MattyMoo

Well for the traditional work life type people it's early - You morning lover
Just as a quick reminder in case some people have forgotten/ Do not know. In order to participate in this event I will be getting you to sign your soul to me on a press release form whilst we are preparing ourselves for the shoot. No signed form = no participation in the Photo Shoot.
If your under 16 and have confirmed your attending the form will be sent to you after you have chosen an email address for it to be sent for your parents/ guardians to sign.

7am isn't early! If I got to start work at 7am I'd cheer. I was happy last week when I got to start at 6:15am because that is a late start. This Saturday I start work at 5am, so all of you moaning about an early start can shush

Noooo, no pluk!

ATTENTION!
Due to a couple of drop outs and THORPE PARK being extremely generous! They have opened up a few more spaces due to the popular demand. Same terms and conditions. That means if you have expressed your interest already you will now have a guarenteed place!
If at this point you have not expressed your interest, the deadline has now passed and you will be unable to attend the photoshoot. You are however more than welcome to join us when the park opens for the social afterwards.
PMs with contact details and updated attendance list will be done today.
Once again a HUGE thanks to THORPE PARK for allowing this to happen and to allow extras to come!

I went today, the max queues were:
Swarm (both backwards and forwards) 120mins
Stealth 140mins
Inferno 90mins
Colossus 120mins
Saw 120mins
Loggers 90mins
Rapids 40mins
Tidal wave 160mins
Rush 80mins (on one swing!)
And my favourite, leaving the car park 45mins!
It hit 34 degrees too according to the car so there were massive queues at all drinks stands to add to the queuing fun!
Although when all the school kids left at around 4, the queues died massively and the most was 30/40mins!

A teacher friend was at Thorpe Park this morning, this was taken at 11am. Fast-track tastic!
My view on Fast-track - I've never liked it, and never will like it. And, more to the point, I never have, and never will buy it

Hopefully they will complain as I have - seeing only fastrackers being let into the Swarm station for 3 dispatches and then only 8 normal forward guests is unacceptable.
Incorrect - I wouldn't complain about Disney because there it works. Take DLP: Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Indy all have 5 trains; Star Tours has 6 simulators and Buzz is continuous loading. Their capacities (with the one exception of Peter Pan) are gigantic compared to Thorpe's. They manage the queues fairly and the normal queue guests don't feel disadvantaged.
Believe me, I visit Thorpe often enough to know how long a queue should take. There is no way that just the rear side of the queue (over the bridge) should take 90mins.
So you're telling me it would be perfectly fine if you went to your local Tesco, library, petrol station, coffee shop etc and the staff were singing across the store while the customers are around about how they want to go home?
I appreciate it's hot and it's physical work but they chose to do it. If they don't like it they need to find another job. As a science teacher myself, believe me I find it hard working for 8 hours a day in a classroom which is currently averaging 32 degrees C, has 30 teenagers in it who need to be working hard to pass exams - with me having to get them to do it. I don't get a fan and I get a quick drink every 2 hours. Can you imagine the senior members of staff letting me go around shouting down the hallways about how I want to go home? No, it's simply unprofessional.

Isn't the Six Flags system flash-pass where an extremely limited number of them are handed out so the park can control how many people go to a ride at any particular point. I admit I know very little about how the system actually runs but I've never heard that it effects the queue lines in an adverse way.
Fastrack is always a contentious issue and I know I've been outspoken about in the past. I believe it to be too cheap for what it is offering and is in too high quantity meaning that whenever something does go wrong (for instance, The Smiler today) then the park falls into chaos. Guest Services answer to everything is to give out free fastrack to anyone who makes a complaint. They then help bump up the queues even more. Then sellers are sent to all entrances to sell even more of the things. And then parks offer free fastrack for Oblivion if you prebook tickets for a group of four people. It just becomes a vicious circle where the only answer to anything is fastrack. Even if our parks built a ride like Euro-Mir or Silver-Star they would fastrack the hell out of it so that a ride capable of getting 1,800 an hour, still has a 90 minute queue because no one seems to give a damn about the actual operation of the attractions anymore.
It's a ridiculous situation.

I would love to go back to the way of normal and single rider queues.

Why can't people just wait their turn? It is the cheapest and a very simple solution to have.
If you go to a ride and its 90 minutes, you either wait 90 minutes or go elsewhere. This is the most fairest system of all rather than the current system of 1st class and 2nd class citizens. Parents have to say to children "Sorry you have to wait for the people with more money to go on first"

Welcome back to the final part - 5 of 5 of the official Nemesis Inferno Birthday Celebrations Report. Congratulations you survived the weekend hanging on the verge of existence wondering what will happen. You can now take a breather as your about to see the conclusion.
The Secret Six - Peaj, Darkadder312, Matthew, J.S217, Han30 & Michelle got to stay in the station for the Lift Hill walk

With no one around, Han30, Michelle & J.S217 touch Nemesis Inferno in a way that no one should....

Michelle & Peaj then pose outside the railings - Just because they could

After the behind the scenes tour, some lucky TPM Adventurers got to also go up the lift hill. Lucky #@$!% getting everything

Whilst waiting to leave the park a game of Drink Capsule Jenga erupted to loads of interest

However R1C4Y was more interested in playing ping pong and losing the balls on top of the games machines

There is also a new claw machine game in the dome where you can win Mer as a prize

After the adventures, classic panoramic view of a meal at Harvester & Mr. Fish starts morphing into an actual fish

J.S217 struggles to keep his drink down, with the shock of what is happening in front of him

Finally we are at the end of the adventure so that only means one thing. THE OFFICIAL GROUP PHOTO!!!!!

