JoshC.

The difference this year compared to previous years when it has awful reliability is it seems to be happening in shorter bursts. In the past Samurai would run pretty reliably then be down for a month or two. This year it's had 3 extended periods of closure already, for at least 3 weeks or so. I'm no engineer, and I'm sure there's plenty of possible explanations behind it. But it doesn't feel like a good sign, does it

I'd expect after, given that it's happening a year after the wall was made plain, and the plain-ification of the wall seemed to be a quick fix. Anyway, here's a wall update:

Media and staff previews took place last night. Obviously every review is saying it's the best thing since sliced bread for now... https://www.facebook.com/PlopsalandDePanne/posts/4155151537904071 Does look intense for a Mack though

Graffiti wall update: On weekends over ParkVibes, a graffiti artist will be doing live painting on this wall. Nearby, an Easter Egg littered wrap around of some of the grabbing machines has occured:

With all the recent exciting 2022 announcements, it's easy to forget 2021 is a thing. Ride to Happiness is soft opening from 1st July, and officially opening on 22nd... https://www.plopsalanddepanne.be/nl/evenementen/ride-happiness-trial-runs

*blows dust off topic* Huzzah, some updates! Well, update. Ish. A 'Construction Site. Keep Out' sign has appeared at Creek Freak Massacre. A sign that work is happening in there and the park hope to re-open it this year? I know the park were considering a few different ideas given the uncertainty around Covid. But with things looking a bit more promising, presumably indoor mazes will be a thing again this year. In more rumour-y things, I saw a group of people with Hi-Vis jackets going into the compound next to Jungle Escape. Some of those people had 'UVE' jackets - Unlocked Vision Entertainments. They've worked with Thorpe a few times recently, including the Fearstival Arena and related fire show, the 2019 endings of Platform 15 and Living Nightmare, as well as Jungle Escape and I think Black Mirror too. Could mean something, could mean nothing. Best case scenario would see some sort of work happening to the Jungle Escape building for Fright Nights. Fingers crossed.

Popped to Thorpe briefly to check out ParkVibes. It's nice to see a new event with stuff happening all over the park. It's pretty simple stuff, but it shouldn't be understated the importance of spreading the event around the park (issues which Fright Nights has had in the past, for example). But honestly, it's not for me. I wasn't a fan of any of the music overlays, from the entrance remix done by IMA Score, to all the rap / festival themed ones that have appeared on certain rides. Probably the best one is the rap that occurs round Rumba RAPids, and even then, I found it on the wrong side of cringey despite its catchiness. My worry is some of the new announcements make the park feel a bit fairgroundy. It's nice that there's entertainment around (dancers, singers, etc). It adds a bit of atmosphere and mixes the day up a bit. It's fine that I don't like the event as it's not for me and it's not something that would interest me. I just hope that the people who it is targeted at do end visiting and enjoying it, otherwise it's a bit of a miss. Some 2021 updates: -Vortex and Samurai are back open. -The picnic tent has shrunk in size, but still exists -There's a piece of 'graffiti artwork' coming to the ugly wall opposite Ghost Train. Watch this space?

Whoops, I lie. It is just a 90º corner turn thing. Not sure how it's unique in Europe, when I'm fairly certain it exists on other rides, but oh well... There is also some updates about Toutatis, the Intamin multi launch. Some concept art: And some reminders about the statistics: Sources: https://www.facebook.com/ParcsActus https://www.dimensionparcs.fr/france/parc-asterix/parc-asterix-2023-toutatis/

The sole Gravity Group woodie I've done (Wood Express at Parc Saint Paul) was hampered in part by the restraints, so I remain cautious over them. I wasn't particularly impressed with Zeus on my rides last year and I know it's certainly split opinion as it's gotten older. Hopefully this brings it back to more universal praise. Also, for confirmation: the first bullet point suggests a 90º degree first drop.

Tonnerre de Zeus is being renovated for next year, and renamed to Tonnerre 2 Zeus: -Unique to Europe 90º bump -2 high speed turns -2 new 'bumps' -14 airtime moments -New trains (with "inverted seats" on the last car - maybe backward facing car?) -A tunnel with special effects Interesting scenario, but not sure I'm a fan of the new restraints...

Well it would make this video relevant again: Gosh, 2010 Thorpe really was the time when Stranger Things happened...

The station building for next year's new Zierer Force coaster, Farmyard Flyer, is complete: This is a small family coaster which serves as an extension to the Tornado Springs area.

Very nice. Many similarities between this and Lech at Legendia, which is a fantastic ride. More of this please.

