Benin

Rides still close at 9pm though?

RMC keeps on trucking along... This layout seems exceptionally messed up...

I don't think there should be any limits on Annual Passes whatsoever, already paid one price for the year, why should someone who only got a Standard not be able to go to certain places whenever they want to? Indeed, the only reason I have a Premium is so I can visit the Midway attractions during August... Not exactly fair though is it? It's simple to check wristbands on people if they don't have 'access' to the mazes... Most mazes last year had 4 members of staff at each entrance, why can't they check? Not exactly a painful procedure, especially as it's simple to show off a wristband to someone... Both methods have their own pros and cons as I said at the start of the topic, but as I'm only interested in night riding things, not having to pay extra to get in as an excuse for the extra charge is the better option for myself... The charge is for the maze staffing, not for the extra hours... Otherwise every park in the world who did this type of Halloween event (I.e. NOT a completely separate ticketed event) would charge people the extra money... Hell even Chessie don't charge extra (then again, it's only 2 hours and all their stuff is free)...

Other parks offer extended opening hours without you having to pay extra to enter...

Ein video auf dem konstruction...

It's daft to compare costs involved because of the countless variants between the two rides and their own individual remits behind their building (as in WHY were they built?)...

Bubbleworks has never really fitted, but the original fizzy pop factory theme worked because it had enough sense to semi fit into it with the use of Prof Burp looking like an atypical mad scientist and the Bubbleheads being his minions... It was a weird theme done up because an actual beer brewery was not a suitable theme for a family park... It also had the benefit of being a whimsical British dark ride, which automatically made it immune from theming clash arguements...

Pretzel loop is done, interesting near miss in the foreground...

It's not Thorpe's fault directly that they're impatient at instant returns and gratification... Something that can be put at the foot of ALL companies atm...

CHOO CHOO!

Is Swarm the reason for a better second year? Or because the park has improved dramatically? People are actually in the country this summer? There's a lot of reasons why this year is better than last...

All well and good us saying that, but we're not the ones spending millions on a potential marketing flop... Thorpe won't want another Swarm...

At least no 20ft bolts will be hitting anyone in the queue...

It is literally dependant on personal tastes, as someone who couldn't give a rats behind about queuing 2 hours to go down some corridors with people jumping out at me, £5 is a bit silly (though I have a Premium Pass anyways) for me to pay extra for a few extra hours of ride time... Meanwhile if I go to Towers for night rides, I don't have to pay anything extra to enter... So what's best for the ride enthusiast at these events? (Answer is of course, go to Chessie) But if you want to do the mazes, then paying one price for all you can do in a night is a better option (but then the issue turns into how many can you do, since the queues are long and quite slow due to the low throughputs)... Though obviously Towers do their deals on maze tickets to get that old value for money out... On a busy night at Thorpe, how many mazes would people average in the 7? hours they are open for (3-10 this year isn't it? Assuming each is a 90 minute queue and you do all 4 of them that's 6 hours of your life gone and little to no time for night rides)... Swings and Roundabouts, Apples and Oranges really... As for whether or not CoS can deal with being free, let's not forget how easy it is to completely change a maze and it's layout... They'd be pretty daft not to make it as high throughput as possible this year...

Aside from being able to claim any UK tallest/fastest/longest crown for a Wooden coaster they probably could claim several selling points... As the John Wardley interview said, the UK is just unsure on the use of wood for a coaster... And it's clearly not just the public, as he had to fly the owner of Oakwood out to America to try some out... The problem is, the UK public generally have only had experience of a few wooden coasters, those at Blackpool and Gwazi in Florida (Stampida could also be added to this)... None of those are particularly beneficial to the idea that they are any safer or better than the smoother steel brothers... Building a wooden coaster would be a risk for a UK park simply because it might not attract as many people as hoped... They are actually difficult to market without breaking some form of record because what do the public care for such terms as 'airtime' or 'crossovers'? Indeed, with Swarm even UK first wasn't even something to help it break into the market (though 2012 was a weird year for the parks anyway), so why would a UK first GCI Wooden Coaster work? I too don't like the hybrids... I also didn't like the Intamin variant of the wooden coaster as it felt too smooth... But those are probably what we'd most likely get because they would be the easiest to market... But if managers were to visit places like Toverland, Efteling and Asterix (don't even NEED to travel all the way down to Europa to find good wooden coasters) they would see a rather surprising thing (to them)... Sometimes, rides don't have to marketed, make it good, and word of mouth can work just as well as some over the top advertising campaign...

