Mattgwise

Someone uploaded a video of the open day which I found through the Dreamland Margate page on facebook. It doesn't show much but better than nothing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs4FyXXCB-w

I have just returned from Port Aventura for 10 days (7 day ticket)
 
I have many complaints this year, however I will first mention the positives, we visited during the week in Which the park transitioned from a 10 - 20:00 closing time, to the White Night 'Noche Blana' 10:00 - 04:00, and then 10:00 - 00:00. So I had a good feel for the variety on offer and got to experience White Night and Fiesta Aventura. 
 
Angkor was a fun ride, however it is nonetheless simply a large Battle Galleons. 
 
I will simply exemplify previous comments, I have been an avid fan of Port Aventura for years and have gone almost every year, however this was possibly one of my worst experiences, (this is not to say I did not have a fantastic time about 75% of the time). 
 
My first major issue is the continued problem with the Spanish to know anything called 'Customer Service', generally they lack the basic concepts of a simple smile and acknowledgement (this is a gross exaggeration of Stereotype). Numerous times throughout my visit I had blunt staff, who did little but point and not even offer me eye contact. This is something I at least expect when I am paying over 4 Euro's for a Coco Cola. Nevertheless there was a significant minority that were helpful and offered the basic level of service I expect. 
 
Now our most popular topic on this forum...Queue Jumpers and Express Passes (I feel they belong in the same category because they are both ruining 70% of the customer's day). Where do I begin...Queue Jumpers, I acknowledged one sign at the entrance stating no queue jumping however beyond this, there are no signs to warn queue jumpers, nor would that matter because staff do not enforce this. And as has been stated on here, Spanish School Children especially like to jump the queue's to join their friends, irrelevant whether there are only 2 in the line and there are 10 of their 'mates'. 
 
I would put most of the queue jumping issues down to the layout of the queue line, the most prominent ones are Dragon Khan with its rectangle 100 meter hurdle fences, and Furius Baco with its amazing ability to cut a queue by 3 hours divided by one single metal bar easy enough for an 8 year old to climb over. 
 
I can agree with all when everyone's day is ruined no thanks to these...(I cannot use the words)...however numerous times my group failed to stop Queue Jumpers, and the staff do nothing to stop it even when you inform them. I did complain to Customer Services over this major issue, combined with the lack of enforcing a no smoking policy in queue lines, which really grinds my gears. 
 
As for Express Passes - well, all I can say is that if you are there for only 1 - 2 days, they are the greatest value for money ticket you could possibly ever buy if you come during peak season (10:00 - 00:00). I realised they are far more attractive than the UK Theme Park Fastpass offerings, because for only 25 Euro's you can skip the queues and for an extra 5 Euro's on top you can ride the top 3 Roller Coasters in the front row as well! That's 30 Euro's to get on everything...that's 50 Euro's per person including your entry ticket to get on everything and some more! No wonder it is so popular...ah...there is the problem...Now, do they limit this Express Pass System...NO, NO, NO...NO! Are queue times increased by double if not by three....YES! 
 
Numerous times coasters had full trains of Express Pass, with a notable incident with Furius Baco with 4 full trains of Express Pass without letting a single main queue get on...that is not fair, that is unprofessional, and just disrespectful...I did complain to customer service...guess what I got One Express Pass for Shambhala...defeats the object of my complaint...but hay, if you can't beat them you may as well join them! 
 
My main issue with Express Pass was, I did not see the value in spending extra for Express Pass when I had bought a 7 day ticket, and I was not able to use it over the 7 days...or at least I did not think I could do that. Therefore I had to stand in the long queues, however I in the end chose to do all of the shows and did the rides as and when they were under 90 minuets (albeit it could have been 45 minuets without Express Pass hogging most of the trains). 
The solution for Port Aventura for this simple problem, either restrict sales...but they will never ever do this because its a licence to print money, the only other option is to introduce time slots for the rides, too many times too many Express Passer's wished to use their Pass at the same time on one single ride causing major issues in the queue for the regular guests. So I strongly suggest Time Slots. 
 
