SteveJ

Yes it looks so much smarter than the previous colour scheme, but the building had been repainted over so poorly (it never used to be such a dark pinky shade) over the years that the original 'look' had been lost anyway. When Transylvania opened the buildings were fresh and all painted in the same muted, quaint colour palette - that was the best. But what we have now is more colourful and theme parky I suppose.

BubbleWorks looks great this year but only in comparison to recent years. The lighting in the finale could easily be improved with a day's worth of fiddling, it looks better than before because it has new equipment but in the world of lighting is quite generic. Not a scratch on the original lighting scheme. The facade looked a looooooot better in 1990 than it does now. One day they might get those nice little touches like hanging baskets and fleur de lis frills back.

Most of the new recruits for Halloween have already had their 6 week reviews and already received their magic passes. Of course it means they only have 3ish weeks to use them up though! To be honest nobody ever uses the magic pass as much as you think you would, because once you've been working at an attraction for a few months there's really no impulse to go to one on your days off! Most of them get used by family and friends.

It's actually important that these 'silly' rules exist because some guests love to try and make claims against the park all the time. Of course, operation procedures don't rely on guests being sensible so failsafes are in place, but guests can and HAVE tried to sue for things that the park could have done absolutely nothing to prevent. It's hard to understand at first and some restrictions do seem like "H&S gone mad"; now I live off an element of danger but that phrase means absolutely nothing in the world of theme parks. You have to see for yourself how selfishly some guests can act. After all, it is true that the park is responsible for the well being of every guest, including people of all intentions, so there need to be blanket rules that can be enforced appropriately. I'm not commenting on whether the reride rule is justified for Dragon's Fury, but it will be there for a reason - however silly it may seem at first.

The netting always covers those fences. The only reason it is falling off in that photo is because of the stormy weather. There's really nothing wrong with covering some ugly temporary fences in camouflage.

Ok well sounds like somebody just got the wrong end of the stick. As I said, usually staff are happy to let guests reride. Because of the new early rider system there are usually guests coming to Fury right from opening, even quiet days. But there is no 'rule' as such that means you can't reride, so it's a bit odd you were told that, it's just down to the operator's judgement.

The attendant would have been told to do so by the operator, they cannot just decide to get people out and step on the track. There are reasons why guests shouldn't reride, it may have seemed like there was no one else in the queue but there probably was out of view, and Fury's station is very fast paced it wouldn't take much longer to load them instead. With Fury Ive very rarely seen the queue dead for long enough that guests don't need to leave the car, let alone 3 times in a row, but when that is the case staff are usually happy to let people reride.

Tomb had a lot of subtle technical improvements this season, new/fixed lighting.

Those refurbishments and general changes are nothing to do with the survey done by Dr Cave, people have been wanting those areas refreshed for a long time and the current management are very good at getting plans in motion. Last year's demolition of scenery around Dragon River, Tomb, Runaway Train and Rattlesnake, however, were prompted by the survey Merlin commissioned.

There used to be blocking brakes earlier on the transfer track, which are now inactive and the train just goes straight through further into the darkness. I think this is where the third train would wait if the station and holding area were still busy. The transfer track is also welded closed now because it is too short for the Vekoma trains.

The computer would not let the trains collide. Although I've heard stories of the trains touching each other at the bottom of lift 2 in the old days, before Vekoma redesigned the whole operation system. Not sure about the validity of that, but a lot was changed in terms of blocking and brake timing during the redesign.

The riders at the front never touch the water, although the bottom of the gondola does get splashed.

In the Ice Bucket video they do not soak the front row, as normal it slightly touches the front but goes straight on to the back row and pauses. It used to pause on both rows and clearly get both sides wet if I remember from years ago.

Monkey Swinger is usually manual but also has an automatic fountain setting. I heard the same is for Rameses and once saw the operator briefly leave control while the fountains were going..

Well I suppose you could suggest it's Chessington's fault for not removing the ride a million years ago, but it's very popular and stuff happens. The right procedures are being taken.

Skyway has been closed for a few weeks. This ride is currently not in possession of Chessington's in-house engineers anymore, so you can't really blame the park for being responsible for its downtime.

That's true, it's at its best since 2005. It actually has the capacity to entertain people now, mostly because of the finale regaining some of its power.

The staggered openings are to encourage guests to spread around the park on quiet days, otherwise you'd get clumps of busy areas and other rides with almost no guests. Griffins Galleon only opens for 3 hours because hardly anybody rides it in the morning or late afternoon anyway.

From a guest's point of view, a "water ride" would be any ride where you get wet. Of course the only attraction strictly termed as a water ride would be Dragon Falls, but that doesn't mean anything to guests. People come off Zufari, Falls, Rameses and Swinger soaking wet when all the effects are blazing. You get splashed on Scorpion and BubbleWorks a fair bit. What I mean is, as a guest you are not hard pressed for choice if you want to get wet. I've never come across guests having difficulty finding water rides anyway. They are always looking for roller coasters that are either thrilling and/or suitable for shorter children, family rides that don't have enormous queues... or the toilets. You could well ease the capacity problem with a rapids (as well as spend a fortune remodelling the landscape), or you could solve two problems at once with a thrilling family rollercoaster with a low height restriction - which there is a strong demand for. In other words, why wasn't Thirteen built at Chessington? I mean really.

If you are out to get wet at Chessington then there are plenty of options, there's no real demand for any more - especially in this weather. There's Dragon Falls which is suitably soggy and popular (try going with a group of 5 people and then say it doesn't get you wet!) and most rides built in the last 10 years get you wet in some way. The money needed to build a rapids ride would be far better off used on something else, and is.

For a rapids ride it is essential to have a varied terrain, otherwise you end up with a very boring layout with an artificial feel. The toadies area is too flat to include any significant height difference, while the field by explorer gate is extremely popular with picnicking guests on peak days and has no level space for the required reservoir. But does Chessington really need a rapids ride? Does it need more rides to get you wet to have fun? Hardly, it needs a lot more things first.

A different system is now being used where only early riders are let on the ride via fastrack, until 10:00 when the rest of the guests may enter the main queue. ER still lasts from 9:30 until 10:30.

Well that's not true. The station announcements were recorded recently and don't feature old SFX. The commercial mix now used in the station has the screams mixed too loud so if anything they have exaggerated the cackling. The original Graham Smart mix of the Vampire theme doesn't even contain many SFX, as more stock SFX were added to the station loop several years after the ride opened I heard?

I believe it was commissioned by the park and is new this year, along with several other new music tracks. Black Buccaneer never had its own music before, as far as I know. I don't have it I'm afraid!

The draft of the script available online was not written by Douglas Adams, it was instead written by Ian Hanson. By that point Douglas Adams had already left the project I think?