JackR

I think that would work very well. Being tormented by a load of injured civilians and crazy people, and shouted at by the military, lots of flashing lights and devastation before walking into an area with a crashed aircraft and a Church with its roof ripped off. Aliens soaring over head and smoke/fire alongside The Swarm sound. I could see it working very well indeed actually. Something I would love to see, but I doubt it would deliver much in the way of scares. At the most, it would probably be on par with the Zombie scarezone at Alton and seeing its a new attraction, next to a new attraction at the busiest time of the year, traffic would most likely be a nightmare too. I think either Se7en or The Curse should go and be replaced with a solid maze without any gimmicks. We have E10 for this unique experience, and Asylum for hardcore thrills so a maze with a great atmosphere and scares that exceed the likes of The Curse/Se7en would be great IMO.

I know Thorpe already have Rush, but what would you guys think of a ride like Pandemonium at Drayton? After a couple of rides on it I decided that it's pretty fun and unlike Rush, the swings seem to be more 'powered' where as the ones on Rush seem a lot more free moving if you know what I mean? Any way, I would like to see a Pandemonium join Thorpe's wide array of flats. What do you lot think?

Same! The first room always gets me for some reason... I doubt Se7en would be able to be relocated anywhere though. There is no area on park big enough to accommodate its massive footprint other than the arena (already taken) and where it is on the beach right now. If that end of the park was needed for 2013 development, Se7en would have to go because it very much relies on the rooms and the corridors of X:NWO would not be able to house those (unless the interior has been changed around quite a bit?). Having said that, I doubt the pool would be closed off because The Swarm and Depth Charge are behind it and there is no way their new attraction would be out of action at the busiest time of the year. I place my bets on either a new attraction in the place of Hellgate or The Curse going to be replaced by something else.

*Blows away dust* I know Fright Nights is still over half a year away but I couldn't help getting worked up over it for some reason. Anyway, I found this on the FN section of Thorpes website. It has been updated since last year, so unless they are talking about The Swarm, could there be yet another Fright Nights maze on the cards for this year?

They started retracking when I was there, I got a quick photo which I may upload later on. The workers were smilling and waving as the train went past the part they were working on and I thought that was one of those little things you would only find in Disney. Shame I didn't get to ride it because I seem to remember horrendous queues on previous visits and February saw the park empty.

Ohhh, I had no idea about the Krake show. I was posting pictures of the maze signage too. I think it's already open. In one of the pictures you can see there is a split where you can chose between 'Krake' and 'Krake lebt!' (2nd from last in my post). Signage for Krake Lebt! When it was being put together a while back. Credit to Theme Park Review

Sorry for the double post, but in other news... I didn't realize Heide were having a Krake show? Hopefully the Leviathan tunnel will be up to the standard of Krake's even though it's Cedar Fair. Credit to Theme Park Review

Straight from CW's Facebook page. I wonder if they theme it?

Onride video? (Credit to PAC)

I was there earlier and met up with a group of girls I know. They all got on Rumba without being turned away and said they didn't even see a sign at the entrance! Not sure whats really going on here now, but it seems some teens can still get on the ride despite the restriction.

Right, I'm gunna have a full review of my day up either tonight or pretty soon but something happened today that I have never seen at Thorpe before and doubt I will see again. I was in the queue for Depth Charge and was on the final turn before climbing the last set of stairs. There was a hollowed out square support type thing connecting to the very right hand slide. My friend said ''hmmmm I wonder what is in that pipe thing?'' and I looked in just to examine. In the hollowed out support was a live pigeon sitting there! I guess it's not that amazing and it probably nestle in a peaceful place to end its life, but I though it could be a serious issue if it was to fly out. Imagine if the pigeon was fully health, which it could have been, and flew out at some point where a little child was queuing. I'm sure a pigeon fluttering around in that fairly enclosed space would make a bit of a kerfuffle amongts the younger children waiting for their ride. I did take a photo which I will put up later but I didn't use the flash as I thought it would either irritate the pigeon, or be cruel to it so the picture is merely a black square with a darker shape in the middle. You can kind of make it out though. Seems very peculiar though.

Firstly, I didn't mean to be having a dig at your argument in case it came across that way But yeah, I totally agree with what story you would be more shocked about, it just seems that either way Thorpe deal with this, the press are able to make it look bad. I'm sure there are no H&S issues as they would stop the ride from operating at all, so I still think there is better ways of dealing with this. Of course as you also said, we don't know the full story so there may be things we are not aware of that need to be taken into account.

But surely Thorpe should have seen this issue before hand and catered to it accordingly without having to stop teenagers riding? What I mean is, Thorpe have invested in a ride with water, free moving cars and lots of hard landscaping eg. rocks.Surely they must have saw through all this and realised that eventually, somebody would be stupid enough to muck around on the ride. There can't be any safety issues involved otherwise nobody would be allowed to ride and I still don't get why the park seems to think adults and children are not capable of standing up too and mucking around too. It's almost as stupid as saying, well we have announcements on Colossus saying ''don't stick your arms or legs out of the carriage'' but some teenagers have done it anyway so we will stop them all from riding to reduce the chances of it happening again. Considering the parks target audience is teenagers and young adults, I don't see the point in keeping Rumba if this rule stays enforced for a long time... EDIT: But surely if the papers got hold of this and made a headline along the lines of: 'Surrey theme park stop teenagers from boarding their ride' it would work in the exact same way? As you said, it is very much down to the way a story is reported, but if somebody was to read that and think 'urgh, this park seems to discriminate against my age group and obviously don't care about the fact that we are paying customers...' then they might not go to Thorpe either. I agree with the statement that it is a lose/lose situation for the park, but surely there are better ways of handling the situation.

