Benin

Sigh, 2D stickers, everything about this addition is so cheap and awful, and this fulfils that aspect... Low UK expectations are exceptionally low... You can create fantastic experiences on low budgets, but Merlin don't know how to do so, and that's clearly evidenced by more than this...

It's a dark ride with scare actors and effects and what-not...

Better than Intamin ones that's for certain... And a fantastic park it lives in too...

Well summed up, plus with other Merlin park additions recently being of a rather 'meh' standard, the expectation levels for this aren't ever going to be high... Short-term reactive business at its best/worst really, but not surprising from a park that would blame a poor yearly performance on a ride rather than external matters...

This will be the best coaster in Europe... Airtime, inversions, rolling launches, keeps the speed, Mack trains... It will be perfect...

I don't see anyone reacting like that... I predicted that the theming would amount to plastic figures though, unsurprised to be proven right...

Is the attraction really 'ruined' because of a line in the mirror maze portion of it? I wouldn't be surprised if it was also there to help guide people to the exit for throughput reasons as well, but then again the whole attraction is poorly designed considering it has a fair amount of interactive stuff (well, kind of but not really), yet you have no time at all to really appreciate the stuff or be interactive with it... Shows how unimportant Chessie were to Tussauds really back then...

Nah, tis Merlin's philosophy... The tunnel was warm enough when I went on opening weekend, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the overall issue, and would just go to show that whoever designs the queuelines for Merlin has absolutely no clue of how to do them correctly...

From what I've heard, the queue over the past couple of days didn't even go through the tunnel, and essentially boarded onto the exit with disabled guests... One can assume that the ineptitude of the staff at the current time is so bad that batchers just batch the entire load, forgetting the designated disabled guest seats and so faff and clusterbuggery commences... As a result, we see them stop using the majority of the queue and just create stupid procedures that make little to no sense... Image shamelessly stolen from a friend As you can see, the tunnel and bridge parts of the queue aren't being used, and guests board via the Fastrack queue and onto the exit platform... The sheer "WHY?!" that comes from this shows how far Chessie have fallen in recent years... No other words describe this ride as pure and simply, awful... And they've made it worse...

The maze is blatently going to return, it is after all their most popular one regardless of the so-called connotations surrounding it... It'll just get tied into a crappy IP this year... Panic ye not...

They decided what to add this year clearly... Aside from the normal winter maintenance, not much was seemingly done...

That area looks slightly over the top huge for an Air Race, they're not THAT large footprint wise... Or at least they don't seem as such... Especially as this is a 6 car one correct?

That building is basically my issue here (ironically, the nicely coloured normal brick building next door is fine)... What semblence does it have thematically? Why is every building being painted a different colour? If the 'little details' are literally gonna be blocks painted onto the sides of these buildings, where has the thought of this project gone? People moan about CBeebies Land being soul-less (which to those who experienced Towers in the 90s heyday of Storybookland are probably right), yet this looks a lot, lot worse than that... Granted the area was incredibly sterile and dull anyway (like most of Thorpe's middling parts) but 'little details' to me do not consist of randomly painting blocks on random buildings... The whole project here smacks of a desperate pull into the family market with a IP that is well-known, and what we've seen so far proves that... Balamory style buildings and blocks painted onto them, certainly the epitome of world class theme parking... Disney's Snow White cred looks like crap compared to this...

From the latest TPM update That looks really, really awful... Don't get me started on the polka dot building either... Merlin's obsession with simple colour palettes is getting annoying now... Very much pandering to the lowest common denominator this addition (in a similar way to CBeebies Land, but that is aimed at 3 year olds who need to be turned towards bright colours and such)...

It also looks... unfinished... I would certainly hope that they'll be adding in a lot more scenic elements on that ride at least, whilst the rest of the area seems to variate wildly in how bright their colours are going to be... Still, a month till opening, shall wait and see (not that I fancy the death-crush into the area of course)...

Should something occur out of it, sounds a decent guess to be a retheme of the Wild West Area, especially with Spooky 3D already there and Brer Rabbit needing a replacement... Wait and see I guess... Though let's not compare it to the Paramount Spain version

Tis a shame because the idea behind the use of the Abdabs wasn't a bad one, just poorly executed and open to the elements and guest idiocy...

It's amazing how fan sites can claim stuff like that yet provide no photographic evidence or in this case be plain wrong...

You'd hope so if they're offering ERT to random groups of people really (and 'hotel' guests)...

Trains don't stop to load as 'normal'... It's akin to Rapids/Flume loading really... Here's a video of it happening on Texas Giant...

So is this effectively hiding the rather out-dated and tatty entrance?

You'd be surprised how stupid people can be in regards to Fastrack, I've seen people have the Unlimited at Chessie and it was pretty empty on a weekend... Don't Oakwood ever get long enough queues that warrant the use of Fastrack?

It hasn't killed anyone yet, so it's probably one of most safe rides in the world...

It's a shame that having a good coaster/ride is seen as secondary to having a 'gimmick'... What's Flug's gimmick? Germany's first Wing-Rider, not exactly gonna beat down Europa's efforts now is it?