One issue on my first day was the weather, Spanish Thunderstorm...obviously shut the rides until the storm was over, however I was amazed to see almost all rides shut 45 minuets after the rain had stopped and the sun had come out...if someone could explain to me why they did not operate way after any rain or wind please tell me! 
 
If you wish to do Angkor remember with Express Pass it runs at the capacity of Sonic Spinball. 
 
 
Fiestaventura - was a poor display, it has not changed in about 4 years, and where others have progressed Port Aventura has simply kept it the same.
 
Generation Forever was simply spectacular however - worth every moment, what a show, worth going to watch!
 
If you wish to know about White Night, you can either have a normal ticket for the whole day (normal gate price, or with your multi day ticket, etc), or buy an evening ticket from 8PM and rides run until 04:00 in the morning! There were a few incidents with my group which caused tensions and upsets, however once in the park, the event itself is fantastic and well worth a visit.
 
The park does not shut and reopen it simply stays open for the whole day and evening. It was a Brazilian Theme so there were parades of Dancers and Brazillian Drummers entertaining the busy crowds. They even raided Generation Forevever for a performance.
 
There was a live stage, and a foam party/Disco area in China. It really was a fun evening. However my negatives included, the lack of security presence beyond the entrance...too much Cannabis and my major niggle was at the entrance...I had entered earlier in the day, and had my hand stamped (my partner had not she stayed at the hotel), however when I returned, the crowds to get in was incredible (they were holding them back because they had 8PM Evening tickets, we did not, we had 7 day tickets) Long story short, we got turned away from both entrances, were told to go to customer services, I refused, and explained through the language barrier, that caused major tensions with my group and they should really reassess this procedure in the future.

Think he is referring to the seat belts on the doors.

Still looks like not much has happened considering it has been shut since September.

I would imagine it is played as shown in the video as it is exactly the same in this video...

Thats a shame as I was looking forward to hearing the whole track. Oh well still better than chart music

http://ridetimes.co.uk

Queue jumping was horrendous. Have to say Port Aventura was the worst experience of queuing out of every theme park visit I've ever had

Ever since the entrance theme was used it always went into the quantum theme at the end of the main track. The quantum part was known as "thorpe theme".

The entrance track as well as others such as air, bubbleworks and Colossus was created by Ian Habgood. You can find out more at these two links:
http://www.habgoodmusic.com/
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep99/articles/readerzone.htm

The entrance track as well as others such as air, bubbleworks and Colossus was created by Ian Habgood. You can find out more at these two links:
http://www.habgoodmusic.com/
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep99/articles/readerzone.htm

I think it's brilliant that the entrance theme and end of the day music will be playing again. Always made me feel excited or happy when I heard either of these play and will be nice to see them returned.
Whilst the chart music worked in that it appealed to the target audience, it just wasn't the same and made the place feel more like a seaside pier than a themepark.
Maybe they will still play the noise in the beach and dome.

I wonder if the end of day music will play again, even if just at the entrance/bridge it would also be a nice addition
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

For anyone interested, I'm sure you all will be, this evening the original entrance soundtrack was blaring! You will be hearing it from now!

Just read this on thrill nations facebook page. Apparently meant to be from monday. Lets wait and see. Would be great to hear end of day music again as well but I guess one step at a time haha.

Someone told me the Entrance Theme is coming back along with new the new screens.

That's my main problem with it though... The people at the bottom are bored completely. Getting the underside it just too boring. The cycles definately need improving to give a range of heights.

This is a top spin (smaller model) running insane!! Crazy! Was it this one you saw?

Wouldn't be surprised if they don't. This is the third season in a row that they still haven't fixed Saw's queueline audio!

But the question still remains. What are they going to do to sort out the car park congestion? It happens far too often.

