Benin

What is with the obsession with putting scare mazes on EVERYTHING? Bugger off with this stupid fad... Why put it on SW7? Why does it need it? It's a roller coaster, SURELY that's enough? Plonk some good theming around it and done, it doesn't need any stupid extras to be 'scarier', it's not the same situation with Sub Terra lacking (in the opinion of most) when it originally opened, and that exit corridor actually improved the attraction... What would a scare maze do to accent SW7? Just... No...

Looks good... Then again, most concepts do... #sittingonthefence

But wasn't it crap? Unfortunately it closed before my visit, but surely it's days were always numbered when they removed the loop... No gimmick, making it pointless as it was panned by all... Meh, maybe they'll get a good ride, as they need another one...

I said I'd do this after Europa... So... 1 - Nemesis Still clinging onto the top spot... Maybe because of the whole first inverting coaster, it does hold some place in my heart like Vampire... Unlike Vampire however, it is still a beast, and one of the best Inverts in the world... 2 - Katun The Italian beast remains... This weirdly amazing American style Invert was a truly breathtaking ride last year, and is certainly not ridden by enough people it seems... Worth the entrance price to Mirabilandia alone... 3 - Blue Fire New for 2012 Just look at my trip report for an in depth explanation on this... Gorgeous, well designed, near as damn the perfect ride with airtime, smoothness and some bouts of intensity to boot... Needless to say that more parks need to buy Mack Megacoasters, and I will put it out there now that Liseberg's will be fantastic... 4 - Oz'Iris New for 2012 For a few months this made my top 3 all B&M Inverts... Says a lot about the ride type, but only in Europe... We are extremely lucky to have 3 world class coasters in the continent, whilst it has apparently gotten slower or whatever, that should not detract from an extremely amazing looking area and one of the best queuelines in the world... The ride is a weird and unique layout, with some great B&M parts... Plus it has the best operator chair ever <3 5 - Revenge of the Mummy Mark9 is wrong... I do indeed love this ride... Whether it's aged badly I have no idea, but I found the dark ride theming brilliant, and whilst the ride portion lacks this, the launch and airtime filled course makes it very re-rideable for me... Also... Cups of coffee... 6 - The Beast The longest wooden coaster in the world is a weird creature, and works much like the Ultimate, but in a much better fashion, as it focuses a lot on the pure build up of speed through a forest... Lots of straights, but due to this acceleration, it doesn't detract... Let alone how it changes from good to unbelievably awesome at night, where the sense of speed in the pitch black completely changes the aspect of the ride... 7 - Tonnerre de Zeus Ton of Air is the classic CCI coaster... Wild, full of airtime, laterals, and just generally mental... The back row on the first drop is one of the great ride sensations, and causes sheer panic, fear and joy simultaneously... Two fantastic rides closer to us than Disney, easily worth the drive... 8 - Top Thrill Dragster Poor Intamin, I do deride them a fair bit, but really, TTD is sommat that deserves some recognition, as it is a pure example of how powerful (though wasteful, but that's another topic) the Hydraulic launch system can be... It s a much more dominating ride in comparison to Stealth, and is one of the few rides in recent times where I've been nervous of riding... Fantastic launch, unparalled with the lap bar... 9 - Fluch von Novgorod It's dropped a bit since last year, but only due to more new amazing rides joining the line up... But Fluch is easily the best example of an Eurofighter, and it's so weird to think that a small independently run park opened such a fantastic version of this type the same year as Saw... Great theming, great launch, great indoor section of madness, great exit path (including slide and maze)... Worth a visit... 10 - Megaphobia Rounding it off is Wales' answer to Ton of Air... Not as good, but a damn fine ride in it's own right... Excellent fun and does share some similarities with Zeus, needs a revisit in the future, but I would imagine it's still the fun ride I remember it to be... Other 2012 Near Misses Anubis (Plopsaland) - Pretty damn fun ride, Gerstlauer launches are just fab... Also based off a fab TV show, I can't wait to return to the park with actual knowledge of it, but the ride is not good enough to make it into the top 10... Swarm - Yeah, it's good, but hell, I think even Raptor might even have the edge over it... It's easily Thorpe's best ride, but really with the lack of consistency with the theming and effects, it does drop some points... It does have some excellent portions, but I think as an overall package it does lack a few parts that Raptor does better (the middle portion and finale)... Wodan (Europa) - Excellent ride, it really is... Probably my favourite GCI so far (With Lightning Racer up there) with an exceptional queue-line and look... The ride though is weird when you look at the older style rides, and really, just not as good at the end of the day... Not as wild or terrifying... On the other hand it's great fun and re-rideable, and doesn't have burdenous seat-belts... Other Mentions The Euro-Raves (Europa) - Truly rides to be experienced to understand why they have a relatively cult following, EuroSat is a weird indoor coaster, very much inspired by the works of Anton, with tight turns and sharp brakes, whilst Euro-Mir is the strangest of all, with controlled spinning and a random as hell layout that ends (sometimes) with one of the most intense ride sequences I've experience... Regardless, they're very fun and my recent trip made me realise how good they are... Besides, THOSE SOUNDTRACKS <3

