stretchy

Maximum number of dedicated fast tracks sold currently have been 40 per hour not 200. You can also access Smiler on some of the unlimited fast passes but the sale of those is seriously limited. Throughput is circa 1200 on an average session according to ride staff, raising to 1300 if swift dispatch.

I'm planning on getting to the park around 11 ish, possably later with traffic (we're leaving Stoke at around 8:30 am).

I'll play assuming I am not at the pub

Whilst I wasn't at the concert, on Saturday, I was on park to endure the longest queues of the season so far (I think). and I did take some photos, mainly from behind the stage area. firstly the stage area from ths skyride, Blurriness is due to the sky ride glass. The humongous queue Somebody famous I assume Nice bike Cool boxes (this is what the famous people arrive in. some assembly is required allegedly. Some screaming fans that were allowed back stage were extremely disappointed when they realised Motorhead weren't playing. Testing Testing 1 2 3 Roadies for Drizzle Di**s could actually play.. ... .. at least 2 notes anyway. Famos people still being interviewed some of the entourage for the famous people (or maybe these are famous people too) (I was really jealous of the black dudes huge....... .... .... {answers on a postcard} Some free range famous people More free range famous people Reason why free range people were leaving the Smiler was that Lee was evacuating the ride https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-SZyYk_bpHq4/Udh4MpH2MOI/AAAAAAAAJAc/c9mk0HuObkg/w1396-h1047-no/P1070381.JPG Odly enough the crowd looked really small from the stage side, well its understandable, have you watched X factor? No nor me. Huge queue now cleared leaving a swath of excess litter. My one real criticism was the slowness to get this cleaned. This image was taken over an hour after the queue had cleared. Maybe famous people, I started loosing interest in asking who was and wasn't famous near this time. Maybe famous? One of them didd take his shirt off so must be famous. Waving famous people. Bloke at back realises he should be waving. He needs work on his being famous skills. Real instruments being removed from the stage when they realised they weren't needed for backing tapes (oh and those famous people again) The new park entrance was being guarded by Shaun Is this guy famous? He had a camera to record his ride. Some famous people that we turfed off the Smiler. Allegedly that is Drizzle **cks (who had just been ordered to remove his R hat) and Onion J.. All I am going to say is all these B***dy Que Jumpers need evicting from the park. This guy is so famous that have to keep him famous. Urm not sure what these guys were doing but people with that expression are normally on their knees. Maybe they were practising. More famous people. Crowds still look smallish from this side And I will leave you with a picture of the most famous beings I saw. The Ducks, These were so famous they were surrounded by sparkling lights.

Can I point out some things that some people may not be aware of. Smiler is NOT a eurofighter. It is a prototype coaster. The actual ride systems for The Smiler is totally new. The ride actually weighs every car and adjusts f**s around the ride to make sure that the ride reaches its high points at a specific speed no matter the amount of unlimited piza consumed by the riders. At various points around the ride the weight is re-measured The valleying is caused by it miscalculating the weight and the effects of the f**s. The ride uses a totally new type of anti rollback which is extremely cool to watch (even though nobody notices it.) F**S decend just before cars go over them as they go up the lift hill and raise just afterwards. The idea is that even with a total power failure, cars can be gently backed down the lift hills. The cars for the smiler are a totally new design and not eurofighter cars re-configured. In the few weeks the ride has been open they have used all of Gerst's stock of 1 particular component which keeps failing. This is what I hear todays outage was caused by. Gerst have restocked this item twice since it opened that I know about which shows you how frequently it is failing. Car 5 is now back from Germany - totally rebuilt after it was removed from the track in the first valley after the ride opened. (This is the car people saw on the back of a wagon.) Last saturdays lift stall was the first catastrophophic fault. Gerst didnt know what caused it but think it was a faulty sensor. When the system reset all lights were then green. You need to see the control both.

ok bit of a bizarre post this. Some friends of mine are going to Towers Tomorrow and they asked me if I could knock up some 'themed name badges'. I asked Marc if he thought you guys would be interested and he said post it here. So feel free to grab use or ignore them (they look much better printed as they look a bit too bright on a normal screen). filled out they look something like

Yes The Smiler had issues today, it was out of action for exactly 1.5 hours but was back working by 13:30 when we arrived on park. Animated gif for you, sorry its not very vertical.

