JoshC.

So it appears that the Ramses dark ride is gone, and a big new investment is taking its place next year: https://www.facebook.com/parkstaste/posts/938052480313010 Some rumours suggest a Jumanji family roller coaster, with indoor and outdoor sections.

If you go to the Island Ticket Centre (the building to the left of the entrance arch), you can book time slots there using the self service machines. Alternatively, there are posters around the park with QR codes you scan. These are outside the entrances of the attractions, and there's usually a set in the Dome or outside the Dome, near guest services. The slots usually go quite quickly so it's probably better to get them towards the start of the day.

It's a thing. A very rare thing, but a thing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquagenic_urticaria Here's an interesting article about someone who suffers with the 'allergy': https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160915-the-woman-who-is-allergic-to-water Calling it an allergy probably isn't the most medically accurate word, but it's a fair description of the reaction that occurs.

I think 2, but I didn't stick around long enough or have a good enough look to say that with certainty. I believe there were issues with some delivery issues for parts related to the fire effect, so I don't think it's actually installed / set up. It's possible they might have been able to install it whilst the ride was closed, but I doubt it. So I expect we won't actually see it until next year now. When it is used, I'd expect the plan is for it to happen all the time, rather than just peak periods.

Yep, was on park earlier and can confirm it opened around lunchtime. Unsurprisingly attracted a very long queue. I'd estimate 2.5-3hrs, wait no, sorry, 90mins+ based on how it's operated currently.

This is what I feared was the case. I also think that last year the maximum capacity was significantly lower at first, and slowly climbed up. Not sure whether this year's capacity is the same as the highest capacity we saw last year, but in any case, I don't think we ever saw the park 'full' last year either? It's a massive shot in the foot for the park. And as said earlier, I think the parks now need to take stock and either reduce capacity of their parks or increase ride capacity again. They simply cannot carry on in their current form imo

Thorpe have submitted a planning application(!) regarding the entrance plaza. It's nothing exciting, just confirming that the current set up is to be used for this year and that they're looking at improving it: https://www.facebook.com/thorpeparkmania/posts/10165652602070624

I'm hearing that if all goes well it should open within the next few days. As many will suggest, if a ride closes and no visible work is happening, it usually means they're waiting on a part. If to say the part needed to be made to order, that can take a while. So with work now going on at the ride, that suggests a pretty quick turnaround which is good to see. Rotten luck that it had to be closed during the hottest, busiest week of the year.