So the audio now plays out like a radio station? I mean, stuff like that can work (see: Amity Cove / WWTP), but I'm not sure it fits here. But heyho, whatever. Maybe people will like it. tbh I would have been happy if they literally just used the Swarm Invasion loop from last year. An evolution of the old soundtrack that worked. Not a fan of shoehorning everything around the area into the audio. It feels desperate / awkward, rather than just letting everything flow. For the obvious comparison, it's not like WWTP Radio tries to shoehorn in all the theming features around, because it doesn't need to. It's the same with the Ghost Train sections added this year. There's loads of heavy-handed, shoehorned sentences chucked in to try and fill in gaps and problems and issues. Just feels awkward and doesn't work for me. Maybe the wider audience / new visitors will respond to it much better. But from my perspective, it feels very forced and janky. For what it's worth, I've always liked Swarm's area. I know people aren't fans of the basic nature it has of chucking vehicles around and such. But I like the crude simplicity of it. The Swarm are flying aliens, so of course things like planes and helicopters (flying things) will have been targeted. Emergency services bring safety, but The Swarm have attacked the fire, police and ambulance services, so they're not safe. A church is usually thought of as a safe haven, but that's been ripped apart and almost serves as the base of The Swarm. It's simple, crude and not very subtle. But it conveys the message and theme effectively: we're in an apocalypse and no where is safe. And that's fine.

Really and truthfully, the area theme for Swarm makes no sense. At face value, it seems to be some sort of attack from alien creatures that can fly. They've bought down planes and helicopters because they own the sky. The emergency services are under attack and useless too. Great. But, if you follow the story laid out by the TV screens, this mysterious attack is happening at Thorpe Park. Okay, cool. But this leads to a variety of questions: Why's there a church at Thorpe Park? Or a billboard advertising paracetamol? (Actually, this is the park with Colossus in, so that makes sense.... ). And why are there TVs reporting the news at a theme park? And why is it being reported in such a blasé fashion? And why are we willingly going to ride these creatures? Obviously I'm going OTT here and this is all light hearted. And none of it really matters, when at its core it's a classic destruction theme. But it highlights again the mish-mash of thoughts that are going on. And if you want to create something that has 'immersive storytelling' throughout, you can't have that going on. The TVs and news report were likely a late-on decision done to try and add something to the queue line to make it more interesting. Arguably the main queue line doesn't need it as there's enough to watch to keep people entertained. I wonder if they've just given up on them after realising sticking TVs in a queue line exposed to all the elements isn't the best idea. On a related note, which I might be incredibly slow in realising, but is the woman from the news reports in the queue line videos...Kay Burley?!

The Lego Mythica area opened last month. I went to Legoland Friday evening for an Annual Passholder event (was very quiet, but largely because of the downpour of rain all day). Flight of the Sky Lion was my first flying theatre and it was pretty decent. A very fast paced experience for the film. At times it would have been nice to just take things in a bit more a 'fly' around (which I hear other such rides do a bit more?). I sometimes struggle with a bit of a motion sickness of some motion simulators, but this was fine, though I felt a bit queazy about 3/4 of the way through. My biggest pet peeve is the fact you can see the edge of the screen at the top, and the roof as a result. It's particularly jarring given the screen extends to the floor, so looking down to fine, but looking towards to top is a bit awkward. Not sure if this is a common problem with flying theatres though..? The queue line, as already pointed out, is pretty dreadful. I hate to think what it's like on a hot day.. The Mythica land is solid as well. Well presented and nice theming, plus bringing attention to a previously quieter part of the park. Definitely think it's much better than the originally planned Lego Movie World would have been too. All in all, an impressive addition to the park. Would recommend giving a shot.

I know @ChessingtonSam mentioned it in the 2021 topic, but Swarm has received new audio, from Nick Hutson: I believe he did the Swarm Invasion audio loop for Fright Nights last year. I quite liked that, so hopefully it's just an extension to that. As Sam pointed out, the telephone box features a snippet of Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe before cutting to a phone ringing. An attempt at humour no doubt, but misses the mark for me... I will be the grumpy git that points out if you want an area / attraction to feature "immersive storytelling", that is something that has to be incorporated from the offset and designed with a lot of care. It's not something that can be retrospectively slapped onto something willy nilly.

