JoshC.

The park are doing a special send off event for Annual Passholders, in the form of a 2 hour ERT session on Sunday: All 220 tickets they had available have gone in an hour.

So, a little while back, staff at the park went on a week-long strike, claiming that hadn't been paid in 4 months.. https://www.birgun.net/haber/ankapark-ta-oyuncaklari-korumalar-calistiriyor-273360 Some alarm bells from the article... Police were called during the strike to make sure nothing bad happened. It's not clear what's happened as a result, but the park appears to be back open now. But these claims won't do anything to silence rumours of this park effectively being a huge money laundering scheme...

Another minor update, courtesy of @RuudSchutten_ on Twitter... Mess of track Hotel aesthetic coming along

I'm a big fan of the concept - looks hilarious and has potential. It looks like an evolution of the the S&S Free Fly concept which never really took off (don't know if anyone on here has ridden it? @Benin or @BenC maybe?). I do hope it does take off and, importantly, is a reliable ride. S&S don't exactly have a great track record for reliable rides these days..

It was testing when I was near it on Saturday. Can't confirm if it opened though.

So an update from the park's fan day... There will be no new stuff next year, wit the entrance area encountering some 'technical delays'. However, the park will celebrate their 45th anniversary and have promised lots of events and such. It's a bit of a shame that there's a delay in their mega-rejuvenation, as a new entrance area would be nice, and parts of the park (especially the Wild West area) need attention. But equally, if feels silly complaining after the past couple of years of investment, and the Intamin goodness coming in 2021..

The updated concept art no longer shows the tower for Aqualantis: I believe the park are still planning on introducing a new tower next year (they do currently have a drop tower). So I guess that will end up in the same place as the Mine Train.

Some further concept art... Also it does seem like the park got another grant from the EU.

Further details about this new investment have been revealed by the park at a press conference. The area will be called Aqualantis (this was previously thought to be the name of the coaster) and will feature... -Abyssus, double launch Vekoma coaster (Latin for The Depth) -Slow boat ride -Mack Twist n Splash (or similar) -Disko coaster -Aquajump, water dive jump show -Large feature restaurant -Ride shop for Abyssus The area continues with what the park have started with the Dragon Zone and going for specific themed areas, and in general lots of theming and themed features. However, it's expected this is going to be a further step up from that area. The theming will be done by Joravision, who do tons of theming projects for parks across Europe. The area is going to be behind the park's current Vekoma launch coaster, to the left of Zadra and the Dragon Zone. On top of this, reliable sources say that the Vekoma mine train is still happening next year, but the park are keeping tight-lipped on that. It's likely that Aqualantis will open when the park opens in the spring, and the mine train will open later. On top of this, the park have said that next year (ie December 2020), the park will be open during winter for a Christmas event. Unclear if/what rides will be open, but it'll feature a Christmas market and such. Their opening hours for next year as such look a little something like this... It's great to see the park expanding across all areas, after starting a Halloween event for the first time this year (even if I've heard lukewarm reviews about it). Seems to be working too. Finally, the park's owner has confirmed that further developments are to be fastracked after they received more grants. Not sure if it's specifically EU money, since that grant has finished, but who knows. This means that the park's next stages of hotel and accomodation offering will all be built at once rather than in stages. It'll be very interesting to see their attendance figures for this year. They hit 1.4m this year, and if Zadra has been a success, I expect that to grow, and this 5 year old park could already be as busy as the likes of Thorpe and Chessington...

So Thorpe have lifted all restrictions on Annual Passes (and staff free tickets) next week during weekdays. This means that Thorpe Park and Standard Merlin Annual Passholders do not have to pay any extra to visit (instead of it is being like £15-20). They still recommend you pre-book (for £1) however, in case capacity is hit: Going to call this now - this will be a disaster. The park has been quieter than expected this week, and the risk of being open all this week (when they're not normally) hasn't paid off in terms of numbers of profits. And they're clearly worried about it being the same next week, so they're trying to give the many annual passholders extra incentive to visit. But here's the issue: this week was never going to be busy. Not enough school kids in the local area are on half term this week. Not enough people are off this week to go. Everyone is planning on going next week, as that's the time when the majority of people are off. It's clearly a knee jerk reaction to them having a bad week. So now, there's going to be the masses of people who were planning on visiting, PLUS the extra of passholders who have now been incentivised to visit. Thorpe never copes well during half term; an extra mass of people is only going to make it worse. Will happily eat my hat along with the egg on my face if I'm wrong. But yeah, I can't see this being anything more than a major disaster for the park, and complaints galore.

