Mattgwise

Fair comment, It just comes naturally to compare to Thorpe Park as it is the park we all discuss here, but yeah you are right, they are very different like the carrots.

And there definitely will be a next time.

I was actually on a tight budget so stayed in a nearby village called Grafenhausen and ran out of time to look at the hotels, plus my friends couldn't be assed with looking at the hotel areas. I spent the Tuesday and Wednesday in the park and the park closed at 7:30pm with the longest queue of the day around 40 minutes for Wodan. Most queues were less than 10 minutes - walk on by 7pm. On the Wednesday the park closed at 8pm but it was much busier. At the end of the day walked by Euromir, Bobsleigh run and Eurosat and all still had queues of around 20 mins. If Stealth or swarm were at Europa Park, then I am sure a one hour queue at Thorpe would easily be halved to 30 minutes, with its speedy loading and no fasttrack.

Just got back from a fantastic trip to Europa Park. Seriously makes the UK parks seem poor in terms of the way they are run and themed. The park is just beautiful, flowers everywhere, lovely buildings and very picturesque. It was a bit tricky finding your way around the park but with two monorails and a railway with trains every 5 - 10 minutes you could just jump on and see where it took you. What's also nice is that although very busy the queues move very fast as all rollercoasters have at least 3 cars. Most many more. The trains are dispatched extremely fast too, I counted 25 seconds on Alpenexpress (Runaway train) between lap bars going up from previous ride to the next dispatch. They don't faff about checking every bar is locked, just a quick look and no thumbs up business before dispatching. (Why do they check every bar here anyway, surely the computer won't allow a ride to start without bars locked anyway) The only rides bars were checked on was Wodan and I think Silverstar. Wodan is my favourite wooden rollercoaster, had lots of airtime, and seemed to maintain a good speed throughout. Silver star was amazing, Pepsi max big one is the only other hypercoaster I had ridden and of course being B&M was so much smoother, and got thrown up out of my seat a few times due to the airtime. Blue Fire was brilliant. It looked a lot slower than I had thought but once on it, it was breathtaking. Felt like I was literally going to come out of the seat several times, and again once on it maintained its speed throughout making the inversions quite fun. The use of lapbars (with pulse readers) made the ride better too. Also had onboard audio which played a nice soundtrack. Also really enjoyed Euromir (amazing soundtrack) and Eurosat, both much better than I thought they would be. Eurosat reminded me of an insane Black Hole. All of the water rides were thoroughly enjoyable too, and believe it or not got wettest on Fjord Rafting, (rapids). A million times more fun than Rumba. Sorry I have run out of time so couldn't do a big trip report. I may edit when I have more time. Below is a link to some photos, they're not great but feel free to have a look (they should be accessible to all - let me know if not): http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151093344060342.485432.701145341&type=3

It's already been established in previous comments by Thorpe Park themselves that the ride will reopen once fixed.

Where did you see that? Says 6pm when I look on the official website. http://www.altontowers.com/events/opening-times/#tab-themepark-aug

Noticed that Storm Surge is down and happened to come across an incident with it when reading a trip report on Pleasure Beach Experience just now. It seems that one of the conveyor belts has come off at the top off the ride whilst it was operating. Picture from http://www.pleasurebeachexperience.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2395.

It sure does!

Never seen that cycle before, three windmills.

Jamie, seeing as you say it was running very slow and you say it shut at 5pm in your trip report I would imagine it was a problem with the ride and not a particular setting.

It will open at some point, Thorpe Park commented on a Facebook post in June that there are no plans to permanently close Slammer and in the Questions to Thorpe Park subforum they have confirmed engineers are/will be working on the ride. We just need to be patient. It has gone down for a good month or two during several seasons since it opened.

No!

Was looking through the Thorpe Park facebook page and a guy called James posted on 24th June "What's the deal with Slammer? Do you plan on removing the ride this year?" and Thorpe Park Official responded "Hi James, Slammer is currently unavailable however there are no plans at present to close the ride. We'll update our website and post on Facebook as soon as Slammer is ready to re-open. Enjoy your visit!" So I guess that answers the current debate for now.

It is generally fairly busy throughout most of july, even weekdays as many other students do what you are planning to do and before the schools break up many organise school trips to Thorpe Park making it very busy at times. Then of course it is the school holidays.

Well base it on the number of hours the park is open it is about the same (ONLY when using a BOGOF voucher at Alton Towers). Take an 8 hour day (10-6) at Alton Towers, works out £2.72 an hour. Cedar point is mostly open 10-10 which works out about £2.75 an hour. Cedar Point might not have BOGOF (and do you know that for sure?) but there are tonnes more rides to go on. I am fully aware that a lot of people use BOGOF vouchers but there is still a fairly high number of people who don't and pay full price, so in my opinion I still say it is more expensive at Alton Towers on average.

Just looked at the ticket price section of the Alton Towers website and have noticed the ticket prices have increased from £42.00 to £43.50. Not sure how long ago it changed but in early may it was definitely £42. Why is there always a need to increase already expensive prices further mid season. Pretty awful prices for those that don't have BOGOF tickets, and what with the car park charge as well. So much cheaper in the US. Take Cedar Point for example, they charge $51.99 which is roughly £33 and there is so much more to do and the place is open until 10pm most of the time.

Looks good, Shame the capacity of Swarm wasn't able to be as good as shown in the 360 tour, with 3 trains on track at once!

It was very annoying to hear that all over the park during halloween. Gets very repetitive listening to it all day, everywhere!

No, this is the music that played in Transylvania

Fred said the Transylvania music had changed, as in the area around bubbleworks and down to entrance of Vampire. Vampire music remains, although is very annoying that they use the microphone/PA over it so much.

Cheers. Thats made me relax a little, as I did think it would be a nightmare.

I originally searched combined flights and hotels through Expedia, but it was only bringing up hotels in Europa park itself or Freiburg and Offenburg which are the two nearest larger towns, this would have worked out expensive getting trains and buses to Europa park each day (visiting the theme park twice). So I found a hotel on booking.com in Grafenhausen which is a 10 minute drive away - http://www.booking.c...131cb59e;dcid=1 that had fairly good reviews. I then searched how I would get to the particular location by train on http://www.bahn.de/p/view/index.shtml and realised it was quite simple with a train from Basel to Freiburg, followed by a change of train to Orschweier which is about 10 minutes from the hotel. This is the first time I have personally booked flights and hotels separately, and definitely the first time I will have to personally find my way to a hotel on a transport system in a country of which I cannot speak ANY of the language in. Lets hope I don't get lost.

Just booked my hotel and flights to Europa park and cannot wait! Sadly couldn't afford to stay in the parks hotels but am staying nearby in Grafenhausen. I booked the hotel for 16th July and it has cost £192 for a triple room for three nights, which I thought was great value at £64 a person.

Chessington is £2 this year, well it was two weeks ago unless they have recently changed theirs too. If the price increases carry on like this In five years time the car park will cost like £10 and admission £50. Very expensive day out.

Seems to be a season of theme park closures this year do far. Three closures by Merlin in a month (2 Alton Towers and now this). Knowing what Merlin are like, they will probably put ticket prices up again to make up for lost money!