AdamY

Thanks :PPluk, I would recommend the internet rather than books - that's how I learned. There are thousands of websites full of advice right from beginner level to professional, you can read exactly what you want / need and ignore what you don't, there are millions of examples to look at, and of course it will cost you nada I'd recommend starting by looking up every function on your camera and getting familiar, then working your way through some websites and seeing what they do. Then if you know what kind of thing you want to achieve - say a night shot - you can look up how to do that and which factors to play with. Then of course the practical element is to just keep trying things out and playing around with it - knowing theory and just doing are both key to improving but neither will work without the other

I still don't see how paving can be disappointing. What were you honestly expecting? I can't think of a single attraction in the world with themed ground around it - not even Disney or Universal do that. I think we might be getting a little carried away with the whole 'everything must be immersively themed' thing - the ground is just kind of a functional necessity really; has to be there but I wouldn't personally judge it as part of the experience! It looks neat and tidy and is finished in a muted, unobtrusive tone. Works for me.

Just noticed that JP Rapids Adventure from Universal Singapore has been added! *Goes to play*

People seem to be ignoring the fact that tearing bricks up and having massive cracks everywhere would be kinda dangerous. Not gonna happen.

I actually think the new track looks very sexy, it's just the lift hill weirdness that looks ugly as hell. Shame.

Random comment but I like the tone of the paving bricks. They look nice Just so you guys know, I won't be leaving the island at all on opening weekend; the camera is gonna be very busy! Also, nerdgasm for being able to get that close to the brake run

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Wow, this is a great website! I used to sometimes play the ones on TTF or ATA or wherever it was of Nemesis and Air, but the quality always varied and there wasn't a great selection so it's great to see this site with attractions from other places and all made to a very high standard. I too love the ROTM one Sheeps - I got to 50,000 last night and put myself second on the leaderboard for the day I seemed to have found a weird way of getting the best efficiency though - I was despatching one train to the hold as another arrived from offload, so might try it with despatching both at once as in real life and see how that goes. I was using manual track switches though, and in the correct way. God what a neek Think I'll try the Jaws one in a minute, I haven't played that yet!

I don't know if this was just innacurate wording, but I've always heard the situation to be that the pipeline was severed during Stealth construction, I.e. just cut off. I can't imagine why they would have taken all the stuff out of the ground for it? In which case, so long as the stuff is still ok after 10 years in the ground, it could just be a case of reconnecting the end that went over by the farm. Who knows I guess, but now I really can't wait for opening day!

I have a problem - in recent days some of my posts have just been disappearing at random. Perfectly fine messages - not deleted by mods for inappropriate content or being off-topic or anything like that (at least, they seemed perfectly normal to me and I've received no PMs or warn to the contrary), they've just been vanishing at random. This seems to be happening across all the boards. Any ideas why you technical peeps?!

Universal's stuff although already known for ages looks nice from 'official' sources at last. Already sick to the back teeth of all the "It's world of colour!!111!!!one!!" on twitter though and it's only been a few hours... Still, can't wait to try new Spidey in October <3And with Dollywood, I'm almost certain it's theirs. Firstly, if we take the guy to be about 6' then it's pretty huge. Second, the size was only an approximation anyway. Finally - and this is the aspect that seems most obvious to me but I haven't seen mentioned by anyone - how many orders for giant larger-than-life eagle sculptures do you think this guy gets!? I mean, do you really think they're in that much demand that he just happens to be building another at the same time?

This is crushingly moronic.

Looks excellent. The wood has a lovely texture and those cannons on the side are great. They seem to be taking longer to build it than Thorpe did to build Swarm though!

*Insert witty comment about a scary horror themed event with the park dressed up for the halloween season*

Yeah, I posted that in one of the other Swarm topics when I received the email. Doesn't spell it out explicitly for The Swarm or even Thorpe at all but makes it seem more likely.

Just because it's still registered I wouldn't have thought that means there are any plans for it to fly again. I would think it'll have no bearing on the extent to which it is themed.

Pwettier!

Can't believe I forgot to add this amazing personI still remember every word she said to me in that voice... :)

Still not seeing it, but I'll take you guys' word for it and just wait to actually see it The rest is still looking mighty fine though!

Somehow I doubt Jedward would accept an invitation even if it was given I don't know, some quarters seem to think it won't have the days and days of previews like Saw did but I suppose it would be surprising if it had no celebrity push in a way. There will be some at the VIP party thing which is already confirmed, but other than that I don't know.

And aside from the noise, it just looks so intimidating! I'm actually surprised how low it seems from inside there, the design team really deserve credit for working that into the ride. That video gives a much better view in terms of perspective, and distances between things / proximity to ground, buildings ect. The lens of the video from earlier looked kinda funny to me. Those three seconds are making me more excited in a way than the 1:30 of the first video.

#Winning. The trains look so good when they're moving. I'll actually want to queue for this!!

Don't do it Sidders Well it sure is difficult to say... The trains did arrive some time before they posted the pictures of them, so it's quite a lot of guess work to be done. I would imagine around the time they posted the pictures could well have been the date of the first test. But regardless of time in itself (57 days!), it does seem odd simply in terms of order that they would start testing before such a large piece of theming was installed. In other words, your guess is as good as mine.

I don't get why people care. I measure a ride by what it does rather than how long it takes to do it - as has been said this covers more ground than Inferno in less time. It has one of the coolest first drops in the world, a massive damn plane at the bottom, a 100 ft tall zero g, an inclined loop, a low ground hugging, high - g turn, a huge corkscrew, more near misses and an awesome inline twist. To be fair, I don't care how short a time it takes to cover all that lot because the fact those things are there is good enough.I'm happy.PS in other news, the January AP email says they are planning preview days and details are to follow.

AQA do officially have the best characters evaar for exam questions They also have masterful voice actors for the languages!But, ahem, Swarm woohyay