Benin

The SFC has been finished (trackwise)!

I don't think just adding lights to the ride will make it any more likely to be open at night... It's probably more the sheer scale of an operation to evacuate the ride that is very off-putting, especially at night... I'd wager a fair amount that if they added floodlights, people would moan that it ruins the atmosphere...

Only way to find out how successful the attraction is to hack Thorpe's computer systems and see what the KPI scores are...

Looks like I'm restarting this topic again lol... I went yesterday, Asterix is really under-rated I've thought, Oz'Iris is one of Europe's best coasters, Ton of Air is still fab, and the park looks lovely as always... This year they've added a few shows to their line up as well, which were rather good I thought... The Romans vs Gauls TV show thing was utterly amazing though, like, my favourite theme park show levels of amazing... The sheer amount of work they put into it (including 'live feeds', fake adverts, staging and costuming the host) and I pretty much didn't stop laughing throughout... Granted of course there is still the language barrier in some respects, but it was just so damn entertaining... There's still no news on the 2017 coaster, however next year the park are getting two new attractions, a Disko Coaster to sit by Zeus, and a TopSpin variant to go by Oz'Iris (somewhere, it's not exactly clear where it's going to go, nor were they advertising it on park)... Concept art below: Hopefully when the coaster is being built this topic can have a resurgence...

Chessie did it in Hocus Pocus Hall many times before...

And mostly because they've realised that the current levels of evacuation aren't actually up to the right standard... Don't know if they have the budget for catwalks on the final brake run...

Toadies doesn't open after dusk anyway, much like Skyway... Reading too much into it, might as well say the same about Thorpe or Towers when their marketing only focuses on certain rides...

Yeah that's utterly, utterly wrong... If the E-Stop had been pushed, then the system would not by itself restart the ride, it would need a manual reset...

Instead of hearsay, let's see some ACTUAL sources... Remember that jeep that was apparently advertising the next big ride? And it turned out it was a tyre cover?

I think the park have confirmed that the wall is temporary... Only to block off the construction, so I assume when they're finished they'll do something with it...

I get the feeling that someone at Thorpe enjoyed last season's American Horror Story...

Best New for 2016 ride is pretty much safely in Phantasialand's pocket atm... That dive into the mountain (or out of the mountain) looks obscene!

I have such distinct memories of the TV ads for Samurai when it first opened, hell even Submission had a fantastic advert back then... Then there's Oblivion's which is probably one of the single best UK ride based adverts ever... True advertising machines in the 90s... Full of magic and relative whimsy in very quick snippets which caught the attention a lot more than today's adverts... Though that's possibly because a lot of the newer adverts seem to have to portray every single aspect of it (see also, modern film trailers)...

Towers really got me into the deeper world of rides, I visited the southern trio (and Disney Paris) a fair few times when younger, but it was a trip to Towers in 2001 where it all just clicked together... Also aided was that the RCCGB were also there on that visit, which took me further down the rabbit hole...

Truckers has had 45 minute long queues for YEARS... Let's not pretend that Chessie having long queues is a brand new situation guys, it's what happens when most of your rides only hit about 200pph...

F&F at USH was just one of their random additions to the Tram Tour (in the same way as Kong was added in recently), and I think it's just a screen based immersive tunnel-esque thing... Full of THINGS and EXPLOSIONS and EXCITEMENT! Will probably be something similar at Florida... So nothing tooooooo exciting, but we have been spoilt recently...

Mr Bloom's 'queue' is always at minimum 10 minutes though don't forget, due to the length of the show... Peeking and Bucanneer both slip in heavy rain, assuming it's as bad as centre of London today... Capers and Amazu will be due to slippery conditions and not wanting children to fall over... Slightly more valid reasonings than say for water rides...

#ruinthemagic Be interesting to see how good a quality the theming is when finished, it could always end up looking crap after a few weeks or months... It could look fresh in 5 years... We don't know (though I've more faith in the upkeep at Paultons)...

After doing two of their attractions in Denmark, I would have no feelings either way on this matter... Like, there is some reasonable quality to it, but it depends on what the park does with surrounding theming, since the Ghost Train at Tivoli Friheden was hilariously awful as a result...

Hehe, I like how Thorpe's new FN Cover Photo on FB has the selected dates small print covered by a few buttons...

That's a lot closer to the Fog Lume than I thought it would be... The best thing to know is that Plopsa's concept art tends to be realised it full, looking rather forward to this, though surprised it's completely taking out the Batflyers if the station is located as per the art... EDIT - If there's a reason to follow Plopsa on FB, it's because they post stuff like this: That train concept is rather adorable

There is literally no space for Thorpe to do a parade... And I doubt many would actually go out of their way to watch it, this isn't Disney where it's a massive part of the day as an example, even Europa's is only really noticed if it passes people by... Odds on the Carnival theming being from Towers?

Scarezone and Studio 13 Carnival overlay it is then...

Herein lies the crux of the matter... Look at other parks who focused solely on the thrill market for many years (Six Flags Magic Mountain is my fave example), and what happened to them is what was happening to Thorpe, poor attendances, atmosphere and lots of other factors were resulting in some very low income years... I think the park actually realised that whilst they were getting loads of people in, these people weren't spending the money per head that was being expected... When you look at the attendance report, which parks come out on top? If we ignore Disney due to the brand name and the Orlando parks then the top ones have rides for everyone... Cedar Point has about 2/3 kids areas and numerous kids rides intermingled with the likes of Dragster, Maverick and the like... In Europe, it's even clearer that the parks with the highest figures are those who are all encompassing with their attractions... Europa combines the thrill market and family market, Efteling, Port Aventura, Liseberg, even Garda all combine the two sides of the coin because you need both to be a successful park... Thorpe have realised this recently, hence the flurry of family based additions (even if the quality is arguable)... It's not necessarily going to completely stop them with the thrill market, but the issue is more towards that for years they told families to essentially sod off to Chessie and now they're desperate for them to come back to the park... And still Thorpe have seen more investment that pretty much all the parks I've listed... Although that probably comes under quantity over quality and an apparent NEED to build something new every single year, even though most parks don't always do this and labelling it as a world's first whatever... I think for a lot of enthusiasts, as you get older, you realise that out and out thrills are nothing compared to parks that get atmosphere and theming right... Hence why most American parks are actually quite dull, because (especially Cedar Fair or Six Flags) they are very, very samey...