I would like to finish this off with a huge thumbs up for everyone sticking together. It was an extremely big group that stayed together for the entire day, so that's no mean feat! The crowds have been as good as always and a few people even mentioned on this trip (One's who can remember the meets of the old days) that the overall people on the meets have matured and everyone seems relaxed and is turning into one big happy family. To get it to that point we can only Thank You! As without you, things like this would not be happening. Once again, also a HUGE thanks to THORPE PARK for putting this together for us and in helping make these meets so special! So with all these last few meets being so close together, I now have the Ministry of Sound report to put together. I can already see your trembling with excitement.

Fish you babe.

Got my rota for next week earlier today and it turns out that Thursday is one of my days off! So I can officially confirm my place

Waaaa how did I miss this? My beloved Stealth! I could actually re-ride that without needing a breather a la Swarm photoshoot in March!
Have fun peeps, tres jealous

I think you are rather missing the point here. Fastrack as a thing, yes of course people can deal with it however against it they are, but the rampant and aggressive overselling of it in a totally unmanaged way is wrong. People should be complaining and people quite rightly get sick of it when it destroys any chance you have of a decent day out as your wait time rises and rises as a constant procession of people pay past you.
There is, allegedly, a system, but it does not work. Supposedly there are x number of tickets per hour based on a percentage of throughput, but:
-that figure does not move based on a drop in real throughput for any reason
-the allocation is based per park hour and should be sold as such, but no one needs/uses fastrack in the first and last couple of hours so the allocation for those is sold and used at peak times, throwing the supposed ratios right off.
-The thing is wildly oversold anyway by staff writing 'x2' or 'x4' on individual tickets, which are all surplus to the number that is supposed to be allocated.
Thorpe need to get a hold of this and sort it, for all the good that they are and have been doing to create a decent place to go they are ruining so many of their guests days with this that people will not return. These short term instant profits will soon look like bad value when they have to work harder and harder to get people to come back (see opening multi-million £ coaster which is well received but your visitor numbers fall dramatically). You simply can not compare the mess we have to the free, well run, well managed Disney system. That's why people complain about ours but not theirs.

I'll be a gent and share the link to the image in it's full gloriousness.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3007/2994758807_afe2940efe.jpg'>http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3007/2994758807_afe2940efe.jpg

<3 24th of March when Detty and Slammer were the only rides in operation after 2 o clock

Seems worthy of it's own topic...
Thorpe Park have submitted plans for an extension of the Crash Pad units...until 2024, as read here:
Source - http://planning.runnymede.gov.uk/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/Generic/StdDetails.aspx?PT=Planning%20Applications%20On-Line&TYPE=PL/PlanningPK.xml&PARAM0=183854&XSLT=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Runnymede_AA/xslt/PL/PLDetails.xslt&FT=Planning%20Application%20Details&PUBLIC=Y&XMLSIDE=/Northgate/PlanningExplorer/SiteFiles/Skins/Runnymede_AA/Menus/PL.xml&DAURI=PLANNING
A quick look at the plans, submitted this time last week, states the reason for this is:
A few more bits of info which may be of interest: -Funding for the permanent hotel may not be available before 2020. -The entire scheme of Crash Pad requires a total investment of £9 million. -There will be a maximum of 184 rooms in the new-look Crash Pad, including smaller rooms for couples. -The current Thrill Workshop (next to the Crash Pad) will house all the electrical equipment and other similar things. -The park only has 1 row of the current Crash Pad shipping containers set up, with a second to be installed "shortly". -Crash Pad v2.0 will open in time for next season and will occupy a slightly larger space than the current Crash Pad. All of this information comes from the third link of the plans (which can be seen here - http://planning.runnymede.gov.uk/RBCNGE/ngeResultsForm.aspx?intref=RU.13/0719).
I'll be trawling through the plans a bit more as time goes (this information all comes from the first 4 plans, so some may be a bit skewed / misinterpreted).
Here's a quick look at how this visually changes the look of the Crash Pads:
Now:

The second row (the bottom one) has yet to be added yet, but should be added soon.
Crash Pad v2:

We see a new, smaller, row is added, and can see the smaller rooms (with the smaller rooms, there' 4 rooms per container, as opposed to 3).
However, the biggest point that stands out to me here is this (again, from the third plan, page 8):

Yep, it is likely we will not see a new roller coaster until 2017 (at the earliest...)
Surely a sign of just how badly Thorpe are currently doing?

Aggggggh, this is terrible news. No major coaster for possibly another four years plus more of the shipping container hotels. This is not good news at all and I can't wait that long til the next coaster.
One other thing,is it just me or are the prospects of a permanent hotel appearing to have the chances of Thorpe getting a top spin ?

I'm gonna say, procrastination happened.

Well, at least the zoo is still open...
*cue mass lion escape*

No trip to Chessington for me this year then. I know its ridiculous, but Runaway Train, as rubbish as it is, is a staple attraction for me and I never miss it on a trip. It goes beyond just being a ride and is something that I grew up with. There's no reason for me to visit the park anymore with its closed attractions, rides that have had theming completely wrecked over the past ten years and rides that have throughput deliberately decreased for ridiculous reasons.
A sham of a park.

Brilliant news, I'll be taking my loose change jar up Sainsbury's tonight to use the Coinstar machine in anticipation!
"I asked for Cycle 6 on Samurai and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt"
I'll be quiet now

You can just go to a charity shop/organisation and volunteer, or keep and eye/ear out for any events that require volunteers. That will get you experience.

personally, if RR did go, I'd like them to replace it with a new atraction... a new one entirely
new starts are always good when it comes to theme parks