I believe it is currently waiting on a part. I think it's been removed from the app, so will probably be down for a while. Rotten timing given the weather and it being half term. This is a dreadful idea in my opinion. Despite what many people think, queue prediction is hard. Few parks actually manage to do it well in my opinion. At the moment, it is even more volatile thanks to Covid and social distancing (or lack thereof). I imagine this idea is being tried for the following reasons: 1. They don't know what the queue times are when they're very long 2. They're getting a lot of complaints because of long advertised queue times When it comes to solving problem 1, there's not much they can do short term. The park is busy, queues will be long. But that in itself is a problem. A quick look on social media suggests that plenty of people feel that numbers aren't being restricted enough for Covid. Should the park, in future, be restricting numbers more? Should they now be looking at relaxing social distancing measures on rides (filling up all seats / rows)? The second problem is more insightful to their thought process. Anyone who's filled out one of the park's survey machines will know that you're asked a question to the effect of 'Did queueing spoil your day?'. This is a pretty big KPI that all the Merlin parks (and likely parks outside of Merlin) are interested in. Presumably, at the moment, they're getting a very high percentage of people answering "Yes" to 'Did queueing spoil your day?'. They've probably also noticed that "Rides per head" (the average number of rides each person has ridden) is low. As such, one possible conclusion that could be drawn is that "People aren't riding rides and saying that queueing has spoilt their day. We're advertising long queue times, so maybe people are put off by the long queue times". The solution there is then to not advertise long queue times, but instead advertise a minimum waiting time. That might not be what has happened. To be honest, I'd be surprised if there's people looking into KPI scores and probing in that way to come to that conclusion in that way. But it's a possible thought process. Equally, it could just be that they're getting a ton of complaints of 'The queues are all saying they're 2 hours'. As Matt says, people will not see the '+' here, and just assume a 90 minute queue. People leave common sense at the door when going to a theme park. There's another problem I've skirted around here. Operations in general. In my experience this year, they've been a mixed bag. Certainly not as bad as they have been in recent years, but not as good as they should be. Why that is, I don't know. But they need to come up with practical solutions to be able to get more consistent operations that are sensible and in line with what the rides can achieve, and with what the park needs. As for the more specific topic at hand... 1. If this is a trial to see if '90+' works, I hope they see it doesn't work, and they see that quickly. 2. If there's concerns about accuracy, introduce broader time frames, especially for higher values. 3. Work on actually make queue times accurate. More on this below. 4. The park need to understand that, ultimately, long queues are happening To expand on these points... 2. Perhaps they should introduce ranges like '90-100', '100-120', '120-150', '150-180'. When a queue is at that high level, it doesn't matter if it's 120 or 140 really, it's still a 2-2.5hour commitment of your day. Next to no one is going to enter a 140 minute queue, and then check their watch just before boarding and go 'Ooh, well that queue only took us 137 minutes, great job!' 3. I'm sure some remember a trial that happened on Saw a few years back to improve queue time accuracy. This would display queue times accurate to the minute, rather than in increments of 5-10 minutes. There's more details on this technology, provided by a company call Headmapper, here: http://www.headmapper.com/case-studies Interestingly, there is also a report which outlines how successful the trial was in 2015, which is largely positive. The technology was again used in 2017 for another trial. One reason why it didn't seem to carry on was costs involved with the product. Another is because it's a bit of faffy system which requires fixed cameras at certain locations (when usually, cameras are need to be moveable for security purposes)....so it would involve the costly installation of more cameras. So if the park really wants to improve queue accuracy and have a positive impact on people's day out, they could put their money where their mouth is and fork out for this. But then that still doesn't address the above point. And why spend out so much for something that doesn't tackle all the issues here. There are alternatives though, which are much cheaper. However, getting people within the park to get on board with the idea that queue accuracy is important is much harder than one might expect. So unless there's a shift in philosophy on that, this will never happen. 4. I'm not saying that the park don't know that long queues happen, or that they're bad or anything. But from my experience, there's a certain fear in acknowledging that the park will have long queues, and that this impacts that all important aforementioned KPI. Instead, there's an over-focus on improving queue accuracy, short term incentives to ride staff for improving throughputs and other weird stuff. Instead, there should be an acceptance that queues will be long as it stands and looking at ways to sustainably ensure that this causes minimal impact to someone's day. This should include making queues more interesting to be in, investing in the park so there's more things to do and making the park a more pleasant place to be in outside of the rides. And that should happen on top of the park improving queue accuracy and throughputs. Even if that should be a secondary focus. --- Wow, that was a bit of rambling rant. I'm sure some people on here know this is something I've had prior involvement in in one way or another. and even if not, it's probably clear I have some level of interest in this at a deeper level. Obviously there's many issues here, and many of them are long term, costly things to sort out. It's worth looking at short term alternatives, as well as little things that can be trialled in the short term to get a gauge on if they work. But honestly, this is the equivalent of sticking a used plaster on a wound that needs stitches. In short, the park need to acknowledge that they will always have long queue times, invest in the park to improve the number of things people can do, have queue lines be more interesting to be in and put some actual thought into how to estimate queue lengths over just picking a number out of thin air

Efteling's long-term outline plan (up to 2030) has finally been approved, roughly six years after it was first conceived, and 3 years after the first plans went in: The plan in particular includes an extension to the park itself, as crudely outlined here: Some may remember talks of a circus themed area, including a launch coaster, being the plan for part of this area, with that originally hoped to open in 2020 or 2021. I believe this is still on the table (some rumours even suggest the project has been tendered and track manufactured). However, because of the financial impacts of the pandemic, don't expect that, or nay big new things, any time soon, as everything is currently on hold, as outlined in this new video from the park: Efteling is a huge park and has a huge draw. In 2017-2019, they were getting over 5.2 million visitors each year. Covid will have slashed those numbers significantly. Without investment, and with all restrictions lifted, I'd imagine they would still easily get back to at least 4.5 million visitors a year. But with competition in the Netherlands and Belgium ever improving, and it being a dense market, I do feel that if they want to get back to pre-pandemic numbers quicker, a big investment should happen sooner rather than later.

There were rumours that Walliams World was meant to be a two-year investment. First year, have the basic area retheme and star attraction of the area, second year extra stuff. So I guess there's an off chance that the Driving School was planned to be rethemed for the second year, or scrapped for new Walliams rides. Whether that was ever the plan, or if it still is the plan after Covid, is anyone's guess right now.

It's interesting, I've seen this said a lot. However, I'm pretty certain that none of the walls move at all! I could be mistaken, but I am very much under the impression that everything (aside from doors, obviously) are fixed. But since so many people are saying walls move, it shows how disorientating and well done the actual 'labyrinth' sections are.

