SteveJ

The Bathtime sign has gone because they've installed a heavy lifting beam where it used to be, to lift boats off the ramp if necessary. Also, Bathtime everybody.

The fence prevents vandalism & children climbing, and replaces the previous awful solution of having those planters around the base. But who knows why it's blue. A decorative fence should have been there from the start really, since the tree is not the most solidly built scenery in the world. (Wild Asia is already going rotten and falling apart)

You can. In your imagination

Or are they...?

Chessington is sadly one of the worst managed parks in the already very dysfunctional Merlin empire. It deserves closer care and heart to it rather than politics and misguided decisions

That's not how Tomb, etc are powered but it likely wouldn't have been a power cut that caused those issues.

Yes, the park are going to NEVER do that. The ride is staying as it is. That was known way back. Unless someone higher up tells Chessington how terrible and awful it all looks (which they're unlikely to), the park don't see it necessary to spend on it anymore

"That awkward moment" when even the thoughtless 2006 design was better than it is now. Scary stuff

BubbleWorks had all its lighting bodged (even more) over winter when new LEDs were installed and now all scenes are randomly mixed colours pointing in different directions or just bright white. Because it's not as if lighting is an art or anything that could look amazing if done professionally

Galactica's whole operation is funded by Merlin Magic Making for its first season and so is unrelated to Alton Towers' operational budget l where all the cuts have been coming. Still silly to cut Hex though isn't it

The money saved would be from te park operations budget whereas the TLC programme is funded with cap ex I think. The park do not need to close the ride in order to save the money to spend redoing it. Hopefully hex will get the AVFX refurbishment it has long needed anyway.

Charlie is closed because the contract has run out, Hex is not relatively costly to run but still closing it will save thousands of pounds over the course of the season, and someone seems to have decided it's not important enough and so can be the sacrifice. Bah

Sub Terra is likely to not reopen anytime soon or ever, and Hex will be shut the whole season as a cost saving measure

The ents team are a lot more than just on park wandering actors, those are just the front liners . The ents team are responsible for Scarefest, on park audio and co ordination of other things. I don't believe the team were completely cut, from what I understand a lot of them walked out. The Smiler accident does not all justify many of the losses that went on behind the scenes over winter.

John has had exactly the same involvement with this as he did with everything Merlin did post-Air. ie, almost nothing, he gives advice and they barely listen. He has done the same meetings in the planning for SW8 as well.

Yes It's not a rushed in project to bring back crowds for this year, it's been a much longer term project. It's still incredibly short sighted but that's the way Merlin work as everyone knows by now. Merlin directly fund staffing and operations of new attractions for their first year or two, after that it will be handed over financially to Alton Towers' own budget again, at which point it will likely collapse operationally just like Sub Terra did once that got handed back.

The new Tomb Blaster gun system was not produced by Sally Corp.

It's scenically detailed nicely with the building shape they were given, yum yum. Can they knock down all their previous attempts to do 'the abandoned look' now that they've done it to an eye-pleasing standard?

No one remembers when they dyed it red a few years ago as well? Although it lasted a week, hopefully will be longer this time

"The expectations of theme park enthusiasts in particular are so high it amazes me. The awful look from last year has gone, an attempt has been made to make it look nicer on what's probably a budget that is minuscule and it gets nothing but derision." The budget allocated to this always was going to be low and if anything the park have scraped more to spend on this tunnel than they would have been provided with before the events of 2015 (hence there scaffold was kept there instead of a permanent structure in the first place). No one is asking the world, it's just appalling that a company that constantly prides itself on being "second to Disney" and whose priority as a business is now 'to overtake Disney within the next few years', choose not to give Alton Towers the cap ex needed to properly sort problems like this and they've really gone for the cheapest passable option possible with this wooden thing, like all their design choices riddled throughout their parks. Its another example of scraping the best out of a poor budget, but the budget should be more substantial than this for such a large company. They just don't care enough to think better than short term solutions. Meanwhile the team co ordinating this scheme considering the conditions they've been given are being very smart in where & how they spend it.

Tomb Blaster was utterly appaulling. Let's be clear, this refurbishment focussed on Health And Safety so that the ride could be approved to be open, and it is now clearer than ever that Merlin do not give a damn about the actual visitor experience. How anyone could think the changes made to Tomb Blaster are positive I do not know. The ride clearly won't last many years longer and it shows in how little effort has been put into the ride's refurbishment. My gratitude to the few people who I know did make an effort whether it be the touch ups in set painting, speakers reconnected here and there or an *attempt* at least to make the ride look good, but overall every aspect of the ride is now shockingly lifeless, unentertaining and unprofessional.

Please can that be a symbol of how utterly dysfunctional the UK theme park industry now is? The whole problem is the fact you have a big low level launch track dumped on top of the area in the first place, and every problem Ug Land/Dark Forest has had since then is a repercussion of that terrible planning decision - desperate to squeeze in a pointless launch coaster anywhere. And now, many hack jobs later, it's come to people around the internet celebrating a horrific path-blocking wooden fence with some holes in it, simply because it looks more slightly more expensive than what was there before (it's shocking the scaffolding lasted more than a week in the first place). Sorry to be cynical, but I bet everyone at the park is just as embarrassed about this. That area will finally be able to live when they get rid of Rita and architecturally design the space properly.

I'm sure that's not just the case, and Merlin are the ones who insist on often hiring the cheapest contractors they can get. There is no excuse for not having a proper drain system where millions of guests have to walk through. It's extremely obvious to most planners and is ridiculous how it turned out.

The figures stated by marketing are always very highly inflated indeed. It may still be their biggest capital investment but that shouldn't really mean anything to anyone, it would make barely any difference to the quality of the ride.

Mmmmm thank god finally they use proper scenic artists and not just the cheapest decorators they could find like usual. That looks terrific and beautiful