The original Drop Tower concept was more of the 1st generation Intamin drop towers, rather than a true Tower of Terror... However, that concept was important in leading up to it... The Nautilus is actually a walkthrough (ish) attraction, hidden... It's quite cool, not amazing, but worth a look around if it's raining...

This basically... Replaces Oblivion and advertises SW7... Good call...

Rubbish, start imposing the times strictly, and people WILL follow it to the correct ruling... It's kinda basic stuff... Of course, if people have a valid excuse (ride broken down/medical stuff/etc) then staff can be lenient as long as the excuse is checked as fact... But it should be a kind of tough potatoes system used if people turn up late... If you can't keep time and follow the rules, then whatever... Sure initially might get people moaning, but there has to be a line drawn somewhere, especially with the dodgy overselling... Need to take the Disney level of strictness...

Why don't you actually bother to queue for it, when it's actually the second longest coaster at Thorpe behind Colossus... http://rcdb.com/4814.htm Not exactly sommat to complain about really the length then... So..

Most guests to theme parks do seem to leave their brain at the door... It's kinda this whole take advantage of the belief of how Fastrack will affect the day thing... We know Thorpe aren't the only guilty party with it, but Thorpe mess up their Fastrack selling on a much more regular basis than the rest... The overselling is a constant problem on standard weekends as well as the peak (summer, easter, halloween) days... And when it's done on weekdays it just shows a complete lack of actual sense or desire to give the customers a sense of satisfaction and a good day... And look what happened last time Thorpe plonked in a ride because of another silly view that you MUST have a new ride every year... If our parks here actually invested money into the infrastructure and tarting the park up and producing so much more than just the rides, there would be SUCH a big difference to the casual GP market... The parks need to consider methods of producing a good day out environment, rides do not mean everything at a theme park... You only have to look at the successful parks in the world in Europe AND America for this plain factor... Six Flags focused on rides a few years back, that clearly worked... And saying that they could've made Swarm longer? NO, NO, NO... Considering the fact that before Swarm that area was water, the cost would SOAR so much just for the groundwork alone... What they did is fine enough, Swarm is an excellent ride (if only lacking a truly exceptional finale), there is no point comparing it to any American version, because ALL their rides are technically bigger, longer, faster, taller, etc than any of our rides... Shame that those factors do not automatically make a good ride... Indeed, compare Nemesis to most American Inverts, and it dominates them... The only thing I would've changed with Swarm was to sort out the finale... Kinda where it loses a point to Raptor really... But for Thorpe to do something like Swarm shows a very different approach to things... Why would no theme and the ride being longer be any good? The theme is what makes the ride... Would hate for Thorpe to have continued a trend of the mid 2000s of building rides with little (Stealth) or no (Samurai, Rush, Slammer) theme... Tl;dr - Fastrack overselling is a burden at all the parks but Thorpe is the worst... Getting a new ride for the sake of getting a new ride when there are clear infrastructure issues (painting, lack of budgets) isn't the best way to run a theme park if you want people to return... And Swarm couldn't have been made longer without excessive extra cost, and the theme is the best on park now...

The Yorkshire way really...

Just a support structure by the looks of things... Scaffold style you know...

