JoshC.

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.

Following the reveal that House of Monsters would not return for this year's Scarefest, speculation increased about the long-rumoured Cloud Cuckoo Land retheme. This seems more and more likely now: https://www.altontowers.com/2020/

The first couple of weeks of summer holidays is always quiet. It's the time when most people go on their main summer holiday (ie - a UK theme park trip, even with an overnight stay, wouldn't be classed as most family's main trip), and people still automatically think "summer holidays=busy". Things will pick up from next week I'd say. Though it is fair to say it could well be quieter than normal.

"Pretty much"? Between the plans and that advertising, I'd love to know how much more confirmation you'd need for it to be 100% confirmed

The arena? 🤔

Confirmation formally from the park that Spyders is new for this year, and it certainly seems to imply that Curse of the Lost Tomb has gone, given there's no reference to it. The vague description of Spyders certainly makes it sound like a like-for-like replacement for Tomb as well.

Lego Movie World will be coming to Legoland in 2021: https://www.southparks.co.uk/2019/07/27/the-lego-movie-world-coming-to-legoland-windsor-resort/ The area will be located near Squid Surfer and the reasonably dead area with some HB Leisure games. The new area will include a dark ride (likely a Flying Theatre like the other Movie World areas), a couple of drop towers and some play equipment:

Merlin have only singled out bad weather for poor performance in the American Legoland parks, as opposed to a global thing. In fact, they've said that the weather actually was a contributing factor for good performance at the theme parks. Hoping that the second Lego movie would see a significant boost in Legoland performances was optimistic in my opinion. Lightning rarely strikes twice for these things. In terms of films, I do think the Lego brand is becoming a bit tired and saturated. Steering away from film and keeping key focus on the product itself might be beneficial.