Benin

NEWS BUMP! http://www.meathchronicle.ie/news/roundup/articles/2014/07/02/4031258-giant-new-coaster-gets-goahead-at-tayto-park/ *books trip to Dublin*

Unsurprisingly, some projects do suffer delays and/or cancellation... The park doesn't actually have to tell us anything about what's going on behind the scenes, how bad would it look on them if they just turned around and said "sorry it's cancelled, don't bother visiting this year"?

#firstworldproblems Last year it was quiet, TOOOOOO quiet imo to become a sustainable event... Whilst walk-on queues and an empty park were very useful for whoring out rides (or, it would have been if it wasn't chucking it down and Swarm wasn't dead), it didn't make for a particularly well-done event (which wasn't helped by the lack of entrance organisation on my visit)... People attending this event and having 15 minute queues is a better result for Thorpe... And of course, this free event will be rather busy because MAP holders being the entitled people we are won't want to go when they have to pay a fiver to visit over free based times...

There's a field right behind Wild Asia that's just BEGGING for a cred... Dunno if it's greenbelt mind, though also consider that Chessie could only get the Wanyama/Zufari expansions because of having the animals involved in both... Unfortunately closing themselves in via the service road doesn't help expansion plans, as you end up with pathways around Zufari which are just 10ft tall fences of AWFULNESS...

7 days at Port Aventura is slight overkill it must be said... If you stay at one of the hotels and book the Express Pass I believe it is valid for your entire stay there though... Certainly the only way to enjoy the park it must be said...

A Hansa Park coaster having a dark ride section before the lift hill? THAT'S unique But also awesome, if Fluch and Schlange are anything to go by... When it's finished in 2016 of course...

The director and his assistants were quite clearly better... Would rather more of them if they want to continue the whole 'park is a horror movie' idea... You're Next people were ok, but with no actual interaction beyond being "OHHHH I'M A SCARY MASKED MAN", they weren't actually that good...

Harsh on Stella, she's certainly not the worst Pinfari and definitely not the worst for sharp braking... Besides, they still you it's gonna brake that sharply anyway, so you should be prepared...

Tbh, this happens with most of the parks... No I don't WANT to know that this random person had a good day at the park, why can't you just favourite these things rather than clog up my news feed?

Smiler DOES look visually impressive, and is an impressive feat of engineering though... Doesn't have to ride 'impressive' (which is an utterly wrong adjective to use in this sense) to be impressive...

http://resort.europapark.de/lang-en/c262.html

The problem atm seems to be that they've mixed the paying Fastrack and Reserve n Ride queues together in one queue... Therefore combine that with Thorpe's over-selling of Fastracks, and it's a rather awkward situation... Especially given that there will be a lot of frustration coming from Fastrack buyers...

But then you have to ask will it still be seen as a good idea as a complete replacement to normal queuing, since that's the end goal... Add in having 3 separate queues in further tests, and the feedback would be interesting to see if it's overtly positive...

There's also that MASSIVE cattlepen outside Gringotts that is completely unthemed and ruins any form of escapism... Of course it's only to be used when the area is heaving, but it's still a shame that multi-million dollar investments can't stretch to theme every last corner...

Any enthusiast worth their salt won't have a high amount of spend per head on Fastrack...

It still reaches 60mph I'm sure, the slowness is to do with the ride staff...

As I said, they need to be efficient to make bag drops work, and 1 person doesn't make it efficient whatsoever... Also, how about you know my pain of platforming Vampire with tonnes of school trip bags (usually 24) on the exit platform... That was a little bit more hellish to deal with than inefficient bag holds... Or, just don't go during this time of the year midweek...

Just goes to show that some enthusiasts will always think they know better than park employees simply because they're enthusiasts... Interesting to see that Saw's single rider (which was always a temporary measure as Fastrack wasn't being operated just after it opened), seems to have been the root cause of Thorpe's dislike of SRQs... Of course, they could've solved it by not having short fences in the middle of the queue, but I guess that would've costed money to fix... I think it does occur at Towers though mind, given the layout of bag holds on Smiler and Thirteen... Unless the batcher is being decent and not just letting everyone through at once...

Is that an actual quote from Thorpe? Not particularly a great choice of words... In theory, single rider shouldn't be slowing a queue down if run properly, so I'm not sure on that excuse either... The only 'abuse' there is of a single rider queue is that you can do a lot of rides in a minimal amount of time (I remember the days of doing 10 rides on Inferno in a row)... It might slow the dispatch down due to faffy people but would that have caused a direct issue with the actual queuetime? Probably had lots of groups have rage because they couldn't ride together or something, and in Thorpe's case a lot of the queues were poorly placed (ESPECIALLY Inferno's), so some H&S issues there...

Everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon, why not Thorpe?

Just imagine being a Stealth staff member... Staff - "Only 20 minutes till close then, even with the extended opening time..." Engineer - "Ride works now, so you can open it" *Ride opens, 2 hour queue ensues* Staff - "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"

The bag system on Swarm has always been flawed, considering in the opening season there were moments when the queue would be backed up to under the lift hill... As Fred said, they should just have followed the same procedures as Gardaland and now Heide for bag drops... Especially as it would reduce the number of staff required to actually run the ride... What makes it REALLY daft is that they actually have a huge amount of space inbetween rows to put in such a system... As for X, I certainly prefer the bag drop being just before the station... Given the state the building gets in during hot summer days, it's beneficial for guests to have bags to hand anyway, for water/snacks/etc... They just have to be efficient at the bag drop (which X tends to be in my experiences, Swarm is really the only one that I've ever seen done awfully)...

Didn't even mention the unrealistic 'Hollywood' London layout you see on the train too (NO YOU CANNOT SEE THE GHERKIN WHEN LEAVING KINGS CROSS!)... When you do think about it, Diagon Alley does get a lot wrong...

If the other versions are anything to go by it will be good...