Benin

Assuming they return the 4d cinema and train it will be scoffed at because of their removal the other year because of not suiting the target market at the time, cos Thorpe were silly... It's not necessarily rides that the park needed (although a dark ride replacing the arena and/or X is ideal), but it's providing other things to do... If you don't feel like doing a ride at Thorpe (after lunch as an example), your choices are limited to queuing for one or sitting on a bench... A show, gentle ride or a farm did wonders for this situation when they existed, but now it's just rides... In order to be successful (especially with families) parks need variety of things to do, but Thorpe didn't see this and as a result we've had crap like Storm Surge and Saw Alive because they felt a new ride every year was needed... I repeat, it's not necessarily rides that the park needs... Although of course an Air Race wouldn't go amiss...

I think Dan meant worthwhile investments during none coaster years... When was the last time Thorpe invested into anything worth the money that wasn't a coaster?

You haven't been able to get MAP discount on ORPs since 2007... You still can on the Photopasses if I recall though... Food is expensive, but at least the quality is decent, lot better than most parks (including the basic Disney offerings)... Towers Monopoly is the only thing that doesn't garner discount (though we managed to get discount, Wahey), considering the increase in quality of the park merch since Merlin took over, I don't really see an issue with the pricing, as it's all pretty normal... Besides, Europa charge nearly €100 on a jumper, and Disney charge €50 for a hoodie... That's bad...

I also hd a further think, and I wonder that if Chessie's hotel can be full due to those using it to access London, could Thorpe not play more on it's location near Heathrow and the M3 to push bookings? It could easily fill a full on hotel with more than just park guests... Hence why Towers went for the holiday camp idea earlier in the year...

Why would I when I live so close? The point still stands, going against a Travelodge as the low budget thing won't work for Thorpe and it's new market, ergo the change in name and colour scheme of Crashpad... Changing the look of the hotel will make the steeper price compared to Travelodge look more worthwhile to potential guests (especially if they chuck in park ticket deals and stuff)... Besides, the newer Travelodges are pretty fab, you stayed in one of them yet? I highly recommend it... Sure you don't get a great view, but then that's why you pay £40 a night... Then again, having a tiny shipping container room never appealed to me in the first place...

As in "Oh crap, the Travelodge will be better than CrashPad, better make it sound better than it actually is"?

So basically one African and one Aztec block? Meh at this tbh, an extension to the hotel was bottom of my list of things Chessie need to do to improve (Zafari's menu being one of these things)... It's not going to improve days out for the majority of guests and the hotel was one of the (very) few things being done right (aside from Zafari)... Defo a year to visit non-Merlin parks at this rate...

That system is in place on Desert Race so it already works... Krake has the bag drop seen on Swarm and the like, it doesn't work due to bad placement, but guess they learnt a lesson... That station looks a bit like Baco :/

Towers must have been doing the same with Smiler's breakdowns then... And Chessie probably does the same... So a park would deliberately start up a story about a sensitive subject (the other example stories you used are very much in the same vein as Towers plastering Smiler logos on sheep or the awful things Morwenna did or Say NO to BO, silly little things that appeal to the Red-Top papers that take minimal time to get into the paper) in order to drill up business? Now, I'm not a marketing person, but surely there are many better avenues to choose than to focus on mental health? Towers a couple of years back did a clown protest for their event, which was both suitable and clearly silly... Fabricating a complaint about mental health suitability for an attraction? To me, that's just as likely to backfire on the park more than anything... Although why would the park need to resort to such tactics if the Lionsgate presence made the event the best Fright Nights ever? Why can the parks rarely let the rides and attractions do the advertising? Why not promote the event as they did on here, mentioning that it's THE UK horror event to visit, bringing HHN to a new level, etc? Is it an amazing piece of marketing? The only well would be to actually tell if attendance levels were better this year than last, although these will be skewed due to the presence of CrashPad and of course the Lionsgate name, so it's actually impossible to tell if this stunt (and a very, very daft one at that due to the nature of the topic) helped or hindered the park...

Put yourself in the park's shoes though, after all the crap that was spouted this year about Asylum and the rather bad image it did paint of the park to the general public, would you really want to risk more OUTRAGE? I doubt we'll see Asylum again after this year... One thing any park doesn't want to do is potentially put off people coming in the gate for whatever reason... It'll just be based off a violent horror film and then people will complain about that instead...

