Dodge2002

https://www.thorpepark.com/12p-ticket Interesting update on the 12p tickets. Looks like you'll just be submitting a form on a first come first serve basis and if you're successful you get emailed a voucher code to use whenever you wish to pay, which will stop this from overloading the site.

I think the problem is not necessarily that having Actors always ends badly, but more that the attractions which the actors are part of are always a flop. IAC, Saw Alive, Sub-terra and Non-Scarefest Sanctuary are all seen as failures regardless of whether they have actors inside or not. One would hope a High year investment won't crash and burn as badly as Sub-terra did, for example. Plus its easy to look at all these negatives, however Fright Nights, The Dungeons, Shrek and Scarefest are all successful attractions, and plod along nicely without having their actors cut. There will always be the odd story of walking through a maze empty, because that's an unfortunate downfall to the logistics of actor led experiences. Hiring 2 teams of people to staff one maze to cover breaks just isn't economical.

I know this is heading off topic but I'm pretty sure the only reason Saw's queue had actors was because when Saw Alive had its fire they had no other place to put the actors.

If the VR section supposedly is in the train iteself, and said train is suspended by just a few chains, then how are they going to hide the 60+ hefty thick Vive wires that will need to feed off to the computer running the VR scene? Even if they managed to house it inside the carriage itself they'd still need a hefty power supply leading in to it somehow.

Something interesting I've noticed, is that especially with the Vives extortionate price tag, a lot of gamers have said this ride will likely be their best chance of ever getting to experience VR. It seems like the buzz from gaming and tech enthusiasts alone could draw in big crowds.

Penn and Teller are 60 and 68 respectively and that doesn't seem to be stopping them...

How is that any different from say B&M building their first ever dive coaster though? The hardware may look the same but there's a whole world of unseen untested software running every new ride. If anything they'll be less likely to fail, they've had almost 2 years of beta testing to get it right.

Can you blame them for being cautious with their marketing after The Smiler's opening blunder? My guess is that the Vive headsets may be holding up the launch. It's just been announced that the retail version will be available from April 1st, and unless Thorpe are working really close with HTC, which I doubt based on the lack of endorsement so far, then they probably only have one dev kit to work with until they go into mass production.

At the end of the day, summer nights' success was always hinged on the weather which surely Thorpe would've known is too unpredictable in the UK to guarantee a profitable event. Chances are it was always just a research exercise, and they've now finished collecting whatever data it was that they wanted. My guess would be that they either wanted to decipher just how much not having to queue would affect satisfaction levels, or they were exploring the infrastructure implications of an after hours event.

If you think you're annoyed, take a minute to think of the poor person that spent hours of their time painstakingly creating these clever clues, only to find out noone can could be bothered to solve them, and they had to go and give the answers away instead.

Given its proximity, chances are this might be exclusive to hotel guests? If that is the case it would make a great addition if they lower the price. The queue was a needed addition too IMO, as even with timed entrances it ended up in big groups blocking the walkways, especially when it broke down etc.

As for the live actors, if they were planning this ride back in 2012-13, then how were they supposed to know that actor led experiences were to turn out to be a flop? IAC probably hadn't hit the drawing board yet, sub-terra showed much promise, Saw Alive was generally a success in its first two seasons, and fright nights had hit its peak. If anything I reckon the original plans had a lot more actor roles, but they now have scaled it back.

Perhaps they meant AR and not VR? Also Vive was only announced in 2014, and the original plans supposedly were drawn up in 2013. No way would they have started working on the ride without having their supplier in place already. Whether its AR or not, the fact they picked HTC just doesn't seem realistic to me...

He may not be the all out creator, but he's a smart man. He wouldn't put his name to something that he didn't think they could pull off. If anything the contract he signed was probably a lot like the one that lionsgate supposedly signed, where it was agreed the majority of effects must be maintained and active. And that's a good thing. By Merlin's standards Saw has some of the most consistent an well maintained effects in the country. Then compare it to the smiler where the projectors didn't last a whole season, the mist on the first drop disappeared quickly, and half the marmaliser is already broke. I think this is more than him just slapping his name on a ready-made ride. It just isn't his style...

If there is an element of "hypnotism" for a story telling point of view, I'm willing to bet we'll see something like the marmaliser scene from The Sanctuary. It was a very poignant scene and conveyed what they were trying to get at very well, and could be expanded upon quite a bit to make a great pre show. They could do a lot more with a permanent installation too!

Would they really use scaffolding for a repaint? Surely a crane would be more economical, considering how little time it would take to paint and how long it would take to erect and dismantle it along the track.

With the amount that it costs to produce High quality adverts they're not gonna blow a bomb just on some silly Facebook video. The quality of this clip is just fine for a small Facebook teaser. It's not like it'll be airing in tv or anything.

The thing that always baffled me was how you can be 50ft+ up in the air on a log flume without a harness or any restraint. And yet you can't sit solo on X because theres an outside chance you might be a size 0 contortionist that may somehow wiggle out.

I'd really like them to push forward with the planning for a bricks and concrete hotel next year. The shark hotel has proven more than adequately that the park deserves one. I really can't see how else Merlin expect the park to push for growth, if they're insistent on not taking away from Chessington's family market. If they develop a hotel around year-round entertainment like their club nights etc. then they could really start pushing forward after what have been quite a few stagnant years, in my opinion.

I know it sounds stupid, but I love that Merlin choose to use brickwork on the ground around all their new attractions rather than tarmac or concrete. I can't stand the cracked and worn slabs of concrete that some of the bigger parks use!

There was a point this year where it said the park was closed throughout fright nights. I'm pretty sure it's common for them to say the park is randomly closed on certain days while they finalize opening hours. I wouldn't take that to mean definite mid-week closures, even if there is a possibility of it. If I was an investor that that just lumped a huge amount of cash into wc16, that wouldn't give me a whole lot of confidence about the success of their newest addition though...

I'm pretty sure the only words first about this ride will be in regards to its theme. Just like they seem to think Saw and IAC are world's firsts.

Whatever happened to Vekoma and their Pandora's Box hardware? It basically looked like a poor mans robocoaster from the concepts. I know its not likely, but they could have revived this concept specially for Merlin?

One of the reasons I found sub species so enjoyable vs. Any of the other mazes is because the actors interacted with YOU. Not the group, but you as an individual. And its not even like it's generic comments either, one of the actors grabbed my arm which had a charity wristband on and said "oh charitable are we? Why don't you donate me your organs". Stuff like this is what really make or breaks a maze for me.

The original X10 was probably one of the best mazes Thorpe produced. I think it proved that you don't necessarily need a lot of room to create a decent length, story(ish) driven maze. I'm still surprised as to why Thorpe scrapped the isolation rooms when converting it to MBV. For me, one of the most disappointing aspects of the big top is that its just a vanilla walk through. I think in this rare instance there's nothing wrong with a gimmick or two, as the event is short enough for it to not lose its appeal. Other than theme, what exactly does the big top offer me that any other maze can't?