Coaster

Magnum is my favourite roller coaster ever. I will get round to writing full reviews at some stage, been very busy lately!

Oh, so they weren't doing away with it to improve guest behaviour and/or to make things better for staff, it was purely a way for them to make more money selling individual park VIP passes for the same price. That's the last time I give Merlin the benefit of the doubt...

The Big One is 25 years old today! It's sad to see that the park haven't done anything, considering they made a fuss about Icon being 1 year old...

Oakwood was very quiet today, we visited and I don't think there can have been more than 100 people on park. Staff were amazing and friendly throughout the day and the reride policy on Megafobia is awesome, allowing us to get the following ridecount; Megafobia x25 Speed x5 Drenched x2 Bobsleigh x2 Creepy Crawler x2 Snake River Falls x2 Skull Rock x1 Treetops x1 Spooky 3D x1 Flying School x1 Neverland Chase x1 Pirate Ship x1 Witch Hunt (scare maze) x1 Megafobia was as good as ever, some amazing airtime in the back row and I'd say it felt smoother in places where it had been retracked/had wood replaced. Speed wasn't so good (lifthill was terrifyingly slow and I'm sure it never used to be trimmed as much before the barrel roll) but the second hill is still brilliant. Witch Hunt is pretty decent. Spooky 3D was awful, the music loop was broken so there was hardly any audio whatsoever and quite a few effects broken. Drenched was good but I miss the force on the drop in the back row Parkwide audio has been changed to themed music for this year instead of the song loop, made for a very different atmosphere I found. Speed's new soundtrack is cool and suits it well. Didn't brave Waterfall today as the water level looked quite low and saw a few people get soaked. Very pleased to see that work has started on Bounce with signage explaining what they're doing, am looking forward to getting back on this. The Disko looks pretty good with the bright (but tasteful) colour scheme and I like the logo designs. Overall a very good day with amazing staff and service. It was a shame to see the park so quiet but the awful weather in the morning may have contributed a lot to this.

Fastrack for a bouncy castle!! HAHAHAHAHA ?

Yeah it doesn't fit in with the rest of that area very well at the moment, what with it being an operational ride...

Had the worst ride ever on Samurai today, didn't flip once and it seemed to be running at about a quarter of the normal speed?

There's quite a few effects broken on Saw currently; Shotgun sound effect not working properly No lighting/animation on the swinging axes No lighting on the crossbows No water on the body underneath the barrel roll I'm pretty sure these were all broken on the annual pass preview day (nearly two months ago)... poor.

Absolutely excellent operations across Thorpe today, despite the park being quiet the rides were all on capacity with urgency being shown to get the trains moving. Really makes all the difference and I just hope they're able to keep it consistently this good. Amazing.

Wow they can't even afford capital letters anymore?

Without question the best new investment at Thorpe Park since 2012. (I wish that was a joke!)

It's a pretty poor situation considering the Merlin parks have already lost a lot of flat rides, that we now have; Thorpe - Quantum Chessington - Black Buccaneer Alton - Enterprise All either mothballed/not ready to open almost halfway through May.

Just bring back Calypso BBQ tbh. By far the best theme park food I've ever had and the prices were reasonable too. Thorpe's food offering really is awful these days, it's not like they had closed season to sort out their catering outlets either.. Oh wait, they did.

I'm not so sure, "Derren Brown's Ghost Train will open on the 6th May" was a corker as well.

Why is Thorpe in such a state with no investment if guest figures are up??

Going on quite a few madhouses recently and then back on Hex yesterday reminded me how amazing this ride is. It's the best of its type by a country mile; the atmosphere, story and soundtrack really make it. They seem to have solved the audio issues in the vault, it sounded amazing and at the perfect volume. All other effects seemed to be working minus the mist. People's reactions on the ride yesterday was a magical moment, everyone seemed so amazed; it really is themed entertainment at its best. It's perfect in that it has such a broad appeal and proves that fantastic and unique ideas are what lasts. Absolutely the best dark ride in the UK currently and the last remaining part of "the magic" at Alton. Incredible.

