Benin

Same amount of time Chessie has been drowning in a pit of despari and non-investment... If not slightly longer...

My Nan used to go on the rides until the doctors forbade her from doing so... As Marc said, it's a difficult one to implement unless you bring in a wristband system, then things just get burdenous...

I would say the restraint wobble is an age thing tbh, 15 years is a long time for ride advancement or improvement... Mondial probably looked to create a fully locked restraint when they realised this issue... Doesn't effect me mind, as it's clearly safe and has been for longer than the lives of some on this forum...

Problem lies with the ability to invest, remember a year or two back when Lightwater couldn't even construct a Tractor Ride, so had to wait a year to do so? Slippery slope of life, the smaller parks can't afford to build anything decent, no one visits... Although of course now there are plenty of rides available on the cheap, you have to wonder if these park's budgets even stretch that far...

God... Just... God...

Budget gets given to others that are deemed as 'unsuccessful'... It's the way Merlin have decided that all parks give to the one big pot so it can be distributed 'accordingly', and so parks that do well in their own right (Chessington/Towers) can hold up the parks that let the side down (Thorpe)*... Of course it does mean that if a park needs more money for some reason (perhaps, a massive delay on your big coaster), the others will lose out completely... It certainly wouldn't cost Chessie £4 million on crews to destroy classic theming, so why else did Zufari lose a lot of the budget? Because others in the pot needed it... To me, who knows nothing to nothing about business, that doesn't seem sensical... It seems more damaging and unrewarding to those doing well, whilst the ones doing badly get given a slap on the back for trying and given a grant to improve themselves, which they promptly spend on lights and speakers and call it a day... *PLEASE, bear in mind that this is from the financial side of things rather than an 'attack' on the park... It's well noted how bad the performance was of Thorpe in 2012, hence the change of budgeting...

Edited for accuracy...

Universal Studios shouldn't be the benchmark though, as none of their attractions in their history can ever be classed as 'original'... The parks shouldn't be looking at maintenance or touch-ups to bring in guests, they SHOULD be doing those things regardless... Having such a view-point on it is the issue... So what if something isn't marketable or doesn't directly bring guests in? Whatever happened to producing the most quality product imaginable? You certainly don't see the likes of Universal or Disney leaving their rides to rot until replacement is required... Even Six Flags manage to repaint their coasters every few years, and they are reknown for being crap maintenance wise... You do maintenance and 'small' rethemes in ADDITION to major additions... Runaway is one of Chessie's major attractions, why is it being shafted?

Nom Engineering though...

Latest theory is that Andy's Mum is Emily from Toy Story 2 who abandoned Jessie... Hence the "Red Hat Theory"...

I believe however the coaster construction tool is yet to be operational on it though, so currently the £22.99 gets you a path/scenery simulator... http://store.steampowered.com/app/254590/ I'm not sure how they will do the add-ons to the current system, I assume that if it's just updating, then it should be decent value for money...

And it looks VILE! The one flaw in this ride so far...

I thought they 'properly' ended the story? Unless it's a reboot, which would be more pointless than Sony's woeful attempts at preventing their loss of the Spiderman rights by rebooting those films...

In actual construction news... EDIT - And another video looking closer at the theming...

Merlin have posted their own financial stuff online... http://www.merlinentertainments.biz/results-and-presentations

Efteling are spending €2 million on a refurb atm... A restaurant refurb... We're lucky if we get that spent on a park in a designated 'small investment year'... As Turtle said, put more quality into your product, and people will be more than happy to spend/return/rave about it... Nothing about Scorpian Express at the current time screams of quality (The Market Sqaure refurb on the other hand, is what I want to see from Chessie)... N.B. I did try and find how much they spent on refurbing Dreamflight, but cannot find it... Mergh...

Is it Merlin's fault that the EDL don't have the funds to rent out a park for the day for their group? If you have the money, you can rent it out, and this applies to anyone... Unfortunately the whole 'Muslims are taking over the UK' slant people like to play with (especially what with the Rigby trial going on, and that some people actually protested this outside Merlin HQ) means that any time this happens there will be trouble... Helped of course by the mass media... I might protest about John Lewis days because I'm not invited to them...

I think rent costs and the landlord being a bit of a burden to the people renting in there were the reason for it's closure... Besides, horror walkthroughs never really do that well with the tourist trade as they are aimed at adults purely, compare that to the Dungeons which has pushed the family friendly routine with the recent rebrand, and even LBE had the Tombs as an add-on... I don't think I've seen a horror walk-through last excessively long in central London, even Deathtrap wasn't THAT successful and that was in County Hall!

It's been dire for years, the closure has been threatened for a long time... Rode the drop tower at Hayling Island though when it still had both sets of seating on it... Not that one was accessible of course...

How about the company that lauds themselves at being number 2 worldwide put in the effort that should be related to being such a high number or even a challenger to Disney? This is what Disney are doing with their Mine Train... Is it wrong to want to see at least some enough to be put in to look like a knock-off version of that? Rather than a 2D backdrop like they used to cover up the site from Jumbos?

Was open for it in August, probs on and off then for some reason... Thirteen stopped at some point since it never could run with barely anyone going there (probs because everyone went to Smiler)...

It never left, was open for ERT last year too (once Smiler had opened)...

It's no dancing pony...

Why do you have to have something 'marketable' is the main question? Think that's the issue, Merlin don't like risks, everything must be able to be marketed to the nth degree, however poorly they might do it (Thirteen)... And hence we end up with an extremely high level of removal occuring on one of the best themed coasters in the UK (at the time of opening, and even before half the rockwork fell off)... All this should have been, was a simple "let's get this attraction back to it's original glory, maybe add some stuff to it like effects whilst we're at it", not leaving it looking like Flying Fish with a giant non-sensical scorpian plonked down RCT style... Merlin are seemingly too obsessed with being 'marketable' that they're missing the point of having a quality theme park, in that if you're actually good at being a theme park, you don't NEED to market a ride refurb, or anything beyond whatever's new, but even then other parks don't feel a need to obsess over being the first at anything... What's wrong with making something of high quality from the world's 2nd largest theme park operator? Hell, they could've added fire effects to the original version (Add a mine-shaft that 'explodes' mid-ride), and it would make thematical sense... Instead we have a new cattlepen queueline, a (probably) 2D backdrop, and a giant scorpian... And that somehow makes the ride more marketable when very little has actually changed?

Just have to look at how Efteling refurbed Dreamflight to see how such a ride should be worked upon... Using new techniques to provide an improved experience that continues the original version's charm and look... So far, this doesn't even look anywhere near as good as the original version...