Benin

Graham didn't do Tomb's new announcements... A ride TL did...

The whole "We need more civilians to attack and destroy" stuff that got added a few years back (2010?)

The newer voice does sound incredibly bored... Not as bad as the voice added into Tomb Blaster mind...

*ticks "Thorpe should get a TopSpin" square on his TPM bingo card*

Probs more towards the usual support rides, as that hour queue has to go elsewhere in the park...

So normal queue, Reserve queue AND Fastrack queues? Can instantly predict that having all 3 together won't work at all...

Making things even more complicated then... Surely if the overall aim is to make the park queueless there's no need for Fastrack to be run during this trial? Aside from that it's the park's only major source of income...

The speed can be varied by the ride op... I've had many fast goes on Tuk Tuk over the years (mainly when it's empty)...

Meanwhile, a video about Wodan has appeared...

Wouldn't be at all surprised if Thorpe (and Chessie)'s sharp percentage rises in attendance were due to very poor performances the previous year... Looking quickly, Thorpe dropped 10% in 2012, so in the long run, does this increase really mean much? Considering that the poor performance couldn't directly be attributed to the park completely... Towers dropped 9.4% the same year, Smiler helped in some respect, though of course the issues with the ride would have prevented a high rise... Imagine CBeebies Land will cause an even sharper influx this year... Like, 11% of 2 million is 220'000, so that's 11 days worth of 20'000 guests... I find that using percentages to prove an arguement never fully tell the true story, as parks like Lightwater could in theory have a 45% increase in guest numbers but that might equate to something like an increase of 5'000, which isn't exactly much...

It's Neverland theming, of course it's going to look fantastic

You didn't miss much with Ghostrider fortunately, so that's a plus... Knotts is exceptionally weird, there was a lack of atmosphere anywhere besides Camp Snoopy and the Wild West area, with the concrete areas that Cedar Fair are well known for these days...

And it's a park where Fastrack makes the trip so much better, otherwise you'd be spending hours in stuffy cattlepens being queuejumped every 5 minutes... Like, I'd never visit the park without it now, especially given the potential for Kgan and Shambles whorage <3

Didn't help with the floods last year causing the filters to clog up due to the dye either... Some park issues aren't in their control...

Swarm cost also includes groundwork and marketing, presumably to make it appear more expensive and marketable...

Do the cars get stripped down in the Stealth workshop? Swear that has space for two trains if so... Otherwise that was poorly planned wasn't it?

Chessie's don't have seatbelts... Never have done... Probs the design of the bar makes the difference, since Chessie's are overtly huge and uncomfortable...

Two seats at the front right end don't have restraints for some reason...

You should see the negativity on other sites if you think it's bad here... People suggest scrapping Fastrack because of the way Thorpe operate it I reckon... It's oversold and causes the queuetimes for the average guest to be substansially longer, which of course leads to further complaints... Of course the best way to deal with that would be both to limit the numbers available per hour (20% of theoretical throughput per hour perhaps?), not throw Fastrack at every complaining guest, and level the playing field by bringing back free Fastrack for all... Reserve and Ride as an idea from the off seems flawed, as the park are (as mentioned) trying to acheive the rather unacheivable, especially flawed in a park where the only thing to do is go on rides... Parks like Chessie or Towers would probably benefit from this scheme a lot more because there is a lot more non-ride things to do in both of them... Where do people go in Thorpe if they're waiting for their time slot? Into other ride queues, which will of course build up immensely given that most of the 5 coaster queues tend to get between 1000-1500 people per hour, so you're going to have 5000+ (assuming an hour long queue worth of people) more people milling around the park itself 'queuing' for those coasters whilst queuing for other rides at the same time... It's almost like they're trying to fix what isn't directly broken (I.e. normal queuing, Fastrack methods ARE broken)... Which confuses me as there's many better ways to actual make the queueline part of the ride experience... Look at the way Disney are doing queues with interactive features for one end of the scale, or making heavily themed queues, or making queues that interact with the ride, or making the queues more interesting that flat cattlepen mazes... There are lots of ways that any park can take a queue and make it an interesting, fuller experience, it's just a case of simply bothering to do that... As for being 'fans' and being negative about this project being selfish, that's a daft viewpoint to have, as criticism is part and parcel of the whole game, and quite often it is the fans who will notice things that are wrong (some are worse than others, Disney fans for example, they complain about carpet corners being turned up)... I would say most of us have a decent understanding of how well the park can run and operate, and a few on here know this from working at parks and seeing what certain attributes of a park's operational standard can cause issues with... There's nothing wrong with fans of anything being critical of something that they like which is doing something (in their opinion) wrong... With this scheme, the park needed as pluk said to test this in combination with a normal queue... Forcing a trial scheme upon everyone is a daft idea indeed, especially if the idea is to phase out the original concept... Hence why the London buses have been taking contactless cards for ages, to get people used to the idea first before eliminating the monetary method... That, a the park needs to improve the non-ride offerings available, which it's been failing at ever since they got rid of the farm quite frankly...

This... It wasn't very good 7 years ago, I doubt age has treated it particularly well... Besides, they already tried to make it popular again by turning trains backwards, and of course when you consider the other coasters in the park (and the probably superior woodie across the ways from it), it's lifespan was marked... It'll be a RMC... Like, there's zero doubt about that... Shame, a duelling GCI would be fab <3

Horray for California Screamin' love, it is a rather under-rated ride, whilst not perfect, it does fulfil the good old fashioned Disney fun criteria... Need to go back, it's changed so much since my visit (Toy Story was being built)...

Not with a giant B&M in the way... Plus it would probably be viewed as an un-required extra cost from the Merlin big-wigs...

Even Disney couldn't get FastPass+ to work perfectly, that doesn't really provide much hope that a Merlin park can do it better... The idea is to get people to spend more time spending on other things (I.e. merch, food, games, etc), but the issue is more that there isn't that much to do of those things or anything else at Thorpe (as Fred already pointed out)... It's not like at Towers were you could spend your time between rides walking to said ride, or indeed spend time in the Gardens, or find a sit-down restaurant, or ride one of the many rides that never gets a queue... Even Chessie has the zoo to wander around to waste time between rides... That's more the issue tbh, that's there's not a lot for the guests to do in between waiting for the next slot... All it will do at Thorpe is move coaster queues into other ride queues because that's kinda all there is to do at the park...