Benin

Thing is, people will go expecting stuff worth paying the marked full price of £60, regardless of the tasty deal that got them in the first place... All this is for is to push more people booking online... Why? Probably so they can actually plan for numbers... Is this the right method of promoting the park? Unlikely... £60 for any of the UK parks is a ridiculous price... And for every single European park to boot... And the American parks...

Increasing to £60 on peak days will not stop this voucher reliance, indeed, it will promote it moreso for those people who just decide one day to turn up to the park... They're pretty much pushing people to book online to get the 'deal' and try and push the whole 'value for money' thing... Rather than creating an actual day worth the money... As an on-the-gate price, regardless of the amount of people who actually pay that much to enter, is pretty ridiculous, especially if kids between 1m and 1.4m have to pay that... So they're going to put the family market off going because of the expense to go in... What's Towers going for this year out of interest? Europa is €40 odd for a day ticket right? THAT'S value for money... £60 for Thorpe is not...

So this morning it was blue and black, but all of a sudden it changes colour to white and gold? WITCHCRAFT OF THE HIGHEST ORDER I SAY!

Probably be the same line-up as towards the end of last year... CBeebies will probably also make a few appearances (well, we hope, ERT to get the new cred would be EXTREMELY useful)...

In addition, this will be the first Dive Machine to feature a singular chain for the lift hill and holding drop...

By the looks of things on the website I believe they're re-purposing the tent of WHY into the queue-line of things likely to be broken when Benin visits over Easter... The inclusion of the Wild West theming also being sucked into the hole is... a strange choice to say the least... Then again I completely forget that it even HAS a Wild West area...

I haven't seen the Air wheels so cannot comment (unfortunately people don't seem to post such images) on the current state of them, I can only guess and assume... But I highly doubt that Towers would let them go beyond a specific working limit... Without knowing what said limit is, it's impossible to say whether it is right or wrong... Show-wise, I highly doubt people on TPM (or any goon-site) would go to Towers to meet Mr Bloom or Justin, because we're not the target market... But did people here go to Thorpe purely because of Brainiac being there? Or because Thorpe was open? Towers also had more rides open for half term didn't it? Not sure what the price difference was for an actual on-the-day ticket though so best thing to work out VFM would be to divide the cost per ride... Which Towers will probably win based solely upon CBeebies Land, which for them, is fine because they advertise the event for that end of the scale anyway, whereas the older age ranges/goons go for Nemesis... Does anyone know Rage's min temperature? Perhaps it's because of the layouts being different providing the issue here, especially as Rage is a stock model (Duinrell and at least 1 in America exist)... Perhaps Rage's stock/clone lifestyle is the big reason for this? Or Gerstlauer/Merlin made a mess of the designing process... Most of the time though these rides would only stall if no-one's actually riding it, so perhaps it's more of a fear that it'll happen at Thorpe/Towers and cause hassle, whereas AI aren't too worried about it... For Chessie I think the issue is the quality of investment since Wild Asia, as well as the basic minimum investment (Zufari was around half of Smiler and Swarm's budget, give or take post Smiler problems)... Why don't Chessie get £10m to spend on, well ANYTHING is probably the question best asked, even if it wasn't for a cred...

