Benin

Well, considering every park in the entire world over-exaggerates queue times in order to give the illusion that the park's queues aren't burdenously long it's not something that's a major issue... It's retail who are the problem... Not the ride staff... Especially as more often than not, oversold Fastrack leads to rage between the two departments...

Those in retail don't have any control over the displayed queue time... If they actually do, then something's wrong with the system...

But the Spanish don't use Fastrack to queue jump...

Then why are those selling Fastrack making up the queue time to suit their sales? It's the whole that person who sold Fastrack in the Nemesis queue thing it seems, so much pressure to fulfil sales targets that people resort to aggressive underhanded tactics so that they don't get the boot... It's a sad sight to see at the parks, but unfortunately it seems these tactics are pretty much acceptable to the parks because it means money over guest experience...

Indy at Paris came in because Space Mountain didn't open for the original park opening... Hence a quickly made (but still well themed) adult coaster...

Staff members selling Fastrack should not be making up the queue time and go by the queue time given by the queue time board... The flat out lying to get people to fork over money is indefensible...

Of course, did you really expect that they would have solved that issue?

Krypt was ridiculously fab <3 Apart from the really crappy ending of course... But I guess it suffered from location and general awful throughput... A shame though...

Blah blah Merlin Gerstlauers are awfully unreliable for some reason when none of the others seem to ever have had such issues... Though most of Smiler's isn't down to Gerstlauer really when they weren't responsible for the groundwork...

Another batch of photos for you all! http://www.heide-park-world.de/baublog/blog/saison-2014/2626-baustellenupdate-13-september-2013 My guess is the building being built will be a shop/food outlet...

LOL GERST FAIL POST!

Precisely the host... I hadn't been for several months so to me it was a change... People don't update on Chessie that much anyway... No one had mentioned the tarp of trees hiding Mine Train from Jumbos...

The park is exceptionally weird atm, as in some cases, it looks terrible (although they've now taken steps to hide Runaway Train completely, especially from Jumbos)... But on the other hand, they've added the odd little bit that looks nice and makes the park slightly better... Vampire opens up at 9:30 which allows for some early morning whoring if you can withstand the poor operations, and the new method of pre-show and lapbars on Zufari improves the loading situation greatly... Shame that the pre-show is still awful mind... Two lots of construction in the Zoo, the aforementioned Monkey and Bird Garden looks to be a new style enclosure, whilst there's also a new thing going into Wanyama... I had a decent enough day yesterday... Skyway is ridiculously fun in the rain going down by the back of Sea-Life...

In comparison to the old version, it's god-awful... In comparison to most dark rides, it's so lifeless, sterile and reeks of marketing... Pretty colours do not make up for broken effects and still figures staring into the distance... As for the ride yesterday, weirdly all the house lights were on throughout... I don't understand why but that's something I say about Chessie a lot atm...

Depends if you like Sub Terra or not

The Annette's Brownie

First drop/lift is now done...

Shame Boulderdash requires a terrain... Something Thorpe cannot provide...

The old entrance was like Oakwood's... Therefore, it's good that they're changing it...

Issue is that because of the hotel/Monkey Puzzle I really doubt Chessie will be able to build sommat like Vampire on that site if/when it gets removed... Anything that would go there nowadays would have to be ridiculously quiet...

I thought Thunderhead was a bit meh really... Just didn't do much to blow me away... Granted I was on one of the first trains in the morning, but as a say, a really good ride is good no matter when you ride it...

Suggesting that Fright Nights isn't a serious event? The Americans tend to begin construction end of August/Start of September... Considering how much more work goes into their mazes (and the number of mazes most parks tend to do over there), it really doesn't take 'months'... Here's an example from Westcoaster from an update on the 26th August: That's about the only one that's been set up to a reasonable level... Nothing else has been touched as of yet... Another example of a maze which is still in the early stages of mid-build... Considering this was a whole month before the event is due to start and neither of the two examples look anywhere near finished, I would say that it doesn't take months to sort out, but weeks... Ergo, there is very little need to worry, especially when most of the construction at Thorpe will take place internally...

It doesn't exactly take long for them to create mazes, just looking at the way the Americans do it, putting up a few cheap walls and then theming them is a few weeks work... The preview night is actually tempting tbh... At least, for the rides...

It's like Lightwater, the place is so inoffensive it's hard not to like it... It's nothing spectacular, but it does the job and has a lovely atmosphere... Their plans for a new entrance next year should help it even more...