Progress on Shambhala is great! The station and splashdown are almost completely themed. The Skyline also looks fantastic! Credit to the member 'Kebab' from CoasterForce.

Banned for supporting a team with Wooden seats in their Stadium

I spent roughly 2 hours in the queue at about mid day? I heard after that the times got less and less? Now for my trip report of my visit on the 11th April: After arriving to Thorpe Park a bit later than expected (missed my first train) some mates and I got ready to enter the annual pass queue. All but one already had our APs which meant everyone except me left my mate to get his pass alone. After 50 minutes in the queue, my friend finally had his AP and whilst I was waiting for him, I had a nice chat with the lady in the office about employment benefits at Thorpe. Even though the queue was extremely long, I could see staff were trying their best to get passes sorted out as quickly as possible and the woman I spoke to was very polite. The first thing I noticed as I entered the park was that the grass to the right of the bridge was being cut. I didn't get a picture, but its nice to see the park taking care of one of their only green spaces. The old entrance/exit music was playing in and out of the park at closing time but that's another story. Especially so early on in the season! We headed straight to Inferno which had a 20 minute advertised time and 30 minutes into the queue, it broke down. I did manage to get a couple of snaps in the extension queue however. As many times as I have been on Nemesis, I've never properly taken into account it passes under the brake run like this... We then headed over to The Swarm to be welcomed with a 100 minute wait. By now me and my friend had met up with the rest of our group and we entered the queue trying to face the long wait as best as possible. To be honest, it wasn't actually that bad and the time passed pretty quickly, I also got some photos of the area in general. That incline loop is pretty dang huge in most photographs... Tall Church tower is tall. Some lovely vandalism for our brand new £20million B&M coaster... I think we can all guess what Rob Alveyy would be saying right now... My ride on The Swarm was rather intense for the inside left seat,row 2. I thoroughly enjoyed it and all my mates came off smiling. I might put up a personal review/in depth review on Monday when I visit again and will hopefully be less busy. After a Burger King and a ride on Slammer and Loggers Leap, we headed to Saw:Alive. In one word it was ****. I don't know If I'm constantly unlucky with that maze but during none of my visits to horror experiences have I experienced such a shocking performance from the actors. They lacked in decent scares and originality so I consider myself lucky I didn't have to wait anymore than 5 minutes to get on. We then went on Colossus where I fell through one of the gates in the queueline. Luckily I didn't hit the floor but I stumbled through onto the grass! The ride was not rough at all and I didn't find leg room much of an issue. Probably one of my favorite rides of the day. I also bumped into Ricky whilst he was working at the Fasttrack/Main queue split which was a lovely touch to my day. I then headed back home with a ride count of 5 in 8 hours and fairly dry from the decent weather. The park was nice and tidy and my experience there was very enjoyable, only thing I would say is that throughput needs to be sorted out! I know it is very busy at Easter time but if there is any way to cut queue times for other peak periods the Thorpe need to do so! Hopefully I will enjoy my experience at Thorpe on Monday a bit more where I may post up another review. I'd rate my day 6/10, thanks a lot for reading!

Here is the picture: As bought up over on TTF, should be interesting to see where all the things stored in the Black Hole tent will go, and I also wonder where they were relocated to when CoS and BH were housed in the tent last October?

Well one thing we know for certain is that CoS and The Boiler House will no longer be in The Black Hole tent for Scarefest. I wonder if they will be relocated on park or back into that field again? EDIT: Save me from double posting, here is a quote from Gerstlauer: A Eurofighter being built in Texas is to feature lap bars on Eurofighter cars, so is there any reason why SW7 wouldn't too?

I noticed a bucket collecting oily, grime stuff as it dripped from the big silver cylinders (are they the air pressure tanks? I'm no engineering genius guy) yesterday. Needless to say the bucket was about 2/3 full and this was at about 4:00pm. I doubt it is supposed to leak so I'm guessing the dripping is a minor problem too?

Still waiting for them to be approved. They should be around by the end of the Easter Holidays though apparently.

I'd laugh if this just turned out to be one of Thorpe's crappy attempts at a PR...

Well hang on a second, what if a 14 year old who looked like a 12 year old was with his family and Thorpe had no way of proving he was over 12. Or the other way around, what if a child with his family was under 12 but Thorpe turned them all away because they had reason to believe the child was above the age limit? Obviously you could have your ticket or a form of ID but I'm not sure how many people keep hold of their ticket beyond the gate (I'm not sure if you even get it back after the turnstiles, I've had a Merlin Pass since I was 11.) Or how many 12 year olds have ID other than their passports, which I highly doubt they would bring to Thorpe Park! Whilst the restriction is obviously necessary, it does have its flaws...

LOTS of Shambhalalalalalalal photos here. Credit to a few Coaster Force users, you can see the rest of the photos in the Shabhala thread over there. Splashdown We can see there is going to be a lot of willy lift there... That first hill... Splashdown looks a bit short IMO. Lovely station themeing. Kinda remins me of the pictures of The Swarm taken behind the trees swooping round the inclined loop when it was testing. Looks like the 'Dum Dum' character who 'wants gum gum' in Night of the Museum. The size of that turnaround TRIM. Let the complaining and comments that the ride is now ruined start here... I'm sure pictures cannot do this view in real life justice. Lovley turn around/station here... And last but not least, some lovely lift hill porn.

Banned for having a poll dancing *kidney bean as his avatar.

Banned for having a poll dancing chicken as his avatar.