AstroDan

The park probably want to 'officially' open Wicker Man on Saturday because they want a bit of an opening ceremony, and want there to be some energy around the park - rather than a dull day in March mid-week with less than 2000 on park. I rode Wicker Man on Friday. It is excellent.

A lot of the people saying they are glad to see the back of them. I am confused. It was already a challenge to achieve a throughput of even 950pph on The Smiler. With added faff of a bag storage area on the platform, this will plummet further.

I know what you mean. It just looks daft! Still, the whole project looks very well executed. Looking forward to seeing it next week! :)

Well it's Holovis doing the preshow, so let us live in hope. Scruffy Dog, Universal Rocks, a local craftsman, GCI - thankfully this isn't just MMM. So... we can hope it doesn't fall apart after 13 months. Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

I sense you are pretty negative about this. Even if the coaster isn't the be all and end all, what is evident is the theming/experience element of this ride appears a step up from previous MMM installations. Whether it compares to Baron or not - which thematically it's not likely too. But ride wise, I would hope so... Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

I was about to say. Thorpe needs more barbed wire in its queue lines. It works so well.

It is just delightful to see Alton Towers refer to Nemesis as 'Nemmy', in that blog post. And this. Just this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CcNiVR6WwAA-Q9J.jpg:large

TLC is not a 1 year thing. The park are looking it having at as a permanent part of what they deliver and offer every year - which is good news, because Benin is right that this sort of thing should be typical of a normal year, not a special occasion. This year, there's so much going on around Alton Towers that you could be forgiven for thinking it was an EP maintenance programme. It's almost alien to see this sort of level of refurbishment at Alton! The Nemesis re-paint is not all being done this winter, because the cost is too great and it is an enormous job. They have already spent the best part of £150,000 on Nemesis alone and the rest of it will have to wait - especially with everything else going on in Dark Forest, Cloud Cuckoo Land etc. There is also new audio coming to many areas, which will be heard in March. It's easy to assume that TLC is some smoke and mirrors thing, but really - the park are making every effort to improve things across the entire place to make it better for guests after the low ebb of 2015. When TLC was announced some people wrote it off as a lie. Hopefully the massive range of images posted on the Twitter feed have at least re-assured people that they are trying, and are spending, on this sort of stuff. The closed rides at AT this year have not been announced - it is out of AT's hands and totally in those of Merlin.

I had a lovely time at Hyde Park on Saturday evening. Only did 1 ride (Wilde Maus) because, no matter what anybody says about London, the bottom line is that the rides are a horrendous price (more than 1 hour on minimum wage for many of them). However, the live music and food was great. Lovely atmosphere.

It is through the noise complaints, that Phantasialand deliver the best nuggets of themed beauty in Europe.

Europa-Park will be getting a very small kiddie coaster next season for their Ireland area. It makes sense, as the current smallest coaster, Pegasus is far bigger than most park's smallest coaster! This will take them up to 13 rollercoasters!

Everyone knows the Flume is awful, old, past it. But it still gets queues and is still loved by many. I mean, it's fairly integral to any visit I make to the park that isn't with enthusiasts.

The rollercoasters at Alton Towers are, absolutely, the bread and butter of the park. To say otherwise is almost incredulous. However, The Flume was most certainly not filler. It may have been old, past it and in a right state, but it often had queues of over 45 minutes on even medium days... well over an hour on busy July heatwave occasions! Log Flumes are one of very few rides that the whole family, from gran to the youngest child, could enjoy... I hope they have plans for a replacement.

It could be that, rather like what happened with Black Hole at Alton Towers, in order for the flume rides to comply with some change in the law (be it H&S, water quality - whatever), that the parks would have to fork out £x,000 money. Rather than do this, the decision has been taken to close them all as they are all old, and instead (hopefully, possibly) redevelop the sites for 2017 and beyond. Black Hole was always going to be removed at Alton Towers eventually, but they decided not to spend the money on evacuation stairs when the ride only had a few years left in it anyway. It is very sad to see this though, after all - these rides have given long service - and there has been no opportunity to say goodbye. There are still Mack, and Arrow, log flumes operating safely across Europe, of course...

The Smiler will re-open in 2016. Absolutely. It will be one of few pleasing points... Aside from its rollercoasters, which will remain the best on offer in the UK, everything else about 2016 at Alton Towers appears rotten.