JoshC.

I s'pose last year we had the world's worst kept secret with Walking Dead, and the previous year Platform 15 was announced in April. This year there's nothing, and any rumours that have surfaced have been uninteresting. Hopefully they can pull something out the bag, but I imagine it'll be difficult.

Presumably the park will take the decision to close 2 hours early because those extra 2 hours don't particularly add anything extra. Of course, longer on park is always a good thing, but sometimes it isn't necessary. It's something the park has to consider on a case by case basis. For staff, look at it from a different perspective. What is more preferably - spending two hours in the rain, entertaining very few guests for minimum wage, or having a couple of hours extra to relax on a Sunday evening? It can be very demoralising doing a minimum wage job in poor weather for very few people. It's not always as black and white as 'it means you're getting paid, don't moan'.

If they make that call early enough in the day and advertise it appropriately to everyone there, I don't see an issue with it. If the weather is terrible, there's so few people there and they're not making any money, why should they stay open for so long? It won't exactly benefit the people who are there (at best, staying open till late on a wet, windy, stormy evening will give a few extra rerides, but not much else), and it'll help the park in terms of staff morale and budgets. Plenty of small parks across the world will close earlier than advertised if the numbers aren't there, especially if it's because of the weather. Blackpool are a small park so aren't going to be any different. I do agree that they should change the wording on their website though if they are still saying 'earliest possible closing time' or whatever it was.

I imagine / hope they'll do that, or have a holding area within Rookburgh itself accessible from all entrances to the area.. One thing I forgot to mention though - Berlin Street now plays pop music in the afternoons and evenings. General cheesey pop music from recent stuff (Despacito) to more 'classic' stuff (Mambo No. 5 springs to mind). And, surprisingly, it works really well. It made the atmosphere so much more enjoyable, helped by loads of entertainers / performers dancing, playing jokes on guests and just generally be a good laugh to watch. We probably spent close to 10 minutes just standing round there, soaking up the atmosphere and just laughing at all the performers antics. And that's how you run a theme park folks.

Wow, I've been slack lately - rode this over 2 weeks ago and still haven't posted a review... Fenix is decent. Good pacing, looks absolutely stunning and flows well. The turn into the dive drop is great as it really picks up some speed going into it; proper nice little whip round. The queue is beautiful (though, bar an extension, entirely enclosed, making it hard to gauge queue times since there's no info board). They're currently using a token system for front row rides similar to Swarm in its first season (you're batched up to the station), so be interesting to see if that works long term. Two minor complaints - the pre lift sequence isn't ready yet (should be ready by end of season apparently), meaning it's effectively a shed at the moment. Also, the exit stairs from the station are VERY steep, and dimly lit, with a spinny turnstile thing at the bottom of the stairs. Definitely almost tripped down them more than once... Merlin's Quest is nice, with a nicely themed indoor section. Maybe a bit too long. Avalon does look beautiful, and I'm sure once it's settled down a bit more with vegetation growing, it'll feel really complete. The new restaurant, The Flaming Feather, is very nice too and reasonably priced! Port Laguna is a great new entrance portal and again looks beautiful. They've got interactive wands you can buy (for an expensive 25 euros) to interact with the area more. And they've got an indoor attraction / show which shows the technology off more (I assume similar to Ollivander's experience at Wizarding World of Harry Potter?). We went through it (despite it being entirely in Dutch, obviously), and it did seem it needed some more work to it, as many people seemed very 'meh' throughout it. The park have actually since closed the experience to improve it. So yeah, all in all, a fantastic investment for the park. The park was, unfortunately, very quiet, with Fenix effectively walk on by the end of the day. And the park have said to Looopings that gate figures aren't as high as they hoped after the introduction of the new areas. But it's hopefully just a slow bloomer for the park - after the risk they've taken with this, and their long term plans for expansion, I really hope it proves to be a success for them!

Tbf, if they ever wanted to bring back that type of ride, it would probably be cheaper to buy and build a new one from scratch than fix the old one, especially if you take into account the cost of (re)theming. I imagine that would have been true at the end of 2016 / start of 2017 as well.

Back up now. The flames clearly were hungry.

