pluk

12 years ago today, the Swarm photo shoot meet. Good times.

It's been a while! Only 438 notifications 😆

Hahaha, yeah those tubs are actively violent, but I love them for it!

WTF were they thinking with the BK destruction? Just as they put in a highly themed railways station coffee shop, they tear out a highly themed burger bar and turn it into generic shopping centre? Spending money to make things worse is my biggest hate in Theme Parks, especially when getting funding for anything that isn't a big new thing has been neigh on impossible for decades, but with this and the teacups we have two big lumps of that here. Who the hell is running this place, and can they be sunk with the Thorpe Belle?

I don't think I could bring myself to visit with all that nonsense going on. Fortunately it'll be a few years until my daughter is old enough to be making a visit likely, hopefully by then this system will be on the scrapheap, but it feels like a one way situation at the moment. Once reliant on the queue jumping cash it's hard to come away from.

Merlin can build new parks from scratch without a wince, they don't have a tight budget in the slightest. They could put a full size coaster in here if they fancied it, they are choosing not too. This change looks insignificant, likely for groundworks, utilities, access.

...changes Turn and face the strange Ch-ch-changes Bowie, the ride. At last, a theming idea I can get behind.

It's loggers, isn't it? 😄

I don't like to be negative, but I hate it for that adverse camber nonsense straight out of the station. Pack it in. Overall though it looks alright I suppose, which seems like some mental apathy for the height record in the UK. It just seems that everything I'd want from a hyper isn't there. A straight ahead killer drop, multiple airtime hills, and length. This is like a greatest hits of elements of other coasters they already have, just a bit bigger.

I think it's safe to say it didn't come about how it should; by someone who knows what they are doing designing an excellent ride and the theming and marketing evolving around that. The tail wags the dog at Merlin. And this is the real crux of it, why I'm negative on the project overall rather than indifferent. However good this ride actually is that throughput is absolutely not good enough. Regardless of any other consideration, the whole thing should be back to the drawing board on that point alone.

Considering enthusiasts have been crying out for investment in Chessington for decades, does it not say something that there might be something off with these plans that the response has been muted at best? There's going to be differences of opinion but collectively we do kind of know what we are talking about, don't we? Should we have been happy for a new dark ride, something else we have been crying out for for decades, when we were given DBGT? Other than it is something, I'm intrigued to know what particular positives people find in these plans. They literally have an empty field to work with, a completely blank canvas, quite a rarity in UK developments. Is this really the best thing they could do with that and a pile of cash?

There's sooo much this park needs, but I'm at a loss to understand why they think that includes a (relatively) low capacity 1.4m coaster with another vaguely jungle theme. Everything about it is so odd.

My first thoughts (from POV, I'm no VIP) is that if this sort of set up was used as the entrance and exit of X, with effects of comparable quality during the ride, that would make one complete, excellent attraction rather than two slightly lacking ones we now have.

Agreed about the middle section. I don't understand why they couldn't get that effect to work reliably? It really was simple, surely they could have put the effort they did into reconfiguring that section into the effect instead and kept it going. That's such a non event now, something spectacular needs to happen there to make the journey feel worthwhile. The obvious answer would be some nice close up real fire effects, but I imagine that would increase the running costs too much.

So Thorpe suffered the indignity of falling below Chessington for the first time in a long time just before the pandemic hit. Shocking really considering the state Chessingron is in.