Morgan

I have to say I thought CBeebies Land was brilliant, I really had my doubts during the construction, but the quality of it all is really great. I took my 2 year old daughter on opening day, and while she has never watched CBeebies, she still loved it all. Postman Pat is a vast improvement on the Tractors, for one it can go around a corner without stopping, but it also brings in the interactivity of pressing the right buttons as you pass by the different characters, similar I guess to the old Riverbank Eye Spy and its buttons, but you now get recognition if you press the right button. The Number-Go-Round is one of the more simpler re-themes, but it looks great and refreshed and isn't quite as annoying now without the cacophony of animal sounds bleating out constantly during the ride. It's a similar case for the Pie-o-Matic Factory retheme of Berry Bish Bash, it looks great inside, with a new coat of paint and the odd new themeing element here and there, although the experience itself is identical to before. The best part is probably the queue line, which has been given some themeing and TVs to entertain during the wait. The Get Set Go Tree Top Adventure is much better now, over it's former guise as Squirrel Nutty. Admittedly it has lost a little of the charm it had as Squirrel Nutty, but the addition of on-board audio and themeing around the previously empty ride path is great. I also like the fact that it is now a bit of a guided tour of CBeebies Land, it is only narrating what you would normally be looking at anyway. In the Night Garden is another improvement, and while it makes no sense to me whatsoever, the themeing they have added around the ride really does make it much more interesting to ride over Riverbank Eye Spy, even if it has lost the sound buttons. It's also great to see the vast majority of the themeing is animated, instead of the generally static characters we've seen before. The new additions to the Land are all really good, and while previously during construction I thought they seemed a bit of a cop out, not including a new ride, they are all worthy additions to the land. I didn't personally go into Nina's Science Lab, but friends that did said it was good, and had lots of interactive things to play with. Charlie & Lola was a mystery to me before we went in, and to a certain extent still is, it's an odd set up, as you enter a house, with a kitchen and lounge with numerous cupboards to look in, and then you move into the back which is filled with a ball pool, a mini climbing mountain type thing, with a hidden cave underneath and an interactive projection pond with swimming fish fingers. It's very odd, but oddly fun and it was the quietest attraction in the land, although this might be due to it being tucked away at the back. The Sensory Garden was another nice addition, and while there is not a huge amount to do in there, it is a good place to spend 5-10 mins taking a break from the rest of the area. We didn't go into the Tree Fu Tom Training Camp as it was a bit wet to let the kids run about in the play area, but it looks like a vast improvement on what was previously the Dung Heap, the play equipment looked fairly vast and varied and I'm sure it will be easy to spend an hour inn there if you have kids. The Big Fun Showtime area is really good, as you enter through the tunnel, it really turns into a peaceful oasis from the busy main part of CBeebies Land. The atmosphere is fantastic, and I can see this being an amazing spot to chill out on hot summer days, obviously between the shows. We only watched the Mike the Knight show, and even though it had a section where it got all the kids to get up and search the entire area for different things, which seemed a very silly idea as it's just waiting for the kids to trample over each over in a rush to get up and find something, it was overall a fun show and was a good way to keep the kids entertained for 10 minutes. The area is also home to a Meet and Greet tent, which had Iggle Piggle from In the Night Garden in, I don't know if the charactes will rotate at all here, there is also a few Mike the Knight themed activities and games to do. The final part of CBeebies Land is Mr Bloom's Allotment. Out of all the attractions in CBeebies Land, I think this is the one where you will benefit the most from knowing the show beforehand. While it's certainly not vital to be familiar with it, because of the interactive nature to the attraction/show it might help if you have seen it before. The attraction is split into two sections the outdoor allotment, where an actor encourages the kids to explore and find things to compost, and the interior potting shed section where another actor interacts with various "Veggies", in a fun interactive puppet show. This one really surprised me, as I assumed it was going to be another walkthrough attraction similar to the Sensory Garden, but the quality of the show and actors was really fun. On a closing note, it had to be said that the atmosphere through the whole land was amazing, they had numerous entertainers about, including acrobatic stilt walkers, actors with "baby veggies" from the allotment and I believe Postman Pat was out in his van, although I didn't see him personally. Whether or not they keep this atmosphere up, remains to be seen, but it was great to see a big effort being made. It's already been linked to, but a lot of the photos we took and the videos for the rides were posted to live.towersnerd.com if you are interested.

I've seen them advertise a 'Major Investment', and have described Hook's House of Havoc as a 'major new attraction', but I haven't seen any mention of a major attraction being included in the Sleepy Hollow area. Also I would've thought there would be more clearing happening than that shown in the photos if there was going to be anything major, by major I'm meaning a large ride.

Yeah the Neverland walkthrough only takes up a fraction of the space that the old play areas used to use, so this new play area looks to be a fairly decent size, and will be a great addition to the area. I think for Sleepy Hollow we will see a retheme of Brer Rabbit, showing the story of Sleepy Hollow, and possibly a family flat ride in there along with a retheme of the area overall. I don't see there being any major new attraction in there at all. I would love to see them get a new coaster at some point in the near future though, it's been 8 years since Speed was opened and the parks line up could really do with another big hitter.

