Mattgwise

Went yesterday - Fire triggered once from what I saw, then got the smell of gas for a bit, then nothing! Water was coming out of fire engine and only coming out slightly when the train passed the helicopter. No sound effects were played and oddly tvs and music turned off around 6pm. To be fair though didnt get to Swarm until about 4pm so can't comment on what worked before that point in time.

A good addition would be Canada Creek railway turned into a ghost train with actors! Trains are all still there, track in good condition! Would be something different. Although personally I reckon it is more likely to be Hellgate's replacement.

2010 Fright Nights I visited on I think the first Saturday (might have been second). The park was quiet with queues of no and had done all main rides by 3pm and then had rerides and maze. At around 9:30pm got on Stealth 7 times in a row, Didn't even have to walk round the queue line, straight through the gate between the onload and offload platform. Last year I also went on the first saturday and was busier but still ok. Longest ride queue around 45 mins and longest maze was experiment 10 at 70 mins. Curse was walkon and Seven fairly short later on in evening. Didnt go on Asylum but was around 45 mins from what I remember. Hope that helps a little.

Yep disgraceful in my opinion. The rides team didn't really know what was going on themselves. The ride attendant I spoke to said all he knew was it was Talkback Thames doing a show about a guy who is petrified of roller coasters who is marrying a woman who loves rollercoasters. When people started shouting as we had already waited two hours with the previous problem he said he wasn't even aware they would be there at that point and that they were just told to stop letting people on the ride with no further information. I suggested it made sense to do this at end of day and he agreed. Another person in the queue said it came up on the scroller earlier on in the day that there may be filming, but whenever I went to The Swarm entrance all I saw was the scroller simply saying "Waiting time 50 mins" and the attendant was just shouting "Fast track only £5" Inferno was on two trains all day, didn't find out or see what the problem was but certainly wasn't adding the second train, may I also add that Nemesis Inferno seems much more popular this year on the visits I've made. Whilst on the topic of trains from what I saw at 10am all coasters were on two trains, Not sure about Saw. But Swarm had two closures to clean up sick, two restraint problems (row 5 on one of the trains left side), and the fifth they made out it was a technical fault, but was clearly just to allow the film crew to access the station platform as it "magically" got fixed after they left the station.

Dissapointing visit today. Got on very few rides due to painfully slow queuing on Saw and Swarm. First headed to Nemesis Inferno to a 40 minute queue for it to have a technical fault. Must admit it was up and running again in no time. Then after a quick go on Rumba Rapids and Loggers Leap headed to Saw the Ride. A tolerable 60 minute queue was advertised. The queue seemed to be moving quick but broke down just as it hammered down with rain. After 15/20 mins it was back up and running but from this point onward the queue crawled. Insane amounts of fasttrack tickets sold meant the normal queue was only allowing people inside every 15 - 20 mins, which meant a painfully slow queue. After a total of 1hr 50 mins finally get on to find the guy shout over the station PA that the queue was 60 mins (speakers in outside queue didnt actually work so pointless advice anyway!) I told a guy on the platform about the queue time and he was not interested and just said oh they probably know now (not five mins after the announcement. I thought the problems would end there. Over to Swarm. The ride shut down not 1, 2, 3 or 4 times but 5 times! Took over 15 mins for one of those times just to clear sick! 2 hours later we get down to the platform. and an announcement is yet again made to say they have to send an empty train, after one is sent empty we all get told to move back and to all of the queue lines disgust they let a film crew in to take a 10 minute shot of a guy sitting in the car! Several people in the queue shout boos and that they are taking the mick but nothing done. Eventually get on and it is suddenly 630pm. Only managed 7 rides all day! Also to add they then closed the Samurai queue line at 655pm! They obviously could not wait to get home! On a more positive note however the rides team on Colossus were excellent and on the last train of the day even let us have an extra go! Food and beverages staff very efficient too. I know you technical faults are out of anyones control but when insane amounts of fast track is sold and allowing filming on a busy day after several technical problems and long queues, it is frustating when the queues take 3 times longer than they should do. Very dissapointing visit.

Forgot about that. Believe it or not it has been sold in Asda for around 15 months. No where else sells it as far as I know for some strange reason. I agree, It is very nice.

Pepsi Max! Strange thing is I can't stand Coca Cola's version, Coke zero but prefer regular Coca Cola to Pepsi!

POV video on Youtube of old Magic Mill ride: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKFFmPi3wKM

£28 for a family of four! It's £138 now, gone up £110 in around 20 years. If the same pattern follows, in 2030 it will be around £220 a family ticket!

Just came across this collection of old 1990's Thorpe Park adverts on Youtube.

It was a few weeks back I last looked, so I am guessing this is the newly increased price. They have had a price increase mid season the last few years, so I expect it to be the norm now to put up at the start of year and again mid season.

Adult admission is now a Whopping £43.20! £42 last time I looked. But still loads of coupons about, Sun tickets and the £20 offer they've been doing the last few weeks to keep it much cheaper and more affordable.

