JoshC.

Going to do one of these now as well, otherwise I'll forget.. I tend to do a Top 5 for coasters and non-coasters (simply as I haven't done that many!), and then sometimes a Top 10 rides list as to how the coasters compete with the non coasters. Having done many new things this year actually, but my views have changed a fair bit since around this time last year. Coasters 1) The Swarm (Thorpe Park). Absolutely incredible ride. Paced perfectly, brilliant theme, great theming and landscaping, nice audio and a great back story / story in general. Very re-ridable and practically perfect in every way. (At night is just amazing too! ). 9.5/10 2) Nemesis (Alton Towers). After 5 years sitting on top of the perch, it's been kicked off. However, it is still amazing in all of the departments and ticks all the boxes. 9/10 3) Th13teen (Alton Towers). Ignoring the bad marketing of the ride (which you should), this ride is great, bar the trims. The theming is great and is growing well with age already I think. The outdoor section is fun, but the fact that the trims are painfully obvious knocks of loads of points. The inside section is pure genius in my eyes. 8/10 4) Saw - The Ride (Thorpe Park). Probably the biggest change leaper this year. My only real gripe with the ride is the audio. The ride is great, as per usual, I'll argue it's intense, not rough , and everything else works well. Though not the best themed ride ever, it's very well styled. 7.5/10 5) Nemesis Inferno (Thorpe Park). With two new additions in the coaster top 5, it was almost inevitable that this was going to drop a place or two, but it's at the bottom of my top 5 now. I enjoy it, love the audio and think it's better than people make it out to be. However, it's just that there's coaster which are better and enjoy more. 7.5/10 (NB: Whilst Saw and Inferno have the same rating, I wouldn't call them equal. In actual fact, Saw's probably more rated as 7.6-7.7, but I just like to round to the nearest half otherwise it looks a bit untidy / strange). Honorary Mention) The Antelope (Gulliver's World). I always stick an honorary mention in; usually it's one that I have a soft spot for / just missed out. I did a dedicated blog entry to this, so I'll keep it short and sweet - not the greatest ride or layout, but I loved it when I went on it. What else is there to say? Non-Coasters 1) Nemesis: Sub Terra (Alton Towers). Despite knowing what the ride system was, and feeling a little underwhelmed by that element on my first ride, the whole experience is great. The frantic, high speed worrying scenario it creates is amazing. The story line is brilliant, and the way the ride plays out (well, at least now, as having read reviews from when it opened, it sounded Sub-Standard) is brilliant. 8/10 2) Hex (Alton Towers). I don't think this really needs explanation. The experience as a whole is amazing, and everything works so well, and yet feels effortless. 8/10 (NB: Same rating as Sub Terra as they are equally good, but I simply prefer Sub Terra). 3) Rush (Thorpe Park). The big swing designed for big kids makes me feel like a little boy. I enjoy it so much, always gives a buzz afterwards as well. Just as long as the cycle in long enough, it's a great ride. 7/10 4) Detonator (Thorpe Park). A large enough drop tower that builds great suspense and shoves you down. If you like drop towers, how can you not like this? 7/10 5) I really can't place one here. Rides such as Kobra, Tomb Blaster (Chessie), Submission, Duel (AT) and Loggers Leap (Thorpe) all jostle for places here, along with a couple of others. Really could not put a fifth place one here.

Personally, I'd prefer a ride to open at full capacity on time then open earlier on reduced capacity. The period of time Swarm operated on one train, for example, was usually an hour or so in my experiences, then with the length of time you'd wait for the train to be put on, and for that train to be tested and such, it just felt a lot longer. Again, going to personal preference, I'd prefer to be in a regularly moving queue than one that opened early, only to move rather slowly.

The site has been updated again, with a little bit more back story, and a competition for kids. http://www.chessington.com/zufari/ Must admit, I'm slowly getting more and more excited for this!

Strangely enough, I believe Swarm has the longest ride duration out of all the coasters at Thorpe. Inferno and Saw probably feel longer due to the pre-lift sections, and the fact Saw has MCBR in the layout. Granted, the lift and final turn on Swarm probably do add a fair bit of time to the ride, but still, time-wise, Swarm is the longest. Personally, I think Swarm doesn't feel too short and the timing of the ride is perfect; each to one's own I guess. Might be worth noting that the most recent MTDP stated that the 2012 and 2015/6 coasters would not exceed 850m in length (ie Colossus' length).

