stretchy

Myk - I am going to be uber thick here. What/who is AWW and where can I join/sign up.

Please put me down as a highly probable on this one. Myk mentioned it over on Towers Nerd and I think we may have a few takers from there too. More details to come.

I will pop over and join you for some of the time any of those weekends.

Can I just add something to this debate. The Kingy and I went to Blackpool last summer for the Big Dippers 90'th. It was one of the best evenings I have had for a while even though the park did rip us off (we bought our tickets in advance, if we would have bought on the day they would have been 15 quid cheeper). The park, over the past few years, has been the cleanest it has been in the whole of my life. The rest of the town has tacky areas and non tacky areas. The promanade has been done extremely nicely. Whereas, on the other side of the road, a lot of the walk between the Pleasure Beach and the Tower has quite a few run down hotels. As a resort, Blackpool has historically catered for those people who cant afford to go abroad for thier holls. A large percentage of these were from my own home town of Stoke. When the pottery industry in Stoke went into decline, the amount of money people had from here to spend at Blackpool also went into decline. The problem was Blackpool was still geared up to expect the nurmal multitude of potters. There became quite a competition over rooms and room proces. (You can now get a B&B for £15 per night and to be honest, the place wasnt that bad) Is Blackpool tacky? Blackpool aimed at a certain clientel. Those from working class environments. The problem is TV has now painted into the minds of all people no matter of class, the X factor view of the world. 40 years ago when I was a kiddy, someone singing on the stage there just for you, was deemed the hight in class. Nowadays, the TV has shown everyone what a world class performance should be, so you judge by that, you set your expectations by that, the Blackpool bar singer now sounds poor, not because they are, Because my expectations are much much higher. Do I think that Blackpool is tacky, a little bit, but I think Vegas is as tacky. Do I think Blackpool hasn't moved fast enough with the times, Definately. Will I be going to Blackpool this year - Of course.

The below site takes all the geo locaton info of photos on google and plots them on a map. You can see the hotspots of which rides are the most photogenic http://www.sightsmap.com/index.php?lt=51.403948&lg=-0.516665&z=15&w=8506&wlt=51.4&wlg=-0.52 Also, here's a link to Alton Towers too. http://www.sightsmap.com/index.php?lt=52.985142&lg=-1.895084&z=15&w=5980&wlt=52.98&wlg=-1.9

OK peops. The time is here to formally unveil Our mission statement says it all really - I want to help YOU to go out and do something less boring than what your doing now, whether that is with novel ideas or part of group trips where we can all try something new and thrilling together, and having a laugh whilst doing so. So the forum is there, nice and void of too many posts. A really basic web site is also there. This will also grow over time, currently it is designed as purely a front portal to the forum but if anyone has any ideas, please add them to the forum. So what now? Well that is basically up to you guys. I have built, with help from Joss and Ethan the groundwork. You now control what we do, what you want to do and when. So this is my formal invite to each one of you out there to come and join in. If anyone has any sign up issues please feel free to PM me here. I am sure that there will be one or two evil buggettes so if you spot any, there is a topic just for that purpose. Once again Thanks to Marc and the rest of the TPM team for allowing me to post this. I look forward to all the adventures we will undertake together at www.stretchedweekends.co.uk

OK I got a fun little competition. I have just loaded up Google and it anounced that it has 'Awsomed' some of my photos. This is the result. The More fitting question and the subject of this competition is What are Han and Myk saying? Answers below or on a postcard if you have one.

I love it. It looks like a prop from Mad Max.

Some of you may have missed this but I hope re look and notice the amazing photo-shopping in the "in the night garden" picture. Notice how the boats roof pillars, even the ones that are in front of the people are behind them. Astounding bit of mind bending physics there, I am now 100% going to complain if we don't get MC Escher effects.

I was on park today, Yes I know it wasn't open, today was the last day of the Christmas opening. So Construction - whats new? CEEBEEBEE's land All photos taken from within the park from the path that goes down the side of the lake by battle galleons. The roof looks finished with bright colored bars now adorning the purple tiles. Lots of scaffolding up around Squirrel Nutties. New railings now bound the lawn in front of the towers. They look fine apart from the footers are not at ground level which just looks naff. I hope they add some soil at least. New railings around the moat of the Towers Twirling Toadstools Seem to have gone Yup I'm sure there used to be more to this ride.. Ahr - That makes sense, the last bits of it are being thrown away in this bin. Shame, I liked this ride. Fallen down trees On the side of the lawns by the gardens we have had 2 trees that have come down. Not sure if it was recent but they were still clearing it. Their collapse seems to have done some damage to the walls too Close up

