Benin

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...

Excessive hang time is excessive... </3

Fastrack makes tonnes of difference to queue times, it's clearly noticeable how queues deemed 60 minutes at park close reduce several minutes when there's no one Fastrack related coming in... Seen it plenty of times on the likes of Fury and Vampire...

If a park is at a stage where you need Fastrack to enjoy your day surely it's doing something wrong? That especially applies to Port Aventura (because of the queue jumping mostly)...

You did only just miss out on the cred in Amsterdam... They'll put in the drop towers soon enough...

I especially like the fact that what they've billed as a world's first really isn't, as the likes of Paultons and Farup already have seats that tilt...

On RCDB it reckons Flying Fish can get 1'000, or Explorer at Mirabilandia can get 900... So even researching it gives variable answers... I once again call onto Mark9 to give us a true answer... Thing is, do any of Chessie's rides actually hit these theoretical capacities? That's the question that should be asked here...

There is no way Scorpion Express, Fury or Rattlesnake get those numbers (sure Mark9 will back me up on this)... Vampire got 600-700 pph if I recall on 2 trains, but that was when operations on it weren't god-awful, so who knows what it's meant to get these days...

Or a Mondial Supernova...

Surely Falls still holds the highest throughput on park these days? God this thing needs a refurb, re-route, re-paint, re-everything quite frankly...

I like the idea that if you don't own a smartphone you have to trudge back and forth to kiosks to choose what ride you want to go on next... That sounds like a lot of fun for guests (who obviously will be in the minority, but will still have some poor experiences as a result)...

Well this ain't opening anytime soon then... #worsethansmiler

How busy was it though? Can't imagine it being very considering the amount of rain the South has been enduring since Saturday...

Until Fastrack comes in...

Winja's already has a tilting section... Dr Who is a weird rumour, would need a dark ride (possibly multiple rides in one long row) to make a real go of it as well...

Another review of the land... It must be said, the area does look and feel a lot more atmospheric and bouncy than it ever did before... Whilst Storybook Land and the Farm had the peaceful charm around them, they were always empty and felt un-used in many a way, so a refurb of the area was a good idea... Of course, with it being opening week, there's about 20 million staff all around the area, be it generic stilt-walkers or bubble blowers in addition to characters related to the shows (including an amazing Postman Pat van), one can hope that they keep up the levels of staffing and enthusiasm, because they'll need it on the really busy days (of which my visit wasn't)... So to the attractions; Get Set Go Treetop Adventure A tricky ride to retheme, so the generic CBeebies theme was a good call, as it helped to create the idea of a pure Land of all the characters living together... It had some interaction for the kids to make noise at the static model blobs... That would be the one flaw tbh, that the models were all static and the hologram images of the presenters were a bit pointless really... Either way it's added a bit more life into a ride which beforehand didn't do much at all... Something Special Sensory Garden A hard attraction to judge really, but the kids walking through it seemed to enjoy themselves... Much longer than I thought it would be, and an example of the Land's interactivity pursuits it's had to have at the call of Auntie Beeb... Nina's Science Lab Goons will love the 5th Dimension look to the outside of the building, and again an attraction solely pushed towards learning... It reminded me of the Science Museum, which must be a good thing really... Full of the usual touch, smell, see interactive stuff that you tend to see in scientific education attractions around the world... Postman Pat Special Delivery Service Pat is certainly popular, as it often got a 45 minute queue at 9:05... It looks fantastic again, but also suffers from static model syndrome... It also stole Riverbank Eye Spy's button mashing game it seems, but without the noise... It does have some awesome queue line games though and the hazards can be turned on and off in the van... Brill bit of needless detail (and I adore needless details)... Lot quicker than the Tractors ever were too, not that it's made much of a difference to the throughput... Numtums Number-go-Round Probably the worst retheme of the lot, as Doodle-Doo was fab, this one not so much... Just filed under the least imaginative way to do it... Surely a show with tonnes of animals involved would've been better? Charlie and Lola What a fab play-area this actually is... Inside I approve of the look and style of it (outside, not so much still), with plenty of cupboards and some fab interactive dress-up screens that relate to the magnets placed upon the characters... Then further in there's a ball pit and slide... A decent surprise to the line-up... In the Night Garden Magical Boat Ride The terrifying show comes to life... Our boat also ground to a halt half-way through and had to be shunted along the way... A few more animated static models this time around, although they were pretty basic... The kids on our boat loved it to bits though, so what do we enthusiasts know? The audio as well just made me more confused with the constant rhyming stuff... Justin's House Didn't do it as not allowed in unsupervised by kids... Looked ok from the outside though and got long queues... Tree Fu Tom Playground We had years of Dung Heap and this is what replaced it? Brilliant... Looks tonnes better and has a lot more stuff it in as well... Mr Bloom's Allotment Certainly the unexpected surprise from the area, this show of 20 minutes involves everything I'd say people would want from an educational kids show based attraction... It had the characters come to 'life' (Mr Bloom himself appeared via TV whilst on holiday), plenty of interactivity involving searching for items and characters, before 'making' something as these characters were sad (Awwwwww)... All the kids in our group were properly entranced by the whole thing and eager to assist... And whilst 20 minutes may seem long, it's not too bad it must be said, as there's enough going on to keep the interest piqued throughout... Best attraction in the area by far... Big Fun Showtime This area is HUGE... And looks quite decent actually, as it acts like an oasis from the rest of the area, with more random activities, meet-n-greets and the shows... They currently have 3 shows on atm, which are the usual kids based affair and are all different from each other... Still in the process of getting used to them though, as the Nina show (which involves Nina pre-recorded on screen) had a few awkward pauses between dialogue... But it's a tricky medium to do well to be fair... So overall, I'd say this area will be a success, and it deserves to be... It's given a lease of life on the area that was only ever busy 2 days a year if we were lucky, whilst many might lament it due to the charm of the farm, it's an addition done with a reasonable amount of care and attention to the various brands and the area as a whole... Though we were lucky that it wasn't particularly packed on the pathways (and as it was open for ERT, was very empty)... They will probably deny large groups of adults going in when it's busy though... The survey man told us they were going stop any adults coming in without kids if it got busy enough... Which is only fair, it's not an area designed for adults at all, and I would say the feedback was very positive so far (bar the queues obviously, hopefully they can add a new ride somewhere that gets a half-decent throughput in addition to what they currently have)... Good job Towers...

But it mentions other rides throughout the ride (Sensory Garden got a mention), so why is it a problem? It's like complaining that Safari Skyway advertises rides on the park you can't see...

Thorpe bringing back the old entrance music can only be applauded, as the chart music was both awful and cheapened the place... When you have a quality piece of music lying around, might as well use it...

Didn't notice it advertising the other rides, but focused on getting kids to do things (clap/make noise)... Mr Bloom's Allotment is easily the best attraction in the area... Perfect blend of interactivity and actual showmanship... It's a great area overall actually... The two play areas have lots to do, with two hands on focused interactive stuff as well... Looks better in person (bar Charlie and Lola's facade) and the Big Top Show area looks brill... It's packed from 9am, so it's a success already, and certainly deserves plaudits... Hopefully they can expand to higher throughput rides sooner rather than later, since that is the biggest flaw it has...