JoshC.

Thorpe was incredibly busy today, long queues and what seemed to be a lot of people at guest services at the end of the day complaining about the reduced opening hours...

Night time video too, with what appears to be one person on the front row riding it:

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Heh, nice. Looks like it could be a copy of Baa Express at Europa? Nice little investment for the park tbh. Good to see, and I'm sure it'll work for the park. Woo.

Yes, this is true. The reasons include: -A decrease in visitors compared to 2011. Despite the fact that 2011 was one of Thorpe's busiest and most profitable (and so, in that sense, 'best') years ever, Swarm still had to deliver an increase. It didn't, so Merlin saw Swarm as a failure, and immediately lost faith in whatever their thought process was behind that direction. -Weak brand. Swarm didn't capture people's imagination. It was very generic and not very recognisable. The end of the world vibe was overdone and it merged in with so many other things that went for that. -Experience didn't match marketing. For one reason or another, people expected an intense thrill ride, similar to Saw. Instead, Swarm offered a much more graceful experience, leading people to be disappointed. So basically, people had minor niggles about the ride, and less people visited Thorpe (which would have happened regardless). So, Merlin see it as a failure. Despite that, in the long term it's done a good job, is less generic these days and scores very highly in KPI scores, which Merlin love. So it's been a slow burner. But Merlin's model doesn't allow for slow burners. Just a couple more to add: Derren Brown's Ghost Train Going for a dark ride over a coaster was always a risk, but it was one which needed to be done in my opinion. Sadly, DBGT missed every single possible mark, which really damaged the park. It did attract attention, and it did cause attendances to rise. But it damaged the park's reputation by so much more than the worth of a few thousand visitors. Two big investments in a row that failed is a big recipe for disaster. You need a sure-fire win after that; something with minimal risk. But when everything is spiralling downwards, the pressure is even great, and the amount of risk you take has to decrease. Ultimately it leaves us in the situation we're in now: the best way to minimise risk is to not take a risk at all. Can't lose money if you don't spend money, right? Terrible Non-Big Investments You have to go all the way back to 2007 when the park added a solid non-big investment, in Flying Fish. Arguments can be made for Storm Surge (diversifies the line up and added a much needed family ride) and Walking Dead (a solid scary-themed indoor attraction at the end of the day). I guess you could say 2013 with turning X forwards but that slipped under the radar with the focus on Swarm backwards. But I think Flying Fish is the last one where someone would struggle to come up with a reasonable negative for it. Since then, we've had short term investments, based off fads or needless IPs, which have led to a mish-mash of identities and ideas, and nothing which has really improved the line up. This is coupled with a lack of general upkeep in the existing parts of the park. The bare minimum was done to rides, theming, presentation, etc., which eventually led to rides closing, theming being taken away, etc. Focusing too much on Scares Fright Nights works for the park. Regardless of its quality, it's still the busiest, best received, and most profitable time of year for the park, year in year out. The park tried to capitalise on that and make it work all year round (which, in fairness, isn't too unreasonable). It worked with Saw - The Ride, because that was handled properly. Saw Alive was a nice idea and helped absorb the busyness whilst it was full time. After that, Thorpe should have quit whilst they were ahead. Scare attractions don't work outside of Halloween in a theme park setting. Scary stuff doesn't work outside of Halloween in a theme park setting. One thing to compliment a line up, yes. But an overarching focus on it? No. Yet Thorpe didn't realise this. They didn't learn that in 2005 when Freakshow 3D was dead during summer because no one cared. They didn't learn that after Saw Alive's popularity dwindled in 2012. They didn't learn after Swarm. They didn't learn after Ghost Train. They probably haven't learnt after The Year of The Walking Dead. Keep scares for Fright Nights, and focus on a diverse line up. Not Learning Lessons Related to above, Thorpe make the same mistakes again and again. This likely comes down to management seemingly being a revolving door, especially in more recent years. A new person comes in, tries something, it doesn't work, leave. A new person comes in, tries that same thing in a different disguise, it doesn't work, leave. Repeat. They need to take a step back, look at what they've done for the past 15 years and realise what hasn't worked, and what has worked, and start building from that.

I wouldn't call it 'truly shocking'. Plenty of mid-sized parks out there adjust their opening times throughout the year to reflect how busy they are, including reducing them. It's not good obviously, and a sign of how the park are struggling. No doubt the weather at the start of the summer holidays hasn't helped with attendance, but surely with the weather now likely to be more normal for the rest of summer, it's time to recuperate and stay open longer when the crowds will be around. The back-end of summer is always busier, and reducing opening hours just feels like a shot in the foot.

I do wonder how much of the Loggers station they'll be able to utilize. If they can use most of it, it gives a solid amount of space to play with given they've got the undercover queue area too. Be nice for them to start pushing it a bit more now to try and gain more attention. Summer so far feels quiet so a big push for Fright Nights feels needed now more than ever (feel like I've said that before..)

Looopings are reporting that Plopsaland are considering introducing a Mack Xtreme Spinning Coaster, perhaps for 2022: https://www.looopings.nl/weblog/11992/Plopsaland-heeft-plannen-voor-extreme-nieuwe-achtbaan.html The park are planning on opening the finished version of Dino Splash (rethemed log flume) and a hotel next year, and a new kids area with kiddie cred and dark ride in 2021. But with Belgian parks investing heavily and being very competitive lately (Walibi Belgium resurgence, Bobbejaanland actually investing, Bellewaerde ticking along nicely), the park seem to want to focus on introducing more thrill rides too, to complement Anubis and family-thrill Heidi. Certainly would be great to see one of these in Europe, and would be a fantastic and diverse addition to the park. Hopefully it does happen!

