JoshC.

Announcement tomorrow!

The 9th "attraction" is listed as a challenge, so I expect it'll either be the return of the rib cage challenge or similar, or something equivalent to Towers' Big Six challenge ("can you tackle our terrifying mazes to get a kids pop badge??"). Last year they didn't even include the Fanta thing as an attraction! They may have something return though; wouldn't surprise me.

Given that it's adding extra staff, midway through the season when budgets are already set and such, I'd assume (and hope) that there's a reason behind this other than 'trying to improve the experience'. If the park wanted to improve guest experience, there's plenty of other ways to do it and plenty of other parts of the park. Given the experience was designed 20 years ago, it's possible that by-and-large, audience reactions have changed. Maybe the park feel there's a need to guide people through the experience more explicitly. Maybe there's been a reasonable number pieces of feedback suggesting that. Saying "it's been fine in the past" is a narrow way of looking at things. Of course, if that is the case, it could be Merlin's own doing that people have responded in such a way. Many of their recent experiences have been actor-led and spoon feed people throughout the experience. So maybe that's what people expect now. Nonetheless, the changes don't sound great, so hopefully they are reversed.

The benefits for the Shark Hotel have been put online, and include actors in hotel rooms for the first time. Sadly, they're not at great times, but still nice to see something different being tried..

Very few staff will probably know what's happening at the moment; they keep it within marketing and senior management as long as possible. Most staff will probably find out what's going in for Fright Nights the day of the announcement (or see it for themselves when the announcement goes live). It's probably best to not waste your time or their's asking questions they don't know the answer too Your best bet is to try and decode the "clues" they've left on the blog until they announce something: https://www.thorpepark.com/blog/fright-nights-2019-five-fiendish-clues My guesses would be they're hints at this year's 5 mazes: 1. Blair Witch. Cos woods, trees, etc. 2. New maze. Cos it's "popular", will probably have chainsaws galore (especially given the marketing we've seen) 3. Platform 15. Cos dark tunnel 4. Do or Die. Shopping for body parts to eat cos cannibalism 5. Living Nightmare. Cos zombies bite

Zadra is old news now. Let's have a look at supposed concept art for their Vekoma double launch opening next year:

A new Platform ending is much needed. They've tried a different thing every year, so hopefully they've learnt from what hasn't worked and can do something that does work.

In fairness, I think air conditioning is something which is severely lacking across the UK in general. Many places when designing buildings don't really see it as necessary due to it likely only being needed for a very small time each year, so some buildings simply don't include them. And when they are included, in many cases they are poorly executed (poor air flow stopping it from cooling rooms/buildings equally). It's certainly something which should be focused on more, more generally too. I don't know how easy it is to retrospectively fit that stuff in, but hopefully they can do something with the Dome soon. Even on warm days, the downstairs area in particular can be unpleasant.

Chessington are offering an extreme version of Creepy Caves after the park closes this year: https://www.chessington.com/explore/chessington-vip-adventures.aspx#tabAnchor6 Sounds exciting!

How dare you! (The October trip is the trip after my next trip...)

I'm travelling the 12th and would only be able to make for a couple of hours (assuming Ryanair don't delay me), so the 13th would be better for me!

Ded End??

Touch scares are a tricky one. For some people, there's a huge fear of what could happen: a lot of people worry about being touched and having their personal space invaded. But once that wall is broken, some can lose that fear (because you realise being touched isn't that bad). There's then the other side that when touching is allowed, actors can become over-reliant on it. Even for people who don't like it, you can quickly become desensitised to it, and ultimately it loses its value. Plus, touching doesn't always ramp up scars factor. Sometimes it can take away from the experience, take you out of the story ("why is this butcher who wants to take me away, kill me and sell my meat only stroking my head?" For example). It has to have a reason and be timed rightly. Personally, I reckon touching works best when it's a bit more full-on (say, Sub Species style, where you can be forced to go in certain ways, etc). Anything less than that rarely increases scare factor imo

Start of September has been when they've announced new mazes the past 2 years, so sometime next week seems like a good shout.

Yeah, don't do that. Please don't do that. As for the entrance, if I remember correctly they have two of those Platform 15 signs: one at the end of queue (just before you're batched into groups) and one where it's currently placed now. So I'd imagine the queue entrance is the same. Given that Dead Creek Woods isn't returning this year but Blair Witch is, I hope they use the full route for Blair Witch. That would be nice.

As much as is sensationalist garbage with people putting on compo faces, they do have two good points: -Being stuck in the air with no shade on a 30C isn't pleasant. -Plenty of people will question, or at least raise an eyebrow, when they see staff evacuating them wearing full harnesses whilst they themselves don't wear full harnesses (assuming of course that's what happened; I don't know what the procedure is for Dragon?) Doesn't justify the ridiculousness of the article, but sadly woven in there is two reasonable irrefutable points. A normal, reasonable person would deal with these with the park and 99% of the time an acceptable resolution would be reached. Shame someone has had to go to the papers.

And a time lapse video from the park, along with details of construction: Around 24secs you see the damage caused by the storm; shows how significant it was and really puts it into perspective!

I'm a fan of the word play. Maze feels like it has potential to be quite different to the other mazes in terms of theme and style; hope they work with that and really diversify the line up.

Some concept art: https://content.sixflags.com/qiddiya/about-the-park/ Falcon's Flight, the world's tallest, fastest, longest ride: New-gen Vekoma tilt(!): General:

Intamin call them swing launches, Mack call them halfpipe launches and Gerstlauer just call them triple launches. So take your pick! I think swing launch is the most fun name so I stick with that haha

In an out-of-the-blue announcement, Six Flags have announced a park for Saudia Arabia, in Riyadh, more specifically, Qiddiyah, an entertainment project trying to revolutionise the country. https://qiddiya.com/en/press-release/six-flags-qiddiya-unveils-park-design The highlight of the announcement is the world's tallest, fastest and longest coaster, with the only seemingly-publicly confirmed stat bring a max speed of 156mph. Oh, and it's not a launch coaster. The park will also include: -A swing launch coaster -A Vekoma Orkanen SFC -A Mack Poseidon water coaster -A new style GCI hybrid coaster -Drop track coaster -World's tallest drop tower -And whatever else they're dreaming of. The plan is for the park to open in 2023. Somehow, I don't think so. But we'll see...

Could possibly be that the park have done research or received feedback that people sometimes want to buy non-Thorpe tat? The Merlin parks are actually part of a minority which sell park-exclusive (and stuff related to rides) merchandise. Plenty of parks sell just general tat and stuff from shows and films and stuff, with the logic being they can capitalise on people having money to spend, and being more likely to spend it on stuff they recognise. So it could be Thorpe trailing it just to see if it works? If there's an opportunity, always worth exploring it I guess. Not a fan of it being in the Inferno shop mind. Ride shops should focus on the ride in question and just general stuff (drinks, snacks, etc). Anything else feels a bit jarring to me personally.

To my knowledge they are still working on it (scaffolding is a good sign!) and they don't have any plans to remove it yet. But I believe the technical term to describe Quantum's state right now is "It's f#¢k€d"

Ah, I didn't realise it was still there tbh. There's no effort made to advertise it (aside from one sign I guess?), and it's probably hardly ever used. Just assumed due to lack of use they'd given up with it!

There are no more SRQs at Thorpe. They were gotten rid off a good 5-6 years ago, before randomly reappearing on Samurai a couple of years back. That didn't last long and I don't expect the park to reintroduce them any time soon.