Benin

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

Hansa will eventually theme their giant concrete tower though... No idea if Lagoon will, one would hope so, but Hansa definitely will, even if it's in 2016 since they've done it before with Fluch...

It was certainly lacking in comparison to other recent years though (like the Voodoo Dolls in Wild Asia as an example)... Mixed bag for all the parks really...

After visiting Hamburg Sommerdom this year, where most things were about €2/3 per person per ride, Winter Wonderland is the biggest rip-off going... Plus also the ability to pay at the ride in question rather than having to use maths <3 Germans just get amusement attractions...

A new funhouse eh? That's the only thing that's interesting these days... Everything else is just expensive tat...

Both of which take up a tiny proportion of the tent? More like squeezed in than shared... Classic poor design choices really...

Shame it has the stupidest queueline in existance then that makes the ride feel like a complete effort to both with (like most of Legoland tbh)... Also, they stopped using Mack Omnimovers, which makes me hate Windsor's so much more...

Gotta hand it to those Mormons, but why is it in the Hansa Park topic?

Well at least you know it's doable, given SM is due a 6 month refurb in the new year... Then again, Disney has never been solely about the rides...

Angry Birds was done in about 5 minutes, so you never know...

Simply put, a giant B&M Dive Machine is a massive stand-out thing to the rest of the park... It's a typical quaint European park, with a massive Forest in one corner, and every other coaster bar Python fitting in because they're either indoors or made of wood... It had the potential to be like Spinball, out of place and completely wrong for the park... Especially as the location for the ride is more central than say Python, which is pretty much hidden at the back of the park... Fortunately they've made the correct design choices it would seem to ensure that the only impact this ride will have is visual interest, especially if the Dutch love it as much as the Germans love Krake...

What's amazing from those behind the scenes videos is the amount of thought and effort that has been put into the design and ideas of not just the ride, but the surrounding area and buildings... Considering this is a ride that really never made sense for Efteling to build in the first place, it's great to see it being taken incredibly seriously...

I think it comes with the previous Merlin additions that the optimism for this, something that should be completely kick-starting the UK industry, is sorely lacking...

Let's remember, the ride experience starts in the queueline... Let's take Ratatouille and Maus au Chocolat as examples now... Ratatouille's queue starts with a long covered cattlepen outside the main building, it has some posters to look at but on the whole is quite dull, saved by the relative pace of the queue's movement... Inside it's amazing, but is only about 10 minutes worth of actual queue... Tis a weird balance really, and is probably what we'll get here, since Merlin love a large cattlepen of death... Now Maus, it's very akin to classic Tussauds, the entire queue takes place within the bakery, going through many different rooms with tonnes of theming, images of cakes and actual recipes on the walls... Also a video appears about half way through as the ride story and safety info... Here the queue suffers from the slow movement, so the multiple rooms help this slightly, but also the added smell of chocolate makes this the only queue in the world to physically affect me and make me hungry... Indeed, all of Phantasialand's queues (bar Winjas) have a real adventurous feel to them... Merlin's queues lack any form of imagination, even abroad... Whilst some still carry the sense of interacting with the ride, there's nothing in comparison to the likes of Nemesis or even Colossus... It's a shame that queues are seen as something to be ignored in the design process, when they are one of the most important aspects in the ride experience... Things like Fury or Saw are prime examples of awful queuelines... At least Smiler is interactive with the ride, even if it is a dull concrete labyrinth...

Dark rides with laser guns don't automatically become disappointing...

Are Rapids and Log Flumes really classed under 'relaxing' rides? I doubt that this dark ride will be along the same lines as Duel/Tomb where progress is slow and arguably dull (especially on Tomb), one would hope it's a very dynamic motion dark ride, even if it's a cheap one...

If a multi-million pound dark ride doesn't provide a more interesting experience than a Carousel then Merlin might as well give up running parks... It's a shame it's not being relocated, as Carousels can provide that much needed "fun for all" quota quite simply for little space usage, something Thorpe needs to do a lot of intelligently in the future... But guess the conflicting we want families (or DO we?) phases are forever going mental... Wouldn't be surprised if they now decided that the Banana Boat should go and get a bigger Pirate Ship in place of it...

There's just something about every single Moffat episode recently that just makes me cringe... The final moments of the finale are a perfect example of it all... Power of love (see also the god-awful Moon episode) and all that, indeed, there didn't seem to be much of a presence from the big bad in comparison to say the last few times they were involved during the T Davies series... As bad as some of his stuff was, at least he could provide a decent over-arching storyline intertwined in, rather than the odd random scene at the end to go "LOOK THIS CHARACTER EXISTS" before the wild Moffat twist... Best episode was Flatline this series...

They are advertising for at least one mechanical engineer...

Juvelen is FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAB... No one is allowed to be negative about it...