JoshC.

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.

The way I was thinking was - theoretical throughput on 2 trains is 1100, so 1 train operation would be 550 (in theory). So, 550*(8/28)=157 (nearest whole number). 1000/157=6.36 hours of operation of Swarm. So who knows what will happen there really; maybe the 1000 is a safe cap incase things go wrong / because of reduced throughput for whatever reason? I don't know too much about the engineering and safety aspect of all, but I believe that the reversing of the rows isn't just a simple 'take off the nuts and bolts and turn them round' job, so will take a while. Then I'd have thought that it would need to go through rigorous testing to ensure it's safe and such. As I say, I don't really know much about it, but surely that is going to take more than three days? So, if only one train is ready to run backwards on AP day, then it wouldn't feel me with hope that Swarm would be running properly for the beginning of season..

Explains why I had no idea about it - I seem to have stopped getting emails from MAP for some reason, even though my pass is in date. :S With 1000 spaces, that would suggest to me that there's only one train operation taking place (or only 1 train with backwards seats), neither of which would create a pleasurable queueing experience...

Oh-err. Where was that announced? If that's the case, then that would mean in theory only one trains has the two rows turned backwards / operational. I think it was said that there's no necessary extras (such as buying / booking a ticket) to go backwards, so that would be strange. Hopefully, for a 'backwards' queue, they'll just scrap the front row system (which was just a bit pointless to start with really) and modify that a bit.

I don't see why Thorpe would install Extremis? Having Detonator on park, they already have a brilliant drop ride. Granted, a ride like Extremis would offer a different type of drop, but they are fundamentally the same thing; something like Sub Terra could work at Thorpe if there's enough emphasis on everything other than the ride system, but the use of Extremis wouldn't work for Thorpe. To be honest, neither of those rides seem suited to any of the Merlin parks in my opinion. Better to use them at one of the Dungeons, or just sell 'em on.

The park have released some photos of work ongoing maintainenance on the rides. Notice the work for the billboard. By far my favourite!

Seems as though the Android version is available now!

Reasons why iOS is better than Android: -The Smiler game has been released on iOS, but not yet Android. That is all. Can't wait to play though - most people have said it's fun. EDIT: Just to be clear, this post is meant to being criticising Apple, not praising it. Everything else about Android is superior. [/end controversial and pointless phone superiority discussion]

Really really enjoying the current series of Being Human at the moment. I'm seriously impressed this series. Last series had far too much focus on a central plot line and just didn't deviate from it. This series has done much better, giving a central plot which is slowly developing into something more and more interesting, whilst still having enough substance in each individual episode. Really glad that it doesn't feel like they're milking yet, despite being in its fifth series and having none of the original cast. Can't wait to see how it develops!

Ah, my mistake, was getting my facts mixed up. The press release back in October said Smiler will be 3x the length of Oblivion, 3x the ride time of Rita and 10km/h faster than Air. Sorry 'bout that!

Announced by AT's Twitter. Wednesday release it is then.

Will be interesting to see how this goes. There's been enough experience with the Wingrider now from B&M and Merlin to know what works for Wingriders. Something of a similar scale to Raptor would be great, and the Transylvania theme would go down a treat and has plenty of potential with the wingrider concept. I look forward to the development of this!

Hey there - welcome to the forums! If you just scroll over the 'Rides' tab at the top of the website, it still lists X as an extreme thrill, but if go on the Full Ride Listing (http://www.thorpepark.com/rides/full-ride-listing.aspx), it lists it as Thrilling and Fun. So it could be just a transitional phase at the moment if you will. As for the description, I think it has changed again, or at the very least tweaked a bit. Hopefully they don't try and create a 'scary' ride, but just something whih is completely random and weird, which seems like the direction they're taking. Fingers crossed!

Doesn't have to be scary to be good though. I'd also argue that the ride (like Chessington) is marketed at families with people of all ages, not young children. I guess what happens in the cave depends on the story of the attraction. Seems as though we're on safari, and a tree cuts our route off, so we go through a cave that an African tribe has said is dangerous. Have some ancient ritual / chanting and a waterfall in there, and it'd be good. Couple of other effects and it would create a superb ending I think