JoshC.

I get your point, I do. But how often have Merlin's investment been "good"? How often have the hit the mark and truly got it right? Not often in my opinion. So it's hard to expect a good investment when their track record is so hit-and-miss. I want stuff to be good, I hope for stuff to be good. Doesn't mean I can expect it though. For now, all I can expect is for it to not make things actively worse than they were before: this children's area seems to do that (indeed, the addition of the log flume is a great step forward imo). And honestly, I hate feeling this way. New additions at theme parks should come expectations they'll be fun and great additions. Having a personal expectation set low isn't a good thing. A company such as Merlin do have the ability and staff to be able to make things great. But it just doesn't happen all that often.

In fairness, I expect that any IP will be understanding of the situation and not expect an attraction to open if it's not safe to do so. It may means some renegotiations are had when it comes to money and that, but that'd all depend on the fine wording of the contract.

I guess it comes down to expectations. What have Merlin done over the past 10 years to make anyone think that their attractions should be classed as world class? Even moreso over the past 5 years. Merlin's investments do the job. They're better than quite a few parks, and at an individual park level their larger investments are more regular than quite a lot of other parks (although it has stretched out further admittedly). "It's fine" sums it up quite nicely. We can want Merlin parks to do fantastic things. We can want every park in the world to do fantastic things. But honestly, Merlin don't hit the fantastic mark often, so it just feels unrealistic to expect that. You could argue it's a pessimistic outlook, but equally it's quite realistic imo

Walibi Holland reopened for the first time yesterday. Here's a run down of what they've done: There's an indoor area near their entrance (similar to the Dome at Thorpe, but smaller), which is now divided into two; each side is a one way system. There's similar markings on some pathways There's lots of hand sanitising points everywhere Barriers have been set up outside food places and restaurants to encourage social distancing, and create clear entrances and exits. Their train is only stopping at one of its three stations People are only let into toilets one household (ie group) at a time. After they leave, the toilet block is cleaned. This means there's a staff member constantly in every toilet, and they effectively batch you in. Nice branded signs though Three attractions are closed: Neurogen (VR experience), their dodgems and their Skydiver upcharge attraction. Furthermore, their enterprise and frog hopper rides, which are part of a rethemed area, are not built back up yet. On that topic, here's a look at the newly themed Speed Zone, which looks decent: As for queueing for rides, the park have opted for a virtual queue system. You reserve on your phone, and book a slot, and wait the queue time virtually. Presumably not all rides you have to do this, since some will constantly have no queue. Walibi's QuickPass system utilises virtual queueing (with options of waiting 10%, 50% or 90% of the queue), so it's nothing new to them. Once you wait the entire queue length virtually, you go to the entrance of a ride, a member of staff (stood behind a screen) scans your phone, then you're in and wait very little time. Reports I read said the longest virtual wait was 40mins for Untamed, but the queue once you get in is less than 5. The park also have a small number of phones people can hire for the day, with a €100 deposit. Any cattlepens have had large barriers put in place to allow people to walk through: Goliath Lost Gravity All photos from Looopings It's an interesting set up, especially with the virtual queueing, and some stark differences to Efteling (especially the toilet thing).

Max and Moritz will open on June 20th, with annual pass previews taking place from June 2nd... Also this shows how much of a horrid cattlepen queue this is going to have. Eurgh.

This is a family ride. Not a children's ride. I'm sure children will love the spike and backwards sensation. It's quite unique to them. But you can give that same sensation and give it more of a purpose and make it a bit more entertaining for the whole family. It doesn't help that they've already got another family coaster which, though fun, again is perhaps a little on the tame side for the general family audience.

Wakala is testing: It's growing on me all the more. The ride starts off a bit tame and I'm still not sold on the spike / backwards section, but as an overall package it looks pretty darn good. And the music is a proper winner.