So, in a contrast to my other blog, these entries will be about all things not related to theme parks. There'll be entries which are a little bit serious and / or personal, like this one, and there'll be some which are just random. Either way, hope you enjoy! So, this is going to ramble on for ages, but basically it's about me and exercising / sports. Probably sounds quite boring in honesty, but hey-ho. A few years back, (about 7 or 8 years actually thinking about it; I'm starting to feel a little bit old now... ) I was part of a local fencing club. I was by no means great at it, and only took part in one competition after a few months of taking part and lost every match, but I really enjoyed it - which is what counts when playing sports. I did improve as I went on, but unfortunately after about 18 months, the head coach did a runner from the club; a couple of years later I saw his name pop up in the paper following a court case, and I'll leave that there... So, after 18 months, I stopped fencing. The nearest club to me was about 30-40 minutes train ride to me, and was over twice the price for yearly membership; it was just something that couldn't be committed to financially. So, until recently, the only sport I really did was the sports done in PE at school, and that was only until I was 16. The only real exercise I did was cycle my bike (which I enjoy doing, but I just don't do it as regular as I should). So, needless to say that over this time, I got quite 'big' - by which I basically mean overweight. Doing little exercise and sometimes 'binge eating' if you will due to many spouts of bullying, it would of course happen. Fortunately, I've never been clinically obese, but I have indeed been overweight, unfit and so forth. Being perfectly honest, I was probably in denial for a period of time thinking that it was just a 'phase' that I would 'grow out of', and would eventually just magically lose weight. To those of you who have met me in real life, or stalked photos of me on Facebook for whatever reason, you would no doubt agree that I am on 'the large side', if you were to put in politely. Whilst I am, naturally, self-conscious about my weight, I have no problems with people who do put it politely / helpfully, as I agree. Anyways, back to the topic in hand... As some who read this may know, I started university last month. When joining, I always had the intention of joining one of the many sports clubs and sticking to it - maybe even be part of one of the teams / take part in competitions, just for the fun of it mainly, but also to get back on track with my fitness. There's a fencing club at my uni; all seems great I think; I can get my fitness back on track and get back into a sport I know I enjoy! But things are never that easy it seems. I went along to a free taster session, and was getting kitted up after arriving. For those not aware, you need a fair bit of clothing to fence, namely an 'under jacket' (which I forget the name of) and a jacket, basically to make sure you don't get hurt. So, I picked up all the clothes necessary and was fine until the jacket. I struggled to get it zipped up, so asked for some help (it's a 'side-back' zip, for the record - so not the easiest of things to zip up anyway!) from a helper, and was told it was too small for me, so should find a larger size. Turned out I picked out a women's one by accident, tiny bit awkward. So, found a men's one, picked up the largest size and tried again. Again, struggled to get it zipped up, asked for help again, and again to no avail. The sniggers started from the helper and his friend, which was pretty obvious despite their poor efforts of disguising them; I've been here before. And so, I left, with one of my little ambitions of uni left shredded up. Needless to say I was a bit upset really. After 7 weeks at uni, I still haven't joined a sports club, and have no intentions to. Instead, as the title suggests, I've taken up jogging. Now, jogging is never really something I've liked the idea of before. It seems so time consuming, laborious and not worth the effort to me. However, a few days after my fencing club experience, a few other people in my halls were planning to start doing some jogging together, so I thought why not, and gave it a try. On my first jog, I did 'badly', if that's possible. Not even 10 minutes of jogging and I was way behind the group, out of breath and needed a break, and so just walked back to my halls. The group jog became a semi-regular thing, about every 3-4 days, and more people would join in, and I was always the one left trailing behind, and cutting short the route. Due to the weather getting colder, people's timetables getting less flexible and so forth, the group runs have pretty much fizzled away, and some who have joined sport clubs have used that as their way of keeping active. However, for the past 4 weeks now, I've carried on, just going for jogs by myself. I'd go at my own pace, stop when I needed to stop, cut the route short when I needed to, etc. I jog 3-4 times a week; so jog one day, have the next one 'off'. Just over 2 weeks ago, the breakthrough came when I went for a jog without stopping. Sounds silly I know, but considered I'd always had a break or quit half way through, it gives a real sense of satisfaction, even if it was only a 15 minute jog. From there, I've been able to build myself up, increasing the lengths of the runs and picking up pace as well. Today, my jog involved going up two hills and lasted nearly half an hour. I'm really noticing the benefits of it now as well. I've definitely lost weight and this is visible as well - rather annoying now though that all my jeans are a bit too big me.. I 'feel' fitter as well, and things just seem better in general. Whilst I don't really have long term aims as to a specific weight I want to reach, are a specific time of jog I'd like to do or anything like that, I'll just carry on, push myself and sorta enjoy it. In saying that though, one thing I consider on my 'to do list in life' is to run the London Marathon - even though it's a big though and I'm a long way away from even seriously considering that, if I keep at this, then maybe in a couple of years time, that won't seem like such a crazy idea... So just as a random, general statement, if anyone is considering doing a bit more exercise, wants to get their fitness up a bit, don't knock the idea of the good old fashioned jog. It's free to do and you feel the rewards of it quickly (oh, and despite how you always feel when you jog, people don't judge / laugh at you when you do it...well, at least I haven't seen anyone do it towards me.. XD). Most importantly though, as corny as it sounds, do something you'd enjoy or will get satisfaction out of doing, otherwise there's no point. I know for sure that after every jog that the sense of satisfaction I feel is what spurs me on to do more.

