dragon2000

Yes, back like 2005. Looks fantastic.

Also went to Fright Nights yesterday 10am-10pm. Wow I was tired waking up at 5.30am this morning, but worth it for such an amazing day at the park. On arrival it looked like the park would be quite busy. Turned out we were completely wrong and the park felt almost empty for a Fright Nights event. This meant average queues of 10mins for us on the coasters, after 6pm I think all the coasters were walk on or 'stay on'. Longest queue we had all day was probably 20mins for X because of the usual 'essential cleaning'! We're not maze people so we ended up taking advantage of the small ride queues and night riding - I love the rides at night! Ride count ended up: Colossus x9 NI x12 Stealth x3 Swarm x10 SAW x3 Vortex x1 (night ride, 3 of us on board!) Rush x1 Rumba x2 Flying Fish x1 X x2 Samurai x3 (highlight being chatting to friendly staff while waiting for 15 riders and ending up with a pod to myself! Awesome ride!) Lots of travelling folk, but didn't give us any trouble. Park music sounding good & we loved the director's announcements. Effects wise on park - Swarm fireball working well, Stealth looking pretty and has it's smoke, lights in Inferno tunnel but no mist, Saw main drop blades off, didn't see the flamethrowers on the shop roofs going off at all. The lighting on the rides at night is pretty good with the exception of The Swarm's island. Floodlit in bright white light from the temporary generators. Shame. One line summary: Sundays at the start of Fright Nights = Recommended!!!

As Jamie mentioned above, the colour changing lights are back on Stealth this year and it's looking fab. The smoke also working (for now)!

Low maintenance... tell that to Thorpe's engineers... Plus of course the boats that fill up with water and need tipping...

Loads of smoke yesterday too - definitely the best incarnation of the ride. Quite thrilling and I came off with a smile!

Good on Thorpe for having some staff on the look out for queue times. Also good that guests can contact if a queue is way different from what was stated. Visited the park yesterday and actually the queue times were all accurate. Thorpe does need to alter the amount of time the second page of queue times is displayed for on the main LED boards though - currently it is shown for about 1 second and then you have to wait a long time to see it again! On a negative note I don't think I heard a please or thank you from any of the staff yesterday. This is a basic element of customer service and on an even more simple level, it's common courtesy. Incredibly rude. I also don't appreciate when members of staff drop a height stick on you when you're sat down on Inferno, and then get no apology...

Don't forget the awesome Dinosaur ride in Peppa Pig World. And if you like getting dizzy the Windy Castle also in PPW will satisfy! It's bliss getting on The Edge without the kind of queue the same ride generates at Chessington...

Gone back to exactly how it was. On our visit on Wednesday the left side of the train backwards seats were going out empty consistently as there was no one queueing that side for them - despite there being a 120 minute backwards queue!! I would not have been amused, 'thankfully' I was only stuck in the 80min forward queue with breakdowns... EDIT: Forgot to say that on Wednesday the fire was working during the morning/early afternoon. No other effects working though - no TVs, no TV audio, no water, no water vapour from the plane wing etc etc.

No one else noticed the police car is missing from the Saw plaza? Gone for repair? Taken away for change of IP? Making room for halloween preparations? Taken away to avoid further damage being done to it? Take your guesses!

Weirdly, the police car is currently missing from outside the ride.

Clearly letting too many people in through the gates. I suppose they take the attitude of once they've got your money at the gate they don't care how long you have to queue for rides. Plus more fastrack sales...

^ With the old seat belts trucks would end up leaving around every 3 minutes = 20 trucks an hour. Roughly 25 people on a truck = 500 people per hour With the new lapbars, a truck every 2 minutes = 30 trucks an hour = 750 people per hour.

I don't think there were many rides not closed at some point today. Full trip report of today's disastrous events coming tomorrow...

Tidal Wave often stops there during the day. Usually sorted and running again within 20mins or so, without evacuating the boat.

The yellow you saw is just the old seat backs.

