Benin

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)...

Hmmm Polyps... An actual airtime machine in the park too if operated like the one at Asterix...

Why if Thorpe can fill out like this for FN has it had an awful season elsewhere? Strange place...

2 hours isn't unbearable? Dread to think what you think would be...

It is coming out the station, as that's the only location on the ride which has the dropping fence... I too swear it used to be themed...

Or, the ride operator is just forgetful and too engrossed in his job of operating the ride to notice... As ride teams gain nothing from higher sales of Fastrack, and Fastrack makes the job of the rides team harder/more annoying, then they have no point in doing that... Chessie's never been too on the ball when it comes to lowering the queue times... Though the problem is that as soon as you do so, odds on the queue increases too quickly for the reduction to be of note... Plus most ride ops can't actually see where the queue is, so has to rely on external factors (Guests/other staff) to make the decision...

Sounds like the usual aggravation of a pre-existing condition (whether it was known or not)... Hopefully the guy can pull through, but the park can't do much else...

If Towers can run Scarefest for two weeks, Thorpe can run Fright Nights midweek before half term... Hell, Thorpe is busy for most midweeks anyways...

Doesn't help the perception that you NEED Fastrack to have a good day out at the park... How many other parks openly tell guests to buy the Fastrack over social media?

We have a drop...

Gotta get the budget for the Creaky Cafe rebuild somehow You do get a gift mind for the fiver, and it's quite common now for Grotto's to be paid for, such is the modern world...

Not even 12 and already full up... Either they've reduced the capacity to something more manageable or it's just hell at the moment...

The walkthroughs were still good, like last year, though as with such things group demographic does make a MASSIVE difference in how the actors behave... The two small shows weren't great, though the singing volume/tech issues for Pumpkin High was the main problem with that... The Wild Factor show was just really bad, bring back Spike! Didn't stay till late, though I do wish Chessie would use some other music, all they seemed to have were the HPH music everywhere... Operations were alright, was certainly that end of season trudge (I remember it well), and at least the park wasn't too busy over the course of the day... The Hotel guests Fastrack till 11am did cause a burden on Scorpion Express as loads turned up all at once, resulting in an entire train and a half to be taken up by them... Perhaps using Towers' method and giving out a free Fastrack package for the day's visit would be a better option for this next year... Next year, could the park give some money to Vampire's team to get a new set of fences that people can't climb under so they can batch more than one train's worth of people in each bay please? Can't be too difficult to source some gothic style fencing can it? Might also mean they can bring back the front row queue and extend the indoor queue a bit more so it doesn't feel as slow...