Luke_A

Mr Monkey's Banana Ride

Oblivion 5/5-Well... What can I say about Oblivion, it gets what it is supposed to do right every time, and never gives up. My favourite ride at Alton and I have never ridden anything which gives such a great mix of atmosphere and Thrill at the same time, Oblivion is just simply unique and amazing! I love it. -_-Nemesis 4.5/5-Nemesis is an original, never gives a bad ride and I do love it, I may not like it as much as Oblivion but that's just my opinion, as Mark said it is almost 20 years old, and has aged very well compared to other coasters... We were discussing this in chat, and how when I see Nemesis, I do not see an 'old' coaster. Air 4/5-I like Air, it's something different for a change and in the back row it is a pretty amazing ride.Rita 3/5-Rita is good, but not brilliant, it has some nice airtime over the hills and the launch into the turn is quite forceful, even though quite a lot of people don't like that. -_-Th13teen 2/5-Th13teen relies heavily on it's theming and marketing, if it had no theming and was just the coaster with the indoor section... It wouldn't be as good as it is, but don't get me wrong it is still fun to ride.So overall I will vote for Oblivion.

Here is a new video from Fotowhizz, which shows Storm Surge, and the rest of Amity Cove really well. If you look closely at 4:30 too, you can see a boat get stuck on Storm Surge, where plenty of water is pushing past the boat, I think Thorpe may have just put a few too many of the spinny pads on that section, and it must be prone to stopping the boats. Looks like the other boat just bumps it down in the end.

EDIT: Ok, Benin beat me to it , and apparently inside there is an inline twist like on Saw's inside.Here's a POV of Takabisha, the new AWESOME looking Eurofighter at Fuji-Q, it has the 'older' style of Eurofighter seating with 2 rows of 4 people, not 3 rows of 2. It's also now got the steepest drop on any coaster in the world with 121Degrees. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it is also the biggest Eurofighter out there now... Oh yeah, and it has a form of holding brake before the drop.

Oakwood theme park have recently completely re-named Hydro (the Intamin water chute ride similar to Tidal Wave) to Drenched, due to a sponsorship... I doubt Merlin would be allowed the Sponsor too if Oakwood already have it. At least Tidal Wave still has it's name though

Thanks for the great TR so far Daniel! Some nice shots of the rides there too, nice to hear your opinion about Silver Star's back row, will bear that in mind when I eventually get to visit. :)Also, does anybody know why Blue Fire has so many unused support attachments; are they just for show or was it something to do with the rides construction? It's something that I have always been a bit puzzled about...

Yeah Pluk, the cable must cost them loads, but this picture below shows the wooden platforms used when they changed the other one in the February half term when Th13teen was being constructed... It's not just the cost of the cable, it's the cost of getting all of these platforms sorted out and the machinery that's also involved in the whole process, I definitely don't think they are going to replace it until closed season now.(image from TowersTimes)

Sorry for the double post... But...The Skyride has been down for what's reported for a week or two now, and it is rumoured that the cable from the Towers Street station to Forbidden Valley has reached the end of it's life, so therefore needs replacing. The gondolas are also reported to be not on the cable at the moment. This in turn means that the Skyride may be closed all season as when replacing the cable the supports have to have wooden scaffold things built round them to pull the new cable through attached to the old one. There are people on other forums saying about what other options there are for Alton Towers to do in this situation... should they close Mutiny bay for some time and the area around it?-although I think myself that this would not be a good idea as nobody really has a clear idea on how long it takes to replace the cable. If it is down all season then I wonder why they did not think over closed season "what if it becomes too weak and doesn't pass H&S tests mid-season?" They replaced the one from Forbidden Valley to Dark Forest over the 2009 closed season, so why not do the same if the other is becoming old too over the last closed season. So this is yet another season where the Skyride has major downtime. Ahh well, will just mean more walking through the park when I next visit for Scarefest. ...If they don't fix it by then.

I have always thought this... But I noticed a couple of weekends back that the water pump motor (which you can see in the queue in parallel with the near bottom of the drop) has had some parts of it stripped down, the connecting water pipe was disconnected when I saw it last and the little mini shed that it is in was also gone. I'm not sure but I think it had a "do not use or connect this device to power" sticker on it. I then got closer to the station and saw by the maintenance shed's for Stealth that there were some new looking pipes that look very similar to the ones that take the water from the bottom of the drop up to the top. So I suppose they are in the middle of adding some new parts. That's why I think it's been turned off recently, don't exactly take my word for it, but I'm sure the pipes were for Tidal.

I have to go with Scarefest at Alton Towers too. B)I visited during the first week of it being on last year, (Sunday 17th I think). It was brilliant on many levels, not only did the park have a MASSIVE amount of lighting and effects such as the Alpha-Spots at the bottom of Oblivion's drop which moved round and shon up to the car when it was about to drop, then spun round as it was going down the drop. Also Nemesis was looking better than I had ever seen it, with tons of red lights and smoke around by the bus area. Air had some lighting as well, basically all the rides did and Katanga Canyon had some nice lights around it like green ones in the jeep by the rapids. I didn't do any of the scare mazes, but by what I have heard about them they sound better than some of Thorpe's... and they last a lot longer. ;)The atmosphere at Towers Scarefest was not too over the top either, it was just right and the merge between day and night was really good when the park comes to life with all of the things like the Th13teen queue actors and lighting. Queues were also VERY reasonable on opening weekend, Nemesis had max of 15 mins by what I remember and was walk on most points during the day, same goes for Oblivion (I spent most of the evening in X-Sector ). Some smaller&water rides closed at dusk because of safety reasons, but that can't really be helped. But yeah, I will definitely try to return to this years event.