There is a LOT to quote here: Spinball being unreliable? That's a shocker for the ages... Cannot speak for anything else mind as didn't visit either event, nor read any reports because I'm simply not interested... Could be that Towers' maintenance limits are however different to Thorpe's in regards to the minimum Air's wheels can go down to for example... But to be fair to Towers, Thorpe's coasters were also on one train, so there's minimal difference between the two... It could also be that Towers have done the bare minimum stuff to get them open for Feb and will do some more serious work between now and opening, as they do open slightly later than Thorpe and have no MAP day to boot, so are probably more willing to do that... As mentioned elsewhere, all rides will have their own individual operating temperature, which will of course vary a LOT dependent on location, ride type, etc... Bearing in mind that Towers tends to be colder than Thorpe at this time of year, and the way in which Rita works, it's unsurprising that they don't try and use hydraulic systems at this time of year... The cable doesn't have anything to do with it, especially since it happened over a year ago... Why are we comparing two kiddie coasters to Saw and Smiler as well? You're better than that Flipper... Besides, as mentioned, those two are much more liable to stall, hell Saw tends to stall when someone sneezes in the wrong direction, and Smiler tends to just stall for giggles... To turn it around, why was Nemesis open and not Inferno? It's the same situation, but strangely missed in your argument... Especially as you pretty much state that Thorpe's maintenance for this event has been better... Perhaps because they only focused on opening two big coasters and Fish? Towers did have Mr Bloom and Mr Tumble/Justin at their event, which isn't part of the regular season at all, so why didn't they charge for entry? It's pretty much the same situation as Brainiac coming in, external events and what-not... Both Halloween events are crap, although generally the better mazes tend to be seen to be at Towers overall, though probably because they have fewer mazes to plonk all their actors in... This will be a continual argument forever methinks... At least until people go abroad and do some of the European events... This isn't surprising, Towers have always charged stupidly high amounts for their hotels... It's pretty ridiculous at the best of times... Pluk's pretty much covered this one tbh... The investment at Chessie is disgracefully minimal, especially budget wise... Let's not forget as well that Zufari even had it's budget slashed late on due to Smiler's issues... And whilst it is good that the zoo is getting attention, should it be fully at the expense of a park? Remember, Scorpion Express only got a retheme because it was falling apart in the first place, and we're STILL waiting for the promise Falls retheme... At least they TRIED to give Legoland a new ride for this year... Perhaps if it looked like they TRIED to add an actual new major ride to the park side of things, or actually showing off that more than one or two parts of the park have been improved (let's be honest, Market Square and a Translyvania repaint are the only real park-side improvements since Wild Asia)...

The idea sounds very... idealistic... Like someone just put together a few best bits of rides and cobbled it together... Then again, Phantasialand build the rather unexpected... I doubt anyone expected Chiapas to have backwards rave room in the final design...

If only it had some sort of system by which once a plate has been emptied it could be refilled...

Guess it depends on how much stapling is involved then by the staff, though with the likes of Abismo and Shock the lapbar also wasn't completely tight on me, perhaps body proportions is a big thing about it...

Interesting comment, given that Twister has plenty of airtime throughout the course...

Krake doesn't get fantastic reviews by the wider coaster community (I find it fab and cute, but most seem to think it crap for... some reasoning, but they're the people who like SheiKra, so they know nothing )... Be interesting to see how fast it takes the Zero-G and Helix mostly... That'll be the decider imo, as Krake's airtime hill is fantastic purely because of the speed it hits it... Still likely to be the best coaster at the park mind, but as the park doesn't have any coasters many would even put in the world-class bracket, this will make no major difference really... It'll be a good solid ride, like Joris and Vogel Rok... And that's not a bad thing at all...

That train design is soooooo utterly awful <3 Timberliner trains as well <3

*Bender Laughing.gif* If Thorpe ever build anything as good as Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley in the next 3 years then I think everyone on here would be astounded by it... Or Men in Black... Or Jurassic Park... Or Transformers... Or Spiderman... Or the Simpsons food court, which is probably the best comparison to use when we're talking about a food outlet...

Merlin are obsessed with making all the eateries look massively bland... The wall murals are nice (or at least, the volcano one is), but it just reminds me of Lego's Pirate Burger Kitchen, a vast empty bland area... Bill's mention of Sleepy Joe's shows how much difference a decade makes...

Could that be part of the contract Towers signed with BBC (and interlinked with the contracts signed by the actors who will have to attend certain publicity events)? Just wondering really as it might mean that the park don't have to foot the bill... Why are the parks currently obsessed with elitism? The issue is, because of the way they have introduced it all via the restrictions, they've just essentially forced people who want to do certain things (I.e. London Midway in Summer) to get the Premium Pass rather than the Standard... And are even this year devaluing said pass by posting restrictions on it on some attractions... Aside from free parking and unlimited park access, what does a Premium Passholder actually get in comparison to a Sub-Standard Pass? Also, Six Flags/Cedar Fair Passes are actually cheaper (and don't have many if any forms of restriction) than a Merlin equivalent ($139.99 for Magic Mountain, some other parks are cheaper, but as they allow you into all of the chain anyway, the value for money there is very good)...

Standardised to be free I hope Marc, rather than every park charging for every single event they run...

LOTS of pics at http://www.vijfzintuigen.nl/forum/136/24466.124.

Here is the question though, is the event good because there's barely anyone there in the same vein as Summer Nights? Are people not bothering with paying for an event with only two major rides open? Is the AP charge the reason for the lack of queues? Just playing Devils' Advocate here really, as visits to empty parks or ones where the ride count is high often get more positive reviews...

Needs more Oblivion and Charlie tbh... Then it would be an excellent line up...