Honestly? Probably not a lot, if anything. I'd imagine they'd have cleared it with the TUV / Dutch Theme Park Association before. There's also the alternative of their 2m pole they can use to check bars, which is hardly much better. As said, the actual physical checking of restraints is almost placebo-like for guests. Once a bar is locked in, it won't unlock unless something is mechanically wrong with the ride. A staff member giving a gentle tug usually won't change that. I'm not sure if Efteling are getting people to pull on their restraints after they've locked to show they're locked, but that's just as good as getting a staff member to do it. Yep, that honesty can't be understated. Every park that opens will do so knowing the experience they're offering is one of damaged limitations. People will want to go for the rides and the escapism, and I'm sure you can get those moments are the rides themselves. But in the greater context, no, it is those constant reminders. One thing I forgot to mention: masks are in no way required at any point in the park. By maintaining social distancing, masks don't add any extra layer of protection. And when you're on rides, masks are unlikely to help protect if someone does have coronavirus. That goes against many parks which have happened / have announced their opening plans.

I guess this could/should go in the corona thread, but sticking it here so I don't forever clog it up. Efteling is back open, and Looopings has a handy look at many of the changes in place. Here's some highlights: The park is covered in these red and white tape markings. Red is 'do not stand here', white is 'stand here in your groups'. These are literally everywhere where people will queue. The park originally went with yellow/black hazard tape everywhere. During their many rehearsal days, this was decided to not be a good idea, hence the change. Attractions with indoor areas / preshow, such as Symbolica and Villa Volta, have numbers on the floor. Groups are told which number to stand on. The numbering system also applies to the park's carousels. Where railings are used in queues, the red/white tape is one the railings. Where possible, cattlepen queues have been demolished and redesigned or shut off. Where cattlepen queues had to remain, screens have been introduced. Their water coaster, Flying Dutchman, has screens in the station to protect staff. Social distancing is in place. There's lots of these 'disinfection stations' around, as well as themed hand sanitiser dispensers across the park. A look at the seating arrangement for Python. Cleaning takes place between rides. Interestingly, Efteling have taken a Disney approach and are no longer checking restraints. They ask you pull them down yourselves, make sure you feel safe and comfortable, and dispatch. Of course, you don't staff to physically check any restraints (the ride's system will confirm if all restraints are locked); staff checking is for peace of mind and to ensure rider comfort in most cases. In the pre-show to their 4D film (yes, that's a thing), boxes have been marked out to show where groups should watch. As for food, there's a greater emphasis on 'grab and go' food, with tables marked off, etc. The park have installed some fun food shoots too: People are encouraged to pay contactlessly / via an app as much as possible too. Other bits: -The music in Joris en de Draak's station is turned off so people can hear staff instructions clearly. -The bag area for Baron 1898 (outside the preshow) is no longer in use. Lockers are still available for €1. I'm not sure if that means you can't have bags in the queue now, but I imagine you can leave them in the station (which was how the ride originally opened). -Most shows are not taking place, except for a couple of acts that take place in the Fairytale Forest. This includes the park's roaming mascots. An interesting scenario which I hadn't thought about yet was what happens during a shutdown. Many people like to leave a queue if a ride suffers a shutdown, but it's physically impossible to maintain social distancing in that case. Be interesting to see what the messaging will be in these scenarios. The Looopings article ends with a quote from Efteling Director Fons Jurgens, who says that whilst he believes all measures in place are necessary, the temporary barriers and red/white tape "hurts" and also said "If you just look at this very honestly, you cannot say that we now offer a top product here."

https://www.themeparkinsider.com/flume/202005/7466/ An interesting article about Disney's and Universal's social distancing plans. Effectively, Disney are planning on marking spaces where people cannot stand (as seen already at Disney Shanghai), whereas Universal will be marking spaces where guests can stand. It's a little difference, but given the proximity of the resorts in America and the ever changing situation, it's a shame that a sensible message couldn't happen across both companies.

Indeed, this is just a copy of the generic Merlin one, but with the Merlin logo replace with Madame Tussauds' one (and some purple text changed to red)! It references that staff have a coronavirus-specific training guide too, which I believe is over 60 pages long. Hopefully that's trained out properly...

You seem like the competitive type Mark; why don't you have a crack at winning this one?