If it's the same quality as the Neverland expansion, then it'll be a great addition to the park. I really like how Oakwood are making these improvements around the park, taking areas which are/were very tired and dated and turning them into something special.

My favourite would be Haunted Mansion at MK, it's one of my all time favourite rides, but Spiderman at IoA is by far the best when it comes to being an exciting, action packed experience in my opinion. In the UK, my favourite would probably be Hex or Valhalla, but there is definitely a serious lack of decent dark rides in the UK.

Apparently the director of PortAventura has been interviewed on Spanish radio and has stated that the Ferrari coaster will be 100+metres and will go 0-200kmh in 3 seconds. So it would appear it will be closer to Kingda Ka than Stealth in comparison. You would think if they are going that high, they'd try and take the height record.

I agree, The Smiler is obviously benefitting from the "newness" factor, and will no doubt drop off next year, I don't think it's a bad ride at all, but it's definitely ranked higher in the poll than I would've expected. It's fantastic to see Nemesis back in the top ten where it belongs, but I would've liked to see Nemesis Inferno, The Ultimate and Thirteen place higher than they did. I think the poll itself is about as fair a poll as you'll ever get, yes there are some anomalies where the ridership is low, but compared to the likes of the Golden Ticket Awards it's much more of a balanced result. Looking at the latest Golden Ticket Awards, which are majorly voted for by select persons in the US, the results show only 6 coasters from outside North America appearing in the top 50, compared with 23 in the Mitch Hawker poll.

The trims are dependant on the speed of the train, the brake fins raise if the train is going too fast, but the majority of the time they are not needed that much. I believe the valleying issue was due to the trims slowing the train too much, so I assume they have tweaked them since then.

I would think it's unlikely, I believe the Banshee trains are wider than the original invert trains to accommodate the new restraints, so it would probably cause issues with clearances and such. Also I can't see the parks forking out for their trains to be retrofitted with the new seats and restraints, or brand new trains altogether, when it would be much cheaper to just maintain the ones they have.

This looks amazing, a huge expansive layout, 3 inversions and on the side of a mountain forest. Layout below... (Source: Theme Park Review) It really bugs me that the majority of UK parks are "scared" of installing wooden coasters. If a relatively unknown park can get this sort of coaster, why the hell can't either Thorpe or Towers.

The fireworks start at 7pm, although it is advisable to take your spot for the show at least an hour before, if you want a good spot with a completely clear view, (the island at the bottom of Towers Street gives a great overall view). The rides in Dark Forest, Cloud Cuckoo Land, X-Sector & Adventure Land will all close prior to the show, I think this varies depending on the length of the queue, and the majority won't open until they have performed a safety check of the areas once the fireworks have ended. The rides in the opposite side of the park generally stay open, and are therefore available straight after the fireworks.

Also Ride Times uses the same feed as both the in park queue time boards and the official app, so if it says it's open on there then it should be open.

Also, to do a free flow maze at HHN it would be a throughput nightmare for them. Presuming it's not changed since the last time I went, they have a near constant stream of people going through, with only a brief pause between very large groups, and they have queues that stretch into multiple hours for all there mazes. My last time in 2008 we had express passes and we still had to queue 40mins for one of the mazes later on in the night, they really do get that busy. So for them to recreate Thorpe's Cabin experience they would have to have multiple mazes for the same thing. That's the advantage of having lower attendance to these events, it allows for a more personal and immersive experience, even if you don't get film quality sets and themeing.

That's correct, the spinning doll door doesn't open, that was confirmed to us by Megan (head of ents I believe). That room represents the basement as it has loads of different items on the walls, we got stuffed in there by the pumpkin head people and were stuck for a few minutes before going out the way we came in. On a different note, I watched a walkthrough of Universal's version of Cabin, and while it is undeniable that their maze looks 100 times better than Thorpes in terms of sets and themeing, it doesn't look anywhere near as fun as Thorpes, just a normal walkthrough, with the actors just popping out here and there to scare you. It really makes you appreciate Thorpe allowing the actors to make physical contact with you, it makes it so much more immersive.

I think it would be... Door 1 (from left) and back into the first room... Door 3 and follow that round until you pass the black room with the chains, then into the basement room and back out again, and then into the lift and from there it's linear. The only rooms you'd miss that I am aware of is the room you access the control room from and the control room itself.

