pluk

https://www.londonwonderground.co.uk/gallery I've never heard of this before, and after looking at the website I'm still not entirely sure what it is! Has anyone been? Is it all about the shows with some bars and food outleets, or are there other rides and stalls like Winter Wonderland?

The queue seems to fluctuate wildly for the back rows for some reason, if it is not a crazy busy day you can probably hit it at about the 15min mark if you keep an eye on the timings. The fastrack queue is often linger than that.

Don't you dare, it's painful enough missing this as it is!

Best voucher I've seen around at the moment if you have kids is on the side of Kellogg fruit and fibre - Buy a child's ticket get an adults one free

Gerstlauer confident it is not the restraint itself at fault.

This is what I was trying to say yesterday, but you said it better. The bolt is one thing, the result is another. I'd be interested to know what would happen if a train went over it in that state. Did one go over it do we know?

One of those drop outs being me. Gutted. Have a great time all of ya!

Surely lots of bolts hold the engine on (so if one breaks it doesn't fall off? That's sure what it looks like out the window!) whereas this one bolt fail looks like it could cause a really serious issue?

I was about to say it's not been hot today so that doesn't seem right, but then it could well be the change in temp rathe r than the temp itself so maybe. The way it has parted from the loss of one bolt still doesn't seem right to me, but as I sayI know nothing of these things.

To my untrained eye it looks like a fairly major problem, be amazed if it reopens quickly. Even if it is an easy fix in itself surely the track joins shouldn't be under that sort of pressure where they want to pull apart when 'released'? You'd have to ask how much strain the remaining join would be under if a train were to pass over it in that state, and where its total failure point would be. If it gave way completely the result would surely be catastrophic, with an at height and at speed derailment possible? I would imagine this is the sort of thing the H&S executive would want to look at and sign off before it reopens, rightly in my view. Of course, it is possible that picture is massively deceptive!

Allegedly the rider who sadly died, If correct it is hard to think that her weight has not contributed to this when taken with this eye witness report (again if true, I'm always sceptical) I don't know if Gerst lap bars have sensors to confirm they are engaged properly or if it just down to the operator? EDIT: Read it back, I don't mean it's her fault that she died because she's fat, I mean she might have been outside the tolerance of the restraint due to either size or weight. In that case it is clearly the fault of the operator checking or ride itself for the green light that she was allowed to ride. If someone outside the tolerance there should be something in place to stop them riding, in the same way the height restriction works. On the Cedar Point here's a clip of the emergency call (apparently, I can't listen at the mo) http://azstarnet.com/news/national/tx-coaster-accident-she-didn-t-feel-safe/article_2165aaaa-5373-52e0-a550-eae20b30489a.html

...and the trial on crushes coaster was fun too! They don't always get it right, but they learn and change things when they get it wrong. How long have we been putting up with this mess for now?

I think you are rather missing the point here. Fastrack as a thing, yes of course people can deal with it however against it they are, but the rampant and aggressive overselling of it in a totally unmanaged way is wrong. People should be complaining and people quite rightly get sick of it when it destroys any chance you have of a decent day out as your wait time rises and rises as a constant procession of people pay past you. There is, allegedly, a system, but it does not work. Supposedly there are x number of tickets per hour based on a percentage of throughput, but: -that figure does not move based on a drop in real throughput for any reason -the allocation is based per park hour and should be sold as such, but no one needs/uses fastrack in the first and last couple of hours so the allocation for those is sold and used at peak times, throwing the supposed ratios right off. -The thing is wildly oversold anyway by staff writing 'x2' or 'x4' on individual tickets, which are all surplus to the number that is supposed to be allocated. Thorpe need to get a hold of this and sort it, for all the good that they are and have been doing to create a decent place to go they are ruining so many of their guests days with this that people will not return. These short term instant profits will soon look like bad value when they have to work harder and harder to get people to come back (see opening multi-million £ coaster which is well received but your visitor numbers fall dramatically). You simply can not compare the mess we have to the free, well run, well managed Disney system. That's why people complain about ours but not theirs.

Hmm, I don't know what clasification of ride Shoot the Rapids technically but it's not really a log flume, the lifts are like coaster lifts and the boats are like floating coaster trains, seating two wide in lapbared seats. From a POV I guess the chain would have to snap and the anti rollback device on the boat would have to fail at the same time, which would be unfortunate. Odd. Maybe there is a way for it not to engage with the track properly but still catch the chain, so going up without the rollback device lined up or engaged? Just before the first lift the trough takes a sharp left so if it came back down at any speed I suppose it would roll over as it hit that bend far quicker than it ever should. Engages with lift at 02.09, can hear the anti rollback gently clicking as it does up. http://youtu.be/shCyUzTqdto Local news reports suggest none of the injured are serious, the one who went to hospital having been released.

A bad day for usa parks then! Got a link for that one?

Blimey. Single lap bar restraints. There's not many options for what has happened here. Either the rider was outside height restrictions, had managed to leave the station without the lap bar fully engaged either by accident or on purpose, or the thing simply failed. Made by Gerstlauer, those.

Crap crap crap. There will likely be place going when I get it confirmed tomorrow that God my work hates me. Still not 100% so don't start fighting over the golden ticket quite yet, will you.