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-27077503
Accident on a miami style ride in Worthing

Had a few days booked at Barcelona and my last full day there happened to be Friday 11th April which was the first day of the 2014 season at Port Aventura so simply had to have a day there.
We took the train from Barcelona Sants train Station looking forward to a good day presuming that the park would be lovely and quiet as it was the first day and schools in Spain hadn't quite finished for their holiday. But how wrong we were.
The park was very busy and unfortunately didn't get on too many rides and have to say had the WORST queueing experience of my life. More on that further in the report
Upon arrival at around 10:15 the queue time boards were not working and as we past Furious Baco which looked empty decided to queue up for it. We past the many lines of outdoor queue line thinking it was going to be nice and quiet. Once we passed by this area we entered the massive indoor queuing area to find endless cattle pens zig zagging every where which were all full. After much faffing with the rides team and a few queue jumpers we managed to get to the ride after virtually an hour. Was it good, well the only thing that was good was the launch. After that it truly is the MOST painful ride I have ever experienced. I went on presuming everything I had heard was pure exaggeration but no, it really is awfully rough. So rough it makes Colossus seem like it glides smoothly over ice.
Upon exiting the ride the queue was well into the outdoor area and the queue boards were finally working and advertised the monstrosity of a ride we had just ridden as 2h10m!!!
Next up we past through the well themed Far west area of the park and went on all the flat rides there as well as the rapids. They were all fun and the rapids although very short was quite good, lots of speed, spinning and wetness.
After that we queued for Stampida for about 40 minutes. This was a fun ride but unfortuately it caused my Samsung Galaxy S4 to crack across the screen completley killing it so as you can imagine I was unhappy, but did not want to ruin the day so just accepted it and moved on.
After some lunch it was already 2:30 so decided to queue for Hurakan Condor which was advertised as 40 minutes. Once again lots of cattle pens and eventually 1h 20mins later we were near the front. The ride itself has stand up and sit down, however you are not allowed to pick whether you sit or stand. I was hoping I would get lucky and get one of the stand up sides as I would have been very unhappy to have had to queued all that time to then be told to go on the side I didn't want to. Thankfully I got lucky. The ride was fun and intense enough, but not as forceful as Detonator.
After this we decided to go to Shambhala as that was the one ride that was a must. This is where my worst queueing experience occured. The queue was advertised as 1h10 mins, but all but maybe 5 or 6 lines of cattlepen were filled so knew it was going to take longer. However during the wait we had at least 40 spanish people queue jump in the area around us alone. I could not believe it! People were cutting across left, right and centre and at one point when I say no to somebody trying to push past me she decided to crawl around my legs!!!! The queueing area is designed awfully and there is nothing to stop people doing it. For some reason no one was confronting all of these ill mannered people and it was just complete chaos. During the queueing the ride suffered two break downs of about 10 - 15 mins each. The second breakdown occurred 2h 10mins into queuing when I was about 100 people from the front and an attended came out and said something and everyone behind us started to leave and a few in front. At this point I was very annoyed and decided there was no way I would be moving (maybe this ride ought to be renamed Shambles). Thankfully 10 minutes later everyone started to clap and the ride reopened. 2 hours and 40 minutes after joining the queue we were finally taking our seats. Thankfully the ride was incredible and has a wonderful amount of airtime. It is now my favourite rollercoaster, but I don't want to ever ever go through the queuing experience again!!!
It was now ten minutes from closing and we managed to join the queue for Dragon Khan. This time we only queued 20 minutes and there was not any of the queue jumping experienced at Shambhala. Again another good, solid rollercoaster, another of my favourites.
So although the park gave me a new favourite rollercoaster and is beautifully themed and has wonderful scenery we still left dissappointed overall as we expected to get on much more and did not expect such inconsiderate people.

Just saw on Facebook that some of the old ride cars and information from Thorpe's history are currently on display at the park in the dome. Looks to be there until 28th March
https://www.facebook.com/southparks

The water jets weren't working today, so I asked the operator if they were broken and he said they aren't using them due to the cold weather. In past years they had them on regardless of the weather/time of year as it's part of the ride experience. In my opinion the water really makes the ride so much more fun and interesting.

Yes! Kellogg's are currently doing a 2 for 1 merlin offer on selected boxes.

The queueline was better as terror tomb with Abdab featured in the room. Plus who remembers the crystal at the exit of the ride which you could try and steal which would then blast air at your hand and make you jump out of your skin? Awesome.
As well as that I loved the Terror Tomb queueline music. I'm sure it sounded similar to egyptian music in RCT2.