Hmmm, I wouldn't say it's gotten continually worse. It's easy to think that, but since about 2019 there's been an improvement in ride uptime generally at Thorpe I'd say, not to mention ride's largely being on fully capacity all the time (which certainly wasn't the case a few years back). However, it certainly didn't get worse at one point. But the bigger issue is that it was never great to start with. If you were to go back 10 years on this forum and look at what people complained about, it would always be about reliability and capacity. The Fastrack situation at Thorpe is pretty dire at the moment. Part of it I think is down to staff not using the system properly; not scanning tickets or taking priority passes. This means that the number of tickets in use is greater than what is actually allocated. Couple that with the fact that the allocation seems to be too high for what the park can cope with at the moment, and it's a recipe for disaster. Given Thorpe are trialling (and will presumably keep) increasing capacity on rides too, I imagine they won't think to reduce Fastrack numbers either. There have definitely been off peak / quieter days. After the Easter break in April, the park was reasonably quiet on weekdays. Same in early May. One difference compared to a normal season though is that the quieter days this year are busier than in previous years. Likely in part due to people not being able to travel, being pent up and wanting days out, etc. June weekdays are never exactly quiet, with university students usually finished and Thorpe being the prime target market for them. Expand that to people want a day out with nice weather for summer, and they're livelier days. Don't get me wrong, they were never as bad as they've been recently, but they certainly weren't dead quiet either. Next month I fear will be the worst. School trips seem to be happening again, and I imagine there will be a school trip season happening for the parks this year. They're a nightmare at the best of times...

I'm of the understanding that the trial of no gaps between groups is happening on appropriate Thorpe rides; that is, Colossus, Walking Dead and Tidal Wave in particular. Why Colossus was still leaving a gap between groups is anyone's guess. Not quite sure what the rule is on Saw and Inferno as to whether they'll be seating groups of 2 side by side again. In other news, Vortex is currently closed and I believe will be down for quite a while.

Sounds like the park / higher up Merlin H&S teams have done appropriate risk assessments and the like and decided now is the time to see if this works. It's strange timing given it occurs around the time the government will almost-definitely announce a delay to the next lockdown easing. But possibly coincidental too. Hopefully the park don't receive too much backlash over it. For what it's worth, I think social distancing on rides is a pretty pointless concept. If someone has Covid and is sat at the front of a coaster train going 50mph, for example, it doesn't matter if you're sat in the row behind them or the back of train, you're still probably going to come into contact with particles that they may spread. And even then, if you're outside and wearing masks, the likelihood of transmission is extremely low. With all the information we have, social distancing on rides should have been scrapped long ago. If not the back end of last year, definitely at the start of this season. At this point, it's really only something that's being done for show.

The ultimate issue with Merlin's RAP system is that so many people use it. Getting a system that is used and works properly (be that the current system Thorpe have, but staff actually filling out cards properly, or a Qbot/virtual queue system, or something else) is only half the battle. The RAP system, along with free carer tickets, etc, is essential to allow everyone to go and enjoy the parks regardless of any disabilities they may have. As much as people may bemoan the impact the poor running of those systems impacts that standard guest, it is effecting those who actually need RAPs much more, and really the parks are failing them. That's a huge problem.

I get why people are annoyed with Merlin. But at the same time, isn't this what businesses do? If a supermarket has a monopoly on an area, and another supermarket comes and tries to set a branch up, wouldn't the original supermarket do whatever it could to stop that supermarket marching in on its territory? You could argue as well that Merlin's reasoning is pretty fair, given they seem to arguing against an issue with how the application was submitted, as opposed to the application itself (as I understand it). Can see why they'd be miffed if they want a level playing field in that respect, even if it is a low move from them. In some twisted way, this kind of is a positive thing, no? It shows that Merlin see the London Resort as a more credible and possible thing now. If they didn't think this would happen, then surely they wouldn't waste their time with this. I still am in the 'I'll believe it when I see it' camp, but yeah, it's a positive thing in some way. Also, it's not exactly like Merlin are trying to steamroll a tiny family business and make them bankrupt, they're going against another huge company with a ton of money too. Ultimately, it's a bit of a low blow move, but it's business.

Park is clearly very busy, with continual extended closing hours. The once-4pm closes have been 5 or 6pm, with tomorrow a 7pm closure, and the weekend 8pm. Next week has been pushed to 5pm but I expect that will probably be extended again at some point:

I'm hoping that the Fright Nights hours listed at the moment (9pm close) are just conservative because of potential changes that could happen because of Covid and those restrictions. We've seen that under normal circumstances there's demand for 10pm closes, and if current form is to go on, the park is going to be popular enough to demand it.

Thorpe have announced that every day up to 20th June will see closing extended by an hour, meaning 6pm closes on weekdays and 7pm closes on weekends. The park looked extremely busy today with many '90+ min' queues advertised. It's a catch 22 situation at the moment - it's good to see the park popular and attraction people, but a shame to see they don't seem to be able to handle the crowds fully. Currently it is back to the 5pm/6pm cycle from the 21st, which is when the ParkVibes event is due to start. I expect those hours have yet to be finalised and will be at least 6pm every day...hopefully longer.