Benin

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...

Hah, if only it was that simple of not reading spoiler tags when plenty of other forums I'm on haven't used them... I'd rather not go down a route of completely shunning a project, as I do enjoy watching the construction of rides and of course a nice bit of speculation, but there is a difference between speculation and going "it will be this"... Just makes me wonder how hard it is for people to keep stuff that has been intended as a surprise as such, because then you lose some of the excitement of some random piece of track happening that no one saw coming (see for example, Oblivion building the drop last, wouldn't have worked today at all with the desire for information forums have)...

If it gets off the ground that is... Weird how Paramount gave up on parks and are now getting back into them though...

This basically... Both Saw and Colossus are as bad as each other for me... Although Colossus wins for the whole "tall people have to be contortionists if they sit in the back row of a car"...

Sigh, what's the point in Towers being secret these days when enthusiasts ruin the excitement? It happened for Thirteen, and it's happened again if these things are true... Do these inside people even care about their media policy? Or because of their special knowledge does it give them some form of power trip (I.e. the "I know something you don't know" card)... Why spoil the surprise? Especially when quite frankly, it sounds bloody awful and stupid... Urgh, enthusiasts really get to me at times... If it's meant to be a surprise, let it be a surprise, don't ruin it...

There's a zoo at Marwell? Never even heard of the place... Surely Drusilla's or London Zoo would be more likely candidates for competition against Chessie in a zoo aspect?

Not much has changed then... You can but hope it opens for at least half term, if only to help the park's queue capacity...

Whoever Thorpe purchase their temporary metal fencing from must LOVE them...

Why the HELL would I want to use Ryanair?

They're getting a few new animals to come in as well you know, not just the existing mob, Giraffes are a definite, and I think Rhinos are on the way as well... Considering there's nothing like this in the UK, any scale is good...

Ahhh, so basically your view of the park was done in by how horrendously busy it was (which happened to me on my first visit of the park, but I still manged to enjoy it)... It didn't help mind about the whole sat nav issue, this is why sat navs are silly, and should be ignored... I think any busy park makes for an awful day, but when the French are involved, it makes things a bit more awful... Cos they're French...

Scared face...

Big if on the economy front... And it's not surprising that they would consider removing Neptune's Beach, it is an awful area and is completely at odds against the park's new 'look'... And the day that Storm Surge is removed will be a happy day, 99% of people seem to agree that it is probably the most pointless addition to a UK theme park in a while...

None of the parks have done well this year... Problem is for Thorpe that they had their high investment this year, whereas Chessie and Towers didn't... But as said, there are more problems surrounding our parks than just a ride not bringing people in...

The hotel is an attraction? Not for an extra £100 a night it isn't...

No, just London... Because it's blatently superior...