Are you into other thrill based activities than theme parks? Maybe you'd like to try a Go Ape style ropes course, or climbing Snowdon? Do you have free time? Enough time to maybe moderate a new non theme park based forum? I am about to set sail on a new idea and am initially looking for people who would be interested in helping. Interested? Read on. A bit of history. As some of you may know, I'm one of the team over at Towers Nerd, mainly responsible for organising trips and live blogging. Saying that, I tend to post all my construction updates on a fair number of sites, Thorpe Mania being one of them, with the lofty goal of trying to bring the community together a bit more. Over the last year, every single weekend except one of season I was at one park or another and that kind of over exposure to a subject starts to wane your interest. So I started to re-evaluate what I was actually interested in and realised that basically it is good memories. It is doing something at the weekend that you will look back on when times are hard with a smile. I then realised that theme parks are just one form of memory creation (ohh god I'm slipping into the Alton Towers fireworks show). Last year I went Caving and that was wonderful. The year before I went Go Ape, that was equally fun. I've climbed Ben Nevis and Snowden. All brilliant experiences. I realised that I wanted more experiences and probably not as many Theme Park ones. The problem is, that doesn't fit in with the TowersNerd or TPM umbrella and being non theme park related it doesn't fit into any of the sites I regularly visit. So I have/am in the process of creating a new site who's main goal is to be a resource of, to organise trips to and to review, non theme park related 'things to do at the weekend'. Ok so what's its status? We started work on it 02 Jan 2014, so it is in its really early stages. We currently have a nearly empty but fully operational forum and a place holder of a website (which won't be looked at until after the forum launches). What am I looking for? I aim to launch the forum part first in a couple of weeks time as soon as we have enough basic content so that the forum isn't totally empty and there is something for people to join in with. So I am looking for a literate person who has time on their hands who wants to help moderate and create forum based content. Someone who is excited to try new activities and fancies organising or helping to organise trips. Also someone who will bring a friend base with them to the new forum. One final requirement. You need to be 16 or over. A number of these activities have a minimum age of 16 so it would be cruel for a moderator not to be able to participate in the trips. How do I find out more? P.M me. Or grab me on chat. I expect to get 4/5 interested people so in the PM tell me who you are and give me an inkling of what you would like to bring to the new site. Interested in being a member, not a moderator? In about 2 weeks time, I will post a comment on this thread containing an advert for the new site. By then we will have enough there to get people started. Hopefully it will take off and hopefully, we will give you adrenalin junkies something new to try. Tune back in a couple of weeks. Important note. I really really really don't want someone to defect from this site to join mine. Both sites have nearly no cross over, apart from a similar base of adrenalin junkies, so I wholly hope you will stay an active member of this forum as well as being a mod/member on the new site. TPM is a wonderful forum filled with wonderful people and run by a wonderful team who have kindly agreed to let me post this here.

Sorry guys. the likelihood is I wont be able to make this. Hope you all have a fun meet, and Happy New Year. (lol I just checked the train prices, thinking maybe I could work on the train there and back and fit this in. £21 to Guildford from Stoke - that is fine. £171 back from Guildford. Madness!)

When reading about this has anyone read the terms and conditions? There were the normal things about no kissing of frogs and clauses about rides may not be open for most of the year (the new form of Gerstache) and then there was this odd line in the middle Please note that the EDF Energy London Eye will be shut for maintenance between 6 January to 17 January 2014 and the London Dungeon will be shut for relocation until March 2014. The question is, where is the London Dungeons being relocated too? Oddly, only last year it was closed till March whilst they relocated. Now those merlin lawyers wouldn't have just done a search and replace for 2013 with 2014 would they. I am sure they are paid far too much to do that.

The general handling of this was dreadful anyway. It gave the impression that management didn't know when the ride would be ready and because management didn't know, nor did the people managing the social media. But I suppose this all goes down to planning. The Smiler as an actual ride was a huge success. The Advertising campaign was a huge success. The planning was the failure point. Things should have been ready when they planned them to. Notice how they are being overcautious at the moment by saying next years new additions will be open 'in the spring'.

I took videos of the fireworks Sat and Sun. Sat - Warning Sat has a bit of autofocus issue where my camera decided that the smoke was far more interesting than anything else Sun - Warning my camera was so sad about the end of the season that it misted up gradually through the show. And a picture I took on Friday that I quite like

I am horrified to see you don't have a fireworks topic for Alton Towers. Consider that rectified. Anyway I was on park today and when not observing a certain new ride shed components, I took some more fireworks construction pics. As you enter the park you see the following across the lake. Notice not only the low lights but also the 3 towers. A zoom shot through the fog at one of the towers. Scooting round the back here's one of the towers and another Zoomie Zoomie Some lighting The third tower Some boxes lights that don't want to become parents the lights at the front, must be new as they still have the cellophane on them And you would think that that was it, but no there is much more to go in. And a total nerd shot of the gennies I will leave you with a shot from the cable car (So excuse the washed colours, the plastic is poor to photograph through.