Interestingly, I heard that Thorpe were the first park to come up with the idea of running an Oktoberfest event (discussions took place during 2019). However, they weren't given the budget to execute it, so it was never part of their (pre-Covid) 2020 line up. At some point, Towers then went for it, and then with all the changes that happened due to Covid, Thorpe had enough budget to do some form of Oktoberfest event. Quite how and when Towers got the Oktoberfest idea is a little up for debate. I heard one version of the story that said Thorpe came up with the idea, but Towers' size and scope meant they were effectively given it. Others that it was just a coincidence. I don't see the problem with the parks sharing events, as long as they're different enough. No one complains that they both have Halloween events, for example. My main, albeit slightly stupid, worry with the ParkVibes event is that it starts right after Towers' Mardi Gras finishes. Could that just have been done so there's no overlap? Or is it because a lot of the external food stalls are the same and just going from one location to the next? Also feels weird that there's no event happening in August.

Drone footage: https://www.facebook.com/339404516145478/videos/202303211743707

Testing, 1, 2, testing...

Oh my, this thing. I rode it today, and I think for the first time, I really regretted it. Timed tickets I don't know what happened earlier, but they didn't seem to work. We had 2-2.30pm entry, got in the queue at 2.30, and weren't on the ride till 3pm. People with 2.30-3pm time slots weren't being let in until almost 3pm, for reasons I will never understand. Operations It seems to be 10-15 people per train (a far cry from the 58 capacity) Pre show It's nice to experience this without being smashed in with 50 other people. Audio seemed a bit clearer too. Pre show 2 Before going into the Hanging Carriage scene, there's a spiel from an actor. It's pretty bad, as it feels like it was written by someone in a minute who was told to try and tie up all the plot holes. It ham-fists an explanation for the Victorian-tube carriage transition, the need for the VR and loads of other stuff. But it's just awkward. Scene 1 The usual Scene 2 Audio seemed better and louder (felt particularly strong from behind the train fronts), but the new script trying to tie everything together feels awkward again. Asking people for a code to escape (given in pre show 2) just feels bad. Scene 3 We seemed to be in some sort of short shutdown / delay. This would usually be manageable with the holding sequence, but it seemed to be shortened down? I swear in the holding sequence, a demon would pick up loads of the characters you can see and drag them away. Ended up waiting for a while, even getting a 'please remove your headset' message for a while, before setting off again. The motion base wasn't working, so no fun gentle rocking as we fell to oblivion. The video message from Derren played on the screens afterwards, but no audio. Scene 4 This is incredibly awkward now. With no Picsolve green screen photo point in the queue, it makes no sense why we're looking at photos. The new story means the actor says something about a finalising some parts of our experience to make sure we're all okay or something. There's no effort to get people to look at the ouija board. The demon scene happens (yay, at least that's there!), but it feels awkward when everyone is away from it and not invested in it. Oh, and the floorboards don't shake. Obviously I had a bit of a bad run with a shutdown and broken effects. And it's nice to see they've tried something, and improved some audio. But the new story doesn't work and it feels like a dreadful attempt at trying to be clever, when really all it does is make you cringe. It's a shame as there has always been so much potential with this, and this is a step in the wrong direction in my opinion. A good point to raise though: all the staff throughout the attraction were good. They were doing the best they could with the tools they have. The script and story is dodgy, but the actors do what they can with it. The ride hosts seemed friendly. Whether this is because the attraction being open is still a novelty and it's like 'new ride vibes' is hard to tell. But for now, credit where it's due, fair play to them for that. Really and truthfully, I do think they should have taken the hit with this. Kept it closed forever more, blamed Covid, paid off the rest of the contract with Derren and just taken the loss. I'd rather it sit dormant for a while and be an elephant in the room, than give people the half hearted, shell of an idea, experience it's giving now.