I've read that Brian Blessed will be playing Henry VIII as County Hall opens... Automatically better than Tooley Street

Depends if the bandied figure of £20 million for this move is true or not... Can't look any worse than the LBE mind... And considering how nice Blackpool's looked on the outside, I would suspect it won't be toooo awful, just kind of lack that old rickety sense that Tooley Street had... It makes more sense for them to move though... Lot more sense than staying at Tooley Street...

Henry VIII stuff eh? That sounds interesting... Meh, it'll always be more humour because of the general mob of tourists from abroad... Lot more of them in London, and tbh, I much prefer such stuff with a very British sense of humour attached to it... Much better than being some generic scare everyone thing...

Doesn't show the genius of letting Hart head it away and following the ball to smash it in... Classy goal mind...

Let's hope they do the same for the rest of the area...

Jesus Christ that character is TERRIFYING... But, Roland

PARROT COASTER!!! So want with it's LED eyes

Are we asking these people if they would prefer 30 minutes on one train, or a lower queue with two trains? What's the point in comparing off-peak and peak days? Ask people if they want a 30 minute queue with one train or a 0 minute queue with two trains, and it's obvious what people would prefer... One train operation is horrid... Just generally is... Hell if Europa can run 4 trains on EuroSat and EuroMir on a dead day (walk on queues) why can't Thorpe run two trains, allow guests an even better day, and let them spend less time in a queue and spend in shops/food outlets... Oh wait, I know, it's the pushing of Fastrack that every single park seem to do nowadays, but Thorpe are much worse for it, which of course, affects the park operations even worse... I can even attest to the whole "Fastrack was the only reason I had a good day" as I did that this year... So aggravating to see the park operations in the south (this topic could SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO be done for Chessie as well) be so poor...

Tracks fracturing isn't too rare an occurance for it to be an unbelievable thing, it happens especially a lot on Nemesis... Just kinda comes with the forces and stress that occur on the track... I would imagine the very bottom of Blivvy's drop bends and moves a damn lot, so would be prime suspect for a potential track fault... Dunno if it's true, but it's not toooooo far-fetched not to be if that makes any sense...

Oh yeah, Swarm's makes sense, as does Saw's tbh as it is 'MEANT' to be some form of warehouse jobbie... Warehouse would have one... Wonder if SW7 will have one...

They put Sub Terra in one And obviously Swarm's shop... But for the most part, they kinda make sense (Thirteen's defo doesn't, but then again, none of that area does)... Of course, the hotel idea still sucks...

This... A lot... Not that Merlin help themselves, I'm so bored of shipping container jokes...

Sure it's half and half... Otherwise why don't Chessie fill up Vampire's station anymore? (Aside from Chessie's operating standards falling)

I worked at a park where if it's main coaster was on one train, it was perhaps the most pointless thing I've ever seen in my life... It happened once I think, and I found it incredibly amusing and stupid, as everyone getting off wanted to re-ride, but they couldn't because of the one train operation... So what if a queue only peaks at 30 minutes for about an hour if that? I don't really see it as an excuse for only running the one train when it's easily doable for two (I accept it when the train is borked, like with Colossus), but it's all about guest experience, and having queues on empty days (where people go NOT expecting queue) AND to sell Fastrack on these days is a real example of how out of touch Thorpe are with being able to give a GOOD guest experience at times... As Mark says above though, the problem is how long it takes staff to get the second train in, it averages about 10-20 minutes at times for them to even get it in with a full staff number, imagine our shock when Katun's TWO members of staff (including op) suddenly out of nowhere brought out the second train even though they didn't really need it yet... Big difference there, especially when they cycled it once and then loaded it... Hell, when Thorpe put a second train on, it's announced as a breakdown, so that makes people actually leave the queue... What's the point in that? Thorpe is also getting busier on weekdays because of the target market's tendancy to have a few days off due to college/uni timetables, so they're needing to put two trains on more regularly at least, but they don't seem to be doing it... And because of the guest mentality that off peak days are empty (it is there), having lower operations causing longer queues and of course the random day of selling Fastrack, it doesn't lend well to a good overall day... And annoyed guests don't spend money or come back... Especially if they've already spent their money on buying Fastrack...