Not completely centred on Thorpe, but it involves it...

Sounds classy, but it's still the shipping containers right? I can see the OUTRAGE on Facebook now as posh families from the wilds of Crawley imagine a wonderous hotel filled with magic and fairies and end up sleeping on top of each other in a shipping container whilst the local Staines Massif throw things at wildlife... It's a Merlin thing isn't it? Bare minimum? The Hotel doesn't work with our new target market? Change the name and do nothing else... Then again, Dockyard Hotel doesn't have the same amount of gravitas to it does it?

Is the twist that the maze doesn't actually happen and it was just an illusion of a potential future?

Hunger Games Scare Maze confirmed...

You mean using the money that had been taken from Zufari? Chessie being given more than £5m on the park sounds unlikely given recent years mind... The website's page on the development doesn't state that RMT or Falls are separate either, so not exactly something that proves that the various projects are costing more than £5m in total...

Tbh, thinking about it (and looking at the pics that were posted after my original post this morning), would moving the Carousel to where the current island of trees that appears to be possibly being removed be an option for the park? It would certainly allow the Carousel to actually have a decent pride of place rather than tucked away... That said, it looks like a basic refurb of the building at minimum, possibly to make them look more like the Sweet Shop refurb of this year? You can tell as the Donut Shack roof is covered in new pieces of roofing and the Toilet block looks a lot fresher... My worry here is that the work on Market Square (however good an idea it actually is, as it's always been a rather weak area like Merrie England was back in the day) will detract vital money from the areas that desperately needed the attention (RMT and Falls)...

Although with it closed next year, who knows where that queue will go? 60 minutes for Driving School?

What the hell are they doing in Market Square? That's rather surprising that half the buildings are covered in scaffolding...

They do, mainly because there's only 2 major coasters open in the park... But at the same time it is primarily a family event... Don't expect walk-ons for Nemesis, and expect the usual long affair for Air...

I'm guessing the construction work in the Zoo is still preventing people from accessing Zufari from the Zoo... Agree on should have the Carousel open...

Any proof of Chessie doing building work is worthwhile posting... Although I'm guessing it mostly centres around the Monkey & Bird Garden work rather than anything else?

We might be surprised that Chessie are actually doing something? I mean like, RMT and Dragon Falls only needed for the stuff to be redone to the same standard as it was before, but considering Merlin's fondness for 'the cheap' or 'the bare minimum' when it comes to theming there's not exactly many reasons for enthusiasts to be excited about when it comes to Chessie... Sure an aviary walkthrough for the Monkey/Bird Garden would be good (as it should've happened back in 2011, but budget cuts), but the park has a LOT of work to do on itself to actually stop the rather bad plunge it's taken the past two years... Having some rockwork theming is actually the least of the park's worries currently, though it was the last straw for many fans as to how the park was going... The thing is, we know what's due to happen with RMT, and that's the rocks are coming back... But the question is, in what FORM are they coming back? Bear in mind the original set of rockwork was brilliantly done in order to make one of the most basic track layouts going quite interesting, and linked well with the overall theme and queue-line itself... But what have Merlin done to lead us to believe that the same level of intricacy will continue onto the new rocks? People are negative at Chessie quite simply because they haven't been good enough, and need to actually prove that they will improve... Problem is, we've also heard it time and time again from the same park that 'next year will be different' and 'it will improve'... It rarely did... 2010 has been the exception to the rule this past decade... And it's embarrassing that one of the UK's top parks is in the state it's in today, with poor operations, half the place falling about and piss-poor designed new attractions (including Land of the Dragons)...

Half Term announced: http://www.altontowers.com/events/half-term/ Usual fare, Moshi Monsters are back, so expect it to be ridiculously busy... Sub-Terra also joins the ride line-up though X-Sector remains off limits (though it'll probably be a construction site again this winter so what else would you expect?)

Does it really matter if Towers does get a new coaster before Thorpe? Tbh, neither really need a new coaster that desperately, and both need to focus on their other offerings in regards to the look of the park, events, entertainments and just general upkeep... EDIT - Though it is more likely that Towers will get a new coaster sooner rather than later, as they need a junior coaster to bridge the gap Beastie left many moons ago, in regards to major coasters, neither park desperately needs a new one...