If you are like me, You have gone out and bought a reasonable camera, and then pointed it at your coaster of choice and produced a rubbish photo. For me, it's always when the weather isn't sunny. I got to the stage of being really dejected during the last Live feed that all of my night shots were.. dire. Then Mark (head of the Nerds) said "Do you know about the manual mode?".. My response was Urmm. Anyway. He did some bits and bobs to my camera and I managed to take : Did I really understand what he did? I have to admit Nope. I know he changed the ISO to a low number and then had me jiggle a dial but I hadn't a clue why. Well not till this lunch time when I found the following course. http://www.lynda.com/course20/Photography-Cameras-Gear-tutorials/word-about-camera-brands/71923/78466-4.html?w=0 I have watched 40 minutes of it up to yet and recommend it to everyone.

OK some construction for you from today. All photos, as always, taken from public areas. Ice tent has gone. Someone allegedly has a bad fix. rather odd graffiti really. This is quite a cool bit of history. I think that this is the rink scraping/relaying machine.

Scarefest Construction 13 October 2013. Sorry for the poorer than usual quality of photos. The weather was atrocious. Firstly, HQ seems to have been halloweened. There are a host of new flags flying over the entrance, all scarefesty in their splendour. Once in the park, each of the grassy areas has had wooden posts erected. On the ground in a number of places is SC. Obviously some Stoke fan hooligans have been in the park. I think that this area is going to get set up in the next day or so. Odly some of the lights on Towers Street have had all except one of their bally things removed. One of the froggies seems to be vomiting blood. There has been a red light placed under him that lights up the water as it jets out of his mouth. By the end of the day, as dusk descended it started looking quite cool. Carnival entrance now set up and looking as disturbing as usual. I do love this entrance. The fencing around it state this. Sneaking a naughty peak over the fence you see The back side of the frontage looks like The golfing side of the maze now looks like this. The other side, behind the plate smash is much more interesting though. An old banner is being used as the roof.I wonder if this ties into the story or is simply a blue peter special. Looking through that gateway (which was open) you can see. Hmm where did that shipping container come from. Well it wouldn't be Merlin without one. What's going on in Zombie? I hear you ask and if you look towards the right you see The other end has quite an interesting grey tent built. which, oddly, seemed quite long. and to the right of the gate, Christmas is still here and in the distance you can see, so is the bus. Elsewhere - Fountain square now has this fine erection. TOTT & Sanctuary now has lighting Nemesis's bus seems to have re-developed wind. Sub Terra now has lighting in the queue line Log flumes lights have been fixed and are now on. OOOO we have coloured lighting And the path to the car park has also gained lights. Finally, the hated ones are congregating in the overflow bus park, plotting their destruction of all mood though-out the park.

That day will probably be packed if previous years are anything to go by.

The mine was about 15 or so minutes drive from Betws Y Coed, but the meeting point was much closer, a few minutes out of the village.

