Dodge2002

Am I right in thinking, The Smiler's queue line ended up looking absolutely nothing like the planning application? I have no idea what exactly, but could they potentially be trying to hide something?

To be fair, at least if they did convert it into an event arena they could re use the lighting rigs. Gotta save those pennies.

One of Thorpe's problems, is that it doesn't really have an overall park wide theme, or identity if you will, to play off of. Alton Towers obviously has the Towers, and Gothic heritage. Chessington uses the Safari aspect of things. If you look at Universal they have their movie set concept, Busch and Sea world have their wildlife themes and Disney of course has its "magic". They really need to re imagine the something like the Thorpe Park rangers. I'm not saying bring them back, because they would be far too dated. But they need to bring back something that gives the park its own identity. They can then use this identity to plan future rides.

Back on to 2015, wasn't there originally an application put in for the Shark hotel to receive an expansion year, if it was deemed necessary? Or am I getting this mixed up with the Phase 1 and 2 plan that went ahead this year? Also, do you think we're gonna get a Pizza Pasta buffet in place of Pizza Hut or will it be a much needed Full service restaurants perhaps?

Its interesting that they don't seem to want to wait for the season to end before starting work. Could all of this work taking place really not have waited the extra 2-3 weeks? I guess they really don't wanna take the risk after The Smiler fiasco.

Asylum: The Ride. That'd be a good way to give the finger to all those idiots complaining about the maze.

If they do use Screens, one thing I hope they take care of is the projection resolution. One of the only downsides to rides like Transformers and Spider Man at IOA, for me, is the fact that the image isn't scaled very well, and you can still see lines across the screen.

Just a thought, but perhaps Thorpe should also consider opening the mazes from 11am next year too.

Merlin don't have the kind of money to invest in rides that aren't going to give them anything but a major return. It seems to be easily forgotten that Merlin, believe it not, don't have some unlimited pool of cash at their disposal. They only made £130 million net profit last year, which when you consider that is split between 100 different attractions across the world, it isn't a lot at all. They're not only trying to convince us to visit, but they're also trying to convince their investors that their new ride will be worth it. I should imagine, after proven success with Saw and Cbeebies land, and lets not forget the absolutely staggering surge of custom that Fright Nights bought in this year with Lionsgate, it will be significantly easier to milk a lot more money out of their investors pockets than it would be trying to convince them that creating their own theme ala Swarm is the better path to take.

I thought the Dr. Who rumors originally stemmed from Alton Towers? It seems actually seems particularly weird if you think about it: Rumors of BBC IP started in 2011. In 2011, Cbeebies world couldn't have been on the cards, because Storybook land was supposed to become Dreamworks/Shrek Land In 2012 The Swarm opens, but "flops" in terms of footfall In 2013 The Smiler opens, after would could be easily described as a "rushed" development In 2014, Cbeebies lands opens, after Shrek land talks broke down In 2015 an entire Shrek attraction opens at County Hall in London, made by Merlin. I would also say, you guys are looking at this far too much from a "What I want" point of view. From Merlin's point of view, a Dr. Who IP, if executed well, could have monumental pulling power. There were people who would travel cross-continent just to visit a half decent Dr. Who related ride. At the end of the day, they want, and at this point, NEED a ride that will draw visitors. Not a ride that ticks a bunch of enthusiasts boxes. Think Wizarding world, but on a much smaller scale. If it does turn out to be Dr. Who, I don't think The BBC would let Merlin butcher their IP to be honest. If rumors of a £30 Million budget are true, unless they do something horribly wrong, this investment is going to be on a whole new level for Merlin. Remember, a lot of the budgets you see at Universal and Disney are spent on actual detailed buildings, not just facades in a warehouse, like we'll be getting here, and money spent on groundworks would be minimal compared to The Swarm and Saw. Personally I'm far more interested in finding out who the ride manufacturer is and what type of ride we're getting though to be honest.

I wouldn't read too much in to the "Thorpe Depot" thing. It is probably just a place holder. Merlin Magic Making have proven they can deliver pretty good set pieces and theming, and at this stage, Merlin would be absolute idiots to cut corners after the flop with The Swarm, and the issues with The Smiler. Probably one of the best things about Merlin is that they don't seem to have actually slashed any budgets as far as rides are concerned, and generally with planning permissions, what you see is what you get.

It seems totally bizarre to me that they would remove all of these attractions, when there is a huge chunk of land sitting behind THE SWARM waiting to be used. Of course the land behind The swarm is smaller, but what could they possibly be putting in that would take up that much land space? Even if it were a darkride, surely with a Merlin budget we're not talking about anything bigger than X's footprint? Nevertheless, there's no doubt about it, that there is a big development brewing, its just a matter of time before solid details start to trickle out! Exciting!

It's blocking it because its copyrighted I think? If its the track below, that was still playing when I visited a few weeks ago? Its part of a Saw soundtrack loop though, although I couldn't tell you what the other tracks included are. Unless of course they've changed it since.

How long did the Saw and Swarm islands have to sit before they could be built on? Isn't there still another few years to go until the land behind The Swarm is actually usable? They only finished work on infilling it at the start of this year I believe.

I do like a lot of their work, but the problem with most of IMAscore's music, is that while it is great to listen to while sat at home, it is not great to listen to stood in a queue on repeat for 2 hours. The Smiler's score is far too over the top in my opinion, considering you have to listen to it on repeat over an over. I'd say Air is the prefect example of good queue line music. Its ambient, it fits the ride, you can talk over, and it fades into the background. As I said though, don't get me wrong, their compositions are amazing in their own right. There are a lot of conclusive studies out there about how different tones, tempos and beats of music can affect your mood, to make you buy more things, feel like you've waited a shorter amount of time than you have, give you adrenaline etc. It would be interesting to know whether Merlin, IMAscore and the Theme park industry as a whole actually put this into practice.