A few thoughts from my first visit of the season yesterday. Ride operations were fantastic all day with the exception of a delay on Galactica. Wicker Man's dispatch times were nothing short of incredible, with the train entering the lift as the train before arrives back into the brakes. Similarly across the park queues were moving very fast, the staff seemed focused on efficiency and despite the crowd level being fairly busy queue times were kept largely manageable. Having the single rider queue back on Smiler is brilliant, long may it last! Areas of the park look in need of a clean, Oblivion's and Nemesis's station for example (even though the latter has only just been re-done, it's looking tired again already on the queue-line side). The cut scene in Oblivion's station video is horrendous and needs reinstating properly. Wicker Man had no fire, it's unbelievable that this has become a persistent issue considering the ride is only in its second season and the foundation of the marketing was based around the (nonexistent) fire. They knew about issues with the effect last year yet it still doesn't work consistently. Extremely poor. Hex was absolutely stunning. To my knowledge everything was working with the exception of mist and the audio is back to its best in the vault. Gave me goosebumps, it was that good! Duel remains a complete waste of potential, despite having all the foundations of a great dark ride it continues to be let down by unprofessional lighting and broken effects. What happened to phase 2 of the promised refurbishment? My main criticism of yesterday would be that a 5pm close just isn't long enough when the park is anything but dead. Even with good ride operations and planning our day around the shortest queues the only ride we managed a re-ride on was Wicker Man (joining the queue at the end) and we had to skip the rapids and mine train due to not enough time. I'd therefore say the park still offers poor "value" in terms of a good day out, as there just isn't long enough to enjoy everything properly. Overall, a decent day at Alton helped by hugely improved ride operations, but there's still a long way to go.

They could have at least put the sign up on the building...

Thanks for the info

Here's a gem from 2016; "It is going to be refurbished it's just going to take a while but it WILL be back better than ever." They lied.

At least it isn't as bad as tearing a coaster down and then selling it piece by piece for hundreds of pounds in the shop. It's a similar situation though, PB aren't interested in the history or old logos apart from where it makes them money, hence the greyscale bland park of today yet the merchandise shop is full of colourful old ride logos etc. This seems very much the same situation with Thorpe using the old logos and branding to make easy money, but in terms of actually being proud of or celebrating their history on the park they aren't interested.

My favourite will always be the original, just like the incredible orchestral entrance soundtrack. I'd go as far as to say that Thorpe' music around 2008ish was just incredible across the whole park. Every area had its own unique feel, there was lots of fun, quirky music and the park just had a really good atmosphere. The playlists such as WTTP and Canada Creek fitted in so well back then. Fun things like Rumba's old theme have since been replaced with dull forgettable tracks? Why? It does however appear that once again the park don't really know what they're doing. Why go to the extent of changing and reworking the entire park audio to the IMAScore stuff if you're just going to change it back a few years later? How does one old theme fit when everything else is still playing the new theme? Also they've literally torn all of the old theming out of the dome, the theming that the music was designed around. How does the old fun end of day track fit in with the corporate bland screens in the dome now? It's almost as though the disjointed way the park runs and advertises has found its way into the audio as well now! It's like no forward thought or planning goes into any of the decisions made at that place. Baffling.

If it's anything like the way Nickelodeon demanded the Streak changed its station system to force people to walk through the area to get to it, then constantly complain about its inability to run two trains (caused by their own demands), IPs can have adverse effects on parks.

Bit of a reshuffle! 1. The Big One 2. Wild Mouse* 3. Troy 4. Grand National 5. Megafobia 6. Taron 7. Big Dipper 8. The Ultimate 9. Joris en de Draak 10. Nemesis *Yes, I am aware it's gone, but it's still a coaster I've ridden! It'll be strangely sad when this stubborn list inevitably gets changed drastically by my upcoming trip to America.

