Benin

But you cannot judge an atmosphere of a park without actually having been there, so..... I've never felt rushed or unfriendly there, probably because I've always treated it as a two day park...

Getting Thorpe vibes from Phantasialand? Yeah, definitely not worth listening to that nonsense... Operations are pretty standard, just because a park might run one train when empty doesn't mean that they'll do a Thorpe and not add one when necessary... I've seen 2 blokes at Mirabilandia add a second train to Katun without even noticing they'd left the platform...

China =/= Hong Kong As Mark said, the financial troubles the park got into due to various problems were the main cause of the stagnation... Plus a fair few last minute budget cuts towards park opening... There's still a lot of land available for playing with, Indiana Jones dark ride, Fantasyland dark ride, Soarin in the Studios are just 3 potential additions we could see used in the future as sites, let alone doing something with the boring end of Frontierland and a potential removal of the Tram Tour opening up even further potential... Though of course we'll just get Autopia removed for Star Wars Land...

If you were to stay in central Paris I'd recommend staying within spitting distance of one of the train stations that goes to Marnee la Vallee, if only for sake of simplicity of travelling there and back... Trains run early and late (mostly filled with staff)...

Depends really on your transport options, hiring a car makes things easier, but here's some parks which are simple to access sans car: Phantasialand - Cologne Heide Park - Hamburg Europa Park - Basel/Stuttgart (this is the hardest public transport one really, mostly due to it being in the middle of a small village) Efteling - Amsterdam/Rotterdam Walibi Holland - Amsterdam Walibi Belgium - Brussels Disney Paris - Paris Parc Asterix - Paris (shuttle from CDG airport) Liseberg - Gothenburg Grona Lund - Stockholm Tivoli Gardens/Bakken - Copenhagen Gardaland - Verona Port Aventura - Barcelona Warner Bros Madrid - Madrid I highly recommend using http://coast2coaster.com/ for planning such trips. I'd definitely recommend on-site for Phantasialand, Europa and Efteling. Everywhere else is a case of seeing what's nearby (Disney is a definite stay at Val D'Europe unless you want to take out a loan). Times are similar to UK, though I did two weeks in August in Germany and most parks were manageable bar Heide and Legoland, both of which have Q-Bots anyway. Just keep an eye on any local holidays that would be worth avoiding.

That grey is gonna blend in perfectly to the glum Blackpool sky...

It's a marketing thing, and it's a peculiar angle to take (although many other park operators are following suit, Six Flags' claims are about as equally ridiculous) considering you could literally build anything and people would visit it because it's new...

Just build a bloody Chiapas clone and be done with it...

Joravision

What could a park in such a situation offer AP holders as compensation? In extreme cases the park(s) have to consider the safety of customers... A storm coming right in off the Irish Sea would not bode well for the park, and I doubt they would've taken the decision to close early lightly either... Without knowing the full details of what was and wasn't open at 5/6 it's hard to judge whether the decision was merited...

In what world is Hansa a two day park? Combine it with Heide is the best option for such a plan. Can stay in Hamburg and both are easily accessible...

Will this be like the one for this summer?

Urgh, don't Walibi when I'm considering returning next year around Halloween... Especially for something so awful looking...

No other operator would buy all 3, too much investment would be required to get the parks up to standard, which is of course where the rub lies... I dread to think how much infrastucture cost would be required to drag Chessie into the 21st century... Or how many gardeners they would need to hire to get the Towers Gardens back up to snuff... The problem is that Merlin don't seem to see that such provisions as landscaping and maintenance are the most important aspect to a park, yet they spend the least possible amount of it... I'd love to see Plopsa get their hands on Chessie for example, it would suit them to the ground...

Flying Theatre would be interesting, I'd assume like the one at Ferrari Land... One would hope an indoor cred would be ideal for such an area as well...

At this rate the best thing for the parks would to be sold off to whoever wants to run them... I think even Parques Reunidos would be a better operator at this rate...

- Our parks aren't doing great, should we invest more into them? - No, we shall build MORE hotels! - But we've had to close Splash Landings because no-one's staying there... - NO! MORE HOTELS, IT'S THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE! That Merlin see themselves as market leaders of the industry concerns me greatly...

Is Peppa Pig really that big worldwide? Bear Grylls is a weird one, though that whole project is weird given it being right next to the NEC...

I lol'd...

Are any of the corners even banked on that image? Knowing GCI, it'll probably just be unbanked for the lolz...

The problem is that there's no reaction to there being a sudden surge in busy times... Most parks will, on quieter weekdays, run one train... This is no issue of course, why would you run more than required? However many of these parks will, in the event of queues developing beyond a time frame (I'd say maybe 30 minutes? Maybe 20 depending on how nice I'm feeling) add on an extra train to cope with it... Why Thorpe can't do this (Chessie did in my time on Fury and Rattlesnack, Vampire was a different thing though due to how the transfer track worked) I'm not sure though, perhaps they're still struggling with their maintenance teams? If Rush and Rumba were open it would make a difference to the queues... Likely not a lot, but every little helps...

Well, they can ask a 15 year old for ID, otherwise they'd get in trouble if they served alcohol to one... Depends on the staff, but you'd think that since you've purchased tickets for these mazes they'd have a reasonable amount of leniency...

Oh, well at least I can ignore St Nicholas Park's existence if the cred is dead...