stretchy

If you scroll down that Mirror article to the photo taken whilst they were on the ride, there are numbers. Underneath it states Victims: (Left to right) Joe Pugh, Leah Washington, Daniel Thorpe and Vicky Balch Having gone to all the effort to label and number and photograph each, they havent even got the order right. But that is about the accuracy I expect from news papers. (By the way. I have vowed, after reading all of the B*****s the papers have written, never to buy a newspaper again. I can only surmise that if they are this accurate with something I know a bit about, then everything else they write is equally 90% error. If I want fiction I will read a book)

Yes we did go on Valhalla, it was running well, some of the fire effects weren't working, but the majority of effects were on. The 'get stretchy soaking' effect was working fine though.

Ok I was intrigued by this, so today I headed over to Blackpool pleasure beach and whilst we were having 40mph gusty wind thought I would try to replicate. When the wind is blowing strongly, because you are only heading into the wind at one point of the 360 degrees it is impossible to get a prolonged spin. When you get into the perfect head on wind position, you do get spun around but as soon as you go past that you stop spinning. I actually spent half a ride rotation upside down due to this effect. I tried letting go of the wing during the bit where your heading into the wind. You did spin rapidly for a few seconds. But as soon as the wind wasn't heading directly at you the plane balanced itself out. All in all, I found that it was significantly harder to get it to spin at all in any sort of wind. Note. These are just my experiences with my weight in the plane. But it is true that you can experience high g forces. If you get a good spin it is as brutal as the tea cups can be. And they say this multiple times during the queue.

Just got back from an excellent afternoon at Towers doing the High Ropes Challenge. Some things I noticed. 1) You enter the resort normally but where you get to the staff car park/priority car park entrance the road is cordoned off. To get to the tower you have to drive through the overflow car park. The reason for this is purely to have 2 checkpoints for people to go through. At the end of the car park. where you have the traffic lights. There was a second check point of staff. All were smiling and looked fine. 2) The big "Big 6" A board at the traffic lights had Big 6 Challenge on when we entered the area at 12 ish, but the big 6 banner had been removed by the time we left at 2:40 3) Some hotel guests were being offered free use of the high ropes course. Yet we did hear one woman saying 'its disgraceful the park is shut'. I nearly punched her. Luckily the guy she was with 'corrected' her. 4) The staff around the hotel and other attractions were doing a brilliant job.

Humans are selfish creatures. Whilst the world continues to shrink it is only when something that affects your little sphere of existence that you become moved. I saw the boat capsize this lunch time and it slipped off me, sliding past my field of concern like butter in a pan. Then, shortly after 2pm I received a text. A text that, at the time, I belittled and passed off as someone having a prank. But I sat in my office for the rest of the afternoon, unable to work, unable to tear my eyes from the forums and news feeds. Gradually feeling sicker and sicker.Every moment came with it a dawning realisation. Initially I had foolishly wished that I was on the car and could witness an evac from a valleyed position, then I heard that there was a collision of 2 trains and I started to regret my wish. I could very well have been on park today, if not for a last minute change to Thursday. That could have been me sitting on Smiler. Suddenly it all hit home and I felt beyond sick. I sat pale and unable to not watch more. I walked home as an air ambulance flew overhead, landing at North Staffs, and I thought, I hope your going to be ok to the person sat on board, I walked past a lady who was crying. it was probably unrelated but that along with every sad face I saw on my walk home filled me with sorrow beyond words. So that's why I am writing this couple of paragraphs, to say that my heart goes out to everyone involved: To the people on the ride, who were unlucky enough to be on the car when this happened. To the other guests at the park who are now on their way homes feeling lucky to be alive. To the friends and families of anyone who was on park today. (I had 4 worried texts making sure I wasn't at alton) To the staff who worked on Smiler today who will, no doubt, need as many friends as they have tonight. To the staff working throughout the park, from ride hosts to management who will, I am sure, all shed a tear sometime tonight. To the staff who work at any theme park who will be silently glad that it wasn't their park and feel guilty for that thought. And even to every one of the 'fan-boys' and 'fan-girls' who sat like I did, from shortly after 2pm in shock.

