JoshC.

The name is confirmed to be Kondaa It made its first test run a couple of weeks back: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=external&v=381612839605104 It's also expected that it will form an entirely new area (which Walibi Belgium call Worlds), rather than being an extension to the neighbouring Exotic World. All very exciting stuff.

However you're celebrating, in whatever Tier, TPM wishes you all a Merry Christmas. Hope you're staying healthy, and looking forward to a, hopefully, more enjoyable 2021! Now get off TPM, ignore that silly ride game for a day 😉, and get on that Zoom call with those family members who you can't meet today (whether you want to or not!)

Depth Charge (3) Detonator: Bomb's Away (3) Flying Fish (3) King Pig's Wild Hog Dodgems (3) Mr. Monkey's Banana Ride (3) Quantum (3) Rocky Express (3) Rumba Rapids (3) Rush (4) Samurai (3) Saw - The Ride (3) Stealth (3) Storm in a Teacup (3) Tidal Wave (3) Timber Tug Boat (2) Vortex (3) Stealth - TTB + Make it sillier

I guess the main one these days is the controversy which occurred earlier in the year, with people involved in the channel having allegations against them. Obviously they're not (actively) involved any more, but Shawn's handling of it was certainly far from good, in my opinion. And this even went further with some, less serious, allegations against Shawn's views, and how he acts in person to some people. Even before then, there was this anti-TPWW thing. I wonder if part of it was a little bit of envy/jealousy being thrown against him, because he was one of the first theme park vloggers, and so when it became mainstream, he was already huge. But I also think a part of it is down to how he has acted in person to some people, and it's just spiralled from there. My personal opinion is that he's obviously got a good set up which works for him, and something like that takes hard work and doesn't happen on a whim. But the past year has shown he doesn't quite know how to handle himself in difficult situations. And I'm not quite sure he has a grasp on how to handle himself around others, in that he doesn't realise how big an influence he has in person, as well as online.

Looks like only a toilet block and store cupboard have been affected, which is a good early sign considered how bad it could have been... https://www.facebook.com/DraytonManorPark/posts/10158136932472669?__cft__[0]=AZXSYkSN7nCFRlOoRuG3wsKqKZVEnmdNTqYNNSpU3SW-XqXRs1ImKigx8w45DwAuV-yulVcQEd5sBVwTE-wuMQZuMjWPCd6w6fqMOQxnlXx1KaDB7iRz-56JqU6fdBJexSOI6C60ggAJCCFQ0pZ6sKyA3PIzQJXj1EiVS1hayPjG9O3F5NC26l3AKbwAMZOdB6M&__tn__=%2CO%2CP-R

At least it happened whilst the park was not open. If the park had been open at the time this could be a very different story.. Hopefully any damage is minimal. If not, who knows what state the park will be in next year.

In fairness, attractions can only do so much to enforce the guidance given from the government. Realistically, no attraction is going to check the address of every person, and then check what tier that address is in. It's the same for restaurants: no restaurant is going to be actively checking that every person in a group is from the same household. This conversation is presumably coming from Theme Park WorldWide's visit to the park, despite the fact Shawn lives in a Tier 3 area and the park is in Tier 2, with his justification being 'TPWW forms his sole income, so he's travelled for work'. If you live in a Tier 3 area, you are told to avoid travelling, but you are not banned from it. So Shawn/TPWW aren't breaking any rules. Attractions and venues can, in theory, stop them from entering under their own T&Cs, but almost definitely wouldn't unless people were causing issues. Ultimately, it's a bending of the rules, not a breaking of them, and you could argue it's morally a grey area. And it shows how easy it is to exploit the government's recommendations, and how important it is for every single person to play their part, and use their own judgement and common sense.

I believe there's some sort of Tesla thing going on there at the moment, and has been for a couple of weeks. I also think the car park was used a temporary Covid testing site for a day or two a few weeks back.

I still maintain that the new prices represent good value for money if you take advantage of everything it offers. I think one issue is that people primarily buy the Merlin Annual Pass to visit the parks, and see the midways as "freebies" / bonuses, that they'll only visit because they get them for free, not using the pass to visit them because they were going to anyway. So then people see the high price and think it's very high because of how they view it. But ultimately, they have always been too cheap considering the large numbers of people who buy them. They've been in need of having to balance things up. The trouble is, if and when they did that, it was never going to go down well because people would see a price increase and no perk increase. My main issue with the new Gold and Platinum passes is I don't see why anyone would ever really want to pay extra for the Platinum Pass? The bonuses you get are: -You can visit the park on bank holiday weekends -You get three more £5 Fastrack vouchers -You get three Share the Fun vouchers (meaning 3 friends get to visit a park for £15, rather than the £30-ish online price) -You can pre-book three more days per attraction I don't see how those perks are worth £80 extra (after the sale)? I don't even see how they're worth £40 extra right now? Maybe the Platinum Pass will have more special event perks or something, but I just don't see it. So yeah, Gold is really good. Platinum, if it existed by itself would be good but expensive, but really seems pointless to me?

