pluk

And we sometimes think our parks are a bit sh*t.... http://www.bbc.co.uk...d-asia-20258175 The Korean city of Suwon has opened what it says is "the world's first toilet theme park". The Restroom Cultural Park has a museum displaying Roman style loos, European-style bedpans, and ancient Korean flush toilets, as well as fun facts about human waste and a sculpture garden dedicated to squatting figures.

Best film ever btw. 1980's ftw.

On park opening the rest of Fantasyland opens with a couple of my favourites, Snow White and Pinocchio both looking clean fresh and bright and for me are like the distilled essence of Disney even if they are relatively simple and short, both 8.5/10. Storybook Boat with a stupidly long name is a cute little thing, nice and secluded and relaxing with some quite beautiful miniatures from fairytales. 7/10. I've never come across anything like Alice's Curious Labyrinth in a Disney park before, and thought it was fantastic. It takes a good while to get out again and is full of scenes and themed sections from Alice, getting curiouser and curiouser. Even on a quiet day it got a bit congested but we had great fun finding our way through. 7/10 Further round the park, through some really odd dead ground beyond Small World which looks like space for future development, into Discoveryland. Star Tours feels pretty tiered really. It's not something I'm much of a fan of in the first place but in French it's annoying and the simulators are creaky, jerky and a bit out of sync. 6/10. Autopia is utter chaos, the cars seem laughably unreliable causing stressed French men with petrol cans running all over the place to try and keep it moving. The cars have no anti roll back and the course is very hilly, the car in front of us slammed into us backwards at quite a speed when it stalled. We found all this hilarious, I know it is for kids but I could have hours of fun driving those little cars around. 8/10 Little Wall-E statue outside Star Tours, I wish it was Wall-E themed instead. That is Disney, however much they pay for LucasFilm.

Well this isn't a whole bunch of fun, but if you are a driver, or will soon be a learner, or your mates or family sometimes drive drunk or just generally like idiots, then please watch this. The aftermath elements are very realistic and familiar to me, sadly. This is what it's like when things go wrong, do all you can to stop it happening.

The thing with the Christianity I grew up with and the church is that generally they promote a good healthy way of life and a sound set of morals to live by. If only they'd drop all this magic man in the sky and believing a book of things that didn't happen hokum it would all be more relevant to real life, to my life. As it is I kind of pity the heavily religious in the same way I do those living their lives by the word of a clairvoyant or fortune teller, how empty their lives must be if they have to put so much of themselves into the mythical. I'm sure they have the same pity for me having not found God or the voodoo man. Having said that, Christmas is a lot of fun and then we have the chocolate festival to look forward to. Nice one Jesus!

That is my favourite stat ever! There is no excuse for single train operation outside of breakdowns imo at any time there is a queue. Whether it is the case or not that hey are doing it deliberately, if they are generating a 30 min queue on dead days and selling fast track, people are going to question their motives.

I've also been told that on the same day they were running things on reduced capacity (ie Inferno on one train) to try and generate queues for people to pay their way out of even though the park was dead. If that is the case (which with fast track sales points open would seem likely) then it really is disgusting behaviour.

Scary thing is, Cameron is probably best of the bunch we've got to chose from. And he clearly is a slimy, smug, self satisfying tool who I'd barley trust to run a newsagents, let alone a country. Our country sucks at the moment.

I'm sure it's 15 degrees in each direction. That's what it says on the ever reliable Wikipedia and I'm sure it is said as that by knowledgeable staff in one of the behind the scenes tours / talks of Hex knocking around somewhere on you tube. I'm not sure why SW7 would include some sort of anti Hex where you turn upside down with an illusion that you don't. Movement which your brain can't account for with sight is what causes motion sickness. Would spend more time closed for cleaning than X!!

This is pretty much what I expected to think of it myself.

That's a shame. I understand why it might seem to be more trouble than its worth to continue with them, but as you've managed to get more than the usual cut and paste response they put on facebook complaints they are obviously listening to you!

Not been since I was tiny, it's obviously changed a lot since then. If you take all the halloween stuff what do you think of what is left? Do you think it'd be worth a visit during the rest of the season?

H&S requires no such thing. Poor evac planning and procedures or design might make outdoor queuing a requirement by default, but it should not be blamed on the mythical 'H&S'. It is totally acceptable to queue inside if it is done properly.

The capacities all start at 4 person again. Why can't they build 'couples' size accommodation so we are not always paying over the odds for two beds we are not using? Does look good though. Wonder if they'll market them as one/two night stays like they do with the hotels, or more of a holiday weekend / midweek option like Centerparcs.

Rumours abound that there is some sort of fire in the actual towers. Oh dear!

I know it's been mentioned before, but is there any way of fixing the missing return/enter/paragraph strokes out of older posts. Some update at some point has removed all of them making a lot of the archive of this site (plenty of which is still useful and relevant) pretty much unreadable solid blocks of text. Maybe it's not possible, but thought it was worth a try.

Indeed! I still stand by my assertion that increasing sales with queue times is an absolute work of stupidity and nonsense as the amount of people the ride can process has not changed regardless of how many people they ram into a queue line, but it is true there are many ways of working out a sensible system. If fast track must exist as Merlin are incapable of pricing the entrance ticket at a level that turns them enough profit (which is what should be happening, but they have spent years devaluing themselves with a voucher discount pricing model and failing to offer good value, another long debate!) then I would like a very Disney type system in place. -Pay the extra once to activate your ticket as fast track. Something like £10 a day seems fair. -Issue tickets on an individual ride basis at a station which would issue you an allocated time to return, with a 30 minute window. -You can not get another fast track ticket until you have used the one before. -When you turn up for your ride you walk straight to the merge point - no substantial queue before that. -The allocations are strictly managed at levels the rides can be reasonably expected to cope with (third of real throughput). This will mean the return time could be quite a long time away. -People will have a choice - use your pass on something less popular with a small return time and use it more frequently, or use it on something more popular with a longer return time and use it less frequently. I would market fast track as the standard ticket, with a 'light' ticket available without fast track for people not intending to ride much / at all.