Day 2 The second day started slightly too early at first, with a fire alarm blasting through the hotel at around 2am, causing many tired Germans to peek outside their doors... Nothing had happened, but it was pretty burdenous to occur at such an hour, so thankful for those times it happened at uni now... We had breakfast after waking up properly and proceeded to ERT, again riding Blue Fire (twice this time) before Wodan once again... We took to riding the Mini-Monorail from Iceland to the Historama station, which we then visited... Historama Interesting this, I remember on my last visit when all the models and stuff you see in the building were in the now Volo da Vinci station... Still this place looks really classy now compared to how it used to, and the models and other things are pretty fab... Then the show part is a bit weird, with the rotating theatre and the going through the different aspects of the park, bit of them tooting their own horn really, but since they can actually back up their claims of being relatively fab, they get away with it... The show portion even included FOUNTAINS... Amanda would be proud... S'alright thing really, pretty cool and worth a look in... We then headed to Euro-Mir as it was next door, before hitting up the random dark ride... Random Russian Bench Based Dark Ride I can't be bothered to look up the name of this exceptionally random dark ride... It was just full of complete what the hell and stuff... It didn't do much and had a rather pointless photo... Complete meh... We wanted to go and see the Ice Show and had a bit more time to spare, so quickly wandered over to Eurosat for a quick go, but not without noticing the Halloween theming had begun! We headed back to the Ice Tent and realising we had more time before it started, went on Abenteur cos why not? It provided the sufficient faff time till opening... Ice Show The only reason I wanted to see this show was because of the story, and it centred around the stealing of Roland Mack's IAAPA President Gavel... I mean, seriously, that's pretty damn awesome for a park to just fully embrace that sort of thing, however the show was naturally overshadowed by the pre-show entertainment... It was your atypical mute clown (seen in America and a few other places as well) who basically took the mick out of everyone and attempted to get the crowd going to hilarious results... It is very much a "had to be there" thing really, but the highlights of invisible drum kit and people failing to clap 'correctly' went to prove that the Germans do in fact have a sense of humour, and it made a change for something to be universally understood [/ignorant Brit] The show started well then proceeded to lose the story, a shame, but was pretty good as Ice Shows go, with more than just skating and included a portion that I swear I saw at the Olympics this summer... Ah wells... We then decided for lunch and some shopping in the main entrance area, but as we were feeling lazy, we caught the proper Monorail back to the entrance from Greece, and ate at the Rock Cafe, which was pretty damn nice with Chicken Wings, Wodan Burger and some decent music... We decided to start shopping now as we would get everything sent back to the hotel for packing that night, as in the midst of our shopping, the rain decided to pelt it down upon the Germans (on holiday from flooding half of the UK I guess) and it lead us to ponder what to do next... Indeed, what we did was purchase a €1 passport thingy, and entertain ourselves by jumping across the park and getting it filled in, a la Epcot... Easily entertained we are... We went back to France via Italy (stamp cred) and then decided (for SOME reason) to ride Silver Star in the rain... In the back row... This was later labelled insanity because it was running super fast and not even trimmed... It also hurt and produced a fab on ride photo which I'll upload later... Then we did another Disney rip off ride... Universe of Energy/Dino Fahrt This is a horrifying Omnimover Dark Ride, with some retro Dinosaur theming, we literally only did it because of the rain and it's so amusing how old some of the dark rides at Europa look... Especially this one... Wonder if they'll ever revamp them in the future... We then went on the Matterhorn again, which was surprisingly smooth in the rain actually for a Mouse, before we continued our adventure around each area getting the Passport stamped... Before long we had reached the England area, and it was decided we would investigate the Enchanted Forest area (the other new area since my last visit) and it was actually pretty cool overall, decent level of theming and plenty of things for kids to do (since it is an area designed for them), we also visited another indoor attraction to avoid the rain... Brothers Grimm This is SUCH a rip off of recent Disney Fantasyland attractions it's hilarious, it had some random interaction stuff as everyone in the room (about 7) had to go up to some mirror as we had to find the wizard (yeah, I dunno why either), and once we had done the multi-lingual clock/ravens said some things and we proceeded into a mini-theatre for the rest of the show... It was pretty cool actually, with some minor physical effects (not 4D show style leg ticklers, actual animatronics) and some sheer randomness... What I liked was that it was set in the park, giving that extra bit of escapism which is cooler than just a random area of trees (*cough*Charlie*cough*)... Random and again, worth a look really... We continued our adventure into the rain (the reaction to the Grimm attraction ending and the host opening the door to the rain was hilarious), and walked through the rest of the area, they're doing sommat to it next year, but I'll be damned if I could see where... We ended up in Austria (or Switzerland? They are practically the same) and hit up the Diamond Mine walk through, which has epic smell of epicness and is quite a cool walkthrough thing, which is something Europa seems to do well, having random things tucked away that inquisitive people will find... Next up was Spain and the two flat rides there... Seastorm and Feria Swing, both are pretty much basic stuff but with quite long sequences... Filler stuff and nothing more really... We arrived just in time to catch the Three Muskateers stunt show, which was again very much worth visiting, as they used the relatively small arena to great advantage, as seen here... Stampeding horse chases on the walkway... Pretty fab, they also had a few swordfights on there as well, inches away from actual people, H&S be damned! Easy to follow even with the language barrier, and the comic relief panto-dame was pretty fab as well... Impressive stuff, and you can see why Europa's shows get a fair bit of praise... We completed the passport at this time through Holland, Norway before finishing at Iceland (again)... We were hungry, so elected to grab a Milka Donut (of nom) and drink from the Gazprom sponsorship station... Afterwards, we walked through the part-time queue of Blue Fire, which can be used as an alternative walkthrough to Wodan these days... Perfect for those who love taking photos... Like me... This makes Fanta and Oblivion look subtle We eventually arrived at Wodan and took a spin, before the exit plonked us at the Splash Battle... Whale Adventures This was cool actually, I really liked the theming of it (for example, each boat having a different model captain) and whilst it wasn't the weather for it, it was pretty decent really... It does feel slightly plonked in now with Wodan stood behind it though definitely, ah wells, I could think of worse examples... We then had a hot dog for some dinner (spicy sauce is not my favourite) from the brilliantly named Moby idiot's before a quick go on Blue Fire to finish off the second day...