This Saturday was my first available slot for revisiting Blackpool. So 4 of us of us left stoke and hit Traffic. Please note the careful capitalisation of the word Traffic. This was such Traffic that it was 13:30 by the time we reached the park. Luckily, unlike Merlins policy of closing earlier and earlier each year. BPB was astoundingly open till 8pm - Brilliant move guys, that one move made our spirits significantly better. So we headed into the park and headed straight over to skyforce. MY mind conjured up images of a queue out of the area and all the way down the boardwalk to near the Big Dipper entrance, But no, as we passed the 91 yr old, there was no sign of a queue. Surely, I thought, there would be some kind of cattle pen of doom set up then, working back and forth where the old south entrance once stood. I was ready for the disappointment of the queue being so full that they had stopped allowing guests to join it. So as we walked under The big One's mighty structure I stopped agape. There in front of us was... nothing. No Queue, well not more than 50 or so people (and less than 50 people is just an unsuccessful illegal rave). So we entered the ride and soon a picsolve lady/girl (you know you are getting old when you see someone and think - your not old enough to work at a theme park) was telling the guys in front of us, the secret to getting a good spin. I listened. She said, as soon as the car swings lean one way, then lean the other. I listened more. Lean till you get a rocking motion, pushing down the flap down as you leaned in that direction. and then up as you leaned away. I was, by this point, listening so intently that she has noticed and then proceeded to chastise me for eves dropping. I was, though, in search of KNOWLEDGE, and KNOWLEDGE is the key to any 'audience participation' ride. (like the best barrel is number 5 on Marauders Mayhem as that one is always the loosest and gets the fastest spin). So the 4 of us climbed onto the first 4 planes and we lifted off. The planes are locked as you ascend (Take off, I hear is the most dangerous time during any flight so I understand the need for autopilot at this point. And then, just as I expected to be locked forever, my plane freed up. I leaned, then I leaned the other way, getting more and more of a swing. 30 degrees, then 40 slowly getting more and more. You need to have patience as you work your way, closer and closer to upside down then all of a sudden your spinning and your spinning fast. Round and round, faster and faster, You spin me right round baby right round like a record baby right round round round. You spin and spin. It is odd, on the ground, I was worried that the cycle didn't look very long. It looked like about 2 minutes of flight time. Well let me tell you. 2 minutes is a lonnnng time when the world is constantly acting like a tumble dryer. I am, here, assuming that our cycle was the same length as the previous ones. To be honest it felt like about 5 minutes of flying when the breaks slowed my spin and the ground slowly came up/down to meet us. As we staggered out the ride op congratulated us on being the first time he had seen 4 planes spin constantly. What was odd was during the time he was congratulating us he span around us. Well I think that he did or maybe it was all in my head. So what did I think of the ride? It was really fun. You get a real amount of dizziness on it. My shoulders hurt from the repeated thud of them hitting the restraints as I inverted, but that is my own fault for having shoulders. I do, though, know how my washing feels and vow to wash more clothes more often. I think it might be the perfect ride to go on after Valhalla. So rather than drone on about the rest of the day, which was most excellent (as Bill and Ted would say) Ill throw up a couple of pics. Conclusion Skyforce is my favorite Gerstache - It brings a new and wonderful type of ache in the form of bruised shoulders. 8pm opening is brilliant The only thing that would have made the time at the pleasure beach better would have been an open Valhalla New Weatherspoons next to the entrance is also brilliant Thanks for another excellent day Blackpool. All you need is a world class B&M inverter and I would spurn towers completely and defect to the Cheesy Side.

They dud the same with the black hole electronics building at the start (the black building here)

So I think the rule of thumb is that people other than merlin are perfectly capable of taking a concept drawing and creating something that looks even better, rather than a dethemed cheapened version of it. By the way, that powerstation counterpoints the english medeavil castle perfectly.

Can I just point out: becomes:

I really reccommend the stealth back stage tour. A bunch of the mania lot, myself included, did it last year and it was extremely interesting. That coupled with Swarm's lift hill was a near perfect day. my pics for the day can be found here if your interested. https://plus.google.com/photos/106418309379254557984/albums/6020017047857059953?authkey=CIiggv627Y3jvQE

What elements can be done on the food loop? I see a vertical loop in the above video - but the question is - can they do a purple and gold corkscrew?

Is there a theme to this MOS night. In the past it has been '90-s night including katy perry' and 'drum and base night including katy perry' and even "ibiza night including katy perry'. Just wandering what they will be playing this time?

Damn you got there before me Jamie was just about to post.