I think here you've accidentally highlighted one of the key issues about all of this. If guests are content with what's happening, then that's fine. In this case, Thorpe (and in general cases, Merlin as well) are seemingly happy as long as their guests 'aren't unhappy'. So if guests think 'Oh, this ride is new this year and it's only got a 40 minute queue, great!' or 'WOW, when I came here last time this was like 2 hours long, now it's only 30 minutes', then guests are not going to be unhappy, and will happily ride with the one train operation. Yet, I don't think there's any doubt that guests would be happier / more impressed if these queues were even less. So, it does almost seem like they're happy to make guests not unhappy, but then that's as far as they stop so they can penny pinch. It's also worth remembering that a 30 minute queue on a coaster with one train will feel longer than a 30 minute queue with a coaster on two trains, especially if guests have experienced the queues when the coasters are on both trains.

You see, despite the size of it, I completely didn't think of Sub Terra! Just shows how well they've styled that and made it work in my opinion. The Swarm shop makes sense in my opinion and seems to suit the area as well I think.

The thing with shipping containers is that at least Merlin try with them, and usually do well. Saw's one is the only one which just feels 'plonked' there. Swarm's is well styled, and I hardly notice Th13teen's one except when using the shop. It works well with Experiment 10 and when they did the Twilight Zone for Vampire's 21st at Chessie. Can't think of many more times when Merlin have used them either. Works well, cheap and convenient. Can't see many issues with them. Hopefully The Crash Pad will have a nice enough style to them as well.

Bringing this topic back to Fastrack related things a bit more... After a bit more Mathsy working out which can be found on my blog (waits for a 'You have too much free time on your hands' comment ), the way Thorpe operate their Fastrack system means that the time spent waiting in the main queue increases by 50% when Fastrack is in use. So, a 90 minute queue ends up being a 2 hour 15 minute queue (in the case of Swarm in particular). Personally, I think the system they've got could do with improving. Then again, Fastrack in general can probably do with improving, so that's no surprise really. It does indeed go to show that no matter what, Fastrack negatively effects the guests in the main queue by quite a bit. Say the queue for four rides which have Fastrack on is 60 minutes, then the total increase in queueing time is 2 hours. It all adds up, and this shows just HOW BAD it really can be for someone not willing - or able - to pay.

In light of new information given, I'm adding a bit more to this. Ian has already done some working on this, but I don't think it shows everything. So, from Zappomatic's reply from the park, we know that the Fastrack queue is meant to take a third of the ordinary queue: Now, this in itself could be quite paradoxical, which has caused issues with people. Does this mean that however long someone waits in the main queue, a person waits a third of that time in the Fastrack? If so, then this means every time someone joins the Fastrack queue, then the main queue gets longer, meaning more people can join the Fastrack queue, meaning the main queue gets longer... you see where I'm going. It's a vicious circle which never ends, and results in an infinitely long queue. So, this is not the case and people should stop worrying about that. What I assume this means is that Fastrack guests queue a third of the time of the main queue, had there been no Fastrack. So, say the main queue takes 60 mins without Fastrack, anyone using the Fastrack queue can expect to wait 20 mins. The issue with this, of course, is that the main queue no longer takes 60 mins, it takes longer of course, but this does not mean more Fastrack guests can be allowed in, as theoretically, they have reduced their waiting time. Now, I'm going to go back to all the Swarm information above, and use the idea of Swarm having a full queue. Again, going to ignore the use of Priority Passes and Disabled Access to keep the Maths simple. So, a full queue with no Fastrack in theory will hold 1650 people and takes 90 minutes (all information from above). With Fastrack sales, the aim of the park is that the Fastrack queue will take a third of the time as the main queue, so in this case, half-an-hour. From Ian's post, they work on a 1:2 ratio Fastrack : Main Queue, meaning there's 367 Fastrack guests per hour. For our half an hour queue, we expect half this number (184, for sake of whole numbers) at the given point when the main queue is full. Again, for sake of simplicity, we're assuming that pretty much the same number of people enter the queue as those who get on the ride (and in turn, 'leave the queue'). With their 9-10 spaces per ride, Fastrack guests quite happily reduce their queue time by about a third, queue the 30 minutes or so and get the service they pay for. What we can't forget is that, no matter how much we personally hate Fastrack, is that it is beneficial to some guests, and we don't want it to end up in a situation where guests who are paying even more money are getting frustrated with the park even more. So yes, this is all well and good, but what about the main queue? With 18-19 people per ride, the main queue gets in essence a reduced throughput of 733pph (as stated in Ian's post). As mentioned earlier though, we've got a full queue, which has about 1650 people in though... I think we all see where this is going. So now, the queue time for the main queue is (1650/733) hours, which is about 2.25 hours; so 135 minutes! If you look at the main entry, this is a good 20 minutes more than I estimated, and I thought I was being lenient with my calculations. In effect, with the park aiming to have Fastrack guests queue for a third of the time that they would in the main queue, this means that they're increasing the queue time for guests in the main queue by 50%. So, if it would take 90 minutes without Fastrack, it would take 135 minutes with Fastrack. If it would take 60 minutes without, it would take 90 minutes with. If it would take 30 minutes, it would instead take 45 minutes. You catch my drift. So, that's what I've wanted to add. Of course, with these numbers being so rounded and vague, and not taking into account things such as Priority Passes (which, in my opinion, are a nightmare), Disabled Access, rides not running at full capacity and so forth, it is quite easy to see how a main queue can build up. It's certainly a strange system, and not how I would have thought it would have been run. Personally, I think there should be a cap on the number of Fastrack sales (and, to be specific, a lower cap then there is, as for them to sell out, there must be some form of cap), but then keep a system where the number of tickets they sell depends on the queue size, in such a way that the Fastrack queue time is proportional to the main queue time.

