pluk

Nope, that was someone just making stuff up and being generally unhelpful.

Wow. Amazing footage all through that, takes me right back. I'd forgotten about the train, that should never have left.

Maybe the summer nights-ish music events? Would be quite cool having bands down there on what is effectively a boardwalk.

It'll be covering up otherwise messy looking welds and fixes is all.

second...

Oh, this is fun, can we all join in?

I should hope not. What a farce. They never, ever learn.

Well, none of that crap matters; as was bleeding obvious backwards ain't happening! Instead..... fanboy fun times!

None of those rides are major at Thorpe. That there's a disagreement about which park has managed to be less worse even before opening day bodes really well for the season ahead, huh?

While it is true that the parks spend their budget pretty much however they see fit I think it's well recognised that the budget given to the parks by Merlin is not sufficient for them to operate at their best or how park management want to. It may not be Merlin making these direct decisions, but it is their budgeting that make these failings an inevitability.

I find it relaxing to the point of being pretty boring. The forces aren't that great or constant and I don't find doing a vertical circle anything like as nauseating as a horizontal one. I don't ride it because there are better things to do, and a little bit because of that video of one on fire! And also, HAN!!!!!!!!

The bit where you couldn't walk was definitely a highlight. Great to see everyone again, and meet a couple of new peeps, in a fun little park of many many helixes.

Original link appears to have been removed?

Mumsnet will explode at this news, but I think it is a good sensible move. Probably the biggest single thing they can do to spread the crowds out of the (sometimes unbearable) peaks days and into the (sometimes loss making) quite times. I hope it is the beginning of the end of the voucher reliance across the whole of Merlin.

I've heard Michael Jackson. About as likely.

So pissed I couldn't make this one. Saw some negativity about it being a bit strong for the unseen slot!

Continuing to throw rooms up does not make a resort, having things to actually do does. Treetops is something towards that I suppose, but this isn't.

From AT facebook... They do look pretty quaint and quirky, but as was obvious from the plans it doesn't have any of that seclusion or feeling of being elsewhere that the likes of Centre Parcs achieve and Towers were openly trying to emulate. So I don't really get the point; it's like being in a hotel but you get to get wet between your room and wherever you are trying to get to. Odd.

I was buying until the winged train bit. On a vertical drop? Nope.

I hope by 'working on it' you mean you are slowly removing all the bolts?

At least three of their major rides are in a state that it'd be generous even to describe as dilapidated (falls, bubbles and tomb) and many others not looking great. Their response of moving some penguins, a hotel which doesn't affect a park visitor, a cheap show, a sealife section retheme (really?!) and a stunningly badly designed safari which should win awards for the amount of wasted opportunity they managed to cram in doesn't really cut it. I don't think anyone is saying there is no investment but it is far too little far too late to make up for the damage that has been inflicted over a decade or so, and the direction they throw the money they do spend is somewhere between bizarre and moronic if the desired result is a park some rids which are actually good and not depressing. I hope that is the look they start to go for at some point.

Sounds good, if by like 13 we are talking vertical drop? A launched rather than lift hill coaster with the drop section makes more sense anyway, it always seems laborious creeping up the lift hill only to lose all that energy immediately by dropping vertically immediately afterwards. Reaching that drop after a launched section should flow much better.

Looks like I'll be there after all! But will have to leave early.