Benin

Apparently the plans have already been pulled off the site... Possibly an admin error or sommat... It's somewhat daft these companies can't file things properly...

The trains are utterly vile...

Actually, there is nowhere but the floor to put your bags on Tower of Terror, Space Mountain and Rock n Roller Coaster... Hell, can even take your bags on Winjas and Crush's Coaster... This having a bag drop points to it having a bit of Sub Terra about it, needing to get people in and out of the experience quickly and efficiently...

It's still in the negative for re-using every single marketing tactic ever

Be interesting to see how it's taken in a Dive Machine train, even if it is a 6 seater one... Also, points for it not being a Krake clone...

What would be the point in opening a ride that within a year would be (hopefully) made to look cheap or outdated? Whilst there is still a place for Ghost Trains with modern effects (Bla Taget at Grona Lund is a good example), with Thorpe planning a multi million dark ride, a old style ghost train isn't what's needed...

One would hope that Thorpe would be aiming to reinvigorate the UK dark ride industry with something more elaborate than a Ghost Train like attraction...

If Universal can't afford the rights to LotR then Thorpe won't be anywhere near that... Dunno why there's this obsession with the minimising of risk on family aimed attractions, you'd think after Smiler's branding success they'd feel confident in their ability to take things further and continue the trend of unique and creative branding... Indeed, surely an alternative method is to save the money on aquiring the rights on an IP and invest that into the ride to make it better... Given Merlin's addiction to budget cuts to attractions and parks themselves, you'd think that spending millions on an IP would take away from the amount of money available to the ride itself... That a dark ride is considered an actual risk for the park shows how far behind the rest of the world the UK industry is...

Answer is simple, do it like Heide do on Flug von Damonen... Or even Raptor at Gardaland... Only that doesn't have a single rider queue if I recall, so I'd rather Flug out the two...

Apart from the sheer mayhem and unbalanced way it's done on Swarm, because they tried to fit in the bag drop and front row/backwards queues causing the hold-ups and on quite a regular basis unbalanced levels of queues inside... It's amazing the difference between Swarm's batching to Raptor and Damonen, purely because they lack both a front row/backwards queue and the bag drop is located in the station (where Heide's uses the superior, "why don't other parks use this system?" rotating bag lockers)... As for pre-shows, what's the point in a 30 second one if it's in a separate room? If they're gonna have one, it'll be a couple of minutes long, and perhaps they'll have two, but if the attraction ends up being actor based, then it'll clearly be one, because budget...

That plan is just depressing now, stupid groundwork people screwing everything up The queue will be stop/start movement since batching, bag drop and pre show... Hopefully they'll batch it well, but can't help but feel Thorpe haven't learnt from Swarm's problems..

This is what happens when you're the only people on Tower of Terror...

Maybe it's all the McDonalds then?

Same level of wetness from the ride side of things (I.e. not very), though Hansa's does also have the guns on the side... So seemingly, it all stems from the stupid water bombs at the bottom, because the normal ride isn't good enough as a water ride to suit the tastes of riders... Add that into the factor that you end up sitting by those bombs for ages due to the throughput (why doesn't it follow the others and have constantly rolling platforms? Guess it's a H&S thing there) and it all adds up...

Other parks that suffer from boats that flood (say Blackpool for Valhalla) have vacuums for the excess water... Doubt that'd take too much time in comparison to completely stopping the loading procedure... And then the question still is why Storm Surge seems to be the only one that suffers with such an issue? Seems more like the whole thing is knackered and suffering from Thorpe's lack of maintenance budget...

Air Tunnel is 13 years old next year, guess pretty much we can't complain about anything anymore since we can't do anything but sigh softly everytime we see a flaw in a park... Though Storm Surge will only be in it's 4th year of operation next year, not that it affects any of the issues discussed since it's opening... One would think that a park would want to keep maintenance of a ride, irregardless of stature within the rest of the park, to the highest of standards...

Now weirdly, that look for Rameses? With the majority white colour? Looks more fun-fairy and suited to sommat like West Midlands Safari Park... Much prefer the colour scheme they later adapted to it... Gold and Blue <3

Does Loggers ever need its boats tipping over to be emptied every 5 minutes though? It's amusing that I never saw Hansa or Asterix suffer that issue from their equivalents, or indeed any of the problems Storm Surge suffers from (such as leaks, as both others involve crossing under and you don't get dropped on)... If the answer is "Well you shouldn't walk under it then" though, then clearly the ride was poorly thought out to a massive degree... Also, shout out to the metal frame at the top of the hill remaining there for no reason anymore...

No one described it as such, but that's their (and my own) opinion... Gonna have to deal with it, like we have to deal with Storm Surge's poorly thought out and cheap existance...

Cameras shouldn't be taken on rides without permission anyway, so there's that factor to consider before any form of investing...

Been a bad year for me, as both of my cats passed away, Daisy in July (18), Emily only just over a week ago (16)... Daisy Emily HOWEVER, there's always a silver lining, as trips to Battersea were made for kittens! So now we have Florence (9 months) and Gaston (4 months), who are slowly getting used to each other... Very topsy turvy for Florence who lost a mummy cat in Emily, but at least she's well behaved, Gaston's previous owners clearly set no boundaries on him and as a result he's a very energetic and misbehaving kitten... But with time he will learn I'm sure... Florence Gaston

Also depends on how grand a scale the scenery will be taking... If it ends up being screen based then they don't have to have room for large scale theming/structures... As for bag drop, probably part of their idea that they make it quicker and easier to load/unload attractions, even though you can take your bags on pretty much any other dark ride in the world... Unless the whole actor based rumour means it'll be a little bit like Hobs Pit and combine a horror walkthrough and transit ride...

We now have an airtime hill which will lead into a helix... After that, presumably another inversion before the final brakes, not the shortest baby Dive Machine then...

So, Phantasialand decided to get Chiapas in the seasonal mood: http://static.phantasialand.de/fp-1416175051/drupal/media/music/mexico/chiapas/winter/music_chiapas_winter_01.52421f9eab4ae8b0b0c7e147f5473bf8.mp3