I think it's time to state this simply. There has been no confirmation by the park that Tomb Blaster is receiving any work, or a re-theme. It might happen, it might not. Until then, rumours are just that: rumours. It doesn't matter if Nick Hutson, Theme Park Giraffe, Doughnut Dan, Gil Lible or Professor Pepsi Burp have "confirmed" or said stuff. The best thing to do is to wait until a park confirms something before believing it. Until then, it's best to take anything else with a pinch of salt and not think something is definitely happening just because some guy said so.

I would have thought it would have been for seats to be painted / themed / styled / whatever off site / by the manufacturer, so there's a possibility that might be the final finish. But yeah, it's quite jarring and not the best look. And Chessington have done weirder things than theming seats on-site before, so wouldn't count it out just yet.

Theming still isn't finished yet and I think it looks pretty good. Looking forward to seeing the final outcome with it tbh!

Trappers Trail (5) Dino Bumper Boats(5) Mrs hippos fungle safari/ drive in the country (5) Chief rangers Carousel (5) Magic Mill/ tropical travels (5) Wicked witches Haunt/ Phantom Phantasia (5) Dare Devil Drivers (5) Viking Rowers (5) Bronko Bikes (5) Canada Creek Railway(5) Treasure Island train)5) Loggers Leap(8) Calgary stampede(5) Hudson river Rafters (5) Eclipse (3) Crazy golf(5) Dbgt (5) water buses (5) The Farm (5) Roller Rink (5) Space station Zero (5) cine 180 (5) Octopus garden (5) carousel Kingdom (5) Slammer (4) Eclipse + Slammer - I'd suggest when the reset comes to have all rides on 3 points rather than 5, otherwise this game will be going on longer than Thorpe's wait for a new coaster...

I guess it will all depend on the wording of the contracts and things like that. With something like Olympia, I'd have thought the contract would be for bringing the coaster for 5 (or however many) events, with an expectation of annual events. But obviously if an event doesn't run in a specified year, then the ride can't be bought to the event, so it wouldn't count. With the parks, their contracts would count years/seasons, and since the attraction is in situ all the time, it would be different. ie, the contract would be for the ride to be in situ for 5 years, not necessarily for it to run 5 years. This is where the wording and fine print of the contracts would come into play. Could an IP specify they want an attraction to run a minimum number of days in a season? Would Merlin agree to that? Does the IP still get paid if an attraction doesn't open? To what extent does having an attraction closed affect the brand name of an IP (I'd suspect it's minimal, but who knows)? All of these things could be different for different IPs too. I remember when Saw first opened that there were rumours floating around that Lionsgate had stated that if less than 90% of the special effects were working, the ride had to be closed until they were fixed. I believe it was absolute rubbish, but many people believed it. Personally, I'd expect the set up to be pretty basic at its heart. Thorpe/Merlin pay a fixed amount each year, and the IP get a certain percentage of the profit of merchandise related to that IP too. That would last x amount of years, and then discussions would reopen. Obviously there'd be other stuff, but that'd be the heart of it. I could be way off of course, but just what seems sensible. At this point, with Ghost Train, I'd've thought that Derren would rather not have it run a year beyond the original planned contract ending, and just cut ties with it. It certainly feels like he's no longer connected with the project.

As others have said, I think this is still a pretty solid offering, especially given the free parking and minimal restrictions (bank holidays and Halloween). At £120, plus free parking and discount, you're looking at needing to visit 4-5 times before it becomes worthwhile (assuming you use discounts for entry otherwise). That's fairly standard and in line up with other individual park passes across Europe. Plus, being an Annual Pass (ie - valid for 12 months rather than till end of season) is a much better option. A Season Pass is ultimately flawed in that its sale value becomes less as time goes on. Pay the price in March and get access all season, or pay the same price in September and get access for two months (minus exclusions). The issue with Thorpe and Merlin is they have aggressively focused on trying to get as many people have passes. They'll have felt the problems with that this year, but it's always an issue. With such a large number of passholders, it's harder to predict numbers for each day (as they didn't have to pre book). You're also left with a larger market who think they're special and should be rewarded for their loyalty. The trouble there is with such a large number of people, any perks aren't actually that special as they're accessible to so many people.. The main issue is the pre-booking thing. For whatever reason, Thorpe's system ultimately didn't work this year (as pre booking wasn't checked for passholders). Hopefully they have a better checking system, and have an improved method for checking numbers. I wouldn't be surprised if Merlin are hoping to a degree that come summer time they can have less restricted numbers at their parks and the passholder prebook can become relaxed / not a necessity.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves; nothing has been announced regarding a Tomb Blaster re-style into Forbidden Tomb for 2021 by the park. If it does happen, it will probably be as cheaply done as this year's, ahem, "upgrade", and not really be an improvement. I imagine they'd probably just turn off the targets and remove the guns, rather than actually remove the targets (see the start of the ride...). I used to like it when enthusiasts who worked in the industry kept quiet about (any potential) future plans, and didn't leak stuff, rather then tell people on the internet so their e-penises can match the size of their egos.

