Benin

The fire is bloody good (when it catches, otherwise it gives the entire area an evil gassy smell)... It surprises a LOT of people in the area and even scares children... The ambulance is also well received, now hopefully they can fix the water jets... A big problem with Swarm however is the bag drop... First of all, there seems to be only one staff member in these things atm on most of the rides, which is the first problem... Then the whole thing in general is an overall faff and really needs improving... For example, people queuing for the bag drop means no one queuing for the ride in the station, as many guests seem to favour the left side (for some reason), leaving the right side empty... This is something the batcher needs to look at trying to improve... Then the collection is an absolute horrid mess... Seriously so, due to a lack of staff, and reasonably good throughput on this thing, it just results in a queue of people waiting for their bags AFTER the ride... And this queue often stretches back to the right side of the station because those exiting there aren't clear on why there is a queue suddenly appearing, therefore causing more faff and blocking the entire exit paths on both sides... I think really, they should've just had the more traditional bag drops in the station platform, indeed, if the staff slightly slowed down the loading process (which already is a bit of a cluster, as a mass of people are trying to move around), and placed boxes in the spaces between rows, there would be a minimal result to the throughput, as people in the bays could drop their bags in whilst waiting, and then you wait a bit longer to open the gates to let unloading guests to quickly collect stuff (which with shoes happens anyway right now), it would remove the bag drop issue on both ends of the scale... Some people never get to see their picture off the ride because of this fact, therefore it's actually potentially losing Thorpe money, so a consideration into the system needs to be improved (whether it be boxes, or more staff, as it's the only ride it has excessive problems on)...

Actually yesterday I've realised in a way that Fastrack isn't the most evil thing ever invented, even if it costs money... Imagine if you've never been on Saw and really want to go on it, you have a choice of queuing in that god awful queue for 90 minutes, or parting with some cash for a 5/10 minute queue... For people who rarely ever visit the park, it's a great thing, maybe the costs are a bit meh, but the idea is good... Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd people selling at the entrances ALSO makes perfect sense at Thorpe (maybe not say Sub Terra or some other rides at Towers, but that's for me to investigate further), for Saw (and later Swarm) we realised that if you wanted to get on these rides using Fastrack, you'd have to walk all the way over to Inferno's shop or the Dome, which is quite frankly effort... Having people at the entrances actually improves the system for those willing to use it as it means more sellers (just as long as they just stand there quietly not yelling about fastrack and let the guests come to them, upselling is where personally I'd draw the line there)... It's bad that the reliability has returned to the ages of 2005-2009 odd, but fortunately the only ride that was really really worrying me was Swarm, and it did have an inevitable effect on the other queues, then it opened and everything else lost their queue (5 minutes for Inferno and Stealth in the last hour for example, Swarm was nearly completely full)... Hope they can get their act together but at least Swarm had two trains and seemed to be behaving...

Forgot to mention Zodiac was also down for the entire day... There were times today when 7 rides were all shut for whatever reason... So yeah, only real option was to do sommat for the guests... Hell they even waived parking barriers tonight...

Swarm was down till about 4... The park was awful for reliability today, so much so they gave away complimentary return tickets/fastrack to everyone... Rumba Rapids was down all day, Fish down till 3, and I think Saw and Stealth had their usual on/off things... A typical day at Thorpe then...

#borisrave

And had enthusiasts trying to link EVERY SINGLE THING in the poster to a potential story/name/theme of the ride... With amusing consequences... Happier days...

Thirteen wasn't revealed until MUCH later in 2009, if I recall not even during Scarefest had it been officially revealed, or maybe it had but it hadn't been in September... Can't base ride reveals on past ones because each one has it's own unique marketing timeline based upon a lot of different variables that the park themselves decide... They'll also probably keep everything quiet about the inenvitable world's first until the day before it opens and lets a boring group of enthusiasts look down a newsreporter's cleavage ride it and show off the big 'secret', making all the secrecy beforehand completely pointless...

