Benin

78 year old rides her first ever roller coaster as part of a Vodafone campaign... It's a launched Maurer in Holland (Formula-X at Drievliet)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=NQBUChBG98Q

I was recently shown a video of Puy du Fou, it's not a ride based park (so people get that idea out now), but it looks so ridiculously over the top and amazing... Nice to see us get one, shame it's in Durham really...

Skyway desperately needs more than just a repaint, it needs re-routing (because looking at a tent or some fields is incredibly exciting), new trains (with more seats) and just a general reworking of the entire system... As mentioned, it's needed a refurb for longer than some people on this forum have actually been alive...

I think that first inversion is one of the reasons I don't seem to go mental over RMC, it just looks VILE... </3

Hollywood unfortunately doesn't have much in the way of room to build something on the scale of Duelling Dragons (not that one would be built and run in the same way as it once was before the multitude of stupidity and injuries built up)... Still, good to see it getting love, hopefully the Tram Tour continues getting investment as well...

Testing testing 1,2,3, won't you come and ride with me? EDIT - Twitter presents us with the Inverted Top Hat...

Yeah I think the trains are that little bit wider, which would be a huge issue on Nemesis... Besides, why fix what ain't broken? The current trains are perfectly fine (bar the oil dripping issue)...

Tayto's is gonna be a Gravity Group one, we all assumed it would be RMC in a similar fashion with this one (because of the Vekoma link)... 83 degree drop and 1.3km long was all I garnered from the stream before giving up, should be stuff on Youtube later I'm sure, but I'm just not THAT interested in RMC...

It's a RMC with 3 inversions... My stream was so awful though </3

It's incomplete... I think it's 12 people per train, and knowing Europa they'll have about 400 trains in operation...

It didn't open at the start, was also late opening, but not as bad as Rush... It certainly didn't open opening day...

I would laugh excessively if this ended up being sommat crap like a Vekoma Boomerang or sommat... Shame it's really out of the way tbh, 90 minute drive from Stockholm or 2 hours on the train, which could be worse but could be better...

Trying to recreate the original Bubbleworks vibe is the last thing they should think about doing, there's a lot of potential in the ride, and any attempt at resurrecting the original would just feel so off... Get some originality in, rather than reboots...

Probs depends on the composite of the track metal really, that and it's also experienced snow, flooding and ridiculously heavy rain since being built... And the weather over winter season when it wasn't running so any rust developing wouldn't be dislodged has been rather ridiculous... Which if the paint wasn't particularly any good at protecting it or the composition of the track being crap, would make a bigger difference in comparison to other rides... I wonder if the mister effect has made much of a difference on the track around it as well... Wouldn't be surprised that much...

Oxidisation is effectively the same as rust developing (as rust is an Iron Oxide, the result of a chemical reaction between unsurprisingly, Iron and Oxygen)... The paint gets worn down from the running wheels on it, exposing the metal to the elements and boom, chemical reactions and rust appears...

To be fair to Slammer as well, it hasn't thrown metal off itself onto the nearby pathway...

Don't go to New England, cos people will say that they have... It makes me think that if the park haven't opened it yet after tonnes of testing if they have any confidence in the ride at all... If this is the case, why haven't they given up on it yet?

Bloody sad goons *5000th post, and I'm insulting people, YAY!

Well, checking summer prices is the best way to see how costly/value for money the hotel is... The first weekend in August was my picked example, and I'm comparing Thorpe against Efteling and Europa Park, for a 2 night day (Friday/Saturday): Thorpe costs £300 rounded up Efteling costs €536 (approx £500) Europa's cheapest costs €540 In comparison to these other hotels, Thorpe is of course, the cheapest, but this is down to the fact that it's not in any way shape or form what anyone would consider a 'real' hotel... What benefits does one get by staying at Thorpe? ERT? A bar? The ability to look out on the park? Most theme park hotels have this sort of thing when you're staying on-site, so what makes Thorpe's hotel worth paying £300? Convience is probably the best thing going for it... You pay for what you get really, and with the Thorpe 'hotel', you get cheap things... There's a £200 difference, but I'd say for the quality/set-up of the hotels I'm comparing to it (is it unfair? Maybe, but if Merlin are trying to be number 1 etc.) then that's a price difference I'd be willing to pay more so then a porta-cabin... EDIT - Out of interest, I looked at Towers, and they're nearly £500 as well (for both)... I think it's just UK parks being rather over-indulgent in how good their hotels actually are...

Candy Holland was the main team leader of the Saw project... She was also involved in Thirteen and Smiler's creative processes... She's the modern day John Wardley I think, only with coin purses tightly fastened and market research corridors to navigate wildly...

They've been senselessly ploughing money in it for 9 odd years, why stop now?

I think the reaction we see here to the mist working shows how generally poor the UK parks are at maintaining effects that give their rides the finished look... It looks great, but it should be always like that, not broken/not on for half the season...

So world class one has lots of clones and is regularly run badly and the other spends about a week open and the manufacturers have given up on it? Nothing at Thorpe can be considered world class...

*Insert relevant defence of Asterix here, though as with any park, it can be complete HELL admission* I would say queueing 2.5 hours for X at SFMM was near the top of my worst list... I dunno really, I'm trying to avoid the atypical "Any visit to Thorpe between 2005-2012" answer that would essentially fill out anyone's list of awful park experiences... Erm, yeah, sorry Thorpe, but your Half Term days win out, what with having no rides open, over an hour wait for food because staff forgot my order, and worst of all no salt (and this wasn't even the fabled day a couple years back)... Even BAKKEN was better than that day, and Bakken was so bad we forced ourselves to spend 2 hours there to feel like having value for money!