SteveJ

It's one of two Swarm logos, the other is simply text. Triangular signs usually give warnings and the image inside the triangle appears to be a winged creature. Other than that, it's supposed to look enigmatic.

The area where Slammer and the top end of Colossus is now. It was demolished to make way for Colossus, but most of the space was empty or used for storage until Slammer was eventually built there. There are still a few clues if you look around, although I'd imagine it's mostly unrecognisable without all the foliage and the new pathways.

The exterior wall was damaged in the fire (we knew) and has now been demolished, in order for a new wall to be constructed. (Obviously the fire did not actually melt the wall.)

My favourite part is when they enter Thunder Rapids talking some gibberish about designing reindeers, then the presenter almost walks into the cameraman and quietly apologises. Even in 1997 this would have been very bizarre video!

Thunder River looks so much better too, with its nice misty cave. And all that greenery around the back of X No Way Out where Trappers Trail was, now all tarmac and fences... It seems Thorpe Park hit puberty really badly. Where did all the innocence go?

That's a "GREAT" video. It feels so weird to see X "Colon Backslash" No Way Out actually being promoted and looking faintly impressive. Poor thing, it only wanted to be understood.

The cafe building already existed (it used to be part of ToyTown) but I think the playhouse shed thingy was a new structure. Where Action Man was is a bit of a mystery to me. I remember it being so large, like a winding labyrinth in a hidden pocket of the park. But looking at the footprint of Land of the Dragons now, it must have been pretty tiny!

They stripped it down entirely to refurbish it last year, and spent lots of money on it to get both arms operating again (which didn't last long). Seems like they maintained it very well despite all the problems it had, but that still didn't make it a good ride experience.

Hahahah! I know exactly what music you mean! It's not actually Thorpe Park's own music but one of the tunes played by the arcade machines to get your attention. They just repeat over and over. There are two of those tunes, the melody from this track or that other higher pitched tune which I don't know. I think the most prominent in the dome is the second one - probably the one you are thinking of. I was also trying to work that out for ages because it reminded me of being at Thorpe Park more than any of the park's own music!

It looked absolutely fine at the end of last season, so obviously the photo makes it seem worse than in person. (Not that I want to stop the enthusiast tradition of jumping to conclusions based on dodgy photos.) Surely repainting the rails just so it can be worn off again is the last thing it needs?

Yes, but that wasn't always the case. The unused path going up around the stall turn used to lead into area three, making it the last leg of the queueing journey. I have no idea when all the old fencing was removed and the route altered. I would have kept that section in use and disconnected area two instead - there were some great views under the lift hill and overlooking the loop pit from the opposite side, but as has been said Fastrack and Air probably got in the way. And according to this photo from 1994, neither area two or three even existed when the ride first opened! The graphic I used above was from 1996. Strange how many clues are there to be found around Alton Towers. It's just a queue but must have been madly long when it opened in 1994. They could have bundled it all in a compact switchback queue in the pit, but instead sent people on a steep trek around the whole area!

Alright. I had heard it was very difficult to clean and manage when guests were in it, hence they chose to keep the other area extension in more frequent use instead. Obviously the queues are rarely long enough these days for both to be used at once. The stretch of the queue that ran down the access road (leading to the monorail depot) has been demolished. You can see there used to be a bridge of some sort over the road and paths either side. That road is totally blocked off now.

Here's a graphic I dun of the original route. The current route is in pink. The dashed part shows "area extension 3" which is rarely used these days because it's very far away from the station and staff cannot access it so easily. The rest of the original route in blue has been either demolished, recycled for Sub-Terra's queue or just sitting there overgrown.

Going back to this point, I've come to realise that strangely there are some people who want the park to fail. It's not uncommon to see flippant remarks such as "best thing to happen to the park in decades" (in regards to the recent fire) and "just bulldoze the place and be done with it", etc... Also when a fan base gets very top-heavy, thinking they know what's best for the park better than the park themselves, that is usually down to a lack of information and can often be just as counterproductive as all that negativity. Many people seem to forget that actually Chessington is a functioning company making money and not a bunch of idiots who have no control over anything. There was never going to be a "Mexicana retheme" for example, and the wording on the website is just that - words. For all we know the Scorpion Express theme might be barely different from Runaway Train. I don't know enough about this project to make a big fuss about it, but I'm also not going in with high expectations. I also think the "£5 million refurb" was mostly just a promotional thing to explain why two of their oldest rides were closed, because now it's very hard to see where that money actually went. Clearly there is something wrong because nothing truly successful has come from the park in years and Chessington's old charm has gone, but that shouldn't justify the constant hateful comments on the internet (again, this doesn't apply as much to Mania Hub). It seems Chessington are so restricted in what they can do (in terms of budget, marketing and planning) that they have lost the creative freedom that made the park in the late 80s/early90s. They need to get that back basically, and that's not impossible.

