Benin

Ah yes, I remember the smooth sailing of Stealth's opening year (and beyond)... We gotta be honest, this (and last year) for the park have not been great in regards to constant busyness like the years gone by, especially when you look at said northern park which seems since Smiler opened (since lots of people held their trips off, as predicted) extremely busy everyday... IF they are looking to really bring in the high end premium family market from now, then how is adding MORE cheap as hell shipping container hotel boxes going to promote this change? A theme park hotel should not be looking to be a direct competitor with a Travelodge, it should be better than one at minimum (which cannot really be said of Towers' two mind, but at least they don't have a Little Chef as the meal option)... Will more rooms really bring the price down? What evidence actually provides this idea? As for opening the hotel with a new coaster, there is logic, but what if said coaster fails? Then they have a problem in too much expense too little return, it's a risky strategy unless the new ride was a definite hit with the public... Also, how does this cost them £9 million? Like, seriously? £9 million on shipping container rooms? HOW? Surely filling these things with IKEA furniture can't cost that much? Mental costings if true, because that's £9 million that could be spent on tarting the park up more to help bring in those new market audience...

Hah, I predicted that they'd rather expand Crash Pad over a new hotel because it's cheaper to create for a quick opening... Temporary build my arse...

Stay at halls, worth the experience if anything... This time last year I was graduating... Jesus...

This is gonna look sexual

Newcastle under Lyme? Good nightlife? Methinks you be in the wrong Newcastle...

You don't spend 5 minutes staring at puddles though? Are the house lights constantly on atm? Probably why the mist has been turned off tbh [the puddles], but hell, the light up exit of it is effort at least (and pretty fab)..

Expansion please, because it's not exactly as bad as Air's...

Have a POV! It is, unfinished like most things seem to be when it comes to Tripsdrill (Mammut was unfinished when it opened, then had additional stuff added since)... Looks a decent ride though regardless...

Tower's Sales mob really are bad at over-selling on busy days aren't they? Though more than likely any break-downs won't help the attempt at limiting the numbers if that's still happening...

Probably still better than Polar X-Plorer even with the open shutter...

British media in over-sensationalist shocker!

It's not just the work on RMT and DF though... It's the poor operations, the over-reaction to any event that goes wrong, the poor maintenance that leads to such events, the state of Bubbleworks, the decision to have Zufari have a minimum height limit, the general choices made regarding Zufari are poor which lead to be an attraction that just reeks of "could be better", the idea that Madagascar is a good show, getting rid of the 3rd train on Vampire because the staff aren't good enough to run with 3 trains, expanding the hotel into the zoo meaning that they cannot further develop that area, that epic looking plans are made then cancelled for budgetary reasons, etc, etc, etc... The problems are far, far beyond the issues between RMT and DF being re-worked on...

Was in Brighton today so unsurprisingly took a spin on it (opened on Thursday)... Since I had rather enjoyed Tivoli's it isn't hard to assume I also enjoyed this one... I do wonder if it could be a success in a park that isn't pay per ride... Maybe a Merlin park could grab one of the 4 seater 8 arms variants in the near future... For the longest ride cycle, go for arm AA...

I think that's one of the most depressing things, how optimistic the park seemed 3 years ago and it really looked like the park was going places... Now, a shadow of itself...

There was no chance of them having a preview period because of the delays though... Yes it should've been open in March for the park opening, but then those issues that came up during construction weren't forseen... How can anyone forsee every potential problem? It's quite simply impossible to be able to predict every single issue that a ride can endure... I'm sure Intamin didn't expect their lapbars not to be able to hold in those of certain dimensions... I'm sure Arrow expected their brakes to fail on Pepsi Max... And so on and so forth with most ride breakdowns... Machines break, especially complex ones... It's an unfortunate fact of life... Smiler is having teething issues just like Saw, Thirteen and Stealth... Hell, at least it's not Intimidator 305 which kept having issues because they didn't forsee that the wheels would go because of the high amount of friction and heat that took place on the ride...

It's been open for just over a month... So essentially it's had what, 36 days since opening, not all of which it has been open for various reasons... That is not months... Considering the rush to do it as well (which is not the fault of the ride manufacturer) because of the various other issues, no wonder they're having bugs in the system... If it's still breaking down constantly in October, then yes fair enough, but it's barely had a month of operation...

Well, at least the zoo is still open... *cue mass lion escape*

If this was true, then every ride that was (in rather basic terms) simple in track and design, would never break down (or crash, interesting Tranan's brakes failed recently, there was nothing special about them, yet there you go, see also Pepsi Max Big One's brake failures as extreme examples of systems that should be easy to build that failed)... Unfortunately, however 'simple' the ride might appear, these are still complex machines... Consider the amount of sensors, computer calculations and the like, it shows that even the most basic would be prone to breaking down for whatever reason... Indeed, a lot of shut-downs these days (heading into opinion waters here) are no doubt mostly down to the over-bearing nature of safety sensors tripping out for whatever reason and the automatic reaction is (naturally) to shut the whole thing down... When I was at Towers last week, Smiler was stuck on top of the lift, which meant that the ride system wasn't allowing it to descend back to the bottom for some reason... That in itself must be a real strain on the ride PLC...

Millenium Force is one of the most boring coasters in existance... So Mega-Lite or Wooden coaster please...

B&M though, so ergo not applicable in building new rides that break down constantly simply because

Chessie still want to use the Maurer Sohne approach to design by getting children to draw random non-sensical lines then?

Smiler (like any new ride) is being very on/off throughout the days... Seems a lot is down to the vertical lift though... But look at how complex rides are these days, there are a lot more bugs to sort out (especially as a ride with as many blocks and such as Smiler)...

Latest OUTRAGE at Chessie is them having the cheek to charge a £10 to feed the giraffes when Colchester Zoo does it for free! (Via Facebook) FFS MERLIN!

Even TPR like Nemesis... It takes a special kind of person to hate it based on that...