Benin

Big old bump since their 2016 coaster is causing a bit of a stir (mostly as NOBODY KNOWS A THING)... They've teased a few images via Snapchat: Now, whilst a lot of people assumed that as a result of Mack testing a Spinning car on Blue Fire, it was going to move onto this... HOWEVER, the spinning coaster in China has one catwalk, whilst this has TWO, with that first drop looking suspiciously like a Dive Loop of some form... Could this be Mack's first Wing-Coaster? The plot thickens...

Restaurant is nearing completion, seems to be a sit-down set menu jobbie...

Given that the neighbours pretty much live on the park boundary, they are within their right to have some concerns... Good parks work within their constraints though...

Wonder if the paper realises that technically everyone gets released at the end of the year if they're on a seasonal contract (I.e. most ride ops)... If the ride was broken down (it was), and in manual mode (arguable), then the ride op would not be in control, it would be the engineer... Smiler probably has at least 24 hours worth of training before an operator is let loose on the controls by themselves (based off the old Vampire/Fury hours, it could be different at Towers), dunno what else you can do in 24 hours odd of training and operating... Some rides have easier to access manual modes than others, I doubt any coaster does though due to the nature of things...

The problem is that often repainting or refurbs often come at the expense of some actual investment into the park... Meant to be a new ride next year, but perhaps due to the pursestrings being tightened we can only afford some paint...

New queueline can only improve RQ (especially since one of the dragon meet n greets uses the old extension)... Meanwhile: Tonnnnnnes of pics at https://www.phantafriends.de/index.php?/topic/391-neu-20152016-themenbereich-klugheim-bilder/&page=9too for your own viewing pleasure...

I didn't rate it in Germany at all... Cos it's in Denmark It's good, theming is pretty decent, the optional Mirror Maze is pretty standard, the ride is very much aimed towards Lego's market and is basically a Frog Hopper version of Mystery Castle at Phannyland... It'll end up with massive queues though...

Ghost isn't capable of the same issues as Sub Terra (as in, it goes up then down, unlike Terry), nor are there any actors in the walkthrough... So there's not that much to be learnt from other attractions at Merlin parks...

Ghost is bigger than Sub Terra (I think)... It's good, now we just have to wait 10 years for them to get the Ninjago dark ride...

It's got a really pretentious name behind it?

Almost as if mood boards use random imagery to convey an idea, some of it from other sources...

You can only wonder how things might have differed if the person in charge of the ground survey hadn't royally messed it up so much that we needed the ride to sit on a sea of concrete... Plus the queueline layout changed from the original plans... Not that it would've improved matters, the claustrophobia comes mostly from the whole thing being enclosed by fencing...

That's what happens when you hire in crap construction companies to build it... Probably set the scene for the rest of the ride tbh...

Dominates the skyline a little bit... Wonky Zero-G looks potentially fab...

Think comparing it to Slammer is a bit too far, especially given that Slammer was a complete prototype and the use of air canisters for it was always (in hindsight) going to cause some problematic issues... Smiler doesn't really do anything too drastic enough (and some of the smaller problems like bolts popping out happen on any coaster, even if the company involved in the construction of this were absolutely terrible)... Your problems with it can be pretty much attributed to most other Merlin additions, therein lies the main issue... Taking this quote out of context: Could relate to Zufari, Sub Terra, Saw, Swarm, etc. Take your pick... Merlin's budgeting for these attractions never seems balanced correctly... Especially when you end up having the budget for another ride slashed because some idiot did the ground survey for Smiler wrong...

The only reason they would've scrapped it was if the HSE told them that they could never operate the ride again... That would only have happened if they had discovered severe problems with the mechanics/system of the ride, which was clearly not the case...

That's ok, I have no expectations to manage...

Is there any point in the clues since we know what the theme is now? Especially since the ride is "top secret" and a "world's first", wouldn't be surprised if the clues were buggered up by the discovery of the images... IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT RYAN!

What does one expect from a business? Like, look on Trip Advisor for any business and see how many responses are deliberately tailored towards the review...

ALL ABOARD THE HYPE TRAIN!

As a thought, given the state of recent H&S style decisions at Towers, I unfortunately think it's more than likely that they'll just end up only having one train on the track at any one time... Grim thinking for anyone visiting to visit the park next season... I hope Towers will prove my doubts wrong on that one though...

It's stalled twice if I recall since opening, most other rides (including a few B&Ms) have also had some issues with stalling... I wouldn't say that something stalling twice is really a massive issue either... It's not a consistent problem over 2 seasons of on/off operations... The incident was always going to be human error though, unfortunately the engineer made the wrong decision (probably as they were sick of having to constantly reset the ride)... Of course, it's highly entertaining reading all the GP comments... Lots of people seem to think that minimum wage teenagers would be the ones at fault...

To be fair, Chessie have been rather unorganised for a long time...

To be fair, Universal's theming has always been pretty good, even on the older attractions like Twister, Jaws, etc. That's some fantastic rockwork though...