Benin

Big old update... http://www.londonparamount.info/media/1022/paramount_full-set.pdf Turns out the "Leisure Core" will consist of the park (presumably 6 themed areas) and a Citywalk style thing with a 2000 seat theatre, cinema, displays, shops and food... Will take up 45 hectares (111 acres) in total... Also an indoor waterpark will also be built... Another important factor is that they've set aside land for future expansion... Could be an interesting development, though I have a feeling they might also be going for some form of queueless system as a quote of "State of the art technology maximising visitor experience: shortening queues and increasing per hour activity", which could be ANYTHING... Hopefully that just means that they've visited Europa Park and decided that it's what they should follow...

Given my recent visit to Skegness, this sort of incident would not surprise me...

They are planning to have Wodan open this year if I recall (weather permitting)... So the only coaster you'd be missing that's a problem if you do miss it is Silver Star...

It's not like the people who go through this are: Applying to be put through the stuff Sign a waiver that presumably grants the owner rights to do whatever he likes Are still under the watchful eye of the owner, who adapts the haunt to the person The owner deliberately picks and chooses those who apply and only picks people who can actually do it So it's not like he's just letting anyone do this... Daft to have a petition imo...

It truly is pointless, I don't mind the shorts they're doing, but the trilogy ended so perfectly... Silly Disney...

It's not just the wooden coaster the council are seemingly worried about... Besides, it's likely this won't open till 2016 now...

Similar situations could be said for other fansites (such as DLP Magic, TPM and the like)... Whatever floats peoples boats really... I can't think of anything more boring than visiting the same park over and over again these days...

To be fair, the Glass Elevator portion of Charlie is the best part... #damningwithfaintpraise

Horror is too generic a term sometimes... Technically Vampire and Tomb Blaster can come under a horror term... Duel (especially under Haunted House) comes under 'Hammer Horror', and these days is just spooky and very cheesey... Hex is creepy, though I've always felt that's more about the setting rather than the ride/theme... However, both are still relatively family friendly to a degree... Having another Saw like IP would not be family friendly (indeed, was always the weirdest choice for the rather family friendly Eurofighter concept)...

Well of course they are a success, simply because they've opened up 20 million Midway attractions in 5 years (might be slightly over-exaggerating)... Thing is, being 'efficient' in a Merlin way results in the state of the current parks... Operationally, they are an absolute mess and mostly need the 'extravagance' that Disney have... Indeed, their 'efficient' spending in a prime reason behind their own growth and success, because of the minimal expediture for maximum income and short-term success... Between having £30m or £200m on a dark ride, you can probably guess which is the most likely to ooze complete quality... Hell if a ride like Tower of Terror is an extravagance then it's one I could do with a lot more regularly...

Hooray for more bland abandoned building based rides then...

*looks up Huss Booster* Show me a 5 year old that would openly want to ride that please...

Having been this past weekend I've obviously managed to get on Ratatouille... I plan on doing a fuller review soon, but I'll give some initial thoughts to it here... I was of course, doubtful about the ride after watching a POV like many people, but to put it simply, a POV of it does zero justice to the immersion the ride provides... It's truly astonishing the scale of both the theming AND the screens provide... When you then consider DLP got Pixar to create unique animation, get the same voice-actors AND get the composer to rescore for the ride and area, it's no wonder it cost so much... The ride is good fun too, with a good mix of screen and physical theming around the ride, and of course, the delightful details Disney always provide into their rides... It's a fantastic addition to the Studios, and will hopefully be another step into turning the park into less of a forgotten mess of crap (especially once the Tram Tour gets spited)...

Perhaps if Merlin stopped trying to please investors over their guests they'd make more money... Just a thought...

I was talking generally, since I'm on the phone picking apart specific posts is more difficult... Simple point is, Merlin's obsession over easy marketing to preventing real creativity to take place and forgetting that it's meant to be escapism... If other parks can feel that they don't need an IP, then surely a company like Merlin with a massive design team can do anything to give a ride not only marketability, but creativity...

Ratatouille cost a LOT more than £60 million, mainly as they got Pixar to do completely unique animation, and there's a lot more going on than the POVs give away... This dark ride will never be as good... As for the IP issue, why do we need an IP just to be marketable, rather than creating a good attraction that markets itself through word of mouth? Don't think Phantasialand found a lack of IP an issue when marketing Maus au Chocolat... Indeed, the obsession of being easily marketable is more limiting and sounds where Merlin's flaws lie...

How big is Duel's building? That's probably the biggest dark ride we currently have...

Paultons have an immersive 4d cinema, does that make them one of the best parks in the UK?

Thorpe's last big coaster was deemed a marketing failure, so good to see them go for a dark ride... Whether I actually have confidence in them pulling it off to create a truly fantastic experience, depends on too many factors that we won't know until opening day... But I don't trust Merlin to build and fix a large scale dark ride, so I expect lots of screens as theming rather than physical items, and of course the IP as standard... Maybe Merlin will surprise me... But I am sceptical, since dark rides are extremely difficult to get right on such a scale, especially with all the hype that will surround it...

Oblivion, one of the rides at Towers that forces you into a shop AND arcade in order to re-ride...

Being bombarded by upsellers (flasks or photos) going down Towers Street is the perfect start to anyone's day and makes me not think Towers want my money...

It's going to be that, I think it's pretty much common knowledge that any complaint will be dealt with via the park (be it Thorpe, Towers or Chessie) will result in your group being given priority passes as an apology... The parks need to look at their complaints policies and revisit them, because when the masses complain, then it makes the situation worse... As for the people queuing, the same can be said for those who'll queue an hour to buy Fastrack in the first place (probably exaggerated as much as the GS queue times)... Besides, people won't know how long the queue for GS will be unless they decide to add it to the queue board (which was probably something it needed a few years ago)...

So people shouldn't complain just because it's busy? If a park is poor, then a park is poor, to say "oh well you should expect it to be busy" is always a cop-out... Does the park being busy affect the over-selling of Thorpe's Fastrack? Yes, but it's the park's fault for over-selling it in the first place... In the experience of park contact, complaining in person is a lot more efficient than via email... How many people even on here have been struggling to get a hold of a park through sending emails with no response? When I visited Europa in summer it had at least double the amount of guests Thorpe has had this week, yet it was manageable... Perhaps the flaw is that the park being busy is just an excuse to forget the park's shortcomings at being unable to handle such a number of guests...

But complaints are still complaints... You could say exactly the same about the positive stuff on Twitter that the parks constantly retweet, filling up my feed with mindless crap... How many complaints were received through GS officially? Or even Trip Advisor is a better standard than Facebook... As for spending £700 on Thorpe a year, there are easily a million things more worth the money than that (and I'm not even saying that because Thorpe, if someone said that for Towers I'd be exactly the same)...