I could be playing devils advocate here, but after visiting the Towers yesterday, and witnessing how smoothly their whole Scarefest was in comparison to Fright Nights, perhaps its time they should experiment with making their mazes an up charge attraction. I would happily pay £15 or so for the whole bunch of them, if it helped with their atrocious queuing problems.

The rain actually caused a fair bit of drama last night. Someone broke their back running out of Saw Alive, they slipped just on the exit bridge I think. We saw them being taken away in a stretcher and everything, it was terrible. We overheard a maze host saying to another member of staff that MBV was leaking in 3 different places apparently. They were sending everyone down the right hand route when we went in so I'd guess one of the leaks was in there. Finally right at the end of the night we heard a group of staff talking about *something* being wrong with Studio 13, although we couldn't quite make out what. The Blair witch was open most of the night, but I think because it was deserted it just looked closed. We actually managed to go through with just the two of us and it was amazing!

Building a whole new building seems like a highly inefficient way of doing that though. They could easily convert the Calypso BBQ into a full service restaurant. Also, keep in mind Pizza Hut is being booted out at the end of this year too, so if they were that desperate, they could turn it into an actual restaurant rather than a Pizza Pasta buffet. They have more than enough food outlets for it to not matter if they lost one.

If Thorpe are really gonna start taking their events seriously (which they clearly are with the amount of entertainment they hosted this year) its about time they erected a permanent stage. If they can start hosting bigger and better concerts, it could become a massive source of revenue for them and also increase hotel occupancy. I know its not the most exciting thing in the world for enthusiasts, but its something that I think is important for the parks sustainability in the long run.

Something about Inferno really owes to being ridden in the dark in my opinion. Every memory I've ever had of riding it in the dark has been amazing.

Wow talk about mixed reviews hahaha.

Going back to the music, like I said there's every chance it was merely a place holder piece while they wait for the actual track to be commissioned/decided upon. As for RnR, I really think Thorpe's heart is in the right place with this system, and its important to realise the "perfect" system doesn't exist yet because it still lacks extensive testing. Thorpe aren't stupid, if they really believed the system worked and worked well, they would have rolled it out all day every day by now. For the time being though, they're just collecting crucial data for its evolution. The crux of it is that Queue times are absolutely crippling the park when it hits peak, and while we can go all blue sky and talk about how they should invest in more cars, staff and maintenance, the reality is Merlin can't and won't give them that sort of budget. Its easy to sit in an office and go "Yup lets make virtual queue lines with these rules." but until its put into practice no one will ever know how well its going to work. We're not talking about building a roller coaster here, where the laws of physics tell you what can and cannot be done, we're talking about something that has high psychological implications, masses of fluctuation and great levels of unpredictability. In my opinion - It's going to take a while for them to come up with a system that works, but they need to start with it somewhere.

It was this track

Just to put things back on topic, a few fright nights updates from my visit yesterday. There were a LOT of actors mulling around and presumably doing dress rehearsals yesterday. Some of you will be happy/unhappy to hear it seems like the Chainsaw finale is definitely coming back for Studio 13, at least that's judging by the loud chainsaw noises you could hear coming from the exit of the maze. Also interestingly, you could just about make out the old Asylum theme playing inside. Whether this was just a placeholder track or not though is yet to be seen. Moving to TBWP, we saw them doing what I would guess was a test run with some staff while exiting Inferno. From what we could see of it, the ending was way more intense, and I would guess the acting through the whole attraction, was much more full on rather than the passive lurking in the shadows type we saw last year. I could hear a LOT of screaming coming from the actors while they were in the hut, although obviously I couldn't say what was actually going on. Not much to say about MBV/Saw other than they just started putting up the fencing today for MBV. And also I'm sure its nothing, but bizarrely the sign board for Cabin In the woods was placed up on the fence where The Aslyum/Studio 13 entrance should be. Have Thorpe just made a stupid mistake here I wonder? And again maybe reading too much in to it, but there was a distinct smell of "construction" (I.e fresh fiber board/paint etc) in the air while walking through X's queue, so I don't know whether maybe this means they're adding some elements to CiTW or not. Outside of that there was a Scruffy Dog van (the theming company) parked outside the Shark hotel, not sure whether that just happens to be where they're park, or if perhaps they're doing some work on the rooms? No idea there. 1 Day left!

The Curse was amazing in its last year in my opinion, the fog was so thick you literally couldn't see in front of you. The only problem I have with the IP mazes, is that the links to their movies don't really add much to the table that Thorpe wouldn't have thought up themselves. The fact Cabin in the woods is a free flow "illusion of choice" maze has nothing to do with the IP, I have no doubt that eventually that concept would have made its way in to the park either way. Likewise, nothing specifically about TBWP IP made Thorpe Park go "Ohhh lets put a glorified scare zone down the side of the park." I don't begrudge Thorpe for not having Universal style theming, because its never going to be in their budget range, however, the theming that is present is still terribly generic, and I don't really believe (outside of Saw Alive, which to this day I think is one of the best themed attractions in the country) "Oh I'm really part of this movie!" at any point. In essence they're just there for their brand power. These mazes would have eventually made their way in to the park in some form had they not signed the Lionsgate deal.