Benin

Oh ye of little faith... Most parks can be done as part of a summer holiday, though my version of a summer holiday (I.e. Coaster Road-trip) probably differs slightly from most people's versions... Who needs beaches when there's creds to get?

That's because it's moving in a straight line... It's when it does anything else that it goes wrong...

Oh yay, I miss the old preview things we used to get (the Colossus model <3)... Probably to do with the Enchanted Forest then...

Awful queues and operations over a few years made the difference, with crap food and staff in a general sense... Thomas Land helped them turn a corner... Still lack a good coaster though...

There's a lot to be said by having parents who also like theme parks... Baseball is still basically Rounders... Though I went to see the San Fran Giants back when the Home Run record was broken in a big old box... It was a laugh and kinda shows that American sports are all just about getting together and having a natter with friends, hence why they all last FOREVER... Next report, please no bold... Please...

Tis probably the truth of it tbh, the other non-Merlin parks certainly have a lot more focus on the value, of which Blackpool, on a price per ride basis, easily wins out... Drayton is a weird one, but I guess the lure and reasonable quality of Thomas Land wins out... Paultons is an excellent park for the family market too, combining that charming independent owned park feel into a top quality IP area... The Merlin parks have been certainly attracting the negative crowds in a relative growing fashion on the decent reviewer end of TripAdvisor...

You can see the station still exists via Google Earth, and on that Pinto bus you don't see it... A strange history indeed and must have been one of the few parks in the world with a dedicated train station (Walygator is about the only other one I can think of right now)...

Empty parks always tend to lack something when compared to a reasonable crowd (a packed park can have an awful atmosphere, it's a tricky one to get right)... Empty days at parks can sometimes feel quite hollow as an experience... Chessie at Halloween a few years back was testament to this...

Look up momentum, there's your answer...

I was under the impression that it was a MAP night only for free, rather than with normal guests as well... It did get busier as time went on last year though... And with only 750 MAP holders for free, the rest will probably still go...

This was only the MAP night as well... It will only get busier...

This sounds like an issue unique to Thorpe... In a similar fashion that I haven't seen other parks with a Storm Surge type ride having to empty the rafts on a regular basis... There must be a clearance issue if there's pieces of rubber on the floor though... Which is silly...

And this is why it had an hour long queue, rather than it being 'popular'... I'm sure a few years back that queue when full was only 30-45 minutes...

The new ride excuse shouldn't really fly on a ride type that's been around for ages and is a simple system that even Chessie can get it to run reliably... Big rides yes, Dodgems, no... By sweeping the rubber on the floor, does this mean that the cars don't have enough clearance between themselves and the floor? Bit of a design oversight there if that's what you mean...

To be fair, Merlin have only technically built one dark ride in Sub Terra... Which is actually of quite a decent quality when you think about it (internal theming is pretty good, externally, not so much)... In two weeks I'm getting an hour worth of ERT on it... #smugface

That article, being 2 years old, clearly didn't come to fruitition, since I used the exact line they're discussing about closing to get to the park...

And I was more thinking that if someone thinks that dark rides are a waste of investment they should be forced to go on the best one in existance... Hence the ToT mention...

Someone quoted £20 million though (that someone being you, YOU!)... If Merlin can't build an immersive dark ride for that much then they might as well truly give in... Thor's Hammer at Tusenfryd cost $8.5 million as a recent example of a modern dark ride, and that looks brilliant... Huntik at Rainbow Magicland probably cost a similar amount but I can't find the exact amount... Unfortunately it would seem that Merlin's methods of budgeting on new rides seems to leave something to be desired in a lot of cases...

http://www.sbfrides.com/product/en/791/MAXI-DANCE-PARTY-360---33Mt./ Saw one of these at Clacton Pier, meh...

So much wrong in this post I don't know where to begin... SOMEONE GET THIS MAN ON TOWER OF TERROR!

Long queue doesn't equal popularity when your throughput is awful...

Pleasurewood Hills did it earlier this year...

A £20 million Merlin dark ride seems very far-fetched though... Just cos Merlin and spending that level of money on a non-coaster ride mainly... Will believe it when I see it...

Well they need to make sure the ride is able to actually get over the top of it, running it empty is the most logical thing to do and ensures that it doesn't endanger any guests riding it... I'm sure it's what they've always done... Rollback happens, get everyone off, test the ride empty...

