Benin

Oh also, Lorikeet Lagoon's nectar price has gone up to £2 a pot... Not worth the money anymore... Silly Merlin...

Rodolphe

Well clearly the staffing budget forgot that the weekend was a bank holiday, as the park was horrendously understaffed... 4 people on Vampire in total, 3 trucks on Zufari... Ew... The problem the park needs to address is the awful lack of throughput all over the park... Vampire was running slightly better than recently, but the station queues are now extremely pointless, why not batch about 3 trains in each queue? I'm sure people would prefer doing that a lot more than a long burden outside... The park still has a mixture of awful looking areas mixed in with the nicer repainted parts... Falls is a great example of this, as the ride looks awful but the dragon/station look nice... The park needs to sort lots of stuff out though still... Why Skyway still doesn't have a queuetime board is really strange (given it was advertising a 60 minute queue)... Amazu is hilarious, because most of it is shut already... Great job Chessie! Also I like the walkthrough that only one group can go through at any one time and take as long as they want... Another one step forward, two steps back design from a Merlin park... Days like yesterday show a parks flaws, and for Chessie, that's the throughput... Build new stuff quickly please guys... But make sure it can actually hit 1000 pph...

That tends to be the common position of stopping (for such things as code LPs and the like)... Depends if it was down for ages or just a little bit... One photo can't tell the whole story...

An inversion plus the swinging element wouldn't be a great experience it must be said...

Those Burger Kitchen's are quite simply, vile... As you said, neither restaurant in their previous guises had an immense level of look and feel, they both suited their areas reasonably well... The second one is unbelievably bad... Such a level of bland and uninteresting look you expect from those parks that can't afford to create a true level of escapism, not from a multi-million pound company... Very, very disappointing...

Hmmmm...

Probably cheaper to build 'proper' buildings really... Not too fussed over the 'normal' lodge building over hobbit holes tbh...

Hmmm, no different to the view one can get from just generally looking straight down on Detonator or any drop tower in the world... If it hurts as much as the Stand-ups do during braking as well </3

But Everest doesn't have projection mapped animatronics but has an animatronic so complicated it's broken to a ridiculous level... Disney won't build something like Everest again, it was a nightmare to design (3 sets of supports intertwining and not allowed to touch), and it's since been surpassed technical wise by Grizzly Mountain... For an E-Ticket Fantasyland coaster aimed at kids, this looks perfect... Grizzly Mountain would have been nice, but hopefully Disney won't keep cloning rides everywhere anymore (or at least have sufficient differences between rode systems that are the same)...

Ride designed for kids in being a kid ride shocker! Not sure what people were expecting? It looks gorgeous and is a brand new standard for Disney theming, we in the UK could only dream of a ride that looks this good... And the dark section? Fantastically done, looks a lot better than Cars (though that might be my bias)... The ride portion looks short, and I did think it would begin with the dark ride section, however it does look rather fun, and isnt that the point in the end? For the ride to appeal to all age ranges and be fun? The finale? Well considering the ride focuses solely on the Dwarves' side of things (I.e. no scary forest or castle stuff), do they need to tell the whole story? As mentioned, the Disney dark rides themselves rarely tell the whole story, or rush the entire story... Eh, doesn't excessively bother me that much, and it didn't bother the guys who designed it either, otherwise why would it be there? And they know a lot more than any of us do about story and ride design...

I like that people seem to think I had a negative opinion on Deja Vu... Lol people are silly... All the GIBs are unreliable, Madrid's is well known for barely running, not sure if there's been any vast improvement with the newer trains... Thorpe don't need something well known for being unreliable, regardless of how good the ride experience is (which is actually the majority opinion and my own, FACT)...

Why was it aimed at me when I was questioning pluk's opinion on the ride (which for the record I enjoyed)?

I dont get this trend of fans making up stuff to look official and claiming it as such... Is it because some are so desperate for hits they'll make up any old nonsense? I'd say so...

Deja Vu the worst coaster at SFMM when it was there? Interesting, considering the dullness of half the rides there..

Looks very Krake esque... I hope they theme this to the hilt, so many possibilities for the park... Probs be a bit like Joris rather than Dutchman levels though...

*cough*Oblivion Fanta Sponsorship*cough*

Think one of the original ideas behind Air was to be a military style thing (inspired by the original Arrow Pipeline plans), but of course dumped for the decent idea of an oasis of calm (suits the ride itself more tbh)... Shame about the tunnel/station theming though...

Sounds like the best way to visit Thorpe tbh... Or any park tends to be better when empty, a park's true quality can only be seen on the busy days, which Chessie certainly struggles with on a regular basis... Also the differing opinions on the perceived quality of Scorpion Express are very over the place, think the issue lies with a relative drop of expectations in the quality levels Merlin provides, but at the same time the likes of Market Square and Transylvania look a lot better... A consistent level of quality is missing from Merlin parks, which is probably the most frustrating thing...

Rest in peace Slammer...

Cedar Point closes rides in a slight drizzle, let alone anything else... Shocking really...

Wouldn't go so far to call such operations insane whilst on two trains, but it sounds like an improvement at least... The only way they could go was up really...

If there was a storm with potential lightning, of course Stealth would be closed... Indeed, most rides close in stormy weather, it's nothing new...

That both are at different parks does make a difference... Any DM at Thorpe would have to be very substansial (I.e. SheiKra/Griffon length) to promote the focus away from Saw... And even then, with Saw's steeper drop and what-not, how can you promote a DM as being better to the masses?

Shame about the rusted supports for it... Then again, the Dome hasn't been reference as Atlantis for ages by the park has it? Makes sense really...