Let's face, in terms of "new" things, it'll probably be another year of weird events, an updated version of Jungle Escape and maybe a retheme of a ride if we're lucky. If the park can focus on actually improving the rest of the park, by means of repaints, refreshes and so forth in a meaningful way, then that would be good too. Though that's been said every year for the last 10-15 years I swear.. Ideally we'd see something actually new (I'd take a chairswing at this stage frankly) or a proper ride refurb (Rumba is still crying out for that), but that seems to be alternative universe territory right now.

Didn't Heide Park have two log flumes back in the day? And same with Phantasialand? And Bagatelle still does, in a similar vain to what Chessington will have (one normal one, one mini one). It's not that uncommon...

This week isn't half term for most schools around the south (most schools up north are on half term). They've copied the Towers way of doing things by being open for two full weeks. Towers do this because they get an influx of people from all over the country visiting, especially during Sacrefest. This is the first time Thorpe have done it this way (in the past, they were only open for the half term for schools down south, and then the days up to Halloween if that wasn't included in half term). Whether Thorpe have done this based on demand and actual research or just seen that Towers do and have copied is unclear. But given how quiet it looked yesterday and today, so far the risk doesn't seem to have paid off. Maybe a later opening would have been a better option for this week..

There's also suggestions that this will be called Robo-Spinner Here's a fan made mock up of the layout, with a spinning version and a non-spinning version: That start gave me a headache just watching it.

Surely this is something that should be commended, not ridiculed? With less than a month to go, it would be easier for them to cut their losses and not bother with it than to actually reopen it. Of course, the fact it's taken so long to end up open (bar the couple of hours in summer before it died) is a concern, but the fact they've opened it now is something.

There's a bit of a debate whether it will be a cobra roll or a banana roll, but in the grand scheme of things, it'll be equally spinny and vom-inducing really.

And we have some plans... Source So, we have a 34m tall, two launch, 4-5 inversion Mack spinning coaster coming to a park which is like a 45min drive from Calais. Awesome! It's located next to the park's Mack Supersplash and is partially over water. The lake is used for pedal boats at the moment so I assume this is the end of them. As much as I'm looking forward to this, given it's in such a prominent location, I hope it doesn't ruin the vibe of the park.

Thorpe are doing a mini Behind the Scenes series for Fright Nights...

The price of drinks from the vending machine was meant to be the scary part I guess?

Calling @Mark9... It's back!

Did this tonight, and it's good fun! It's a solid 10-15 minute experience, with a nice variety of sets and good scare tactics. One particular scream really made me jump! It's got a bit of everything and is a well designed maze. Of course, this is an attraction done by a small independent company, which is only standing for a couple of weeks, so it's not been done on the biggest budget. So don't go expecting the next Big Top or anything. But regardless, it's a well put together experience and just a good bit of fun. Actors need more time to get used to things (natural, as this is the first night), but it does have a good number of people in there, and they got better quickly. Tl;Dr - great independent attraction! Well worth a visit; support a small local company who have buckets of potential.

Been a while since an update. I guess because not much has reallllly happened. The final major wall of the area is being built. This is basically adjacent to the main road and is near the end of both launch tracks Hotel construction is going well: (Source for above 2 photos - Phantafriends member PHL-Marcus) And a couple of renderings from Phanta-famous man Tobi... It's getting there. Slowly. Very slowly. But it's getting there (I've been saying this for the past 3 years now, but oh well.....)

And the full length animation: As awesome as this looks, this does effectively make the park's current single launch Vekoma coaster completely redundant. I do wonder what their long term plan is for that..

Visited here last week, primarily for their Halloween event (which I've covered here), but a couple of words of Area 51 and Excalibur. Both of these are fantastic rethemes of their rides. They don't try and reinvent the wheel or go crazy; they've just spruced up what was there and added extras to make it a whole experience. Excalibur has awesome extra effects which are unusual for a rapids ride, and really makes it feel like a complete experience. I have one niggle - when the ride re-enters the building, there's still no attempt at hiding the building, which really stands out compared to the rest of the ride. A bit disappointing. Area 51 has just fixed up and modernised the old Bermuda Triangle sets and given it a new lease of life. For those who have ridden it in the past, don't worry: it's still as wacky as ever. And those who haven't, if you ever get the chance to ride it, you'll end up understanding why it's reached a cult status of praise. Annoyingly, the park has put in a pre show in the queue. It's themed very well, but effectively acts as a list of restrictions for the ride. Fortunately they don't bother with it when the ride is very quiet, but the need for it at all is questionable. So yeah, the park have done a fantastic job with these rethemes. Their new Paw Patrol area is decent for what it is too. Along with Star Trek in 2017 (which, admittedly, I'm not that big a fan of, but appreciate people enjoy), the park have had some absolute winners of investments lately. Hopefully they can keep it up!