Benin

Because the original Zodiac model was ancient and prone to throwing pods into trees... Sometimes rides do need replacing, but why replace rides which have nothing wrong with them?

I wonder though if Burger King gets busy because of being a recognised brand... Thorpe's restaurants outside of Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut very rarely get very busy in my experience...

That last picture just goes to prove that Disney face characters always look really really bad... Especially it seems the American ones... The Circus looks great though... I'm still holding back till Fantasyland is actually finished though...

Won't be McDonalds because they made them go away from Chessie and Towers in the first place... Yay for more branded outlets though, one thing Merlin have done well, is the park food, so much better now...

Didn't actually know about it, but that's quite an exceptional case and kinda needed to be done? Since there's nothing really wrong with Det or Vortex, why replace them?

Oh it's clear they do, and I like Slammer as a ride, but should it continue as it has been over the next year, I just don't think it'd be worth the constant expensive investment Thorpe are doing... You have to draw the line somewhere... God knows where the money saved would end up though, none of us can truly know that...

I support the whole "better things Thorpe could spend money on" approach here, mainly because of how much of a drain Slammer must be to the maintenance budget... Why will it be a drain? Can't go to S&S and I doubt the ride has any form of warranty anymore because S&S themselves have gone "nah, it's dire" and given up on the entire concept... That leaves Thorpe with needing to go and create replacement parts through custom methods, possibly either through getting one company to manufacture the parts for them, or getting multiple companies involved... Either way, it's a costly and long (as proven by this year) process, and might well outweigh the positives of having the ride still running in the future if it continues to constantly be a thorn in the side of the park with prolonged breakdowns that have plagued the ride since 2005... As much as the uniqueness helps the ride, I wouldn't be surprised if one day Thorpe just give up on it if it continues acting up like this... I know I would look elsewhere eventually...

People bother to queue so long because when Thorpe is busy it's often the shortest queue on park... As for quiet days... Well, the low throughput contributes to the long queue...

Until you try and cross the road... What IS it with the continental cousins being so mental in inner city roads (Germans aside, but they have common sense)...

Erm, no, this will never happen and has never happened in any theme park...

Take it then the sheds were efficiently hidden from view then?

Also, I'd imagine like with many rides, there may be other 'incidents' that don't make it out into the obvious public domain... Still though, this ride is a bit awful isn't it?

I was expecting someone had gotten bored on the lift hill and jumped... Hope person is ok, hope the ride isn't...

Problem with that is how would you be able to tell between a staff member or park guest?

To be fair though, the Spanish economy is absolutely buggered...

Hard Rock Park's situation with the change of name/owner/etc was more down to be it being a complete and utter failure though, rather than Hard Rock just pulling out for the lols... Looking at that list, perhaps a Dreamworks area would be likely, it depends on the distribution rights for stuff like this could be worked out, defo wouldn't be getting a Transformers based ride though, which is why we need a Star Trek ride... Aside from that I can't really see any other franchises jumping out at me that weren't already done at their original parks (Tomb Raider and Italian Job)...

It's actually quite amusing at times how going to a theme park with non enthusiasts can show how really picky and pedantic enthusiasts can be...

Disney park have survived with other theme parks adding themselves close by... I'm sure Paris (with it's potential for new investment with Disney buying it back a bit) will be better off to keep plugging away if this place happened... I would rather dark rides too... American style rollercoasters are so over-rated it's not true really... Especially huge ones... And with the British weather, imagine having a park full of quality dark rides? Excellent stuff... And just because it's huge, the park itself won't be, the whole area of 800 odd acres (or whatever it is) also include the waterpark and entertainment complex...

Two rolling LSM launches? Zero-G finale? I'm sold...

New Mack Megacoaster for Liseberg in Sweden... Scandi trip next year looking likely...

In the short term, I would imagine Merlin will wait and see what happens with the project, if it looks like it will go ahead, then I'm sure (putting on my business people will think logically assumption hat) they will make plans to take on the new competition... I would hope a film based park could provide some classy dark rides, but it's dependant on the Paramount franchises, though I can already see an epic Star Trek themed dark ride...

That's from an outside London point of view, considering Chessie is located within the Travelcard Zones (very important to Londoners, especially with Oyster PAYG on Zoned stations), I was more thinking of an internal London viewpoint more than anything...

I'd hate to have American standard rides, would rather European standard level...

Again though, it doesn't help that then on the various forums it just appears without any form of spoiler... Hence it just gets spoilt anyway... Hell, this wasn't even in spoiler boxes originally as you can see from JoshC's original post... What would be better, is that people with info, just keep it to themselves for the benefit of everyone, rather than just going like this (and potentially looking stupid should it not come true)...

It has dead pigeons on it's brake run... It's cool...