Soooooo who wants a new Wingrider? Cedar Point do! Will Thorpe be moaning at Cedar Fair for 'stealing their loop' again? This does look excessively fab though, the Zero-Gs over the turnstiles are a brilliant concept really... Yay for Cedar Point getting a good B&M!

^I think it might not help that with Thorpe's "uniform", a group of Thorpe workers milling about doing nothing isn't the same as at Towers or Chessie... You would hate if Sub Terra was closed as well as Air mind... Although with the Phalanx outfits it does look awesome...

This really, then the next photo was a really dodgy one that didn't really show anything... I think it doesn't help that quite often, as most of us will already be following Thorpe themselves, we are essentially getting two of the same post within a minute... It's pointless really when the posts lack any form of interaction to the people following TPM and all I see is a direct copy from Thorpe... Advertise yes, but try and make it less of a copy and paste job, giving TPM a more identity, rather than something that seems to be another arm of Thorpe's PR system... tl;dr, Up the quality of the posts and pictures...

Like the rides staff will be cleaning the volcano part of the station... Technically, that's not even part of their job tasks really... Queueline is essentially the only aspect the rides staff are expected to clean, the rest is usually dictated to other departments to organise and sort out... I dunno what people expect really... The staff are stood there for a reason, to ensure that if/when the ride reopens they are readily available... Imagine the faff if they were on the other side of the park or in the middle of cleaning the volcano, there'd be more faff as the staff would have to pack the cleaning equipment up before being able to open it... I think the majority of guests at Thorpe also wouldn't give a damn about some dirty volcano over a ride being open in a minute after being handed back over from Engineering...

Should they have announced it? Nothing has ever been confirmed as to whether or not there will be at least anything new next year, let alone a flat... Besides, considering how the flat ride line up already exists at the park, it's something that they really don't need to improve upon that much... Aside from a Huss Top Spin of course...

Money has been no object? Someone needs to mention this to Towers so those ingenious people who have improved it so much this year can do whatever the hell they want to the finale... Although the cynic in me sees 'improvement' as 'refurb the broken effects'...

INVERT ALL THE RIDES! Of course, being pedantic (as per usual) the only reason it can have inversions is cos it's not a 'true' wooden coaster... Bloody hybrids, I'd sooooo much rather a GCI (or several) turn up over here before one of these... Especially as this will not help the "Wooden coasters look unsafe" viewpoint...

And kids can then climb all over the netting instead...

If they did, they would've given me a smooth ride...

The bolded section is the main reason here... What makes more sense to the park? Fulfilling the basic H&S requirements that are a result of the investigations from both the park and the executive is of course the first priority, but do they desperately need to theme it right now, or reopen the ride considering the 'summer' period has turned up... Whilst I don't hold my breath that it will later be rethemed, at least it looks better than Saw's god-awful random chainlink prison queueline... More Punjabi prison than Guantanamo Bay... The park priorities change these days... Aesthetics cost a lot and would take longer to install... Is that worth keeping a popular ride shut for even longer over summer? Safety SHOULD be the priority over everything else, otherwise who would want to go to an unsafe park? Especially a family based park... It doesn't look great, but it's a necessary evil for the park to operate the ride... And knowing enthusiasts if they were spending longer to sort this out we'd be complaining that the ride isn't open...

Pfft, terrible excuses really, call yourself an enthusiast? etc, etc...

ENNIS!

Distinct lack of Krake and Raptor bears though... And a Nemesis bear... Must try harder...

MIND... BLOWN...

Would be better going off when the riders are going through the helix bit tbh... MUST TRY HARDER THORPE!!! Yes I'm being sarcastic, in a way, I do think it would work better potentially going off through the helix, but I doubt H&S would agree with me... Just hope they can keep it operational with the rest of the effects..

Probably only to block off Sunken Garden, otherwise it doesn't need one...