Compare this to a season or two ago when they worked hard to get Stealth reopened on the last day, and ended up opening it for only a few hours, and it wasn't particularly busy. Of course, it could be the case the second train may not necessarily have been able to be used, but the reason of 'Getting a day's head start of closed season work' just isn't that good in my mind.

The Sanctuary was no doubt my favourite this year. I loved it. As for whether I preferred FN or Scarefest, I'm really not sure. Both had their pros and cons by the sounds of it, and as I didn't really experience properly FN (and went on one of Thorpe's worst days of the season), I don't feel as though I can really judge.

I think it's worth a visit during the year if you're going to be near the area. As I say, even if you're not interested in the history side, it's definitely an interesting place to visit. Though, as Fred said, be prepared to pay for extras, such as the Dungeons and the Merlin Tower (based on the TV show Merlin, that is). At Halloween, I'd say it's worth going to more though. So yeah, whilst I'd recommend it, I wouldn't say that at any time of the year it's worth travelling half way across the country for, as there's that much to do there (9 hours, though enjoyable, felt a bit dragged out for example). However, if you're quite close / going to pass it somewhere, definitely worth popping in.

A Press Release has appeared on the park's website. No new information really, just the same old 'IT WILL BE GREAT' marketing.

That's Easter Weekend I believe, so they'll no doubt be doing an event. Will be interesting to see if it's another Ministry of Sound event or something different; would love to see the return of Twisted Carnival personally!

Clicking the logo takes me to the main forum bit (forum.maniahub.com), I'm talking about the main page as in thorpeparkmania.co.uk, which is why I have to go to Hub Bot posts to get onto the main site.

