park had only been open for a couple of years, and so the place is completely unrecognisble. With this book being older than a large number of members here, whilst it's highly unlikely to bring any memories back to anyone here, it's still an interesting look. The book itself is 130 pages long and in full colour. I don't know if it was avaliable on park as something to buy, something that was used locally as 'advertising' and given away fro free or what. But as I say, it's still interesting, goes into a lot of detail and some great photos. Here's a few pages I've scanned up: The front cover. Contents pages. The beginning of the 'An adventure in leisure' section, which introduces the park. The 1981 'map'. Each 'section' of the book has it's own 2-page introductory spread, with a brief overview and nice drawings like this. Model World was a huge point for the park. A bit on the waterbuses, which gives a nice view of the dome from the entrance bridge. Speaking of the dome, or as it was known then, the Mountbatten Pavilion, here's a 2 page spread on it! A bit of info on what fun things there are to do. The photo in the bottom right is particularly striking to me. Cinema 180 was the 'new thing' for the park in 1981, though it is completed unrelated to the 4D cinema and was situated somewhere in what we know as the Lost City area now I think. The final page gives this particular beautiful sight of the dome. I think if we were to look at this angle this year, we'd be seeing The Crash Pad. That's all for the time being! I do hope to scan more pages up, especially the introductions to each section, but I thought that these were some of the most interesting ones to look up. If anyone has any specific pages they'd like to see, just say. I can't guarantee I'll get them up right away, as the scanners at uni are pretty slow and clunky to be honest, but I will get round to them.

But it won't be similar to a front row queue system; the backwards rows are something new and different. The fact that the reason the park are (likely) doing this is because Swarm wasn't seen as thrilling enough and needed to become more thrilling means that they're reacting to public demand. It's like what Ben was saying, only a small percentage of people will get to try the 'new thing', leaving people disappointed. It's not like with other coasters, a year after they open, the park advertise 'NOW WITH ADDED FRONT ROW'. There's going to be a much bigger demand for these rows, and I fear it will be a logisitical nightmare for it to work.

I wouldn't exactly call X one of the park's major coasters at the moment. I think that could prove very difficult to achieve. I assume that, at best, the 'splitting area' for backwards anf forwards rows will be where the front row queue was (and the front row queue gets scrapped / moved inside the building, though I hope they just scrap it). So it's going to be difficult or not sigificant enough to justify doing. No doubt we'll just see a sign similar to front row queues saying 'Please be aware that the queue time for backwards rows will be long than that of forwards row'. And if they haven't learnt from last season, they'd open it on one train and you'd still be waiting ages...

I'll keep quiet about Slammer this time!

Maybe I'm just thinking about this in a stupid manner then. The way I see it, we have 5 major coasters - Colossus, Inferno, Stealth, Saw, Swarm. However, with Swarm, it's got forward rows and backwards rows - whilst it's the same track and the same ride, there's a lot of emphasis (naturally) on the backwards part, so much so that it's could well be seen as a 'different ride experience' in itself. If you wish to be pedantic, last season, Swarm offered plenty of different experiences - front, middle, back, each side, etc., but they weren't marketed any differently. This year, we have two differently marketed ride experiences on the same ride. Let's consider some theoretical situations. You have 1100 people the in queue, 300 odd want to go on the backwards rows, 800 odd want to go on the forwards one. All well and good - it should work out nicely that the 1100 people will all have gone on the ride in an hour, which is what the theoretical throughput would suggest. But then, say, 500 people want to go on the backwards rows, and only 600 forwards. Now what will happen? Are some people who want to go on the backwards rows going to have to change their mind, go forwards and leave themselves disappointed? Whichever way I look at it, I just can't see a nice and easy way that this will work out. It's just a huge headache of a situation. I can see guests leaving disappointed at not being able to experience backwards rows and it being a headache for for some staff members. I just hope I'm proven wrong...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdNryKEIkTE Just wow!

Looks bulkier than I was expecting it to. Should look great once it's been styled to fit it, and will be a great near miss by the looks of it!

What pluk basically said. We now have two very different ride experiences, which are both being treated as big headline attractions, along with the likes of Stealth, Saw and so forth. One of those experiences (the 2 backwards rows) will allow 314pph to experience it which, for a park like Thorpe, shouldn't really happen on any ride, let alone a major ride. Then the forward-facing experience is now down to 786pph, which makes that in itself the worst of all the coasters at Thorpe.

Whilst I agree that not everyone will want to ride it backwards, the park are still potentially putting themselves in an unwinnable situation. If the park get people to 'book' backwards seats, for free, there will no doubt be people ignorant to this, and when they find out all the slots are gone, they will be annoyed, which is understandable to a degree - when you go to a theme park, you don't think you need to book a seat on a roller coaster, do you? Of course, you could argue that it would the person's fault for not checking, but really, when it's being pushed as heavily as it is, you don't particualrly think that there's 'hidden booking ideas', if you will. If you just have it as splitting into front and back facing queues (say, where the old front row queue was), you inherit the problems of the front row system - congestion in the building, not knowing the length of the queue for such rows, and the like. How that can be improved I don't know, but if they can improve it, then it may work better, but I just don't see how that will work well. The sad reality is, when you think about, The Swarm is now 2 rides (a backwards one and a forwards one), with 1 queue system. The backwards rows will have a 'theoretical throughput' of about 314pph, making it one of the lowest on park. Yet, it will be advertised (presumably quite heavily) this year, and appeal to a large number of people. We then consider that the theoretical throughput of the forwards rows is now about 786pph, making that queue longer as well. I'm open-minded about the row-reversal, and look forward to trying it out, but the more I think about it, the more I think this changing two rows backwards is going to be a nightmare for guests and staff and just wrong. Hence why Thorpe "can't win either way"...

I wouldn't exactly say the rop looks awful. Whilst it may look a little bit better without it, it doesn't effect the impact of top hat section. When you look at Stealth, you see the height and are meant to be blown away. That's exactly what happens. Until now, I've heard no moans about the rope being there, and very very few people wonder why it's there. The only time when I find it is particularly noticeable is when it's dark, which is to colour contrast. It's not so much of a large, widespread grumble that the rope is unsightly, because to most, it isn't.