A couple of photos I took on Thursday, sorry there weren't that many of them I quickly realised that walking stick, bag, drinks capsule and camera just didn't work. I need either more hands or a team of slaves to answer my every whim. https://plus.google.com/photos/106418309379254557984/albums/5894971167515949089?authkey=CKT_-of6oaCm9AE BTW My favorite picture has to be Han and her expression on the flume. (I hear that Han will be selling her exclusively designed 'Hanhat' for £25 at leading retailers in the near future)

I had a brilliant day and apologise for not being my usual over hyperactive self. I loved nattering to people and felt like I spent the whole day talking to new people. I am sure that I have made a lot of new friends, even though I do feel that I accidentally failed in talking to a lot of people that I already new. It is also a shame that most of the meet missed me terrifying the poor girl working in the hot dog stall who nearly had a heart attack. The track walk was awesome. I have never done something like that before and you don't believe how much I enjoyed it. It's weird how just something as simple as standing beneath the track or walking through the tunnel can be so cool. Thorpe did a wonderful job sorting this out for us and I cant thank them enough for it, and even though it was tipping it down as we left the park, I was on an uber high. Once again, Thanks so much for inviting us, it was excellent.

Yup a spider-man style ride was something else that has been mentioned numerous times purely because JW has said on numerous occasions that if there is one ride he would like to do, its a UK spiderman.

My problem with the Air Carpark is that the park is just growing towards the Hotels and if they keep doing that it will beome even more unballanced. I do think the car parks will be used, but I think this will be for a down town experience rather than a coaster. Can I throw a spanner or two into the works. Look at the distribution of rides per area. Xsecor - 2 coasters Forbidden Valley - 2 coasters Uggland/Dark Forrest - 2 coasters Katanya Canion - 1 coaster Farmyard/Adventureland - 1 coaster (spinball) Merry England/pirateland - 0 coasters Towers Street - 0 coasters Cloud Cuckoo Land - 0 coasters Next year, I hear Towers are getting a retheme of the farmyard and spinball area. There are alot of runours that Spinball might be already sold/promised to another park. Maybe this retheme is going to reshape that area completely and maybe we will see a new area arriving which will maybe leave space for a new SW? There were also, a few years ago, rumours that one of the future SW's wasnt going to be a coaster. I think this sparked from a question asked to JW himself who said a SW dsoesnt have to be a coaster.

I have ridden all of the rides listed and though Smiler is in number 2 position, Nemmy is still my favourite. I am starting to think that Nemesis on the front left or front right seats just cant be beaten.

Unfortunately James, the main problem with that scare zone was that it was way too short and not at all scary. (TN did a live feed from the 2009 event at the time we wrote the following) http://live.towersnerd.com/?event=21. One of the advantages of doing a live feed is that you get the honest reponses at the time. The longer something is ago the more scewed your memory of it becomes so ok things become brilliant and minor niggles become hates.

Glad you enjoyed The Smiler. Quite surprisingly you get the cheer of the first public train every day I have been there.

1) Open, 2) 120 minutes at 10am (but in reality it will be 60 minutes) 3) 3 trains 4) 2.5mm

We did have some extremely heavy bursts yesterday but the area doesn't drain well, There were still quite large areas of water this morning and it had only been occasionally spitting since I woke at 6.

I believe the flume replacement plans were for 2014 but are no longer on the cards. That doesnt mean they will never happen though. But SW8 is unlikely to be there even though I would love a pirate themed woodie that starts there and scoots out down the side of the park, which was also mentioned a while ago. Just think of a huge pirate ship as the station sitting on the flume lake, it would have been magnificent.

You dont need high staff levels to have an area as a scare zone. This can also be done with sound effects, lighting and triggered effects and even free roaming effects. What I think is needed is for them to think outside the box rather than just have some people going arghhhh at you as you walk near them. Imagine an area. Dimply lit, as you walk near you hear a noise of metalic spider feet. The sound follows you as you walk along and then rushes ahead. you see shadows of millions of spiders running in front of a light. you turn the corner and see a few metalic spiders projected onto barrels, skuttling down them. Then you hear a much louder skuttling behind you, you turn around and see the lights going out one by one behind you. Total cost of this would be some lighting, some timed audio through a surround sound system. a projection system to project the spiders. or Imagine another area Tomb stones line the path as mist drifts slowly from behind them. The area is dimly lit. 12hz is played through a base speaker. Whispering slowly becomes audible. A chanting that gradually get's louder, the area starts to pulstae in light and the chanting louder, seeming to spin around you till you have a all mighty scream then 10 minutes of silence before repeating. Both of those aren't expensive things to do. None of them involve live actors. Both are things that could be re-used year after year with minor tweeks and more iportantly in daylight both can be turned off or replced with just happy halloween music for the kiddywinks.

