JoshC.

We have a lift hill...

And this is why we quote hilarious typos Charlie 😢 I wouldn't expect anything crazy though Matt. I fully expect that it's just a grab and go sweet treat place with a name to match the theme of the area.

Phantasialand opens for Wintertraum today, and the park are stepping up Fly advertising with the 'Rookburgh Gazette': (Picture from one of the park's marketing team) Included in the paper is reference to FLY, Hotel Charles Lindbergh, the restaurant Uhrwerk (Clockwork), as well as newly revealed things Bar 1919 and Emilie Chocoladen & Candy Werkstatt (Emilie's Chocolate and Candy Workshop, which will presumably be a sweet shop)

>Theme park reduces opening hours to save money >Less people visit theme park because of reduced opening hours >Theme park keeps reduced opening hours because less people visit them >People continue not to visit because of reduced opening hours This is the problem with looking at attendance figures for deciding opening hours.

Which is ridiculous if true. They're a family theme park which caters for everyone. The opening hours should match that. Longer opening hours won't alienate the pre-school market, it'll just get more people in. But it's much more than a group of small enthusiasts. It's pretty much anyone else who doesn't go to school.

Towers is a park that attracts people from across the nation. Plenty of people are willing to drive 2-3hrs for a day trip there. What incentive do people have to visit the park on an off peak day when they're going to spend almost as much time driving as they are at the park? And if people don't want to go on a peak day, then they just won't visit.

The final wall is going up... Source

*blows dust off and chokes* In case you missed it on our social media pages, we'd love it if you could spend a few minutes giving us some feedback on the TPM social media pages and website. As ever, we're always open to suggestions and if there's anything you can think of, always feel free to message one of the Team! Much love x

Oooft, ermm.. Thorpe Park x15 Chessington x4 Alton Towers x4 Legoland x4 Phantasialand x2 Walibi Holland x2 Paulton's Park Linnanmäki Movie Park Germany Walibi Belgium Hellendoorn Slagharen Duinrell Drievliet Belantis Freizeitpark Plohn Karls Erlebnis-Dorf Elstal For rest of year, might hit up Chessington and Winter Wonderland but that'll be it. Solid varied year. Don't imagine next year will be as varied or exciting, but we'll see!

I wouldn't say that puts the rumour to rest. "Nothing has been decided" certainly implies it's possible that the ride could be closed next year so they can refurb it. I haven't listened to the video so apologises if what I'm say is just a repeat of what was said in that, but from what I've been told: -Valhalla costs over £1m a year to operate -The park need to spend approx. £900k to simply fix it up and make it ready to operate again -On top of that, the park want to spend extra money to improve the longevity of the ride (in the 20 odd years since it's opened, technology has improved, etc etc) So the logic is if the park close it for a year, they immediately save enough to do all the fix ups it needs. They can then have extra funds to, as Amanda puts it, make it more sustainable, and do it as one big project. For a ride like Valhalla, to hear the park want to make it more "sustainable" should ring alarm bells. That immediately sounds like they want to cut costs so it's less expensive to run. Of course, the key cost down to the water - pumping it around and making sure it's clean, so they can't cut that, but other things can be pulled I'm sure. Hopefully that's not the case and they're just planning on improve the hardware of the ride.

Fixed that for you

Boomerang has gone vertical:

So this is pretty much a certainty now. However, current rumours are that Tonnerre de Zeus (park's woodie) is going to be renovated for 2021. Some people have of course jumped to the conclusion of RMC, which I guess is a faint possibility at the moment, but there's nothing to suggest that either way. Asterix are owned by the same company as Walibi, and were very impressed by Untamed, so I guess it's only natural that those sorts of rumours will come about. But RMC conversions can be quite expensive. Untamed's conversion cost €12.5m for reference. Would they really invest that much in a renovation of a ride (which is already pretty well received), and then introduce a major new headline attraction the year after? Unlikely.

In theory, I guess yeah. But it would either mean reusing the old site and killing off Platform 15 (a bit of track at the start of the maze is workable, track throughout the whole maze much harder), killing off Creek Freak Massacre or building the track over water (very expensive). So not impossible, but just very impractical / expensive however they did it. We're in Closed Season - of course it's time for pointless conversations!

The major issue (ignoring that the station is for FN mazes as they could work around that if they really wanted to) would be how they'd have the train return to Old Town. There's no space for a loop now so that a train could return to the station facing the direction it would need to leave. They could go for trains which run in both directions but would end up with a completely different feel/

Don't expect an instantaneous switch. The take over is hardly seeing new people come into the business, it's just that the layering of people is different. The park have always had a LTDP, the trouble is that it's been chopped and changed so many times that it just hasn't worked. There may be some changes we see, but they wouldn't be down to the takeover. Equally, at this stage, don't expect to see anything exciting from outside the park. No plans have been submitted, and there's not even a whisper of anything interesting happening yet.

The big giveaway in that photo is the curved window. From very early on, it was never planned to be viewed or accessible from beneath the ride. Whether that was just a "we don't want people entering from ground-level" idea or "we consulted the illusionist and they said entering from ground-level is impossible" I don't know. But having seen how the illusion was designed, and how it looks from ground level, I'd be very surprised if it could ever have been designed to be viewed from beneath the train carriage in any way.

The recycling tax is very common (maybe even law?) in a lot of western European countries. Not something that's really advertised as it's taken for granted.

The Farm is still owned by the park. The land area is now much smaller than before as it was 'permanently flooded' when the park infilled new islands. The area is now used by Landscaping (for cultivating plants) and by Waste Management (for managing waste).

Is it part of a S U P E R M E G A T R I P?? Sad you won't be there though 💔

I have never had a problem with the food at Plopsa parks (Pirate Grill was decent during my visits), but I agree it's very expensive. Especially given how bog-standard the options are, it's crazy how costly the food options are/ Heidi does have operating conditions which means it can't operate after 6pm anyways (noise and all that), so that'd be one reason. I guess the other reason being it makes sense to have the scare zones by the scariest rides. I'd say bad luck is definitely one thing; anyone would struggle to enjoy any park when their two major attractions are closed. With Plopsaland that issue is highlighted all the more for us as enthusiasts since they're really the only two decent thrill rides there. They do suffer with weather related downtime quite a bit too since they're so close to the ocean (less than 2 miles!). It's really crazy. This is the one thing which really sticks out to me though. I've visited Plopsaland 3 times, and never had any issues with the operations. Everything was simple, quick and efficient. One man ops is incredibly common on many (bigger) rides in Europe. A shame it wasn't great - I hope it was just an off day partially down to the weather and such rather than something that's becoming the norm.

Moved out of my mum's house, into a flat with a couple of old TPM members and got a side job to help get extra money whilst at uni this past week. Pretty decent week.

Assuming I'm not working I should be able to show my face at some point during the event.

I think one of the issues is that if they made full use of the range of motion, it would require much more maintenance. Equally, Thorpe would likely prefer to use it for a shock factor rather than immerse you into it and stuff. As for The Apprentice episode, it really shows how the GP thinks. One group just chucking the most inversions and fastest accelerating coaster and whatever else sticks at the wall. The other group going for a backwards gimmick (I guess the idea was a backwards dive machine but the video seemed completely different lol). Big fat USPs to draw people in. But also a focus on storytelling and theming. Obviously it's a very contrived environment, but it does give a rather sad look at what 'ordinary' people jump to when given a blank slate. However, I did like the fact that many felt a 15 inversion, 0-120mph in 1.5sec coaster was a bit sickly...

*sigh*