Let's do a top 10 water rides, because why not... 1. Chiapas, Phantasialand. It's bloody amazing. 2. River Quest, Phantasialand. One of the few rides to have genuinely terrified me. Not necessarily the best, and when you get wet, you get soaked, but I adore it for the fear factor alone. 3. Excalibur - Secrets of the Dark Forest, Movie Park Germany. I liked this pre-retheme, but after it's retheme, it just feels so much more complete. Really well executed ride with good levels of wetness. 4. Piraña, Efteling. Solid rapids run, always a bit of fun with acceptable amounts of wetness. 5. Loggers Leap, Thorpe. RIP. Great fun; the smell after the tunnel in latter years was never good though.. 6. Kållerado, Liseberg. Rapids ride that starts of really slow before picking up. If the slow start didn't take as long it might be higher.. 7. Splash Jungle Adventure, Energylandia. Another rapids ride. I'm not normally a fan of the bare rapids rides, but I did just really enjoy this one. 8. El Rio, Bobbejaanland. One of the few good things at this terrible park. Solid ride with a decent whirlpool element. 9. Fluch des Pharo, Belantis. Another good ride at a terrible park. Quirky log flume-esque ride with a fun indoor element and a good post-drop section to go with it. 10. Stormforce 10, Drayton Manor. It's fun enough, a bit tooooo wet for my liking. 4 log flumes to 6 rapids; pretty even mix

And my post train has taken us through Germany, Netherlands and now circling back to Poland... Energylandia have outlined their plans for reopening: https://www.facebook.com/EnergyLandia/posts/2534506719984738 Google Translate is a bit rough, but from what I gather the key points are: -Drones used for disinfecting the park -300 disinfection stations for guests to clean hands -Staff temperature checked at start of each day -Some form of mass temperature check upon entry for guests -Ability to buy food in advance via an app (you can even order food when in a queue for a ride) -Staff divided into areas, and to stay strictly in those areas On top of the standard social distancing, wearing of masks, etc measures we've seen other parks do. Unlike other parks, you can buy tickets on the day, but it's encouraged as much as possible to buy in advance.

Efteling have a wonderfully fun video explaining their guidelines: This also confirms that guests will need to book a time slot for arrival. Not sure how many European parks are doing that (I haven't heard of any doing it?), but it's a big thing with American parks and their plans to reopen.

Whilst the park has been closed during lockdown, Talocan received some extra maintenance off-site. Here's some pictures of it being put back in place: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=3201310206546792&id=938244026186766 There was a period last year where Talocan was running on a very minimal setting, and I believe Huss came in to do some work to fix it up. This is likely the park responding to that given they have the extra time. As for Fly, work is still ongoing, testing is still happening, etc. It has taken human riders. As for when any details might be announced, the park's current stance is "let's get the park open again first" (which is set for 29th May). Even if social distancing and reduced capacity is still a thing for a while, the park will likely want to open Rookburgh as soon as they're happy with it, since it will add extra pathway space - and hence capacity - to what is a tiny park. The latest rumours is that the park were targeting a late June opening - similar to Klugheim - but it may be pushed back by a couple of months because of Covid.

I think it's fine. At time of writing, there's now only 1000 people in the queue and a 10 minute wait. It was just the initial rush of people getting tickets because people can't wait to go back. Things will level out by June I reckon. Phantasialand is the latest major park to announce their reopening: like Europa, they'll open on the 29th, with a reduced capacity. They aren't doing any virtual queueing and their hotels aren't open.

Europa Park, as previously mentioned, will be reopening from May 29th. It's been said they will max the daily capacity at 15,000, a quarter of their usual capacity (just for a fun comparison in park sizes, 15k is around Thorpe's capacity these days I believe...) However, to book tickets you have to get in a virtual queue (similar to buying concert tickets and the like I guess). At time of writing, the virtual queue has over 28,000 people are is estimated to take an hour. Will be interesting to see how it levels out in the future, and what this means for booking park visits in general over the next couple of months.