Just got back from the park, didn't go on that much as I was with a friend who had a 7 year old who was into this Moshi Hunting. A lot of kids seemed to be enjoying the event, hunting around the park for the different Moshi monster things so worked very well. They had to find a symbol at the eight Moshi locations, and convert it into a letter using the code breaker sheet, and then had to unscramble the word to win a prize of a 3 day Moshi membership (exciting!) and be entered into a competition to win a family four day pass and some Moshi stuff. The park was quiet for the first hour but soon got busy. Unusually ride reliability was pretty poor for Chessington today. Upon arrival Jungle Bus and Black Buccannear were advertised as closed all day, Black Buccannear was however open when I went past at about 11:45am. Dragon Falls was down from opening and opened in the afternoon, looked like problems with the conveyor belt at the top of the main drop. Vampire closed for a short time, due to first aiders needing to attend someone coming off the ride and was also seen running a few empty cars quite near that time, so may have also had a problem around the same time. Dragon's Fury went down at around 2:30pm from what I saw and later began testing, reopened and closed again after a few people started queuing. At 4:15pm it was testing again, and I didn't get to see if it reopened. Atmosphere still seemed good around the park and staff as friendly as ever. Vampire advertised a 100 minute queue and I chanced it and waited 80 mins. Very slow at dispatching, train always waited on break run, Although we would all love the third train to return, seeing it's poor loading today makes me wonder how they ever managed to run three trains, without it stopping on the second lift for a long period of time. Tomb Blaster again very slow at loading and dispatching, and queue reached an advertised 90 minutes. Other queue times: Runaway train - 60 mins Safari Skyway - 30 mins Dragon falls - 60 mins Black Buccaneer - 30 mins Toadies Crazy cars and Tiny Truckers - 40 mins (insane) Kobra - 80 mins Bubbleworks - 70 mins (although it was only 25 mins in reality) Tuk Tuk Turmoil- 40 mins Others between 10 - 25 mins Only got on 5 rides due to having a relaxed day, this silly (IMO) Moshi Monster hunt, and long queues but still had a god day.

I thought the fences looked horrendous in the pictures, but just got back from Chessington, and they actually don't look as bad in person. Again as mentioned most if not all effects seem to work now. I can't remember the last time I saw the boulder move on one of my visits.

Did you think it was meant to burn everyone on the ride then? In my opinion it is there to affect the guest experience of people walking around the area more so than those on it. Most people I saw walk by inlcuding my self stopped to look and chatted about it amongst each other.

Seriously can't believe that they have done that because of one accident in the rides very long history. H&S has seriously gone OTT! Just looks awful in the picture.

Talk about ridiculous. It has been operating seven and a half years and only happened once and suddenly you cannot walk under the track during launch. Next they will probably move the now unused level crossing barriers from CCR and close them every time it launches.

I knew how the station worked before and obviously has just played main theme for last few years (better than the 2007 crap they used). But this time even the two entrance speakers played the bird ambience. There was just one speaker in the extension cattlepen and the one in the cattle pen before the stairs playing the theme. I probably only noticed it more as the entrance speakers usually play the theme. Oh well it's not that big a deal, just worth pointing out.

Shouldn't the whole queue area play the Nemesis Inferno Theme? Not bird sound effects. In its first few years, all of last year and earlier this year the whole area played the main theme very loudly including the speakers at the queue entrance. I do remember for a couple of years between I think 2007 and 2010 it played the bird ambience but thought that was a mistake and the correct format was the whole area playing the main theme. So is the bird ambience the correct way then?

Went to the park today. Had a good day, but felt the park looked a bit of a mess in terms of the plants and trees. It just looked awful in places with plants and trees overgrown and looking more like weeds rather than plants. Also my friends who are not theme park enthusiasts commented on how awful it looked with Saw alive being closed but still there, CCR closed but still there, Fungle Safari closed but still there, time voyagers closed (yeah you get my drift). One said it made the park look like it didn't care about the place. longest queue I queued for was 50 minutes for Swarm (said 75 minutes), the flats really weren't bad at all with the longest for me probably being Vortex or Samurai at 25 - 30 mins. Saw Nemesis Inferno and Saw the ride have a minor breakdown, both were up and running again withing 20 minutes. All rides except for Stealth and Slammer were available. As mentioned in Stealth topic, some work was being done today on the cable, Slammer must still be waiting for parts as nothing happened, just saw some blue covering on the lower central part of the ride and a cherry picker. Also as many have heard the fire was working on the Swarm fire engine, but no timed water effect, just water on the helicopter and one fountain next to it spraying up. Nemesis Inferno had no mist and was playing the annoying bird sound effects in the queue line, except for two speakers softly playing the usual theme. Went on virtually all rides once.

Couldn't believe how awful the queue line is looking to Saw the Ride. All of the plants and trees are overgrown and hiding the themeing. It just looked a mess. On top of that the soundtrack only seems to play on like one of the speakers despite them still working as the announcement of the breaking down could still be heard.

He was pulling the cable in his hand starting at the station end going towards the end of the launch track. I couldn't tell if it was new or old as they had staff in front of the diner stopping access any nearer to the ride. and didn't see anything actually put on, just A cable being pulled.

We all hope for that! We shouldnt have to hope though to be fair! It should just happen.

Its quite large and could possibly be dangerous going off as the car goes behind fire engine if the wind was blowing the wrong way. Timed Water effects not working though.

Currently sat in front of Stealth. Definately something to do with the cable. There are three engineers working on it and one guy is currently pulling the cable along the launch track.