Benin

In possibly some of the strangest news so far this year, it would appear that Chessie will now be closing at 7pm during the Summer Holidays...

Layout alert! Pretty much takes up the entire side of the park, past the Crazy Mine and Schlange von Midgard creds...

This is the new queue for their Seastorm ride (Colombus Dinghy)... Ridiculous and unrequired... But it's fantastic...

But Merlin didn't start the car parking payment trend, DIC Tussauds did... Merlin just made the situation increase drastically by adding it to all the other parks (and this has had a knock-on effect to get Drayton in on the action)... Unfortunately, whilst the Merlin blame game is a fun one to play, we can't blame them for EVERYTHING...

No-one is disagreeing that the cuts are down to Merlin's greed... But stop blaming Towers for it (or at least, certain things)... I'd reckon the majority of staff are just as unhappy about it as the guests (apart from maybe losing Nemmie single rider, since it was never the easiest for them to operate)... That the loss of a single rider queue is lamented more than staggered openings and loss of off-peak hours (with no drop in price, at least Thorpe have an off-peak price) shows how skewed enthusiasts can be with the big picture...

Yet History dictates that once the thing is broken, or runs out, it won't be sorted until the closed season... Because it's effort to fix things under Merlin...

Reading various sources suggesting the operating budget for Towers was cut from 15-20% from last year... After their most successful season in years? Good job lads...

There seems to be some confusion as to why Single Rider has been spited (amongst other cuts)... Towers (and Thorpe, and Chessie, and Lego), all get given a set operational budget by Merlin, what they do with said budget is up to the individual parks, but of course, sometimes what is required budget wise, isn't given to the parks... And the park has to take it on the chin... Hence why this (and Rita's, but no-one seemingly cares enough) has happened... And the other issues such as the staggered openings and the like... Therefore not everything Towers' fault in this regard, but Merlin trying to run their parks at the bare minimum outgoing costs... Towers have had their hands forced a lot more than the other parks presumably because they have the highest requirements of operating budget... What can we do to combat this? Seemingly the only avenue is to tell Merlin to stuff it and not visit or buy MAPs... They're currently in that phase last seen in the days of DIC, where there were numerous cuts, crap low expense additions and a general malaise amongst the parks... The similarities to the current 'standards' are scary to say... I highly doubt THOUSANDS of people rely on a single rider queue though... Indeed, most guests don't tend to actually understand the true concept of one, and see it more as a shorter queue (I wonder how regular it is for staff to have to deal with guests who lack the common understanding of it)... No-one's crying over Sub Terra losing IT'S single rider queue... Double standards </3

Helix at night: Shambhala at night: Joris en de Draak: Top Thrill Dragster: And my favourite of my faves, Oblivion:

I wouldn't be surprised if it would take 5 minutes to unload/load, between the new staff on it AND the randomness that young children bring to a ride (parents taking photos of child on ride, child refusing to leave ride, etc)... Hopefully over the year they'll find a way of telling parents to bugger off and buy the ORP if they desperately want a pic of little Timmy on the ride...

Awkward... https://www.facebook.com/thorpeparkmania/posts/10155444462305624

I would say that single rider on Nemmie was always a bit of a logistical nightmare for the staff to contend with... SRQs always seem to work better when they're properly integrated into a queue...

So it would appear that these are the following staggered openings: 11am - Dark Forest, Hex, Cloud Cuckoo Land 12pm - Flume, Rapids, Sub Terra, Ripsaw The late Dark Forest opening is a bit dreadful... Guess the money-men just expect people to either be in CBeebies Land or X-Sector...

Depends on who you know

Flume NEEDS to be replaced with Chiapas... Simple as...

I agree on the "it could do with maybe one or two more big set-pieces", but really, it looks nicer than most kiddie coasters... Will look even better once they've expanded the area even further and removed Spinball...

Talking of theming being sucked into the hole... Probably the best pieces of theming Merlin have done on any of their additions imo... Especially the van... Shame everything else just looks dull, they even have lots of CCTV cameras...

Looks like they're building a marquee on the ride...

New video, obviously COMPLETELY out of date since the ride is practically built, but you know

The op cabin looks so lonely...

Smiler begs to differ from this point

Train to S'Hertonbosch (or whatever the place is called), then a bus... SImples... And here's the ride's entrance:

More pics are up: Source - http://www.vijfzintuigen.nl/forum/136/24466.160 The detailing is ridiculous... Even Europa would struggle to be better than this (that said, their repainting of the Seastorm ride is equally ridiculous)...

One positive, it does mean the return of OUTRAGE bingo, especially on Chessie's one... I remember when the OUTRAGE was over silly things, like BunnyGate, rather than the parks being a bit inept at opening things... It's honestly not as entertaining now, moreso depressing as to the current state of affairs going on... Granted, Facebook (and Twitter) are more likely to get the full rage-ons, will be interesting to see their Trip Advisor pages over the next week... I do agree that the £10 return is slightly insulting given the number of major rides down... Perhaps that is acceptable if it's only Vampire down, but not when the 3 biggest rides are... Also, I seem to remember people 'jumping the gun' when Smiler got delayed to score points against Merlin and Towers, let's not defend the current situations with such an argument eh?