Benin

Are we really considering Scorpion Express as a major investment? Low standards are low...

So, as always, Europa are doing a number of minor improvements to the park during off-season... They've posted a few pics of this work on FB: A man oversees their new Express Lane, which will essentially be a Travelator in the car park. The Kolombus ride in Spain is slightly gutted for a refurb. The base of Euro-Tower is getting a look-in. Don Quichotte restaurant also sees a gutting. The Italy area sees a repaint. As always, Mack prove time and time again that they know exactly the standard required from any park in the world...

Would appear that the layout in the image of the SFC is a clone of Kvasten at Grona Lund... A very good solid family coaster it is too, a suitable choice for the park...

Mack launch k pls... Couldn't care about Rapids, all the UK ones are dull...

If only they could improve operations, then this would be very good news...

Excellent choices from Paultons, one solid family coaster, and an unique one in a way for the south... More coasters than Chessie and Legoland with these too...

Is Tweenies still a thing? Octonauts already appear at Chessie and Sea-Lifes, I wouldn't be surprised if it was that tbh...

Bear in mind this coaster hasn't even officially been announced through the park... They'll just tack any marketing onto the back end of the CBeebies Land ad... "Now including a BRAND NEW roller-coaster for kids!" etc... Does it matter if that's all the advertising? Not really, this is not Smiler, or Nemesis, you don't see many other parks pushing new kids coasters UNLESS they're opening as part of an area...

Yeah later in the year, certainly there in October, it was cool, but Scorpions are dull creatures so it doesn't provide much...

Which probably means that as a ride/coaster, it's pretty dull and typical... Which is of course, not a bad thing, it makes a nice change for there not to be some stupid gimmick/idea surrounding it beyond having a coaster built for the target market of CBeebies Land that has been missing ever since Beastie was spited...

To be fair, his reaction will probably remain exactly the same when the actual building is finished...

Track has arrived! TowersStreet FB Still no closer to determining for sure the manufacturer... Track looks a bit more Zierer like to me though, as the Zamperla family coasters tend to have a flat cross-rail...

Yay Zierer, very under-rated manufacturers...

How to link it to tickets? Incorporate scanning the barcode into an app, job done... Thorpe already have an app, see if they get put RnR into that...

Ahh, so it's only good because there's a good exploit for people to use, rather than it actually being useful... Much like the old style Tussauds Fastrack, where any barcode would provide you a ticket...

Tommy pls:

Is the whole City area getting a retheme or is the Friends thing just a sub area of the City? Nothing is clear...

There in lies a potential social issue, but then again, given the state of the modern world anyway, I don't think people will really care about it... Besides, plenty of time to talk when waiting for the ride as you find something to do to pass the time until you can actually do something...

Unless the locals change their viewpoint on the park (which is of course, affected by the traffic issues, which is something not entirely in Merlin's control), then the stagnation will continue... Of course, if this paves the way for parks like Paultons to catch up and provide a better experience (which based on Trip Advisor, it's already doing so), then it can be considered a positive... A Disko coaster at a Legoland is strange anyway, a 1.2m ride in a kids park? And one at Windsor would be even more unlikely given Kobra down the motorway...

This is what happens when it's over a year till the next new ride

For comparison purposes, here's how close the Efteling Bosrijk buildings are (ignore the obvious difference in quality and size): Trip Advisor

I liked how it stole Dreamflight at Efteling's music and proceeded to fulfil it's duty as a cheap and creepy European darkride...

Coaster length does not equal a higher throughput, just look at T'Ultimate to see how flawed that argument is... As said, it's the filler rides that need the higher throughputs, doesn't every major coaster at Thorpe apart from Saw get over 1000pph? Or at least relatively close to that in cases like Stealth and Colossus?

Europa, as part of their 40th year celebrations, are doing a 24 hour day in July... http://www.europapark.de/en/park/events/40-years-europa-park I WANT THIS! EDIT - Turns out it's dodgy translation, and the park will close at midnight

Thing is, you go to a Disney park to experience the "Disney Experience", which includes the Magic Kingdom ride staples like Space Mountain, Big Thunder, Haunted Mansion, Pirates, etc. It is expected of Disney parks to have these rides/attractions, and even then they're not always exact clones of each other (Paris of course, getting different storylines/layouts which are arguably superior to the originals)... You don't go to a Merlin park for the "Merlin Experience", because such a thing doesn't exist, as all of the Merlin parks (bar Legoland of course, which follows the "Disney Experience" method) are unique... Gardaland and Heide are pretty much the lame ducks of the Merlin portfolio anyway... I'm not entirely sure why they still own them in a way because Garda especially is one of the worst performers in the park side of things...