Oooooh, I think I get the honour of writing the first full Black Mirror Labyrinth review online. What an exclusive! I should start by giving a disclaimer: Yes, I attended a preview event which invites celebrities and influencers, and the intention of these events is for such people to share positive thoughts about the experience. If you want to see that stuff, check out TPM's social pages, and a review will be live on our website later. What follows is a balanced reflection of my genuine thoughts of the experience. As always, whenever I attend these events, I try to give my feedback to staff/managers/creators too, good, bad, or ugly... Slight spoilers follow. --- "It's...interesting" That was my immediate reaction. It doesn't sound very positive, but it's also not very negative either. I guess a good way of describing it is a grown up Hocus Pocus Hall. And that's not a bad thing. It's a multi-route experience, with dead ends and multiple special effects. There is a mirror maze in there, yes, but that is just one part of the experience. Your name and face is used at a couple of points too. The story is that the Labyrinth is an AI creation which has become self aware. It's stolen all its information about you, and now wants to 'delete' you. So the premise is original, but slightly Black Mirror in tone. It's a fun experience with some quirky moments. We got lost a few times. We became disoriented. There were some moments which were a bit of a surprise. There's nothing special, but it all works and flows pretty nicely. After having done the experience twice, though, I'm not clambering to do it again any time soon. That's just the nature of this experience - there's not enough multiple routes to keep it completely fresh each time, and it is kind of 'one and done'. That's not a bad thing really, as it is an enjoyable enough experience in its own right, but I don't think it's what Thorpe need right now. Some assorted Q&As: -Is it scary? No. And I wonder if that will lead to complaints with people expecting a FN like maze... -What is batching like? You're batched in your household group exclusively. And it seems like it will be a group every 90 seconds. -What would batching be like without Covid? It seems like there's space for 12 people per group normally. That would give a throughput of 480pph in theory. Bog standard for a Merlin maze really. -What are Covid rules like? This is a weird one. You have to remove your mask whilst your photo is taken (this is for a special effect). And inside you naturally end up touching things as you find your way round, and you may come into close contact with people due to the non-linear route. I expect this may make some people feel uncomfortable. Some fun facts: -Figment Productions have been involved with parts of the experience -The experience was rethought and had extra money put into it last year, since they had extra time -Though nowhere near as much was invested as in a new ride, a lot more was invested in this compared to a Fright Nights maze (about 7-10 times the budget of a maze I believe) -There's a couple of little Easter eggs about (and some I probably missed) There's a couple of photos on TPM's Facebook, I won't post them here because effort. So all in all, the premise of the experience is interesting. As I say, it's not something I'm itching to get back to doing again, but it's a fun experience. It's another indoor experience for the park, which is needed, but ultimately it is very much a 'one..possibly two... and done' type thing, which is perhaps not what the park needed. I'm very much worried about how this will cope with the crowds. It seems like an operational headache. However, given it's going to be Timed Tickets for a while, and it should be pretty reliable, hopefully it means physical wait times are minimal for now, if done right. So definitely worth giving it a crack when you're next on park.

Is 'she' a Pokemon?

It really is a mystery why the train arm effect didn't work reliably. In theory it should be a very simple effect, but I think that it was just overcomplicated to try and 'fit' in with everything else, leading to it having a mind of its own and just being temperamental. And in some ways, that's Ghost Train down to a tee. Much of the experience has stuff which, in their own right, should work reasonably well. But put together, it just doesn't work.

Thunderstorm in Chertsey, which meant all outdoor rides have to close. Ghost Train and Angry Birds are also open, but I guess the way the app is programmed means they show up as closed.

Tucked within the consultation plans for Chessington's new land showing attendance of the 4 UK Merlin parks: Unlike with the TEA attendance, I believe these represent accurate numbers (the TEA reported figures are usually fudged to some degree). Each vertical line represents a million visitors. There's a couple of mistakes with the investment timelines, particularly with Thorpe, but it gives a very interesting insight into the state of the Merlin parks. Hard to know whether the 2020 numbers are end of year figures.

Here's a post from Jared on CoasterForce (who also runs Chessington Buzz), which clarifies some points raised at the in-person consultation:

I feel like I'm just spamming at this point, but oh well: https://www.facebook.com/thorpepark/posts/10159147696830867 She watches you when you're queueing She knows when you're irate She knows if you've booked a time slot So book a slot for goodness sake!

Where have I heard these things before? Let me ask my buddy, Derren: "I don't know Josh, I just don't know..."

The trouble with the 4pm closures on weekdays is that the park have had them for so long now, it's hard to know for certain how 5pm weekday closures would be received. There's some logic at the park at the moment though: They've realised people didn't like the fact there were less rides available, so they've temporarily bought in more to see if it works. They've realised people didn't like the fact they closed between 5-6pm on weekends, so they've increased those open hours (though for some reason, they only announce it like a week before...) So either they've realised people don't like 4pm weekday closures, but don't have the budget to extend them, with focus being on the more profitable weekend. Or there isn't a problem with 4pm closures. OR they haven't realised 4pm closures are the problem. There is still the issue of British logic of leaving early, beating the traffic and being home for dinner, yes. But credit where it's due: Towers are at least sticking with later closes this year, and hopefully that shows the demand is there.