Benin

Maus au Chocolat's ride system is the same as Toy Story Midway Mania... A trackless dark ride at Phantasialand would be something amazing... But they need to remove Night Hawk and Hollywood Tour first, since that part of the park is bloody awful (not helped by everything else since then being next level stuff)... Wouldn't be surprised if they were next on the chopping block, either that or Geisterschloss or Atlantis... Hell Night Hawk's building could become another completely internal area...

Swarm didn't draw in the expected crowds because everyone seemingly left the country when the Olympics were taking place... I still don't understand why the parks didn't try and take advantage of a massive global event happening on their doorstep, there was barely any marketing over the summer yet millions of tourists in the London area... Plus dodgy summer weather, something Merlin are blaming this year's low figures for (as well as the Smiler, obviously)... Swarm's brand wasn't that weak, it just wasn't pushed in the same way that Smiler's was... Hindsight is a wonderful thing though, and at the time the campaign was good, but I think external factors were the problem...

Thorpe/Merlin are the idiots really... How come Smiler was such a success for Towers then, since that didn't have an IP?

Any detailed information on the incident is not in the public domain... And you didn't exactly specify that you wanted actual cause, you just asked how they crashed...

One train went into another that had stalled in the Knot...

Few pics: Themed footers <3 Dreaded Intamin trims... A new tunnel being built Still some rumours over a second coaster coming in with this monster, but I'm not 100% sure on this as of yet... Would be insane if we do get another one though...

Just ripping it off instead

It's going next to the 4D Cinema at the back of the Duplo Valley area... I think Billund has a surprisingly high amount of land available...

http://www.legoland.dk/en/Explore/LEGO-NINJAGO---The-Ride/ New area announced, including a dark ride... Described as: Sounds like a 4D simulator of some kind... Picture of the area:

Because everyone on here who works/worked in the rides department hates Fastrack and would rather it not exist at all then deliberately on their end create more demand for it... The correlation is more coincidence, there have been some cases at the parks when Sales get a big complaint from the Rides department about over-selling Fastrack, because it's the Rides mob who have to deal with the fallout... Let's not forget the lack of engineers that Thorpe seemingly have no ability to fix (probably due to the lack of experience many engineers would have with ride based systems, as there's not really any dedicated training for it out there, annoyingly)... It's a lot of factors adding up which doesn't get helped by Thorpe's rather pathetic excuses of environmental standards and a lack of demand... The problem lies with the company setting ridiculous spends per head that need to be acheived, otherwise we end up with budget cuts and the like, because they decided that one big park wide pot of money was better than each park operating independently (Hence why because Towers isn't performing after Smiler, the other parks end up having their openings slashed, or ride budgets cut because other rides that are termed more important need the extra bit)...

You'd think people constantly forget how Merlin like to wind enthusiasts up with non-sensical crap like this... This is gonna turn into Thirteen's construction, where focus on the ride's background ended up being guessed as a dog because there was one in the promotional art... Then everyone will be upset we didn't get a Doctor Who themed ride... Even though the clues didn't actually point to one...

I've found out that a lot of the voting is done by ACE members... ACE had a trip to the UK this year... The likes of Towers and Blackpool haven't been in the top 10 Best Park for years... Similarly Nemesis and Valhalla in their respective categories... Shows how easily these things can be manipulated by recent trips...

Few details on the Princessia castle have started to appear: Meanwhile clearing for Heidi Coaster is in full swing:

Does Valhalla have a backwards disco room? Case closed...

Spookslot I guess it depends what you expect from it... As an show, it's very well done, with lots of things to look at throughout, but the lack of idea of what is going on (especially whilst waiting) is a problem... Not enough love for the racism rides </3

We don't even know WHAT the thing is... Nothing has been confirmed, so until then, it can be treated as "absolutely nothing"... Still waiting on the 500ft coaster that went out to sea tbh... Kennywood and Knoebels are two I can name... Let's be honest though, Blackpool have removed pretty much all of their historical rides in recent years bar the coasters and about 3 dark rides (Gold Mine got a massive update and cannot be classed as 'classic' anymore)... Vast equates to a ghost train, Alice and River Caves, plus National (ruined by Kumbak) and the other woodies... Bring back Turtle Chase, Whip, Millenium Bug, etc.

'Only' has 3 coasters... Lucky they have Tower of Terror and Indiana Jones really... Also, Europa won the best park thing, so it can't be that amusement park focused then...

There's a ride in the mountain... I was trying to be a bit fair and use a similar style overall photo rather than focus on details...

Just to point out that apparent industry experts think this: Is better than this:

Shame those awards are just dreadful and change winners once in a blue moon... Sure Cedar Point will win it next year with a new DM...

It probably doesn't help that most of these other parks are a lot more responsive (within reasoning) to how the queues adapt during the day... Asterix when I visited recently was adding trains on everything pretty much on things as an example... Thorpe's excuse of 'no demand' shows the lack of customer service we get these days... Especially when people are in 45 minute queues...

Defo used to dispatch earlier than that... Probably as part of the whole "we don't want rides to risk crashing ever again" idea...

DiVertical actually opens?!!!! That home made park thing looks absolutely amazing for all the wrong reasons... Might have to visit if I ever return to Italy (which won't be anytime soon)...

Going where Wildcat once stood... People say the mini-DMs have uninspiring layouts...