Benin

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...

Nowhere near as cheap as the Unlimited Fastrack Movie Park Germany offers for €25 a person... Of course, they either limit the hell out of that, meaning that there's rarely a queue of people in the Fastrack section, or the Germans (being sensible and efficient) would rather not go for it...

Isn't Thorpe's twitter external these days? Would explain the miscommunication there as it shouldn't be a low difference between queues if they want to make Fastrack feel like value for money... The only idiocy with Fastrack I see is when guests buy an Ultimate one with less than 15 minute queues... The masses buying Fastrack at this time neither care nor realise how much the overselling affects those in the normal queue, the park are the ones fully at fault for allowing it to spiral out like this... 45 minutes, regardless of it being shorter than the normal queue, doesn't read well considering the prices of the Fastrack packages... Then considering how that 45 minute queue affects the regular queue, that's not a lot of happy customers really... Yet, every year its the same... Is it Thorpe? Or is it Thorpe trying to achieve Merlin set targets?

Overselling suits the current "I want it NOW!" culture in the UK... You'd ho home though if that queue greeted you... Sod that...

Located near Kidderminster, WMSP's main draw is of course the car safari, but it also has a few coasters and rides to supplement the day out... NOW, they're applying for permission to build an indoor water park and hotel to improve the offerings, images below: It does look very good, whilst the ride selection (and ticketing system) is a bit poor, this will hopefully give the place a bit of a kick-start at least, especially as they're apparently also looking to later expand with a Spa and Conference Centre... No plans for the hotel as of yet, though I suspect it'll have rooms overlooking parts of the safari... Would be shocked if they didn't use that as a selling point...

Given that's it's in the height of it's Halloween event, and in Spain, it'll be open just as late as some summer hours...

Fixed that for you...

Back when the parks (looking at Towers and Chessie here) first started, was there a demand for a theme park of the levels they built the rides at? The current namby-pamby safe option choices is more of a hindrance to the parks development than actually helpful... It's a similar situation with a wooden coaster, the parks won't build one because they don't think the GP would enjoy it, BUT if they took the risk on a modern one, then the odds are that the GP would enjoy it and then suddenly your park is behind the one that built it first... In this modern day of advertising as well, there is zero excuse for Merlin (or any park) hiding behind the "there is no demand for this style of ride", because there is only no demand because it either doesn't exist, or the experiences of the visitors are limited enough that they don't care for it... Perhaps instead the park should look to what Towers and Chessie did back in the days of their growth, where they pretty much expressly told the guests that these are the top class rides you can expect from us... Give people something they never knew they wanted, rather than just a tick box exercise, and things become a LOT more interesting (but of course, an unique idea isn't as marketable as Dr Who, it is a shame that parks in the UK are solely marketing focused)... Also, will cost affect it? Whilst Thor's Hammer wasn't the best dark ride in the entire world, it's still better than anything the UK can put up against it... The cost? $8.5 million... If the budget is £30m (though knowing Merlin, that'll be the entire total budget, not just the cost of the ride), then they could buy 3 Thor's Hammers! The only thing stopping Merlin from creating such an attraction is their own personal limitations that they seem to put on their projects to stop them from being 'fantastic' instead of 'good'... As an aside, I like Sub Terra, I liked that it was something different, that it was story-driven and more of an experience with a ride... Also the internal theming is really good... Shame they ruined it with a cheap corridor...

Merlin BLAMED Swarm for the lack of success, forgetting that one new addition does not a park make... 2012 was a crap year for all the parks as well, but of course it was the new ride's fault rather than the biggest sporting event in the capital taking place (and the crappy weather)...

One of those at Thorpe would be horrific with the throughputs... 300pph? With Fastrack? Based on the one at Legoland Germany, not the right avenue to go (however the Sky Roller than apparently gets 720pph odd would be a potential option)...

GIVE US OLYMPIA LOOPING OR HOLLENBLITZ!

Sitting in the very front makes a big difference for the record... The speed that you can get is truly something, as I found out to my cost at Legoland...

Sometimes it might not always be someone who's drunk (although by the ride/attractions rules and regulations, those under the influence shouldn't be allowed to ride), it can just as regularly be someone who reacts to being jump scared by flailing an arm or two and catching the actor right in the nose with some force...