Benin

Yet you brought them up because people were being negative over Big One having one train operation... You got called out because you decided to bring Merlin into something they had nothing to do with; as you needed to one up them and defend Blackpool over something that you will no doubt moan over when you visit Thorpe this year... What do previous years have to do with it? As Josh said, people moaned about the situations at Thorpe and Towers because they went wrong, it's not like everyone was positive about them because they were open... Given your critical nature surely you would understand others being so about one train operation on a massively advertised half term event that Blackpool hadn't tried to this level before... Just take the rose tinted glasses off and accept that Blackpool isn't perfect...

I guess all those years Merlin parks had a half term event when Blackpool didn't count for nothing then eh? Granted they weren't always perfect (cold weather was usually the reason for Thorpe's problems, I'm sure if they'd attempted it this year it would've been fine given the weather recently), and when they did it majority of the time was on capacity (unless Nemesis decided to pour oil on everyone)... But you know, some parks get away with murder in some people's eyes...

If Silver Star didn't have the trims of doom then it would probably be rated akin to most B&M hypers... Still better than Millenium Force though...

Having one train operations when the park will pretty much know expected figures (although I assume the milder weather in the north probably pushed a few extra visits, as well as this being the 'crossover' weekend of north/south half terms) is poor though, even with valid reasoning, you would have hoped Blackpool would've pushed for two train operation on their biggest ride... It's a fair complaint, and I'm sure if this was Thorpe having two hour queues with one train operation on a Saturday in a school holiday you would've been first in line to stick the boot in...

Bet half the train is full of sandbags to boot... This is why Feb half terms end badly, UK parks never seem prepared for the numbers who turn up...

Classic business tactic, make Merlin throw more money at him to renew the lease at the risk of losing a fairly big cash cow of a park...

Bring back the Nemesis Nosh bus!

What rides in the park will be closed this season to make up the budget? Surely a park cannot just afford to plus a pre existing attraction without something needing to be done?

I won't have to beg, I'll just resort to kidnapping instead, much less hassle...

Another park for the big cred whores to beg for entry then...

They redid Heide because it was just the same as Colossus (and the rest of the park had really bugger all in the way of actual themed music)... Getting rid of Colossus and Inferno's music though? Bugger off would IMAScore top Colossus...

Dungeons is clearly more in the field of 'Horrible Histories' style these days, not a bad thing at all, and I've no real issue in how they look, run, sound, etc these days... This is very typical news stuff now though... Brand does PR stunt that some find offensive, blah, blah, blah... Boring really...

There's no point the UK parks doing big shows at the current time because there's a questionable level of interest (though that's probably down to there being no decent shows) from park guests and there's zero time in the day to actually take 30-45 minutes to sit and watch one... Would UK guests want to watch an ice skating show? Whilst the Madagascar shows were usually busy was that down to the show quality or the IP?

As in the stage isn't coming back or the Penguins show?

Needs more lights tbh...

I look forward to seeing the finished product on this, Asterix was missing a quality middle ground coaster after all, and Firechaser Express gets lots of positive reviews... Can't quite tell how they're gonna do the switch back towards the end of the ride though, cos Firechaser doesn't do that... Hopefully it's not a dull switchtrack section...

If the 25 year shelf life is to be based upon the last time the ride went through a MASSIVE refurbishment (something I don't think many Arrow Suspendeds suffered), then it'll be theoretically on it's true last legs in 2027, so we've got another 10 years of "will it won't it" to get through... Besides, on top of that there's still 3 others currently in operation that are over the shelf life... Shelf life means bugger all if the park has the desire to actually keep a ride in operation (like Slammer)... It could probably do with another massive refurb though... Imagine if they actually got Vekoma to do a proper job with it? Turn it into a SFC with tyre driven lift hills (that'll help with the neighbours) and the lifespan of it would be extended no end...

Because he's contractually obliged to appear in certain adverts?

It's just... Dull? Like it doesn't seem to do anything potentially interesting at all with the layout... Might as well just buy a Vekoma SFC... I do however ADORE the ridiculous rotating track switch design in their "high throughput" inverted launch... What WERE they on?

It takes someone 5 years to take a place of work to court over an injury? Surely that's nothing to do with the recent spate of incidents at the park? Someone else is taking them for receiving a broken neck off CuChu, though only getting a x-ray 4 weeks afterwards (if your neck was THAT broken, you'd know the difference in a lot less time)... Guess the Irish have just discovered how lucrative theme parks can be in the court systems... Merlin's payout list was enough before even Smiler...

You forgot it's not ORDINARY steel set up by not ORDINARY men...

My source is better than your source, my source is twice the size... Of course no source has ever said something that turned out to be wrong, for varying degrees of reasoning... Maybe Merlin are jumping on the 'alternative fact' train?

Clearly means a Hyper RMC Aquatrax...

Six Flags probably still have bugger all money, doubt they'll ever want to tread towards administration again... Besides, repainting some rides, ret racking a wooden coaster and a vr attraction isn't exactly pushing the boundaries of investment levels...

I'd assume no-one mentioned it because no-one cares... Strange decision though, what difference will a day really make?