This Saturday, I visited Warwick Castle for the first time. The trip was my first ever to Warwick Castle, as well as a first for the three others I was with. Being the final weekend of the Castle's Halloween event, 'The Haunted Castle', it was open till 9 (for the first time as well, apparently), so we arrived just before 12. The site of the Castle just after the entrance, with added smoke! The Castle is certainly an impressive site. Looks very impressive whatever the weather as well (come rain, shine or lit up - experienced all three in one day!) First up for us was the 'Flight of the Eagles' show. Bog standard show with a couple of eagles and an owl; was interesting and entertaining for all. EAGLE! After that, we went to our first scare attraction of the day, The Haunted Hallows. We weren't expecting this to be scary in any way, as it was only listed as 2/5 ghosts and 'spooky', but it seemed like fun I guess. There's nothing to really spoil I guess, and now the event's finished it may not matter if I say about what happens as it may not be brought back next year, but...just as warning, this does contain spoilers. So, you walk through a make-shift corridor which has a few paintings in, one of which talks and had light up eyes. Could be scary for little'uns I guess. In a similar fashion to Alton Towers' Haunted Hollow route, from here on it, it is just an outdoor route with some gargoyles and other bits of theming scattered around. The first shock comes in the first big scene, where a skull squirts water at you, which goes off on a regular basis. I got caught right in the face and it completely caught me off guard...much to the enjoyment of those around me. The next major 'scene' involved a cobwebbed dining table with skeletons, and these guys overlooking. Was sorta hard to tell at times if they were real or not.. Next, there were two alternative routes (which lead you to the same place very quickly), with one just a bit mistier than the other. When the split routes come back together, this creepy, silent character was waiting. Certainly scared a couple of little children in front of us. Dunno why, but I like this photo.. At the end of the route, you meet this fellow. He rewards (young) children who make it through with sweets! Some general exploring was done, and we went to the mill and walked along the River Avon, enjoying the nice views. The River Avon. A view of the trebuchet; more on this later. After some general walking about and exploring the grounds, we made our way to the main Castle grounds and decided to head up the man-made hill (which I always forget the name of :$). Certainly gives a nice view of the area and Castle: Tried the panorama mode on my phone at the top, but it's hard getting a good position to take it. We then decided to trek up the Towers and Ramparts, which gives a warning of having 537 stairs to climb. Again, some lovely views and bits and bobs of history thrown in, and some devilish spiral staircases to tackle. Along the route, there was a room showing the episode of Most Haunted that was filmed at Warwick Castle as well as some other bits and bobs relating to the place being haunted. I was quite surprised as to how high how up it was. Lovely views of the town of Warwick. The end of the route of the towers brought us to the entrance of Kingmaker, which I found to be a Madame Tussauds-esque history walk. I was genuinely surprised as to how life-like the models really were! This part of Warwick Castle in particular strikes me as to just how well they succeed at catering for all ages. Everyone had a good laugh and learnt a couple of bits and bobs whilst at it - exactly what the attraction sets out to do. Me looking good with a helmet on. A quick visit to the Gaol happened afterwards. Pretty much a pitch dark room. (Though some Gangnam Style dancing went on down there... ) More milling around and such occurred, and we watched the short Dream of Battle film and wandered around the Castle as well. Unfortunately, most photos inside the Castle haven't come out very well, but photos can't justify the beauty and striking-ness of the inside. It just looks amazing, and has an amazing feel to it. It really is something you have to go to 'get it'. Model of the Castle. We went on a tour around the Castle courtyard (was called the 'Ultimate Tour' or something I think) which was interesting and fun, and then watched the trebuchet show. Whilst I really liked the way they performed it (and, of course, watching a trebuchet fire a fireball!), it was a bit ruined by the music, which was too loud and felt unnecessary. It just distracted from the show and made the speech more difficult to hear. I did prefer the evening showing as well, as that had a bit more story to it, but nonetheless it was good. I'll try and upload the video of the afternoon show at some point. It was nearing 5 and stomachs were rumbling, so we went to The Coach House restaurant. Pretty decent food there, and with two meals for £13 (plus AP discount), it worked out pretty cheap. I didn't even eat all my dinner, which shocked me just a little bit, as normally I'd finish that size of meal (I certainly do at Thorpe and Bar 360!). By the time we'd finished, it was dark and a little bit drizzly, but it was time for what I was looking forward to the most - Séance: The Curse of Mary Black, which is the 'big' scare attraction of the event (I exclude the Dungeons as I believe they're their all year round. Speaking of them, didn't visit them due to the additional cost, but ah well). However, as we were there and we enjoyed it so much earlier, we went through The Haunted Hollows again, which was better in the dark, of course, and the actors certainly interacted with us in a different way to that of younger children / families, which was good to see. One even followed us for a while, which was good. Again, spoilers of Séance will be here - you've been warned! Before you queue, it is apparent that you have to wear full boiler suits for the maze, which is a bit confusing. When I asked why, the reason was 'because you're about to enter a crime scene, and cannot contaminant the area'. Crime scene = scary stuff. Good looking shot of me in a boiler suit. Though I put mine on inside-out... So then, the actual maze. Well, thinking about it, I'm not sure maze is the right word, but I'll use it as it's easier to say than 'attraction' or whatever else. You get batched in quite large groups (around 20, maybe more) and then get escorted into a room by a tour guide (also in a boiler suit). The tour guide explains that just over a year ago, a woman killed seven people in the house we are in. We are told that we're the jury, and we're to tour the house, examine evidence and reach a verdict as to whether she's guilty. We then watch a tape with a police recording, where a possessed woman calls the police saying 'They're all dead...I killed them...it's still in the house', amongst other things. Interrogation footage plays, and footage of her possessed is found as well. We're told that all the victims have had their eyes gouged out as well. Whilst the video is playing, the tour guide disappears and slams a door, which provides a nice jumpy moment. After the video, we're escorted through a couple of rooms, with just the tour guide's light to help us see, and told of the deaths. We then reach a staircase, where the tour guide goes up a few stairs and explains to us about Mary Black, and how she was in the house 100 years ago and her eyes had been gouged out and mouth sewn up by others living in the house. It's at this the torch starts 'cutting out', so the tour guide goes to find the emergency lighting, and as soon as he moves, a woman in black can be seen to be behind him, and she walks upstairs. Of course, everyone but the guide sees this, and it really catches you off guard. I still can't work out how they pull it off! Then, once the emergency lighting (and the torch) is sorted out, and the guide said 'By the way, if anyone wants to leave, just say and I can organise for security to make sure you get out the right way'. Then it's up we go. In the next room, someone started to have a bit of a breakdown. She was scared and wanted to leave, and started panicking, shouting she didn't want to go alone, and then runs off with someone screaming. The guide chased off after them to ensure they went the right way. After this, we were quickly moved on into the next room, and soon after the guide closes the door, there's a knock at the door, which he ignores. Then, there's a very loud knocking and rattling sound, which startles everyone. The door opens a little bit as well, and we're hurried along into another room. More story is given, then the lights cut out again and after some effects, a door opens and a victim is standing there, with her eyes covered as though they've been removed. This causes much panic, to which the guide leads us to a secret passage, which gets us to Mary Black's bedroom much sooner than planned. After a bit more story, the lights go off AGAIN and what looks like a painting actually turns out the be screen starts playing. It shows images of Mary Black and how her eyes are missing and her mouth sewn up, and the tour guide disappears. The next bit is a bit predictable - Mary Black appears in black (though out of nowhere), with eyes missing and her mouth sewn up. It causes a lot of panic, and with lights going off and on slowly, it disorientates you and you don't know where Black will be. All of a sudden, she disappears, and the tour guide reappears, shaken. He then tells us to go back to the hidden passage, and opens the door, only for a female victim to be standing there and she then walks in (this scares many people, as they're all brought close to the door). The guide rushes to another door, only for another victim to be standing there and cause plenty of scares. You feel trapped and unsafe; the audio and lighting add to the chaotic feel, and after a while, the guide finds another door which leads us to safety, thankfully. All in all, it's a nice little attraction. There's some obvious bits, and the person who runs away screaming with someone are both actors, who end up being the victims later on. It builds a lot of tension, but doesn't last very long, much like the chaotic feel near the end. It's all good, but just needs more of it. However, with only 5 actors (Mary Black, 2 victims, and 2 tour guides, who alternate groups) and with only 1 group being in the entire maze at one time, I guess this is understandable. The fact we did it later on in the evening though is testament to how much we enjoyed it. 6/10 After that, we wandered around a bit, went back up the tower for night views, and got views of firework shows in EVERY direction; a really beautiful site! We must have stayed up there for a good half an hour watching various firework shows. As said, we watched the second fireball trebuchet show, which was slightly better, and went through Séance again - in fact we were the last group of the day, though it felt a bit rushed unfortunately. The day ended there at about quarter-past 9. It was a great day, and I really enjoyed it. Warwick Castle is somewhere I'd recommend for everyone to go to at least once - even if you're not a big fan of the history side of it, it is a great day out, and I'll certainly be going back again.

