Benin

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...

Haha, omg I remember seeing that and it was amazing... Such self-entitlement from one of the worst enthusiasts I've personally come across... I completely forgot I went last year... Shows how memorable it was...

Most of the park looks knackered, Rattlesnake is definitely one of them, the cave especially... There's a big difference between looking knackered due to no upkeep, or deliberately looking knackered...

It's the opposite of Voyage at Holiday World and that's considered a hybrid (wooden track on steel supports)... I really think now that if RMC rides didn't have wooden supports in them no-one would care...

What a load of utter unintelligent crap... And they're gonna fill the world with these? Urgh, creativity truly is dead isn't it? Dreamworks are just aiming to fill the world with stuff relating to their franchise films that have declined excessively as time has gone on aren't they?

It lacks the ride line-up of parks of a similar size, but simply makes up for it by being full of quality throughout the rides... It's not a park everyone would enjoy, but with the top tier quality dark rides and fun coasters there's enough to at least spend 2 days there, bearing in mind that on my visit 3 attractions were closed, including the massive show... Certainly better than PA because it feels more natural and not awful... Better than Europa is the harder one, but I feel like it's just better, purely on the relaxing atmosphere compared to how Europa does pack in the rides sometimes... Akin to Towers in many ways where you can just roam around with no rides near you and chill... I can't comment on throughput quality as most rides were walk-on, operational standards were pretty average, nothing bad, nothing exceptional bar some Joris based interaction for the winning train... Will it be on people's bucket lists? Nah, it lacks a true stand-out ride for that to be the case, or a general knowledge of the park as a whole... It can be considered the most visited hidden gem of a theme park in Europe...

Welcome to London prices...

Nah, even on Rage they were interactive and polite... Maybe cos of living in Essex? Dunno, Southend is pretty mixed on the dire/modern seafront situation...

Has Adventure Island always had such happy and interactive staff? Because they were pretty decent yesterday... That feeling of sincere questions of how your day is and just general enthusiasm is something that Merlin need to figure out how to do... Perhaps the lack of people helped? But even so they were still rather efficient at their jobs, filling up rides and being generally decent staff...

I don't think I'd be impressed by this regardless of park, as we would point towards the original Runaway Train as a prime example of how to do this... Sounds the usual, good ideas poorly executed, a Merlin trait becoming more and more worrying...

Sounds likely that does...

Elsa and her Jessica Rabbit style costume though