Day 2 – Parque Warner Here was a park I was rather excited about, with 2 B&Ms, a Vekoma GIB and some gorgeously themed areas, how could I not be? The journey to the park was slightly longer than the other, purely because it’s seemingly in the middle of absolutely nowhere, so first step was get the Metro: Then the RENFE train to Pinto: Then a bus straight to the park entrance: Rather simple in the end, who needs to spend lots on hire cars? My excitement also truly got the better of me when I noticed Stuntfall testing, and then my interest was piqued by the entrance/main street area. Whilst the quite often unforgiving Spanish sun has faded the paint somewhat, I adored the entrance area; and the theming in general. Though the theming didn’t extend to Stuntfall, our initial first destination, we were denied due to some good old fashioned Spanish operations, where some rides open 45 minutes after park opening. Weird. Undeterred, we followed the straight path with our goal directly in sight, Superman – de Attraction de Acero. I have heard LOTS of good things about this. And whilst the ride was on one train operation, I felt that it didn’t really need it, considering the queue was only down the stairs that led into the station. Naturally the first decision was to sit right at the back row, and we were quickly sent out on our journey. B&M straight drops are brilliant. It’s probably that simple, of course you rarely see them on any bar a Hyper Coaster or Raptor at Gardaland. This is a real shame, as there was tonnes of airtime to be had in the back row of this. The rest of the ride was rather standard in the classic B&M fashion, loop, Immelmann, zero-g, cobra roll, intwined corkscrews, but with the slight difference of a small airtime hill and some good final helixes through in for good measure. The positive of this being that without a MCBR, the ride doesn’t lose pace, which considering it’s on the boundary of when B&M started going ‘safe’ is perhaps the best bit about the ride. I wouldn’t say it blew me away, but it was still a brilliant ride. The plan was to ride Batman next, but that was also opening late, so I popped onto La Venganza del Enigma, the shot/drop tower, which was good fun and very whooshy. The drop from the top was probably the standout of the ride, as the shot up was rather gradual. Again, taller drop towers quite often lose the real thrill in comparison to the shorter ones. Finally, Batman – La Fuga was open. And it probably has the best queueline in the entire park, and should certainly be considered as one of the top ones in Europe. As soon as you enter through the entrance gates of Arkham, it becomes a fair representation of the place. A long and winding indoor queue past noisy gates (hello Sub Terra), abandoned cells and random other bits and bobs was very enjoyable. Unfortunately the theming just stops at the stairs to the station as well as the station itself. Which is a bit weird it must be said. The ride of course, is a Batman clone, which are varied in their own world as per most clones. Some are good, some are bad, etc. Another run into the back row and away we went. One of the best parts of a Batman clone is the opening salvo of inversions, loop, zero-g, loop, is pretty much a real push on the senses without doing that much. Of course La Fuga has the added incredible near miss in the zero-g to the station building. Whilst it was still early in the day there was a definite feeling that there was a lot of bite to the latter half of the ride, but it was indeterminable after 3 or so dispatches in. Still, between this and Superman, this park has two fantastic rides. Back to Stuntfall it was then. 7 years since I rode Déjà vu at Six Flags Magic Mountain, and I was rather itching to get on it because a – GIB’s are pretty fab, and b – it spites regularly. Unfortunately it wasn’t running the back or front rows, which was a bit burndenous and slow, but the queue moved reasonably quickly. Until… The dreaded engineer appeared. Fortunately he did some things and the ride tested and he moved on. Huzzah! Before long we were ready to ride (and destroy ‘the burdenous buzzer of unnecessary loud times’). The lift is fast and actually quite scary, if only for the fact these trains don’t have much in the way of space between cars, and my feet kept touching the giant metal thing in front of me. The drop though is just outstanding. Fortunately due to the large inversions there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of Vekoma rattle on it either, though I was in the fable Vekoma-Brace-Position™ which probably helped. Even backwards it was reasonably smooth and definitely enjoyable. A shame that not many of these exist in the world really. After that we needed a long sit down, and by luck, a nearby indoor show was starting in the Scooby Doo Musical. Featuring songs from the hit live action film of a decade ago, and of course, the Great Dane himself (the actor of which deserved the most credit, being in that suit and being involved in a very high tempo show). The story seemingly followed a similar tale to that of the Buffy musical episode, where the