This is going to sound like a bit of a silly question I know, but is there a direct link to the main TPM page on the forums? Any time I'm on the forums and want to go to the main site, I always end up going to a Hub Bot post and going clicking the article link, which though not difficult, is a bit tedious and annoying.

Think there's been a bit of miscommunication here... Jack asked if Vekoma do spinning coasters. Benin posted about spinning coasters in the dark being done before (with regards to an earlier post). Jack mis-read, believing Benin's post was in response to him. He then meant to say that he himself should do some research before posting. Following on from some research of his own, he realises that the coasters Benin mentioned were done by Maurer Sohne, and posts again saying this. Of course, Benin's post was never in response to Jack's, hence the confusion. Anyways, more on topic, would prefer it if the cars were kept backwards, etc. etc.

"Unlimited Fastrack sales" is definitely not the right way to word to. Unlimited would imply they would sell as many as they can, with no consideration about any other pieces of information. As Benin says, they have no upper limit / cap on the number they sell per day. This means that they're not saying 'Okay, every day this year, we will say at most x many Fastrack tickets', but instead 'We'll sell this many to ensure Fastrack users wait this period of time in proportion to the main queue'. So, no where near unlimited, as they won't sell so many the Fastrack queue goes above a certain waiting period, but it just doesn't have an exact bounded number. Certainly an interesting system and different to how I would expect it to be run.. I'll muse over that for a while before I say what I fully think. However, it's really good you got such a clear, informative and helpful response. Normally, you find that such responses feel very general and feel like they've just been copied and pasted. However, this has obviously had a bit of thought into it and gives information about Fastrack, helping give a more helpful and specific response to the complaint. Good to see.

Paranormal Activity 4 Like Ryan, I'm a fan of this franchise, and despite Ryan's poor review, I bit the bullet and decided to watch it yesterday. So, the beginning starts off ridiculously slowly, and - I think - adds in a scene which adds nothing to the plot of the film. There are so little scares in the film it can't be called a horror film. There are a couple of jumpy moments, but they're faux scares which make you feel hard-done-by. And, of course, it always leaves you thinking how people can be so idiotic that when they have clear cut paranormal activity on camera, they don't think 'Hey, rather than sounding crazy, I'll show someone some evidence', especially when people are slightly scared. The plot itself makes little sense if you ask me, leaving many things in the film unexplained, and answers few - if any - questions about the previous ones. I'll spoiler a list of questions from the films that I can think of: One thing I want to end with though. Despite the flaws this franchise now has, in that the past two films have been poor, with the third being pointless, and the fourth just being there and not doing much, the film is successful at building tension. People have begun to fear what could happen, as opposed to what is happening, and when you do that well in a horror film, it just works. It's just a shame that what does happen doesn't compliment what you fear will happen very well.. 5/10

Right, to avoid a long and rambling post something which will leave many people uninterested and bored, I've got a blog entry about Fastrack - http://forum.maniahub.com/blog/10/entry-349-how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-fastrack/ For those who don't want to read a long, possibly boring, rambling entry with a fair bit of maths, basically what I've done is worked out how on The Swarm, if there are just one or two Fastrack groups on a ride, it can increase queue times for the main queue quite dramatically. Furthermore, it shows how the current system of Fastrack slots not being strictly adhered to makes the problem much worse. All of this seems obvious and already known to a degree, but it shows just how bad it is. I've also given a couple of suggestions on how to improve the Fastrack system, and quite simply, I think the best one is to make Fastrack time slots much stricter, give verbal information about if you miss your ticket slot without good reason, you won't be able to use it, and thus make the system work and flow better, and make the numbers at any given point more predictable. However, one thing which always needs to be thought about is how Fastrack is a premium service, and a balance needs to be made so that this premium service does deliver to those who are willing to pay, and I think that is a lot harder to achieve than most people may think..

I think someone's got confused with 'The Ministry of Joy' and 'The Ministry of Sound'...