I've already given my thoughts from the preview night on live.thorpenerd.com, which left me not being able to choose which maze I preferred. On Friday, Cabin, Valentine & Asylum all had their merits for being my favourite, but after our second day on Saturday, Cabin was by far the stand out maze this year for me. We went through Cabin three times on Saturday, and all three times we took a different route through, I'm fairly sure I've been in every room now, including the control room, which is a really nice touch. This is the first time I've ever experienced a maze where it makes you actively want to go back again to explore what else is inside. The free flow format is a big plus for me, it allows you to become more involved in the experience, and makes for some fairly hectic and amusing situations. Valentine was good, I'd never been in Experiment 10 so I wasn't able to see the similarities that's been mentioned, but I felt this was far too short and seemed to suffer a little with throughput at times. Also it really wasn't what I expected inside, I thought the actors would be dressed up in the gas mask outfit, which would've created the affect of the same villain stalking you through the maze, but I didn't see this once on the three times through. Asylum was better than ever, mainly down to the actors pulling out all the stops, but still using the conga line format, stopped it from being up there with Cabin for me, as you are just walking through not actively taking part in the scenario. Blair Witch was disappointing, they seemed to have changed their act a bit on Saturday, as the only jump out scares were the actors dressed as campers screaming 'Help Me!', but it still didn't capitalise on the potential it had. SAW Alive for me was rubbish, they've completely abandoned the theme of the maze, and although on Friday there were a couple of actors that were doing a great job, it really doesn't work anymore. The only thing that was missing for me was a park wide atmosphere, the special ride music featuring the director was a nice touch, but as you walked around the park generally, there really wasn't that much to give away that Fright Nights was actually on. To sum up, this was the best Fright Nights I've been to, Cabin is one of my favourite mazes I've done, up there with Field of 1,000 Screams. I really hope that the rest of the event is a success and Thorpe stay on this track for future events, I'd love to see all mazes becoming free flow, I think Asylum given the Cabin treatment, could be an amazing prospect.

The price of on-ride DVDs and photos is ridiculous now. As others have said, if they embraced digital media and offered them as downloads or email for a smaller fee (e.g. £2-3 for a photo & £4-5 for a video), they would make an absolute fortune. They are getting to the point now that they are going to price themselves out of the market. They have even started being a bit underhand with selling photos as well, I know at Towers they sometimes charge £10 for a ride photo, which is the physical photo plus digital download option, instead of offering the download as an extra. Back to the videos though, I think if they did go down the cheaper download route, the amount of videos that would be posted on Facebook would provide a huge amount of coverage for the parks, it just seems like Picsolve are to near sighted on pushing their short-term margins than actually looking for a sustainable future.

Legoland can get away with not adding big additions regularly, look at last year, they opened the Hotel but to the average park visitor that isn't any reason to visit for a day trip, and the only other addition was the Star Wars Miniland, yet their attendance jumped by 5.3% on the previous year, which is one of the largest increases in Europe that year. Legoland is just ridiculously popular, and while they are packing out the place with families, there's not a huge incentive for them to lay out for a huge ride.

I've been wanting Thorpe to get a B&M Hyper for ages, and while I'd be thrilled if they did get one, I think I'd prefer them to get a coaster from RMC, there recent work looks outstanding and their own coasters (not including their upgrade jobs) look top notch, obviously at the moment they only have Outlaw Run at Silver Dollar City, but the visuals for Goliath at Six Flags Great America while a bit unorthodox, looks like it'll deliver one hell of a ride.

I'm hoping that Fright Nights this year (if successful) may spur Towers into putting in some significant investment into Scarefest, as this year isn't sounding very promising, with nothing new announced.

It was inevitable after they added Lex Luther: Drop of Doom to the side of Superman at Magic Mountain. I'm sure it will be an amazing ride, but I much prefer drop towers that have other ride position over seated. I find that the thrill of a drop tower comes from being able to see the ground coming toward you, so on a seated ride you generally can't see the ground very well, it's much better when you are tilted, standing or floorless, or even in the case of Falcon's Fury at Busch Gardens face down. Maybe it'll be something they'll add to it in the future to give it a boost in popularity.

Being a premium MAP holder, I obviously prefer Thorpe's pricing model (although the cost of extra petrol to get to Thorpe completely negates the saving ). Having said this, if we ever want to see an event of the calibre of HHN at our parks, the only way to go is the separately ticketed model they use. It costs a hell of a lot more, and would make the event a one visit yearly event, instead of visiting multiple times in the event, but the difference would be amazing. I can't see it ever happening like that though, I don't think it would work in the UK, paying an £40ish for a 6-7 hour event. Plus if it would be anything like HHN, the only way you would be able to do everything in one night would be to buy fastrack tickets on top of that, so even more expense.

I was at Alton on Saturday and Sharkbait Reef is fantastic. The themeing is top notch and the amount of stuff they have packed into the relatively small site is amazing, it really feels much bigger than it actually is, and can easily take up 30 minutes just walking around. It is seriously the best thing that's been added to Alton in the last few years in my opinion.

I think Inferno is my favourite Thorpe Coaster. It has seemed to get better over the years and was running amazingly on opening day, really fast.

From Thorpe I've got a Stealth, Tidal Wave, Saw, Nemesis and Twisted Freak mugs, and numerous fridge magnets. I've also got mugs from other parks, along with tonnes of fridge magnets.I also really like the Saw syringe pens, I meant to get one last weekend but completely forgot.