Holovis (who were involved in the pre shows of Wickerman and Walking Dead Ride, and have done rides like immersive tunnels) have also developed a similar style app: http://www.holovis.com/free-social-distancing-app-to-help-destinations-re-open-safely/ There's a webinar where they explain it in detail, though I've yet to watch that. Obviously the idea of virtual queueing is being thrust into prominence once again. And since parks will be operating at a reduced capacity, it does help with the problem of "won't the pathways be rammed?". It doesn't solve the problem of what people will actually do when waiting for their slots, especially since entertainment offerings will be diminished / basically non-existent. Psychologically, it could very much change how a day at a theme park goes. For the most part, you'll be waiting around in pathways, with very little to do, waiting for your booked slot. Though similar to the concept of waiting in a queue line, you lose the sense of anticipation, the buzz, etc. After all, a good ride experience starts when you start queueing. It also just leads to the issue of people waiting outside the ride's entrance, which defeats the object entirely. Reserve n Ride's long term aim was to stop people waiting in queues so they could other things instead. In this set up, you just can't do that. I believe Walibi Holland's Fastlane system operates on a similar logic (depending on how much you pay, you wait a percentage of the ride's queue time outside the queue - ie virtually - free to do other things, then go on the ride). So it'd be interesting to see how they would operate it on free scale.. I'm not sure on the worthwhileness of virtual queueing when the parks reopening in response to Covid. Parks should be reducing their capacity anyway, which will inevitably mean that queue times (or, at the very least, the number of people in a queue) will be shorter. If you introduce virtual queueing, you then have the majority of people visiting the park in the pathways, where it's going to be harder to maintain social distancing. Surely it would be better to have people in organised queues, where you can clearly mark social distancing markers, etc, making it easier there. Any cleaning procedures on rides will take time, and increase wait times. But that's counteracted by the fact there's a smaller number of people on park, and clear communication that queues will move slower due to cleaning. And of course, as has been mentioned in the coronavirus thread, no amount of reduced numbers and social distancing will matter when you're on a fast moving ride. If someone at the front of a train has Covid and coughs, it's likely those droplets will land on riders behind them. Knowing and accepting that, you have to question at what point parks draw a line as to what measures they implement. And I'd say that introducing a tech-heavy, experimental virtual queueing system is crossing the line of "not really worth it".

I get where you're coming from. There's definitely some people who have become overnight experts just because they've read a few things online (which usually features a lot of hindsight), who then use whatever they find to blast the government. Equally though, I expect the exact same thing would be happen had we had a Labour government. It might not necessarily have been so prominent online, but definitely would be still be there. That in a large part comes down to the fact there's very much a strong political divide at the moment in my opinion. Fewer and fewer people these days seem to have the ability to look unbiasedly and go 'hmm, the other side could be right here'. It's very much "us vs them" all the time. There might be no right and wrong at the moment, but there is good and bad. Good choices, bad choices. From what I gathered, the choice of this "herd immunity" and avoiding lockdown made in early March was the best possible choice for the UK with the data available. Sure, it might not have been what other countries were doing, but we were in a different position to other countries. With hindsight it's likely it wasn't the best choice, and in time we might come to learn it was the "wrong" choice, sure, but at that time, I think it was the right call. But equally, more should have been done. Why did Johnson not attend early Cobra meetings? Why were borders not tightened? What about the hot topic of PPE? These are all choice which were made then, and are all causing issues now. Hindsight playing a part now, yes. But at the same time, it's difficult to understand why those choices were made then - at the very least, what was there to lose had different choices been made? As has been said above too, I think it stings the most when you look at other countries who have made all the right choices, and countries who have made many more right choices than us. They weren't easy choices, and I don't think everyone could have gotten it right of course, but it's a hard pill to swallow. I do think people are overstating the confusion for a joke / a cheap pop at the government, but there is still confusion. What does "stay alert" mean? It's something you'd more say a teenage girl going clubbing for the first time or something..."have fun, but stay alert...". There it's more clear cut. Here, not sure much, because it's open to interpretation - "Stay alert" of yourself and symptoms? "Stay alert" of other people? "Stay alert" and maintain everything we've done so far, but keep in mind we're relaxing some rules so this will be slightly harder? If you look at some MPs who have tried clarifying this (on Twitter for example), they've all had very different interpretations. And it feels dangerous to tell people to exercise their common sense when making decisions...anyone who has worked with the public knows that people very quickly lose their common sense in groups! It's all a bit muddled. Tabloid press has been hugely irresponsible over the past few days, definitely. I'm somewhat confused how some details trickled down to the press before Johnson's announcement. I don't know how that happens and if blame should lie somewhere, but surely with something this big, it should be embargoed and then come straight from the horse's mouth first, so to speak? Then let press report, speculate, whatever. It very much hasn't helped. On a general note, one thing which has surprised me is the lack of mention of the reproduction number (R-number) in the UK until the last few days. It's not a difficult concept, but it's something that needs explaining clearly and simply to the public so they can understand it. It was mentioned vaguely in March time (albeit not called the R-number), and then again recently. Why? This is something that should be continually drilled in. Again, look at other countries (many across Europe): from the early days, they've provided details of what the R-number is, and been making clear and simple updates about it. Here, it's been put on us at a time when we're transitioning between stages, when people have other questions. And then people have questions about this R-number. Which just piles on this confusion and the questions raised. It's something I don't quite get on the government's behalf?