Tired doesn't really cut the cheese when it comes to describing my state on Sunday 6th October at 07:00. Let me guide you quickly through the reasons why I was so tired. Firstly there was Friday, a day that started for me around 3:30am with me leaving the house at 5:45am and then this happened http://live.thorpenerd.com So after that I drifted off to sleep in a Travelodge at the end of a runway at Britains busiest airport back aching like a pitbull in a tutu. Till I woke myself up at 5am snoring. Saturday was here and I was awake, listening to Rob gently snore to himself. I lay there, trying to mentally mend my back by sending my internal repair nanobots to that area (I assume humans have these). 7am drifted around and I came to the conclusion that my nanobots were defective, or busy too trying to mend my brain. So got out the iPad and sat playing civ till Morgan awoke. Ahh one min, I was briefly describing wasn't I, sorry. OK so we headed off to Chessington World of Not Working Effects In Zufari and did a few rides there. I was pleasantly impressed with the theming at Chessington (or CWONWEIZ <in German accent> as I think it should be known from now onwards). The nerds enjoyed the Dodgems though. and the Nerds liked the start of Zufari Midday came and it was time for us to meet the rest of the nerds at Thorpe. Saturday was fun. We did rather a lot of mazes, many many of them. I didn't loose my temper with any short fat men who were trying to abuse the poor defenseless zombie miners at all. No that was someone else with a goatie. So we had an excellent day and lots of laughs, saw a man chunder and visited the control room for Cabin in the woods and even formed a rock band, though our lead vocalists version of Barbie girl was worrying. So we left the park at 10:38 (10 minutes after a certain Golf GTI did) and headed up the motorway, stopping at least twice, dropping off at two locations and still got to Coasters house only a few moments after that certain Golf GTI got there. This proves, without a doubt, that Dacia Sandero's are better cars than Golf GTI's. ...And with that bombshell it was suddenly 02:23 and I was feeding my kitties, who both told me off for being away. That is why I was a little on the tired as we sped into the beautiful Wales, and in the morning sunlight it was astounding. I am told its always like this near Snowden. By the way, welsh trains aren't quite as modern as their English counterparts. So eventually we arrive at our destination - Go Below. My two cohorts on this adventure and myself donned our safety gear and then posed for this photo. As you can see, my mate Ade was protecting the wrong head with his helmet. this was remedied by the instructor. The rest of our partied also donned their protective gear. and we headed off in a landrover, where we played corners all the way to the bottom of a hill. This was no ordinary hill. It was a top secret mine ladened hill with really cool bits like this. This section, back in times even before I was born, used to have rails going up them and mine carts taking slate down from the mine. We then went through an eerie Forrest, as we walked our guide (the lady at the front) told us tales about how miners got their faces smeared off when they rode mine cars down 'inclines' inside the mine and forgot about the height of the tunnels. Actually some of the trees were even eerier than those. Just think how good Blair Witch would have been if it was here. So after about a 30 minute hike we get to the entrance of the mine. That small hole is what you have to squeeze through to get in. You head off down into the mine. Deeper and deeper into the darkness, a glance back to the entrance makes you realise that you are now entering the underworld. Yes that is reflections of water you see in that photo. Most of the mine was under a small amount of water, which is why we all were given wellies. And deeper into the underworld we went. That small dot in the centre is the same outside that you saw above. It was at this moment I thought that My Bloody Valentine, in this, would be sooooooo scary. By the way, the brightness in these photos are the flash of my camera. My camera also has a problem where it doesn't flash a cone in the centre at the bottom of the picture. And still we went further into the mine. Eventually we came to our first activity event. Here, as with all of the activities, you had the choice of 2 paths. The easy path, in this case a small zip line, or the hard path, that ropes coarse on the right of the picture. Here youc an spot my mate Ade doing the wussy easy zip line. I would like to point out that the water you see there is about 400ft deep and clear. I had the problem that a lot of the photos that I took inside the mine came out blurred or too dark. Following this we went to a room and did a virtical climb of about 30ft followed by either an abseil (easy route) or a ropes course and a longer abseil. In this piccy you see me doing the ropes coarse just prior to the abseil. We then stopped off for a bit of food and a well deserved rest in quite a large cavern. Following the rest we encountered this. This is an indoor river. which we actually walked up. I really enjoyed this, the sound in the place was brilliant. Constant rushing water with echoey voices. After about 20 minutes of walking up this river we came to a floor of the mine where we were told to go explore. This was quite cool as you could go off totally on your own, into the pitch blackness of the mine and discover things like this ancient ladder or this space invader thing or this water filled cavern The final activity inside the mine was to escape. This involved an 80ft climb up one of the air shafts 80ft doesn't sound much but it was quite a climb for someone as unfit as me. Here you see Chris exiting through the small hole at the top of the air shaft, being helped out by one of our guides (Erica) Finally we had a 40 minute walk back to the Landrovers past the uber cool derelict structures of the slate mine So what did I think of the whole experience. It was totally fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a bit expensive, at 50 quid a head, but still it was one hell of a good day out. I would like to thank Miles and Erica for being excellent tour guides and keeping us safe, and an extra thanks to Erica for all the background info and gruesome stories and allowing us to play corners. I'm going to leave you with a link to their website. Go have a go. its fun. http://www.go-below.co.uk/ All images ©2013 Me and my mate Ade

Sorry guys, I am already completely booked up for December

OK construction update for Scarefest. The cordoned off area in fountain square is open but there's 2 of these mini cordoned off areas: Inside is this. I think this will be mini cordoned off areas for lighting stacks. Lighting has now appeared before the Towers Carnival! More work is going on here There was a lot of banging from goalstriker Closer look at those figures again At the other side of those vans is this and this Zombie! Well I didn't expect this! It seems the Zombie Scare Zone this year is the Zombie Xmas Zone There are LOTS of pressies for all (like death) Looking up past the bus we get more of the old style theming I walked round to the other side and was greeted by this. Towers really don't want people looking in, every hole is plugged. Except that hole at the bottom. When you photograph through it you get... WTF is THAT? It looks like its out of Mad Max! I need to get a vantage point on this I think. Oh Skyride, come hither! Ooh Pumpkins, I love Pumpkins. Oooh Army Tent. I love Army Tents And finally the speaker above sanctuary entrance that last week wasn't there, is back this week.

So pics from yesterday, ok I admit, most of the pics are scarefest construction pics. https://plus.google.com/photos/106418309379254557984/albums/5928912652201789153?authkey=CLvOh5Xehfb2yQE Lovely meeting people. Lovely day. Even though I now realise that I'm not 18 any more. Struggling with energy this morning. Day 2 pics added to same gallery Thanks for a cool weekend guys. Sorry I was so whacked on Sunday.