Here's a few thoughts from my first visit to Pleasure Beach in 2019, this is based on visits over a few days. The new pre-opening show is a good idea to keep people entertained whilst waiting for the gates to open. Areas of the park look and feel dismal at the moment. The entire FY4 from the back of Alice in Wonderland’s warehouse, empty Mouse site and the monstrosity that is the newly reopened arcade feels like you’re walking through an abandoned theme park that closed 20 years ago. It’s very sad considering the area looked mostly fine up until 2018 and with Icon tidying up south park considerably, they’ve now let north park get worse than south park ever was. It leaves a horrendous first impression on guests entering the park that way, too. The place was fairly busy over Easter, with moderate crowds (and then very busy on the Saturday). Ride availability seemed pretty good (aside from Sunday morning) with Icon and Valhalla being the only rides having significant downtime, even then it wasn't too bad. Extension to 6pm on Monday was nice. Sunday morning was poor with The Big One, Big Dipper and Revolution on (very) late opening whilst Infusion also broke down. Icon also took 25 minutes to transfer a third train on? We managed a ride-count of 17 on Saturday with the park open 10am - 10pm, however this was with us making sure to do the low capacity rides first. For first-time visitors trying to get on Nickelodeon Streak or Avalanche in the middle of the day it would have been miserable. The fireworks were great but I wasn’t keen on the music choices… they’re missing a trick by not using Icon’s score for at least part of the display. The new location was much better from a viewpoint perspective as they weren’t blocked by Icon’s station, but I still disagree with closing rides over an hour early on a “late night riding” event to put on some fireworks. Operations were very mixed. Big Dipper and Grand National were running very well, or in the case of Nash, as well as the system will allow it to. On Saturday we queued 20 minutes for Dipper from outside the queue entrance, and 25 for National from well past the entrance to the steps. Very impressed! Valhalla’s queue shifted very fast on Saturday, but was extremely slow every other day despite having the same number of boats on… weird. Continuing from the end of last year, The Big One’s operations remain dreadful. Dispatch times were very slow, largely caused by Speedy Pass but also the lack of management watching the operations. There were instances when they took 10 minutes to load a full Speedy Pass train, and out of every 10 trains I’d say that 7/8 of them stacked for a considerable amount of time. For a ride that lasts over 2 minutes, that’s just not acceptable. The staff were holding the queue outside the station which I assume was to prevent it from getting too hot, which I thought was a good idea. On Monday however, a quieter day, they were running one of the trains with only two carriages open until late afternoon. With the queue being held outside the station in the morning (meaning it’s more visible on the ramp) and then not in the afternoon, it definitely felt as if this was being done to increase Speedy Pass sales. With crowds on this level it would have previously taken 10 minutes to wait, as by lunch time it’d have shifted the queue to the final two switchbacks. It took us 40 minutes purely down to slow operations, it’s just a complete and utter mess. Pleasure Beach have really taken their eye off the rest of the park since Icon opened and The Big One has suffered hugely, operations have got to rock bottom and Speedy Pass continues to make queueing in the main queue a misery. It isn’t the ride staff’s fault; they try their best. It’s poor management and upselling of a fast pass system which the park knows will have an adverse effect on the operations of their signature ride. On a positive note, PMBO was absolutely flying on Friday and Saturday, reaffirming why I love it so much and still regard it as my absolute favourite coaster by quite some distance. Amazing. Valhalla continues to be an absolute mess. Here’s a brief status report of effects from 3 rides over Easter. - Water curtain over skull entrance worked for 1/3 rides - Trommels not working - Projection audio (Odin voice) on lift 1 slightly louder but still not audible - Projection looks like it needs a new filter/replacing (wire hanging down, picture not clear) - Green popup face not working - Waterfall corridor not working - Blackout doors after backwards drop not closing meaning light leaks in and exposes the workings - Lots of torn and/or missing blackout curtains throughout entire ride exposing maintenance areas - Ice room half-frozen, no ceiling misters - Water vortex soaking the boat - Light on waterfall following vortex switching off too early so effect is missed - Water geysers on either side of the track after water vortex not working - Light leaking into this area as fire exit left open - Maintenance lights left on - Chandelier not swinging - Crow animatronics not fully functioning - No ring of fire - Fireballs in first room following final drop not working (room in pitch darkness) - Only one small explosion in final room - Ride soundtrack loop cutting out and jumping River Caves has also had CCTV put in thoughtlessly over elements of theming as well as awfully implemented emergency lighting. Dark rides are supposed to provide seamless experiences with the back-end hardware hidden away, so it’s a disgrace that Pleasure Beach are so careless and clumsy with implementing these things. They did the same with new CCTV cameras in Valhalla last year. Lots of effects broken in Ghost Train. Alice and W&G were in decent condition overall. Overall, I had an enjoyable time at Pleasure Beach. Some areas had a nice atmosphere on Saturday, with the live music and busy crowds. With that said, the park has lost its buzz for me and the overall impression I got was that it feels like it’s missing something. The vibrance, the classic PB feel, it’s all gone. The park still houses some of my favourite coasters, but on reflection I don’t rate Icon very highly at all. The ride has lost its “new factor” and I’m already growing tired of it. It just feels too sluggish and there are so many places where you *nearly* get force or airtime, but it doesn’t quite have the speed to deliver. A shame. Two of the best assets at the park are still missing for me… Wild Mouse, and Valhalla. I include the latter because with the ride experience offered at the moment, it may as well just be a log flume in the dark. Steeplechase was very good as always. It was nice to be back on some of my favourite rides and seeing people, but I’m not in any rush to return to the park. My enthusiasm for the place is gone.