I think the 'problem' is that the majority of guests just can't handle that many hours of riding thrill rides. I spent 9.30am-10.30pm yesterday riding all day at Thorpe and I am certainly feeling sore today. It's fantastic to be able to have ridden the rides at night once again though, so I'm hopeful that the parks will give it another go sometime. I'd like to echo how great the Summer Nights event was (in terms of being able to get ridiculous ride counts!). It was so weird going up the lift hills of the coasters and only seeing one or two other people walking around the park between rides. We got to stay in our seats loads of times - including 6 in a row on Inferno without moving. Otherwise it was a case of just moving seat or waiting for the train to get back to the station. Most staff seemed friendly despite being tired as some were doing 13 hour shifts! Massive well done to the Inferno team again today - they are really cranking people through again, leading to it having tiny queues for the majority of the day. Plus they know how to batch fastrack sensibly it seams (cough cough - Swarm team). Only slight negatives of yesterday were Bar 360 staff not getting orders through to the kitchen (has happened quite a few times this year - dodgy ticket machine apparently); some of the coasters (Colossus in particular) not re-opening for Summer Nights until 8pm; and the huge number of breakdowns. Swarm, Rumba, Loggers, Storm Surge, Inferno, Vortex, X, Tidal Wave, Stealth all broke down that we saw - plus we got a rollback.... [on the Flying Fish ]

Anyone else noticed the new security camera placed directly overhead of people entering the Stealth queue at the moment? It's on a makeshift looking white tubular frame. Making presumptions here: A good idea for keeping an eye on who is in what queue in case of claims of queue jumping/security issues. Just a trial? Will it follow for the other queues? Or is it for a different purpose altogether?

Lots of schools are definitely changing the way they visit on school days. They certainly used to not leave from school until about 8/8.30am (normal school start time), meaning they didn't arrive at Thorpe until 11ish. Now most schools are setting off much earlier, say 7am - leading to the park instantly being crowded upon opening. Definitely days to avoid!

Hopefully they will complain as I have - seeing only fastrackers being let into the Swarm station for 3 dispatches and then only 8 normal forward guests is unacceptable. Incorrect - I wouldn't complain about Disney because there it works. Take DLP: Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Indy all have 5 trains; Star Tours has 6 simulators and Buzz is continuous loading. Their capacities (with the one exception of Peter Pan) are gigantic compared to Thorpe's. They manage the queues fairly and the normal queue guests don't feel disadvantaged. Believe me, I visit Thorpe often enough to know how long a queue should take. There is no way that just the rear side of the queue (over the bridge) should take 90mins. So you're telling me it would be perfectly fine if you went to your local Tesco, library, petrol station, coffee shop etc and the staff were singing across the store while the customers are around about how they want to go home? I appreciate it's hot and it's physical work but they chose to do it. If they don't like it they need to find another job. As a science teacher myself, believe me I find it hard working for 8 hours a day in a classroom which is currently averaging 32 degrees C, has 30 teenagers in it who need to be working hard to pass exams - with me having to get them to do it. I don't get a fan and I get a quick drink every 2 hours. Can you imagine the senior members of staff letting me go around shouting down the hallways about how I want to go home? No, it's simply unprofessional.

Still shut and no action happening to Slammer today. As ThorpeAddict said above, still waiting for a part I guess.

Storm Surge still broken all day today. All boats parked up on the lift hill. 4-6 mechanics sat on the pre-station conveyor trying to fix it throughout the day but no luck I presume! I won't make any 'how many mechanics does it take to fix Storm Surge?' jokes...

Fastrack ticket sales were out of control today. Pretty much all the coasters had a salesperson stood at the entrance at some point and it was making a lot of the queues move at a snails pace. What should have been a 45min Swarm queue ended up being 90mins because only about 6-8 normal forward-facing riders got let into the station each time a train was sent out. Funnily enough when the fastrackers stopped coming to the ride around 4, the queue went right down. Can I also say how miserable some of the staff were today. Even the usually great Inferno team were chanting the 'daylight come and me wanna go home' song across the station to each other (For those of you unaware: )

There are currently a lot of foreign tourists in the parks as part of organised trips - as well as British school kids. So it's looking pretty busy for the next week or so too.

^ took them 20mins to take 1 train off of Saw at about 4pm today. Was just about to get on the ride which was frustrating, but the car had been making some weird noise, so safety first!

Saw has been running 7 cars quite a lot this year. Or at least starting the day with 7 and then adding the 8th by midday.