Romanian 2013 Eurovision entry was causing all the fuss. It was enjoyable and pretty basic theme park show affair for continental European parks. I wish we had more like these in the UK. After a quick break for lunch (at least when we wanted lunch at British times the places were empty), we headed into the Cartoon Village in search of more coasters. We were distracted by the Scooby Doo Adventure, a Sally dark ride, which had a lot of burdenously broken targets. A shame but the cars were so, so cute <3 Further on we heard the rumblings of a Zierer Tivoli, Tom y Jerry. Nicely themed to a classic episode involving a picnic, we also had burdenous queue-jumpers in this one, who we actually ended up walking past anyway because of being a two and the staff filling up the car. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Not much to report on it tbh, ridden one Zierer Tivoli, ridden most of them. We meandered around the area looking for the next coaster, where we stumbled into the character house area. We elected for Bugs (because who wouldn’t?) and after walking through the house/queue were greeted by a rather scary scene of Bugs stretched out in his chair waiting for us. It was terrifying. But we had a good bit of banter with him and the photographer. Shame it’s one of those bits where you have to buy a photo over taking your own. Stupid Picsolve </3 Finally we eventually found the entrance to Correcaminos Bip Bip, a Mack Youngstar that had a rather awesome themed queue/station combo. Why aren’t there more of these? As they are clearly better than a Vekoma Roller Skater. I especially like kid’s aimed coasters that don’t really patronise the kids in the same way as Wacky Worms and the like. Good old Mack. LOL VEKOMA STRAPLINE That done, we headed into a very rare European Wild West themed area. And headed for Coaster Express. It’s god-awful. Not only does it bounce its way around the track, it’s DULL. Being dull is a bigger sin than being rough, and this was BOTH! In addition to the fact that the trains are rather limiting to who can actually ride, this was by and far the worst part of the overall trip. And we can blame two companies for this, RCCA for existing and building the ride, and Intamin for the trains. This was Mean Streak levels of bad, and I’d much rather ride Baco than this. THAT’S HOW BAD IT WAS <////3 After some further faff, we headed to the Police Academy Stunt Show. Which involved 15 minutes of dull chatter involving picking audience members, and then one does the same thing that’s done in every show and starts driving the car because he’s a [sHOCK] part of the show lineup! [/sHOCK] The actual stunt part of it was cool, but there was truly too much faff going on to enjoy it. A quick escape led us to Hotel Embrujado, a Vekoma Madhouse, and quite possibly one of the best examples of one I’ve ridden. The internal theming is amazing. I felt like it was ripping off Tower of Terror, but in a good way, because the quality wasn’t really THAT far off it. Add in the numerous effects in the library, the ride LITERALLY hidden behind an ancient bookcase, and an equally amazing and terrifying animatronic in the ride made it a wonderful experience. Naturally it suffers from the whole language barrier as most Madhouses do (the story seemed to be Phantom Manor in a hotel), but the thing was so gorgeously themed I didn’t care. Definitely better than Villa Volta. All this needs is 1930s music and it’s Tower of Terror To continue our dark ride tour, we headed towards Batman: La Sombra del Murciélago, or ‘Knight Flight’. Again the quality of theming within this attraction was rather good, and again the language barrier was there. This simulator also went into full CHEESE mode, so whilst it was a very low quality film/simulator, it entered into the good category because it wasn’t that good. Ironic eh? Naturally, I NEEDED a pic with the Arnold Mr Freeze <3 We decided to end the day with another go of both Batman and Superman. In the end I would say I preferred Batman, as the second go on Superman was full of old B&M rattle. The kind that doesn’t make the ride bad, but it’s just, there. Batman unsurprisingly had warmed up considerably and was thumping around the track wildly. With that we headed back for tat based times (which were disappointing) and ventured back to Madrid. I ADORED this park. Whilst I didn’t get to do the water rides and Coaster Express is better off being burnt to the ground, the park is very well themed, and a good range of coasters, flats and dark rides. It perhaps misses a really big world class dark ride in that list, but beyond that I can’t really thing of what else this park needs (aside from a GCI replacing Coaster Express). It’s truly amazing how a Six Flags park was so well themed. It could probably do with a few touch-ups here and there, and perhaps the entertainment has been scaled back a bit (there were two arenas seemingly unused in Gotham and by Stunt Fall). But the park has a good level of quality theming throughout, and is beautifully designed by someone who clearly knew what they were doing. I definitely want to return in a few years.