I was more referring to the numbers - 8 non-main queue vs 20 main queue is a good split. There's benefits to both systems, and looking at how Thorpe have designed queues in recent years, they prefer letting Fastrack join just before the ride. Colossus (and Inferno) are unfortunately stuck in the past a little as a result. But I agree they should stick to the systems they've got in the place, or redesign queues, rather then retrospectively trying to put a system in which the side isn't designed for.

4 rows closed for Fastrack and disabled guests is actually a very fair split to be fair. Even 4 rows for Fastrack plus an extra for disabled is decent.

eNOji.

Looks very nice - I really like the look of the station at the moment too! Once it beds in, this will really fly through. The twist and dive element looks mental already though.. September needs to hurry up a bit...

Though that's true, Samurai was running with 2 rows unavailable on Saturday. Potentially still true for today. If so, not hard to see why someone would exaggerate that to 20 (or alternatively a typo).

According to Towers Times, Merlin have filed a trademark for the name 'The Alton Towers Dungeons'. Taking it very much at face value, that suggests Alton Towers are certainly planning on getting a Dungeons-style attraction. If true, it wouldn't be the first attraction to get a Dungeons within it - Warwick Castle does have the Castle Dungeons, which is a 45 minute ish experience. I'm... intrigued by the idea. There's enough real history, and scope to embellish the truth (see Hex), to create a fun and unique Dungeons style attraction. But would it really work in a theme park environment, especially at a park where it's a stretch to do everything of note at the moment anyways due to the short opening hours? Also, would prefer to see the park get more rides. It'd be particularly good if it is something that can open after park hours too, and is an option to non-theme park guests, but I imagine that being logistically difficult. All depends on where they end up putting it too I s'pose. So what are your thoughts? Where could it go? Is this the right thing for the place? Is it the right time?

The Berlin gateway is receiving some work, and it appears it will display a new poster with more details...

IT LIVES https://www.facebook.com/BiuroPodrozyAlicja/videos/2776515639031593/

Sexy trains Queue line coming along Source - https://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1557590&page=714

The last picture shows just how crammed the area will be! It's absolutely mental what they're doing with this, and I really can't wait to see it develop.

I've deleted the link to the video. For those who haven't gathered, the video showed someone sneaking into Legoland during the night and doing stuff, some of which was dangerous. Linking the video and giving it views ultimately encourages this type of behaviour further. We obviously discourage this massively and absolutely do not want to support this in any way. This is similar to when videos were posted of people sneaking into Thorpe Park and climbing Stealth. I'm sure there's enough detail here for people to be able to find the video if they wish to watch it, but we just don't want to actively link it here. If anyone has any problems, drop me a PM.

Though not related directly to The Walking Dead, Zombie Hunt forms part of The Year of The Walking Dead activities. Th experience runs July 21st - September 3rd. Details are still vague at the moment, but with Thorpe releasing a new map, and them starting marketing, we are getting a bit more detail to piece together. The vague idea seems to be an outdoor laser quest type thing, where you get to shoot zombies. It'll be based somewhere around Platform 15, and be suitable for families. It appears in particular there will be 'characters' within the experience as well, which could make it a lot more exciting and interesting: I'm really looking forward to this - there's certainly a lot of potential for this to be a proper little gem of an experience!

I believe that that message does indeed just apply for Standard MAP and Thorpe AP people.

The entrance plaza for Port Laguna is nearing completion and it looks GORGEOUS: https://twitter.com/teamlooopings/status/1009079715683094529?s=19

^The issue is that, for whatever reason, the UK audience doesn't just stay for late night openings unless there's a reason too. It's been tried in the past, and if you keep a park open till late for no reason, people will leave early. They only stay late if there's a reason to (fireworks, scary things at Halloween, etc). I guess that's why they've got Love Island involved. Get an IP involved, create a special event to entice people to stay and maybe it'll work. It's still a risk though, what with it being such a polarising IP. The one major positive to draw from this is that the IP is current. It's always been a joke that Thorpe grab IPs when they have passed their peak, but in the case of Love Island, it's just reaching its peak. Of course, there's the argument about whether it'll work at all and if that sort of IP should even be considered for Thorpe, but there's at least one thing done right there...

Small Rookburgh update; pictures from PhantaFriends: Huge towers that'll be for theming.