The park had a competition for people to guess how much the project of the new coaster cost (originally asking how much the ride cost). Apparently, the project is costing over £20m. For some perspective, that means it's costing more than any Merlin project (except maybe Ghost Train). If that's true, that's ridiculous and park are ripping themselves off.. 😂

Regardless of the correctness of the source, it's pretty poor of a staff member to be saying 'a ride is closed cos someone has been sacked'. Tbf if staff were saying when the ride would open and it did open at that time, there's a good chance it could be a staff-related reason. There's not many other ways they would be able to know confidently when the ride would open.

Swarm should be back open soon (hopefully today or tomorrow). I'm under the impression that Stealth (and Quantum again - sorry @Mark9) will be closed for a little while longer yet.

Just chucking in a few more pictures, form the Xtreme Coaster Network on FB...

So this was officially announced a little while back; slight differences to what was posted previously: https://buschgardens.com/williamsburg/roller-coasters/pantheon/ Key stats: 3 launches (including swing launch) Maximum speed of 72mph 95 degree drop Maximum height of 178ft 2 inversions True testament to how much roller coaster engineering has developed recently that rides like this are possible and becoming more of the norm.

Tayto have confirmed that they're going to appeal the decision; so watch this space re that... -- In other news, the Viking water ride received a queue line upgrade thanks to a English company. Worth checking out as it looks pretty damn cool: https://www.katapult.co.uk/work/tayto-park-viking-voyage

The Bermuda Triangle retheme, Area 51, has soft opened this week.. Bermuda Triangle achieved an almost cult-level following in many ways, but was very much getting on and needed a lot of TLC, which this retheme now brings. Given that before this happened there were a lot of rumours going round that this was for the chopping block, it's very nice to see it get the deserved attention.

It's certainly been talked about once upon a time, but I'm under the impression that idea was dropped sometime ago and this isn't what is happening here.

Space would be one major limiting factor I'd guess. The attraction is still effectively a narrow corridor with the occasional open space for the scenes. Fitting in doors would be awkward (not impossible mind, but just awkward). Equally, I don't think it would work or make it feel any better. With Hex it works because you have a payoff at the end. I personally think walking through a corridor, being stopped at a door, watching a scene, and repeating 4 times before being greeted by a mirror maze wouldn't work and would feel very tiresome. I guess the answer is from a creative standpoint, the positives would come with as many negatives, and at an extra cost and effort.

So Broom has seen some changes recently, and arguably for the worse.. Instead of having a staff member guide you around the attraction, stopping at each scene and getting children to interact, you now walk around by yourself. At the start, you're encouraged to wait in each scene for it to play, but of course no one does wait. What this now means is you have an awkward walkthrough with lots of dimly lit corridors lit only by 'twinkling stars' with the occasional scene which you never get timed right. All sense of everything is lost. Even Hocus Pocus in its state last year was better, because at least there was theming throughout and stuff to interact with that made sense. As previously mentioned, I didn't like the how it was originally set out, being staff-led, etc., but that's how it was designed to run. Not running it like that makes it even worse. Question remains whether this was a budget thing (you now only need 2 staff to run it rather than like 4-5), or an experience/throughput thing (the queue moves quicker now for example). Either way, not good. Chessington have a real dud on their hands.

We have our first look at the train, from FOMO Coaster: Testing should be imminent. 15th August as an opening date seems all but impossible at this stage, but I could still see it open in September.

A couple more serious ones I need to add: -Dutch school kids. They are THE WORST; don't know how to queue, don't understand the concept of personal space, loud, obnoxious. Generally just unpleasant to be around. -People who compare everything to everything. You can enjoy something for what it is yknow! -Related, people who look at something a non-Merlin park has done and use it as a dig against Merlin

Did Bounce today. It's fun enough for what it is. It's a questionable investment for a theme park, but there's no denying it means there's more people doing something other than standing in a queue line. Two key points: -It has a minimum height restriction of 1.1m. However, being on a grassy hill, it's hard getting accurate measurements. It's also unclear whether that should be 1.1m with shoes on or off. Very wishy-washy rule. -There's no music around the course. It makes you realise that, regardless of how awful the BounceZilla soundtrack is, it helps create an atmosphere. And it also gets people moving along. So yeah, all in all, a weird one. Still crazy to think that Chessington have a longer (and arguably more interesting) bouncy castle than Thorpe, and don't need to advertise it to the same extremes..

I don't see the problem - I mean, it's better than R&B and heavy metal...

The thing is though, Bobbejaanland and Chessington have had the same number or worthwhile 'new' investments this century. And Chessington have done a much better job at tarting up old attractions than Bobbejaanland have. One new coaster doesn't, or at least, shouldn't, mask that. We can rave about foreign parks' investments (and we should), but it can be all too easy to get carried away when a park gets a shiny new coaster. Many other of their IP attempts have failed, for varying reasons, yes. But the point still stands: they were ahead of the curve when it comes to introducing them in the first place. That's what the point was. A good point. As I said in the Merlin thread, I think it was optimistic of them to think lightning would strike twice and a second film would have similar attendance impact. But equally, I don't think Lego Movie Worlds are a bad idea; they still have draw. It's still a clever way of attracting people to visit, and getting them to return. There's a major difference between a sequel's ability to draw people to a park and a new attraction based off a successful film.

Liseberg seem to have come into a few hundred drones to muck around with. At least, that's the only explanation for how they've managed to shoot these videos... There's a beautifully worrying near miss at around 42s in the Helix video.

In my experience, it depends on how those people word it. Playing the 'I know something you don't' card in any way (including saying "my sources have said...") is ridiculously frustrating. But if it's worded more carefully, and the person in question is known to be reliable, I don't have a problem with people who come across as being in the know. There's plenty of people out there who are in the know, and can hint in the right direction if they so choose.