As some of you know, I am a big fan of scare attractions. Last year Alton Towers made waves with The Sanctuary winning at least one award that I am aware of, yet Thorpe are the nations thrill capital but last year it felt like Thorpe had lost the motivation with Thorpes scare mazes and the whole atmosphere around the park. The mazes felt very samey, Experiment 10 felt to me to be the only reasonable maze yet in its 2nd year, it felt lacking somewhere, The Passing didnt seem to work at all for our group lefing us more confused than hapily scared. Asylum is basically just the last section of Altons Terror of The Towers and felt way too short. The other mazes just felt.. dull. It felt to me, an outsider, like Fright Nights was a much smaller and half baked affair. What I would like to see is: Theming throughout the park, if the park is clever this could be a gradual process over a few seasons, reusing last years props and continuing to add new ones, but giving each of the ride areas £1000 and having an internal staff competition for the best area within that budget would produce some good ideas. The whole park turned into one big scare zone after 7pm with occasional 'SAFE AREAS' for you to escape to if your a wuss. (I.e. restaurants and pubs that way you have to spend money if your too scared) The mazes made more than just someone going Boo at you or screaming. The park open till much later, maybe even midnight with it advertised as something to come for just for the evening with special after 6 tickets. 1 pay maze that really really scares you. The Dome being a sefe zone and turned into a Halloween Market selling themed food and drinks and so on.

Me and whoever is in my car will also be there all day, I plan on getting there shortly before 10 but that will be traffic dependant. I've not had any PM's from Liam re lift, I still have 2 spaces in my car.

Fast Track were being sold today as a test. They will also be sold tomorrow.

By The way, If anyone wants a lift from stoke-Derby area please ask. I have some spaces in my car. I will be heading down and meeting King Nemesis somewhere at the Nottingham/derby end of the A50. Then heading down M1.

Can you put King Nemesis and Myself down for this please sir.

@holtjammy LOL re: throughput. No way is it that low. The queue is constantly moving. I would put it closer to 1200 than 600. The queue feels as swift as 13's queue does. Well guys. I rode smiler twice again today. First time it was rougher than saw. I was really shocked with how it could change over 2 days Not only did it lurch around the track but it also had one hell of a vibration.On the 2nd time it was much smoother. One further point, on Friday Morning it was much much quieter. It now has a nemesis roar I am also wondering if it is being a bit big headed and trying to threaten Nemy's prowess. I am trying to work out if it is due to certain cars or certain weights. I didn't see what car we were on at the first time, but the smoother ride for us was car 5.1. I think we need to crowd source some feedback on this. After today's rides I will back down on my statement that it was as smooth as a B&M and up there with Nemy. The first ride was comparable to Saw. The second was better but still not as smooth as Friday morning. One thing that I did see, that I hadn't noticed before, was the theming on the ceiling of the area where you hand your bags in. I'm not going to spoil it for you but it is quite a good fan based joke.

Today the Some friends and I went to the Merlin Annual Pass Preview Day at The Trafford Centre, Manchester. I have done an annotated picture review of it. The photos arent as good as my usual photos. My camera is rubbish inside. The Sea Life itself is in a section of the Trafford Park. It is pretty well hidden. It was only when I moved closer I noticed it. Inside you are greeted and pay your entrance, get your photo. Then you go into 'The Turtle Experience'. Inside you are greeted by the above lady who explains to you all about turtles, starting with that they have been around since before Dino's existed. They use projection mapping on the floor to show you a turtle. It is extremely effective. especially when the baby turtles hatch. The whole show takes only about 5 minutes but is an excellent start for the centre. I really enjoyed it. You exit this via walking through the sea (not sure why but this is the way it is and enter this amazing room. The fish are racing around the room like lights from a ballroom mirror ball. This photo is a panorama shot and is nearly 360 degrees. The rest of the sea life is pretty much a normal sea life centre. There are some cool bits like this kids mini tunnel. Which is just before the main tunnel, which is curved. There was also this ultra cool tank which had the happiest looking stingrays in it. They seemed to be playing tag one leading the 4 of them and then another, always weaving in and out of the other fish. And as with all Merlin attractions, you exit into a shop. So my overall verdict. What was there was excellent. There was only 1 tank that wasn't populated. The theming is excellent and totally immersive, even though the roof looks a bit odd, but out of the 3 of us, I was the only person to notice the roof, your eyes are drawn to the fishes constantly. Unfortunately I wonder whether it is worth the cost. We took our time and did the whole thing in 45 minutes. I think it is comparable to the neighboring Lego Land and the joint tickets make both together a much more reasonable time. What they also do, that I think would be cool, is for £2.50 +vat they do a behind the scenes tour. They also do a "Walking With Fishies" where your stuffed into a dry suite with diving mask and you actually get into the main tank with the Sharks. This is far more expensive though. Full link to the rest of my piccies https://plus.google.com/photos/106418309379254557984/albums/5884532568043167297?authkey=CMaogd7p6en0bw