pluk

Was probably in the plans and I wasn't paying attention. Is that a curved lift hill? And yep, it all seems a bit average and comes after much oversold crapness, so little interest from me. We'll see.

Ah, didn't know TOTT was paid now. If they have hour long queues for mazes with tickets then that's just incompetent! That's the cycle of poor we are currently stuck in though, the mazes can't be that good as 16000 people are trying to do them in a few hours each evening, high throughput, poor quality, long queues. Ticketing is a way out of that. But yeah, if they tried to upcharge for their current efforts that wouldn't really be good enough, I'm not suggesting that!

From someone that despises fastrack to their very core... I'm all for Halloween extras to be paid. They are extras after all, and it should be done with timed tickets to manage the queues. What we have at the mo, at Thorpe especially but Chessie to an extent, is a mess that makes no one happy once it's even moderately busy. Towers seems to have it about right, one decent high throughput freebie with the supports being able to be better with a lower throughput and ticketing to make it manageable. Would be pleased to see them all go this way.

It's not 'our' coaster, it's Intamin's to sell to whoever they want to. With that thinking we wouldn't be able to have stealth!

It was excluded from the prohibition list as it's model number is outside of the affected, probably because it's older than the one involved so doesn't contain the part which has failed.

Fair enough. I don't remember the last time I saw the queue line video working (I've not been this year). That I've never really thought about it shows that the theme works as a whole I suppose.

I always felt that it is set at 'Thorpe'. It's not necessarily a theme park in the context of the ride, but a place. Does anything within the theme suggest 'Thorpe' is a theme park? It's situated separate enough from the rest of the park to work for me, I don't think that's any leap greater than 'it's a gold mine', or 'it's a canyon' when the wider surroundings suggest otherwise. It's patently not set in America though!

How about one of those deathly free fall into a suspended net upcharge things? I'm all for upcharge with something as unique and thrilling as that.

Sounds like the perfect Merlin may of taking a simple and achievable idea (count em in, count em out, the difference is the queue) and making it a complex mess which won't really work.

Hoorah! I've been saying this is the very obvious and fairly simple solution to the massively inaccurate queue time problem for years. Aside from unforeseeable breakdowns, once it is set up properly it should be pretty much infallible. These are the things which needed to be in place before they tried to do that queue-less park nonsense.

With the specifics of which models have to close, excluding more recent models of the same type, it seems they have a good idea of what has failed.

Well, shit. Not even a knock off either. I imagine we'll see KMGs every shut until it's know how the hell that happened.

Hope you all have a great time while I'm stuck at work

I believe they have a licencing based 'legal' capacity which they can not exceed, and they also have a considerably lower self imposed 'operation' capacity which they stick to for day to day opening, but they can (and do) exceed if they fancy. Hopefully with the staffing in place to cope with it... Either way, imagine most of this week is some sort of hell to be avoided at all costs.

I won't pretend K-Pop isn't entirely lost on me, but that's impressive! Well done MrsMattyMoo. While I'm here, I'm properly obsessed with Arcade Fires new stuff... and also Mr Jukes too... My songs of the summer so far.

You are right... this is worse!

I always feel like the only person on Earth who doesn't give the tiniest crap about Star Wars, but it's clearly the franchise which will give them something to rival the draw of Potter at Universal. I'm sure it'll boost their fortunes for many years to come, unlike Avatar which is just a very pretty way to spunk billions of dollars. It's over a decade since I've been, but I don't recall the Great Movie Ride as being particularly Great. Got to love a mine train though!

Wow, this little selection might be new, but it's already being run like a dieing octopus garden again?

Do not order Le Créme Brúlée

Be good to see what they've done here, I imagine it'll work better in the controlled and liniar Madame Tussauads than similar efforts do in a theme park environment. I'm a bit confused by the wording used, they keep referencing it as a 'game', when it looks to be more like a walk-through than an escape room or similar?

@Marc Any idea what happened to my pictures? They were uploaded to the site, not linked from elsewhere, so I don't know how to fix them!

I'm an 18 stone male, and while I don't know my measurements I imagine most females would be more chesty than I am, with chest size being the restricting factor on most retaints. I struggle with colossus and vortex restraints closing at all, with Samurai pretty snug too. I'd guess you might have to skip these, but other than that you should be fine. I'm not so sure about the wheelchair restrictions, I know some rides have evacuation and access issues, I'd hope these would very posted on their website?

Blimey, that's a hell of a write up; I feel like I've been there myself after reading that! I didn't realise how easy it was to get to, certainly on my to do list.

There has been no statement from anyone explaining the mechanics of how she came to he in the water. While rider error is by far the most likely reason it is totally unacceptable to blame the deceased for their death at the moment. To do so is insensitive and crass in the extreme. No ride of this or any type is ever 100% safe, there are many things that may have gone wrong.