Forgot I didn't post them on here! Here's the ride script I wrote on TowersStreet with my storyboards. It was a fun project and I tried to keep the original character of Dragon River intact (it must be the first theme park ride I ever went on!), I only sent it to Chessington as an afterthought!

The competition wasn't postponed, I won it (yay) a month or so ago. But now that the project itself is cancelled, methinks they want to keep it quiet so that the public forget about the advertised "Dragon Falls retheme" until a later date. The wording in the email sent to me was "your concepts have been passed on to our creative team who will consider implementing elements into the final design [...] however currently there is no set date for the Dragon Falls retheme to take place". At least we know Chessington most certainly do not want to leave Dragon Falls in that state, and there were originally plans drawn up to redesign it. I really hope this indefinite delay doesn't go unresolved!

Chessington can't even dig up their own pavement without a massive overreaction. And they started this business in Market Square months ago, so it's not a late project.

Creaky Cafe was removed from the Chessington website because it no longer exists. BubbleWorks is reopening later in the year as the building needs some slight repair work, but different managrs at the park are saying different things. It could change.

If a metal box and compact staircase is the very best that Thorpe Park could produce under the constraints of space and groundwork, then how come some of the world's best theme parks were built on nothing but Floridian swampland? Saw isn't superbly themed anyway, it's just average by today's UK theme park standard. If it was really that impossible to build something simple then how come theme parks could do it years before? Terror Tomb's queue was almost just as tight for space but they set up a pre show tableaux in there, which was easily better than Saw's indoor queue despite being built 15 years later. Plus they had to work within the constraints of the pre-existing 5th Dimension building, whereas Saw was built from scratch. Even Phantom Fantasia had a better indoor queue than Saw and that was built on infilled land too, as was the entire park. In fact Saw Alive showed how Thorpe could build decent set and atmosphere quite easily if they wanted... and that was on a boat!

Yes, da boiler shack: If they replace all that with a pavement switchback maze of B&Q fences then I'll be very disheartened. Runaway Train is an extremely dated cheap children's ride, but it was fun little things like the boiler leaking steam and the path through the cave that made it fun.

You expect them to decorate the ride with a pine tree... Huh what? There has been no confirmation either way if the mine and boiler shack will be restored, so I don't really see why people are so disappointed with this "news". Anyway here is the new logo:

If guests are not allowed to queue in the building then really that's the result of an oversight by the designers. There's not much room for people queueing in that building as it is unfortunately. Strangely Saw's indoor queue isn't truly indoors, only the 6m stretch at ground level with the shotgun effect is fully enclosed (by a corrugated metal wall). The rest is a just an evac-style staircase with some wooden slats fixed to the sides, which allows too much light in. It must be very hard to create a scary environment because hardly anything can fit into that metal cuboid, since they designed it to be so basic. Clearly extending the building outwards and weaving the queue through themed sets on different levels was too hard, so now everybody just waits outside in the dust before directly shooting up some stairs instead. Well at least the rollercoaster itself got a great "dark ride" prologue ...OH Poor UK!

I'm so glad Alton Towers went a step further and hired a really great professional team to produce the music. The effort really shows, and what IMAscore came up with embodies the ride concept better than the rollercoaster itself!

Yes that is the railway depot, the train used to go right by it after crossing the bridge near Loggers Leap. It felt like another world in those trees because you were so far away from the rides. (Thorpe Farm even more so!) I notice they have updated the aerial image. On the old one it was clear to see where the old route of the Railway went up to Thorpe Farm (there was an obvious trace across the grass where the sleepers had been and remains of the Farm station), but now you can see they have dug up most of the farm to flood with excess water. They have also built new roads and bridges to the farm and to Treasure Island, essentially reconnecting all the areas of the park out of use since the 80s. However it will probably be many years until they ever use that land again!

AbDab may have been a slimy greedy thief but he didn't deserve to sit outside for years slowly peeling apart. Silly billy, I hope he's been put back in storage, or sold off to haunt somebody's attic forever, or enjoying a holiday to Egypt or something.