The effects can be turned on or off by the operator. I know that when it started raining once they turned them off, probably because people didn't want to get any wetter than they already were. Another reason may be because the boats fill up with water easily from the water cannons and the water curtain, by having them off means that they don't have to tip the boats as often as usual.

So I've really got into the remixes on the Deluxe edition of Born This Way... I love this Judas remix, it almost has a Dubstep 'Edge' to it. And then there is what happens at 1:56, just awesome! Ok, this one of Sheiße is 9Minutes long... but really uses the time well, and whilst I don't think it's as good as the Judas one above, it's still a good one to listen to. The way this one of Born This Way sort of cuts the words off and muddles them up is also nice. :DJust can't stop listening to these remixes as well as the rest of the album now...

Merlin are planning another of their 'eye' attractions, following the London Eye and the Blackpool tower 'eye.'It is stated to be a 174 foot tall observation tower, where the platform rotates 360 degrees to offer great views of the seaside town and also for the 2012 Sailing events which will be held in Weymouth & Portland during the 2012 Olympic Games. >Source<I see this as a good addition for the town, I visit Weymouth every year myself on holiday so am quite excited to see what they come up with. The plans are the exact same specifications for the 174 Foot tall Intamin Gyro tower, so I presume it will be one of these (The model is called the "Super Gyro Tower 1000").

I have had many goes on Saw where my restraint has not been checked, and In my opinion it doesn't really matter, just look at some of the German parks I.e Europa Park... Even if your restraint is not completely down as far as you like, say on Oblivion or Nemesis(B&M's in general), then you will find when going through an inversion or at the bottom of the drop on Oblivion, your restraint will click down a notch or two more, or on inferno at the bottom of the loop my restraint quite often will click down more... I'm quite skinny myself so on Saw and Eurofighters with OTSR's, the bar is usually all the way down until it wont go any more. If Saw did have OTSR's with seatbelts like Rage does at Adventure Island, then I think it would be suitable for them to be checked. I agree with what Peter said on the subject anyway. And if you think it is bad not having your bar checked at a Theme Park, have you ever been to a funfair , most of the time the ride is still moving as you get on it and you just pull your bar down and go, when all bars are down the OP obviously knows and off you go, but sometimes they might do a quick run round and tap your bar, but that's about it. Well that's the case with what usually happens at most of my local fairs who are run by most of the same people anyway.

That Coaster is at Fuji-Q highland, well it was up until 2000 when it was closed. It pulls a max of 6.2G in that 'pretzel knot'...ouch. >>Wikipedia link here<<

I heard it was going to be filmed at Knotts Berry Farm, as they have hosted this type of TV show before for the American TV.

^ Well it's just what I've been told and if you look on page 6 of this topic there is also a similar discussion going on where I remember someone who has worked on loggers explains about them. (although some of the posts have been deleted so it's a bit vague...)

That's how they are supposed to be, they pop out when the ride is e-stopped or if a sensor senses something is wrong, they are closed during normal operation probably because they reduce noise pollution. If you look the next time you are on the Canada Creek Railway, you can see the pipes which run alongside all of them which control if they are open or not. I presume the ones that are open have just got something wrong with them that prevents them from closing, so it's better for them just to be left open. Anyway, if the conveyor would stop the boats wouldn't run down it immediately, this would probably only happen if it was a very heavy boat or if the belt was more slippery than usual.

The one inside the tunnel is an infra-red light so that the security camera which is above it can see what riders are doing and can see the ride etc.

Th13teen seems to be suffering from quite a large technical problem(s) lately, it's been down most days since 30th May and some have reported that the Crypt has had the roof off and bits have been seen coming out of it using a crane. The crane is apparently gone now, but since it reopened a few days ago, it closed again a few hours after it opened. Some say that it has opened in the mornings or late in the day, but within an hour or so later, it has been down again... Then there were also reports yesterday that it was closed as well as Rita, so the dark forest was a bit useless. Intamin...

Wow... Wow and wow, Europa Park looks amazing, I really hope to visit soon as the first park I visit outside of the U.K. Hotel Colosseo looks stunning as well as all of the food and resort things there too! That shuttle service from the airport looked really handy too, especially the fact that you didn't have to drive all of the trip. You haven't even mentioned the coasters and the rest of the park&rides yet and it's already an awesome TR! Keep them coming!

The Bass Cannons are always still on, but they must have blown or something or maybe just turned down lots. They sound incredibly rattly and are only really noticeable at the start and end of the theme music when you have them long sections of bass playing, they never really hit the lower bass parts anymore. But yeah, they used to give out awesome Bass Inferno's theme music is still by far my favourite of all rides.

I think the project as a whole was more than £6.5Million, maybe that's just the trackwork cost, I seem to think the whole project was about £10Million too, you have to remember the Volcano, Groundwork etc.As for the mist... Sounds like it's starting to get clogged again already. It happened last year too, and seasons before that, all Thorpe have to do is keep the pipe that the mist comes out of in good maintenance, like the one on Oblivion, or else you will end up just getting wet from just water coming out.

Right from the start of 3:34 to 3:38 please. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for doing all of these fantastic TR's Mark, they have been brilliant! Can't wait until I get a chance to go to Orlando some time in the future.