Of course the throughput varies, but in terms of working out fast track numbers if should be using a good average of what they manage to achieve what they can't do is increase the throughput in any reliable or meaningful way. There has to be a presumption that they are doing just about the best they can on any reasonably busy day. What I'm saying is they can't turn it up to account for extra fast track sales, so fast track sales shouldn't increase either. Indeed, if you have the longer queue you would want to 'enforce the ratio' more than with a short queue. Can't you see that selling more tickets when the queue is long will be doing the exact opposite. Remember, that throughput has not moved! As for the times, stager it on the ticket into hour slots starting at 5 minute intervals. Simples! From your operating experience you clearly have good knowledge of the departments and process of how these numbers are generated and managed. I don't really care about that, to me and the average visitor THORPE PARK is THORPE PARK as a complete entity I have no idea which department's fault it is and nor do I much care. Whoever is running the park as a whole has to bash some heads together to sort a working system that does not piss everyone off.

Looks like Camelot has finally officially been put out of its misery... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-lancashire-20197934 Never went myself, only Knightmare took my interest and that wasn't enough to drag me that far. Hope Knightmare remains in the UK somewhere, I'd still like to give it a go.

I don't doubt that they 'sell out' towards the end of the day when the staff want to go home on time!

Ohhh, I've not been on a ski jump for years, and maus XXL looks great. Not sure of the pricing but I'm always getting sent substantial discounts for the event from American Express, so if family or friends have a card it's worth asking them to take a look for you.

Sorry Ian, you, and I can only presume THORPE PARK, are over thinking the simplicity of what is actually happening. There is only one thing I have 'ignored' from the original quote, and that is the capacity of the ride. There's good reason for ignoring this: they can not amend the throughput of the ride. It is what it is and ain't going anywhere, so once the original numbers are worked out for an acceptable number of fast track riders per hour it can be ignored. In reality it matters not a jot how long the main queue is. There is a complete constant, and that is the throughput of a ride. There is nothing to be gained in sending more and more people into the fast track queue if they are going to keep the ratio of fast track to standby the same. So why do it? Because the pressure of the fast track queue will force the staff member on the merge to increase the ratio in fast track favour. Why make the physical fast track queue longer, when people can virtually wait with a timed ticket if they are sold with a time in at the correct ratios? Remember, in all the numbers you give there are three things not changing- one being the capacity, one being the ratio (allegedly), and one being the opening hours. If all of those three things do in fact remain static there is nothing at all to gain or any sense in selling more fast track tickets per hour with the growth of the main queue. Any such sales that do take place can only be dealt with by moving the ratios in fast track favour, because the other numbers are not going anywhere. I've just noticed throughout your post you reference the number of people joining the queue. That joining end of the queue does not matter in the slightest. It is the business end that matters, the getting on the ride bit. Lets see how those imaginary numbers add up, how the queue length effects the variables: Queue Length: 20 minutes Ride capacity: 1000 pph Ratio: 4 standard to 1 fast track Sales available: 250 per hour compared to Queue Length: 200 minutes Ride capacity: 1000 pph Ratio: 4 standard to 1 fast track Sales available: 250 per hour Oh look, no differences. So how do you justify an increase in fast track sales? You can't.

From the horses mouth: So the longer the queue, the more they sell, so the longer the queue so the more they sell, so the longer the queue, the more they sell, so the longer the queue so the more they sell, So the longer the queue, the more they sell, so the longer the queue so the more they sell........... That, according to THORPE PARK themselves, is the details of the maths behind how it works! EDIT: It was a Union Flag, just a little reference to the highlighted math/maths use. Not important, I grant you, but but it contributed to explaining why 'math' grates on me. Not to worry though.

Sorry Ian, but that is exactly what you are doing with your 'interpretation' of the message from THORPE PARK. It clearly states there is no upper limit on the number sold, that they sell more as the queue time increases. Obviously the more fast track they sell the longer the main queue gets, so with their odd thinking that allows for the sale of more fast track tickets which will? You guessed it, cause the main queue to get longer and allow the sale of more fast track tickets. It's a never ending cycle of stupidity. There is no upper limit on the length of the main queue line other than the complete capacity of the park. There is no positive spin to put on this system. It out and out sucks and is clearly the cause of much complaint and loss of guest satisfaction. The obvious and as far as I know common way of managing this is to have an absolute limit on the number of fast track ticket sales in any given time slot as a percentage of the operational capacity of a ride. The standard queue continues to move at a reasonable rate and the fast trackers stay close to walk on. This means that the sales of time slots simply get for later in the day and everyone is kept relatively happy. The system as described by THORPE PARK is fundamentally flawed and has the net result of making anyone happy, apart from maybe the accountants at Merlin in the short term.

I they give you a time and make you stick to your end of the deal time wise then they should stick to theirs. For each time slot they should sell slightly less than theoretical capacity to allow for 'breakdowns'. You really should not have to wait more than 10 or 15 mins for something with a timed start ticket. If Thorpe aren't capable of that that (on an attraction with no 'standby' queue to manage into it) then they are even more incompetent than I gave them credit for.