Hard to know how to react to this given we don't know what the replacements for Standard and Premium are (especially given the survey they had a couple of months back, where most options didn't sound good). In principle though, offering this is good idea and does open up more options for some people. And it does mean that we should expect to see all the park open every day during season again (which has been reflected in the already released Thorpe and Towers opening times for 2021). Obviously that's a double-edged sword in that it could lead to other issues, but that's for another topic... Interested to see what the other two offerings are.

Ghost Train's total cost is much less than people believe. Unlike with other major Merlin investments where they push the investment cost with a specific number, they just went for the 'most expensive investment ever' line, which would make it more than Swarm's £18-20m (the number varies depending on which press release you read). An article in the Financial Times quoted £13m, which is the only number we have from any sort of source. I believe the total investment was closer to the £20m mark (I've heard numbers between £17-23m), and that included the fixes and new stuff in 2017. But take that for what you will. Ultimately, Ghost Train was a major investment for the park. It came when a major investment should have (Thorpe and Merlin were doing 4 year investment cycles then), and they spent a lot of money on it. It's turned out bad for a variety of reasons, and I see why people don't count it as a major investment. But when it comes down to it, it was.

I think my favourite would have to be Lost Gravity's. And on the leftmost seat, it is just insane! Other highlights, in no particular order... Balder Goliath (Walibi Holland) Hyperion Lech Coaster And whilst I'm numb to it a bit, Swarm (and any wing over drop tbf) is pretty damn cool, even if not my favourite. And as an honourable mention, 1066 at Festyland. It's by no means my favourite, but an unassuming drop. In the back row you get a surprising amount of ejector from it, and it's basically a drop off a mini cliff. Quirky.

Trains look great. Ride looks great. Theming looks great. Everything looks great. I've heard the rumours about Mata being the name, but some people seem unconvinced. I'm not sure it's the best name out there, so hoping for something else. But yeah, very much looking forward to this.

The length of the IP contracts vary a lot, seemingly depending on how big an investment the attraction is. They'll have certain clauses and the ability to have pre-determined extensions triggered. I believe Saw was on an initial 5 year contract and had regularly been extended. The Lionsgate and Walking Dead mazes, and I'm a Celebrity, were 3 year contracts, with options of 1 year extensions. Angry Birds I've no clue actually. Walking Dead The Ride is under a separate contract to the mazes. I'd have thought 4 years, but who knows. But yeah, it's very true that it would be easy to retheme it to a generic zombie ride if they wanted to! Specifically for Derren, I've heard the contract was 6 seasons in length, which would put 2021 as the last season potentially. But all that remains to be seen.

I think it's way too early to say either way whether something like this will happen. 1. We still need a vaccine. Yes, there's been great developments announced this week, but there's still a long way to go. 2. When a vaccine is made available, it will (or, at very least, should) be made available to older generations, NHS staff, etc first. The overlap between people who have been given access to the vaccine and people who want to go to the park at March will be small. 3. If you're requiring guests to be vaccinated, staff should be too. And then you encounter the same issue as above. I can definitely see it happening for some events at some point in the future. I think start of season 2021 is too early for the parks to implement that. We could see similar ideas about having to show you've tested negative in the last 48hrs of your visit, for example, if regular testing with quick results (like happening in Manchester at the moment) becomes more of the norm. But then you're relying on the country's testing systems, which has been shown to not be as robust as it needs to be. With the situation changing so much and developments moving rapidly, I don't think we can really say what the 2021 season will look like in terms of Covid-regulations until February at the earliest. There's just way too many variables at this point.

Yes, wooden coasters need more maintenance. But having to shut the ride down for multiple days multiple times throughout (half of) a season, and then having to spend a significant amount of money on further maintenance over a closed season is nor normal for a wooden coaster.

Wicker Man has had several reliability issues this year, having multiple periods where it's been closed for a few days (and I'm sure there was one instance where it was down for over a week). That's due to the need for retracking. Many Towers regulars have said Wicker Man has run noticeably slower and / or rougher at points this year too. I've heard rumours they're spending a lot of money (ie in the millions) on Wicker Man this year to help rectify the problem. So hopefully those reliability issues should be a thing of the past. But even then, should Merlin really have to spend millions on a ride that's been running for 3 seasons? As for an RMC at Thorpe, it's fair to say the engineering and maintenance challenges would be very different if they opted for a hybrid. And there's a level of unknown about how reliable the raptors would be in the long term. So there's elements of risk with that investment, but then again, there is with any investment. Just whether Thorpe and Merlin see it as worth the risk.

If the ride has a long cycle, I wonder if they'll add a pre show so that the experience time is increased? Though I've begun to tire of Merlin's pre shows, it's certainly an option, and helps leave people more satisfied after a long waiting time. Sure, you can view it as a 'one in, one out' deal. But medium sized, established parks rarely see a new major ride outright increase the number of attractions they have anyways. It usually ends up that we see a 'one in, one out' thing, or the removal of some smaller stuff as a result. We're getting a new family ride, thrilling enough that most people can enjoy it, replacing an aged, expensive-to-maintain, thrill ride long past its best. Maybe I'm a little biased as I don't ride top spins, but I really can't grasp the situation as a negative.