Retrofitting a 20 year old building is a bit different from a country where the constant hot/muggy weather requires every building to be a freezer 24/7... I would be interested to see how much it would cost them to fit in a system and how much work it would require to keep the entire building to a suitable temp considering it's two floors and split into multiple rooms...

I would personally rather them move completely away from the Bubbleworks name, sure the original was a real classic, but remakes always lack that something that made the original what it was...

I rode Blue Fire with a lot of hype prior to it, Shambhalala will be the same... There's only one way to build an opinion, and that's riding it yourself, regardless of prior people's experience...

I guess you're referring to the theming that was already falling apart and a danger to everyone hence it's removal? Chessie can't afford anything worthwhile...

Oh... Oh... Confirmed Heide Park trip in 2014...

Saving money at the expense of guest experience... #surprise

Fury hasn't run on 8 cars in YEARS, like 2005... Mark9 will be able to confirm reasons for it, but I think 8 car operation meant that the was literally no room for error in regards to loading... Which is of course, not the best thing to have in any park due to the unseen factors of idiotic guests, but Mark will confirm the reasons himself... 7 cars is decent enough for Fury, but of course the main issue at the park is that they have a distinct lack of high throughput rides and have done since forever... Fury can get 600 odd theoretically (and used to be able to) whilst Vampire was about the same on 2 trains (with 3 getting over 1000), so the two biggest rides cannot get anywhere near 1000 now on busy days... Then you get rides like Berries, Peeking, Jumbos, Truckers, Seastorm, etc which all have low throughputs and half now have Fastrack on them... Then you have the stupid loading procedures on Buccaneer... Then you have Toadies lowering capacity... It's a comedy of poor errors that has lead to this... I recently saw a fan made design of a Gerstlauer Sky-Fly (the massive multi seat arm one) sitting on the spot of Samurai/Peeking and I went "that's a cool concept and could work for Chessie"... The throughput is however pretty low (about 360) so it's an improvement comparatively, but then again, not the sort of thing Chessie need unless they could double that number up... What the park need to do in future is get rid of every crappy low capacity ride they have (so Toadies, Truckers, Peeking Heights would be my personal choices to get chucked out, with Temple of Mayhem, Playhouse and Capers also removed due to their pointlessness) and replaced with some decent capacity attractions be they unique to the country (like the SkyFly) or generic park rides the park lacks (for example, Teacups)... Then get a high capacity coaster... Thirteen would have been a brilliant fit to the park as an example... I've also always been a pusher of the park getting a Gerstlauer launched coaster, after riding both Anubis and Lynet, I can safely say that either would be an excellent addition (and apparently Lynet gets 900pph, add a short dark ride section pre-launch to fit another train in, and that could squeeze it over 1000)... Hell even a Bobsled from Gerst would get higher throughputs... Another concept I just thought of, would Tomb Blaster be better off being retconned into an Omnimover? The slow nature of the ride is very much an issue in experience and queuetimes, so perhaps a constant motion (with themed buggies a la Laser Raiders or Gardaland's Ramses) would benefit the ride and the park... Finally, get a Madhouse in Wild Asia... If there's one dark ride that loves to people eat, it's that, plus some decent chances for good theming with it too... And of course, it goes without saying that the operations NEED to improve... Get some decent staff and train them up well to sort their lives out...