This is a blog entry that relates to the hot topic of Fastrack and Fastrack sales. So why's it in here, and not in that topic? The aim here is to illustrate how Fastrack sales affect the main queue of a ride, and demonstrate what many bring up - those who pay for the premium service (Fastrack) negatively affect the service of those who do not pay for such a service (those who use the main queue). Unfortunately, this will be quite mathematically thought out, will ramble on a bit, and uses many assumptions, but nonetheless, it will show just how bad Fastrack can affect the main queue. Example - The Swarm I've decided to use The Swarm as an example to demonstrate this point. Why? Simply put, I think there's enough information to be able to show the point. So, first thing first, where am I getting any information from? Well, the following photo from TTP was taken from the Swarm Behind the Scenes event in April: The main and Fastrack queues illustrated in this plan seem to resemble that of the real queue lines, so I'll assume that these are the same. As can be seen in the top right corner, there's a bit of rough information about the queues. The main queue is 450m long, and should take 90 mins, whilst the Fastrack queue is 75m long and should take 15 mins (these are presumably guestimates). Strangely, we can see that the Fastrack queue and the main queue have the same length-queue time ratio, in that 5m takes 1 minute to queue. Presumably this would mean the guestimates given don't include the main queue and Fastrack queue working co-currently; in other words, a full main queue would taken 90 mins with no Fastrack whatsoever. The theoretical throughput, again taken from TTP, is 1100pph. So then, by the guestimates the park has made, a full queue which takes 90 mins will hold 1650 people (in theory). If we divide this down, we find that 28 people, which is a full train, are in (84/11)m of a queue, to be quite precise. Okay, now this is where I have to make a perhaps strange or unrealistic, to a slight degree, assumption. However, for the ease of calculations, and the fact this is only a rough example, it will have to do. So, I will assume that, on average, at any given point, the Fastrack queue is 2/5 full. So, perhaps confusingly, this would according to above information, only be a 6 minute queue - IF there was no main queue. Yeah, sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Anyways, being 2/5 full, this adds and extra 30m worth of queue, if we were to literally 'plonk' these people in the queue. So, being 2/5 full, there are (28)*(30)/(84/11)=110 people using the Fastrack queue. Again, unsure of the realism of this, as I don't particularly pay close attention to how many people are in the Fastrack queue, but I think this seems like a reasonable number in my opinion. Of course, we would not expect the park to send trains' worth of Fastrack guests round at any one go; it is ridiculous for that to happen. So then, we need to create a form of ratio for the number of main queue guests let in to Fastrack guests let in. Now, I don't know if this is how the park operates it - I'd hope it is something like this though - or what sort of ratio they would use, if they use it. This means I'd have to make a guess, but I'll work out two cases, which are a couple I've mentioned in the Fastrack topic. Say we work on the basis of 3:1 (main queue : Fastrack queue). In other words, a quarter of the train is made up of Fastrack guests. (NOTE: This would mean 7 people per train, which seems unrealistic, as most people will be going in even numbered groups, but bare with me). Assuming a linear correspondence to this and the throughput, the 'throughput' of the main queue will be 825pph (three-quarters of 1100). Again, I'll assume that we are in a full queue. So, in the space of 90 mins, a person would move 337.5m (which is three-quarters of the queue length). In another 30 mins, you'd move the remaining 112.5m. So then, if just a quarter of guests are Fastrack users, this adds an extra 30 minutes to a full queue. Following some additional calculations, which I can't be bothered to write up here, I can confirm that if a quarter of each ride is made up of Fastrack guests, the queue time of the main queue increases by a third. I'll cut this second case a bit short, but if we work on the basis of 4:1, a full queue would take 112.5 mins (again, to be quite precise). Again, a couple more calculations confirm that if a fifth of the train is made up of Fastrack guests, the main queue time will increase by a quarter. Personally, I've always felt that these two ratios are reasonable amounts to satisfy Thorpe's need for money, which is understandable, whilst creating a balance so Fastrack users get their premium service which they've paid for without creating too much hassle for guests. However, this is still quite a large inconvenience for ordinary guests, and it certainly surprised me. This does show how not only does Fastrack offer a premium service, it DOES give a negative effect to those who do not offer such a service. Overselling and Sales So, now time to see just how many tickets Thorpe could sell according to this. Let's take a 10-5 day, which would probably be expected to be a reasonably quiet day. Say that the Fastrack sales have time slots from 11am until 4:30pm (half an hour in each slot). This gives 5 and a half hours of the 7 hour day where Fastrack is available. Taking the first example of 1/4 of each Swarm train being for Fastrack guests, this would mean that a quarter of all guests who ride Swarm in an hour will be Fastrack guests - which is expected to be 275. Multiply that by 5.5 (number of hours in the day where Fastrack is used) and we get 1512.5, round to 1512 for simplicity. This would mean that there's 1512 Fastrack tickets up for sale in a 10-5 day. I don't really know about gate figures or the like, but if we say that there's between 8000 and 10000 guests on such a day, about 15-20% of guests will use Fastrack to get on The Swarm. Reasonable? Again, I'm really not sure, but I was expecting a figure around 10-20%, so I would say so. Now then, there are of course many issues with this, which I'll explain a bit more in a bit. However, there's the issue of implementing this is reality - it is unrealistic to assume you'll be able to shift the same number of tickets per hour all day, every day. I believe Fastrack works on a half-an-hour basis, so this means that