I've never had a filling, but then I haven't been to the dentist for about 20 years so there has been no one to tell me to have one! I am well aware this is going to bite me in a big way sometime in the future when things start to hurt and major work has to happen, but until then I'm happy with my slowly rotting gnashers.

How could I forget that one! Was it 4 or 5 times they managed to squeeze it in? Crazy.

BBC Hot or cold?

Excellent, glad you liked! I'm not sure people will quite 'get' what he is doing without knowing the original songs and how he is changing them, but he uses the decks as an instrument rather than just a record player. There is barely any 1 min in that hour and a bit you could find that only has one record playing! Mad skills.

They soooo need to make the second half of that dome walk a slide!

Sorry for quoting myself like a douchebag, but I am so right! We were lucky enough the other day to have a couple of goes with the central lighting rig off and only the surrounding lasers operating (must have just been very lucky with the sequence.... or something ) and oh my it is good. Feels like a bigger, faster ride like that, it is mildly (but not sickeningly) disorientating as you can not see the track or where you are going to go except for brief flashes as the lighting that is there bounces of various bits of wall and track. It is hard to describe how good it makes it for what we know to such an average physical ride. Seriously Thorpe, sort it. It needs to be like this.

My unnecessarily long thoughts on the evening are over there in that blog bit that most people ignore. You know, there. Take a packed lunch with you if you are going to listen to all of it.

First off, Ministry of Sound at Thorpe Park was outstanding. I did not have any idea what to expect from it really, was thinking the dome would not make much of a venue and the notorious Thorpe clientèle might make things a bit uncomfortable. I was very wrong on both counts. The evening was run like two different events stuck together, summer nights riding followed by the nightclub separately. I expected them to blend together in some way, having appropriate music pumped around the park maybe, but it was all nice and relaxed wandering through the empty dusky park with beer in hand. A couple of other bars would have been nice (there was nothing on the whole Inferno to Colossus side of the park), but riding in the darkness with no queues is always going to be superb. Was also a very nice touch of them to open up Rush and Tidal on top of the advertised line up, little things like this really make a difference, great to see the park being so generous. Once the rides began to close everyone made their way to the club, where the transformation of the dome really worked; totally cleared of furniture and machines, surrounded by black curtain, a couple of well staffed bars set up, a huge stage and lighting rig and a sound system that really worked in what must be an awkward space acoustically. Impressive. They even had a stand selling dirty doners to mop up that alcohol, which I gratefully devoured at the end of the night. There was a bit of a scrum for the bar at first, but that soon died down. Then everyone started dancing, and didn't stop. The atmosphere was great, I didn't see any trouble (except a couple of fellas who had smuggled in joints and smoked them in the middle of the dance floor stinking the place out, if you'd call that trouble), everyone was just there for a good time and it certainly seemed like they had one. But there is always a but. The music was not what it could have, or I think it should have, been. It started well with a good string of proper classics for an hour or so, but then it lost its way. I can see what they were aiming for, they had advertised a 90's night but most of the people who went were barely born then, so they were playing mushups of 90's with modern stuff like putting Katie Perry over some 90's tune or another. That is all very well, but there is only so much of that stuff that exists and they soon started repeating themselves, and they needed to throw in some of the real classics too. A couple of months ago a posted a few of the tunes I would like to hear. Of those we got little snippets of just two (Insomnia (minus the essential break and build) and Funk Phenomena (as a little sample in a mash up)). Here is largely what you did miss. And this is what, unbelievably, you didn't miss... Tori Amos - Professional Widow Arman Van Helden remix. THE bassline of the 90's, missing this was criminal! Sugar is Sweeter - CJ Bolland Arman Van Helden remix. The other bassline of the 90's. Moloko - Sing it Back. The 90's were chock full of sing-a-long feel good house music and this was one of the best, would have gone down a storm I'm sure, along with many other of the same ilk. Gat Decor - Dergees of Passion. Full of energy, two classics mashed together to make something greater than its two parts. Goldie - Inner City Life. The 90's saw the start of a whole new genre of music, maybe it wouldn't quite have fitted on the night but I'd have gone bat**** crazy. And just as important as the record selection on a night like this is how it is all stitched together, which comes down to the skill of the DJ. In a previous life I used to do a bit of DJing myself and the mid to late 90's was my peak, now I'm not suggesting for a second I'd have done a better job than those who did this night (actually, sod it, yes I would have) but maybe if they'd have got someone from the right era they'd have had a better idea. Back then the best DJs put their personality into the mixing, and they could do that because it wasn't all slick and perfectly matched up for them by a computer hooked up to some CDJs, but was on 12" vinyl which they touched and and manipulate with their own hands, putting a huge amount of energy into the set if it is done well. Thorpe posted a pic from behind the decks, and it was indeed a pair of CDJs. There is no way the DJ could have done the music justice with those. If you want to see what I mean I've found on youtube my favourite DJ set of all time, Jeremy Healy on the Fantazia House Collection volume 3. I must have listened to it a thousand times and still find it fresh and exciting, the tracks are amazing on their own but what Healy does with them puts the whole thing in another league. Compare this with the digitally stuck together soulless nothing MoS themselves release today on their mix compilations, and largely gave us on the night. I'm sure that no one will bother but please, clear yourself an hour and a quarter, hook this up to some proper speakers and play it loud. This is what we should have been aiming for that night... http://youtu.be/LxFjg1R77G4