Hard to tell if this response is sarcasm, from someone living under a rock or someone who genuinely believes the Covid-situation has been well handled across the board...

On the Dutch theme, Efteling plan to be reopen by May 20th: https://www.efteling.com/nl/blog/nieuws/20200508-efteling-gaat-weer-open They will be open before then, with very small crowds (relatives of staff, maybe passholders, etc), and slowly building up so staff can adjust to new routines. The plan come May 20th is that the park will be at most at 1/3 capacity. Their Bosrijk Holiday Village is already open, since people stay in their own self-contained cabins. Also, a few images that have been circulated by the Dutch Theme Parks and Attractions Association, who have put plans in place for how Dutch parks should go about when opening. These measures have been approved by European safety board TUV: (Image of Joris en de Draak at Efteling) Some form pole can be used to check restraints. I've also heard (but not seen a link) that staff are allowed to use feet. An example of how Python (a 28 seater / 14 row / 7 car train) could be loaded. The idea is that a maximum of 14 guests from a maximum of 5 families can board any given train, with certain rows blocked off. Other things in place are standard 1.5m distances between groups, encouraging paying by card/apps wherever possible (Netherlands, similarly to Germany, use cash a lot more than we do in the UK), blocking of every other urinal and sink in toilets, etc. Efteling have also been redesigning and rebuilding some of their cattlepen queues.

Annnnd for a separate, non-German post, Walibi Holland has said they will open on May 25th: https://m.facebook.com/walibiholland/photos/a.204047486303716/3815438515164577/?type=3

Expect plenty of German parks to reopen this month. All regional governments are in charge of relaxing restrictions and have laid out their plans; North Rhine-Westphalia (the region with Phantasialand and Movie Park Germany) have said that theme parks can open again from Monday. Both parks said they'll await further details as to what measures exactly they should follow - as that still isn't clear - before announcing a date to open. Lower Saxony (Heide Park and Hansa Park) have said the 25th. Hansa Park haven't commented yet. Baden Württemberg (Europa, Tripsdrill, etc) have said the 29th, which includes hotels as well. Europa have also said they'll be reopening their hotel restaurants in phases from the 18th, with outdoor seating only. Rulantica remains closed till further notice. No other parks in the region have confirmed their opening plans yet. Obviously the challenges now are having plans in place to make sure parks are following their local restrictions, as well as getting staff trained up (as many European parks weren't meant to open till April, they may not have started their pre-season training schedules before lockdown). Scandinavian parks are also in a position to be opening in early June.

I mean I wouldn't have thought Ripsaw or Rameses would have needed a documentary either, but each to their own I guess.