I really like the steam punk one (below), Those pipes are cool. OK I started this lunch time with the intention of doing the words filling a circle as asked for by Tuffpikk. But insanity quickly took over. I appologise for any sleepless nights, disturbed minds or mania caused by the next logo. The slogan across the middle started as "the forum changes after dark"but since it doesnt I then went to 'The fanboys change after dark' but thought that that would be sexist and that the fan girls have an equal ability to be maniacs after dark, so went back to the park slogan for fright nights.

I really like the steam punk one. Love those pipes

Anti aliasing - Totally agree. The above is a photoshop quick knockup jobbie. Whatever design is chosen, I would hope that someone with skills in a vector packages would take it and produce a scalable version. That means it would be smooth no matter what size. [ You mean something like this? Whilst we dont have any specific deadline for this, what we will probably do is at the end of the month create a short list and maybe have a vote off on it.

You mean something like this J.S217? (I only have a poor quality silhuette at work so I appologise for the bittiness of it) or even

Ho hum, This simply isn't a patch on merlins theming. I cant see a shipping container or dirty derelict building anywhere.

Attention all fellow maniacs. The collective opps here at TPM have decreed a search for a new logo. YES!!! A NEW LOGO!!! So we are calling on you, YES YOU, to help us in our search. We know that you are the most wonderful group of creative minds ever assembled in one place. A group that can come up with whole ip's and storylines for new rides from just a single drawing of an unthemed building. A group that can dream up rumours of ride seats being put backwards seemingly from thin air. A most imaginative and productive group indeed, which is why we need you. So what are we looking for? Well the current logo looks like: The crew at TPM know that ideas always begin small, so you dont need to be the best artist in the world. We are looking for ideas as much as prettiness as ideas grow. For example the black and red logo (number 5) of the list below came about from Josh saying, Then some fool with 5 minutes over lunch knocked it up creating number 5. It was then improved on to give the hot and steamy bottom one (number 6). Or if you simply think the current logo is wonderful then tell us, sticking with that is also an option. What do I win? Well since, I hope, the winning design will be created by all of us here, no matter who does the final bit of art work, we all win by getting a new shiny all purpose logo. So - here are a few designs that the TPM team have knocked up. What do you think of them? Can you do better? Do you have an idea that could spark off someone else?

I will join you for at least the towers part on either of those days. and I will also join you for the newcastle evening. EDIT if people want to group into 4s you can get a discount on tickets for drayton Manor single advance ticket = £20 Family of 4*** £65.00 http://draytonmanor.co.uk/tickets-and-prices Also - most drivers, ariving < 9.30, will be sent round to the bottom carpark by the main entrance, which is at the other end of the park to the hotel, which is at Entrance 1 (The old main entrance) or Entrance 2( The hotel/corporate entrance). You might want to have 2 meet points for this, Main entrance and Entrance 1. Then have both groups meeting up once the gates open by the lake/pirate ship (about half way).

Why do all these "events" have naff "tenny" bands/groups? Maybe I am just getting old!

Hmm that layout is interesting. Some other things caught my eye though rather than the queue.. There are 3 what look like platforms there. What I guess is that they are emergency evac points. So on that I drew arrows. I then thought. hmm wonder if the same ride car would fill them all so I drew the blue boxes. Then I thought well how would a car like that get from one to another. The red path is the only route I can think utilising the space as much as possable. That means it goes sideays and long ways for different places, not a bendy track. Assumptions made during this scribble 1) there is 1 ride vehicle per loading platforms 2) it is all on one floor 3) the vehicles are the width of the gaps 4) there is a track and it isn't a walkthrough maze 5) the rectangles are stations and not holes or drainage or something else.

OK emotive songs.. hmm... breaking the motivational theme and settling on the mildly fed up theme: Illusion by VNV Nation. One of the most beautiful songs I know and occasionally brings a tear to my eye.. 3 of the many songs I listen to when the world gets a bit to much for me, oddly all of them cheer me up. Street Spirit by Radio Head. Hurt - Johnny Cash (cover of NIN) And since were on about green day, you missed :-

ok Maybe its a Dr Who spinoff rather than Dr Who itsef - Madame Vastra possably? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_Vastra,_Jenny_Flint,_and_Strax fits with both the perfume bottle and the teaser posters

Oh dear. Why do I get the dread filled feeling that Thorpe 2016 will be called either or