there's about 137-138 tickets for each of these slots, (which is just over the above assumption that at any given time, on average, the Fastrack queue is 2/5 and has 110 guests waiting). No doubt it's possible to think that, time slots will be more popular and others less popular, which could possibly lead to there being more slots designated to the popular periods of the day, and less to the quieter periods. It does mean that we could easily see a queue time increase by 40% (which, to reiterate the long running point, would mean the main queue for Swarm would be nearly 130 mins - over 2 hours - when it would only be 90 mins with no Fastrack at all...). Another issue, which has been pointed out in the Fastrack topic, is time slots and how they are kept to, or rather how they are not. Say a 'popular' time slot is 1pm, and many people missed their half-12 slot because of eating lunch, waiting for their lunch to go down, had the intention of going at 1 anyway or whatever, a Fastrack queue which can increase a queue time by 40%, can easily increase it by even more. Okay, I'm belabouring on the point here, Ways to Solve? So, this is where the blog becomes rather similar to the post in the Fastrack topic. Before I carry on, I'd like to say that with the two ratios I looked at, 3:1 and 4:1 Main Queue-Fastrack Queue (ie, a quarter and a fifth of the train full of Fastrack guests), we're looking that on average, about 6 Fastrack guests per train for Swarm. In turn, this will increase the queue by about 3/10, such that a full queue line will approximately take nearly 2 hours, 117 mins to be precise, as opposed to 90 mins. The idea that 6 people per ride are Fastrack guests is a little on the conservative side in my mind in my opinion. One way to solve it would be to increase prices and decrease the availability of tickets. This way, the park still make money a plentiful with Fastrack, and will not lose out on cutting tickets. Again, using Swarm as my example, if instead of having 1512 tickets, it went to 1000 (again, to make life easy when doing calculations). So, this cuts the tickets available by a third, meaning we have about 92 tickets available for each slot. Cost-wise, at the moment, if everyone bought a Swarm Fastrack (again, to make life easy, let's just assume there's no front-row Fastrack and all tickets are £5), then 1512 tickets in a day would create just over £7560. If we cut tickets by a third, and raise the cost by £1 (a fifth), meaning people would pay £6 for one Fastrack, which no doubt people will willingly pay, they earn about £6000, losing £1560. Now, I guess one great thing for the parks is Fastrack will pretty much be all profit - ticket printing costs are low, and it won't require many, and in some cases, any, extra staff on rides. So, I'd assume that what is quite a large change in money earnt won't stop profits, just decrease them. However, I'd be quite confident in saying that if the park were to advertise 'Fastrack tickets are limited all day and certain time slots sell out quick!' or something, people will happily part with their money even if the cost has gone up and, dare I say, I think the same would happen if a Swarm Fastrack cost £7. A couple of other options would be to implement just one of these without the other; either just outright increase prices, or outright decrease availability. The former of these two options means more money for Merlin, but possibly less people willing to pay if it's not as premium as they expect (ie - having to pay a large-ish amount to queue for a period of time which they'd judge as not worth the additional cost). However, we have seen prices slowly creep up over the years, and I believe that this will continue and prices will naturally get a bit more expensive, especially with the packages. The latter of the two means a full out decrease in profits for Merlin, which in terms of a company, is a bad thing. Not to say that they would never do it, but I can't see it being considered, or considered to a degree such that it would be noticed. A different and, in my eyes, most sensible and realistic idea would be to be stricter with the time slots. I guess Fastrack tickets have half an hour time slots, and it states on the ticket 'To be used within 30 minutes of the time printed on this ticket'. Yet, by the sounds of it, as long as you arrive after your time, it's fine. Why not actually enforce such a thing? Well tickets are sold, tell the guests verbally 'You have to use it within 30 mins of the time printed or you can't use it' and print it on the ticket, along with 'no refunds'. That way, they still make their money, and people have been warned - surely unless there's a valid reason for missing it (stuck on a ride, breakdown extending queue length and so forth), it's not the park's fault, so why should they have to refund it? The issue is of course people aren't always great with time management, especially if they've never visited a park before, so this may be a bit harsh / need refining. Another thing I'll briefly mention is the Fastrack packages. How exactly do they work? Is there a specific time slot for them and how does that work? Maybe they can designed so that they're as strict to times as possible, whilst still giving enough lee-way? I really can't comment much on this, and can't think of much to say seeinghow I've never had any experience with the way the packages work. So, that is that. Fastrack has a negative effect on the main queue line - fact. However, there's an issue with everything that I've gone through. I've been concerned with the queue length, queue time, etc. of the main queue, but mentioned nothing about how long the Fastrack queue will actually take. This is something I won't actually try to work out at this stage, but may do it at a later date. However, if it turns out that this leads to the Fastrack queue being not-so-fast, then all of this is pretty much...complete twaddle and everything I've modelled would need refining. I'll also point out again that I've made many assumptions here for the sheer ease of calculating this, so there will be things such as 'Hey, that's unrealistic, that would never happen', but hey-ho, life carries on.. Thanks for reading this and hope I haven't been babbling on about complete rubbish all the time. As said, if anyone sees any mistakes / problems with this, just say, as I may well have made a silly mistake somewhere. For now, that is well and truly that!