SteveJ

Ahaha. That's the vicious cycle of Fastrack inflating the queue times for you. Abolishing Fastrack and an expansion is so desperately needed, but it will never happen sadly.

Fury has not had a three hour queue any time the last week, or probably ever.

It's not Samurai but I think everyone really knows that really anyway.

Ok I admit: If you put 5 people in a boat the ride explodes.

I'm just explaining that it's alright to sit however you like because it's not a case of low water levels, I'm not trying to tease people that 'I know something you don't'

Sorry I cannot )) but it's not very interesting.

A different but equally boring reason. Should be resolved, just a shame it's come at peak season when indoor rides are very popular in the rain.

The people limit is nothing to do with water levels this time so it doesn't matter if the boat is balanced.

Well it hasn't been closed during the height of peak season, AND in a long period of heavy rain when indoor rides are in high demand, just to clean it and fix broken effects. But it should reopen in a bit of a better state than it was before..

Also worth pointing out that Haunted House (Duel) and Terror Tomb (Tomb Blaster) were on the same scale as this for size and budget. Although a lot more will be quoted as the WC16 budget because these days they always include the PR & advertising budget which is huge. They were definitely not cheap dark rides, just rides of their day and you wouldn't be able to compare from the state they are in now. They also both had new ride hardware invented especially for them, probably a bit like WC16. "Most people don't appreciate theming over interactivity" This is a very enthusiast-y outlook on 'theming'. In this situation if your enjoyment of the ride depends on whether you appreciate theming for the sake of theming, then it can't be a very good ride. That's shouldn't be the point of theming, and usually the best themed rides are subtle and have a lot of detail that sinks into the bigger picture. An exciting dark ride will be well designed for everyone

Does anyone else have to stop themselves and think when they realise that Storm Surge is an actual ride at Thorpe Park? It's always a bit of a surprise to see it still even exists

How did you get from 'not a coaster' to 'slow boring dark ride'? A great dark ride can be miles more exciting than all the cheap quick-thrill coasters they could have more easily squeezed into that site. Do ya know what a dark ride is? The UK has always been dragging behind for THRILL dark rides so you can't really judge what is possible by anything else in the country. Oh no.. Unless you're one of those no imagination 'all dark rides are a waste of money that should be spent on a coaster' people.. be gone with you!

OO I forgot about this, but 80% sure this is the second lift only (purely because it is vertical). Is lift 1 designed like this too? I really don't think so but can't remember to be honest.

But reversing a train down a lift hill goes against all rollercoaster mechanical design - the train & track is designed so it would never be able to move backwards down the lift. Also computer controllers don't just get random errors that cause the wrong actions to occur when a different button is pressed. So this can't be the reason at all.

Chessington was never being considered to have major rollercoasters built as Tussauds had already been struggling with planning even the tiniest rides for a good decade or so. The idea that Colossus was meant for Chessington in any shape or form is just made up. Perhaps they would have 'liked' to have a thrill coaster there but it wouldn't have gone past a board meeting. Chessington had received a steady investment in bigger thrill rides until that point and so already was the thrill park out of the two.

And most of those points are untrue so don't take it all too seriously. Especially the one about Saw's opening (HAHA), Colossus being planned for Chessington (a million reasons why this is not true) and the one about Saw having movie links in its early stages (the Saw franchise was a very late development long after the name project Dylan was coined). It is not too expensive to run Tidal Wave's flame ball because it could easily use the same gas supply and takes just a sparker to run the effect. The real reason is the gas container is about to fall down.

Stop using the word epitome wrongly!! Epitome means "the best representation of ... ".

As far as I know that's very truthful. It's not a lack of care from those behind the ride, it's a climate of not caring coming from the way UK parks are so strictly structured and controlled now. So thats how it is, but I echo the thought that it's pretty exciting to see a big spacious DARK show building going up when there hasn't been a dark ride project like this for years

No you're right don't need loads of space to create a good dark ride, but a comparison about how this building makes use of the space to Haunted House or Hex is daft. Thorpe Park is a premium theme park, it's very expensive, very well known (internationally - I lived in India for a bit and they talked about it a lot when it came to rollercoasters) and one of the best parks that the UK has to offer. Their form of on site accommodation is a shipping container hotel. Alton Towers could have built a 'temporary' 'short term' solution when they were planning their hotel in 1996, but quite deliberately they chose to go right ahead with their best idea possible very successfully (and from that came the craze of turning every park into a resort). No UK theme park would never do that kind of big entrepreneurial thing now. The same attitude has resulted in this ugly building. I see a lot of indifference with guests on park and in managerial decisions every day in UK theme parks. You can throw rubbish at people and they will complain but given enough time and excuses, it will just get accepted and no one has the incentive to care anymore. Case in point: Imagine the reaction if this building was done 10, 20 years ago - enthusiasts and guests would find it shocking and off putting. These days - stick a big logo on and it would just get some sideways glances or whingy posts like this on the internet and no one in the industry will actually care. Does this mean cheap design like this should be gotten away with? Of course not.

You can't be more wrong on this, Haunted House was the largest ghost train in Europe when it opened (there are/were A LOT of big famous ghost trains in Europe) and is still a very large ride. Hex takes up a lot more space altogether and had an ENORMOUS amount of planning gone into how the buildings both real and constructed were utilised/hidden. They used some absolutely genius tactics with Hex and Haunted House's use of space to hide the giant building is also very clever. Totally totally incomparible to a red box put next to X No Way Out. Also you know when you've lost track of being unbiased when you start adamantly defending a shipping container hotel. An actual (expensive) shipping container hotel at a premium theme park. Look we all want to enjoy the ride and I really hope it doesn't let people down inside. But the more parks get praise and indifference for doing nothing, the tackier standards will get in the UK. It's a big red box, I'm sure even the designers that made it think it looks awful. Yet when standards are so low you can get away with it. The bit of themed facade round the entrance will just be to attract people through the gate and give some visual indication of what is inside, at least we get that but it's still not a true attempt to create something themed.

The ride inside could still be a wonderful experience (I know absolutely nothing about it) and Thorpe Park as an attraction may 'care' about delivering an immersive experience. But really there's no point to defend this when there's clearly no effort made. Try asking for a budget to pay for a redesign of the surrounding paths or to create a seemless facade and the budgeters would probably just laugh Sadly that's just the way theme parks in the UK work now so there's not much else they could have done. Just to note: dark rise show buildings Always look like this before the facade goes up. However as others have pointed out, the plans show this IS the finished exterior for that whole end of the building.

Why many show buildings are tucked away is because a lot of meticulous planning goes into disguising it effectively and choosing land that can easily conceal the building. There's no effort made here really even though it would be well in reach to create a facade or remodel the space for that side of the building, just the budget controllers don't want to spend money on things like that when they can spend it on PR, technology research and marketing instead. People will just put up with having a plastic backside of a building on show and coming out in the way of the path, because its not seen as necessary for UK parks to bother creating an immersive space anymore, when you can pour the work into building up hype and looking for the next attention-catching effect.

The original Magic Carpet was a thrill ride and the same (if not bigger) model at Quantum at Thorpe Park

Well don't judge too much, that photo was taken about 2 seconds after it was just installed

But the whole point is to remind people that Halloween is coming up and to make plans to come back, and the fences say "trick" on the dark side and "treat" on the sweet side. It doesn't look awful in person, it's just much much too early!