Mitchada04

Think this and Rollercoaster Restaurant add up to 5 million in total.

Double post allowed for this.

Nothing about Tomb so you can assume that it's actually finished ready to go. Bubble and Fury to be open in the afternoon but on both days strikes me as staff testing or something in the morning. Rattlesnake was due to a delay in receiving essential parts. A typical start to the season would be having Vampire closed.

I'll just leave this here.

They could have used some of the Time Voyagers stuff! Merlin love to reuse everything they can, unless they somehow overwrote the video.

Not sure why the I-Beam supports, guessing engineering said so. Valvaran has a few too apparently. Kong is looking a lot more complete now. Apparently they are ahead of schedule a bit now too, softs expected late May. Official opening in July with Hulk and Sapphire Falls for a huge press event. NBA City replacement might be announced by then or nearly complete, still heave rumours of a high class chocolate place. I'm there already in my dreams While we're here, haven't seen much from Volcano Bay recently, which could be open in just over a years time. Well, from the lovely MickeyXtreme on Twitter, we have some sky high visuals!

EMPIRE! Rules are simple. Each person has an "Empire" which is a ride name. You chose your empires name before the meet. You tell me this name (PM me on here or on FB the name of your chosen ride). You can tell other people what your empire is, but then you'll lose. Aim of the game is to absorb everyone into your empire. Each hour, the list or rides will be read out. Adventurers, it is your mission to guess the name of other peoples empires. You guess correctly, they become part of your empire and your name. More people per empire, but less empires, until we have a winner. The leader of the final empire. For example. I am Nemesis. Bucky is Swarm. If I ask Bucky, "Hey bucks, are you Swarm" and he spits his coffee out at me in disgrace I guessed correctly, Bucky is part of empire Nemesis. Now if anyone were to ask Bucky if he's Swarm he would say no, he only answers yes to Nemesis now. No continual "are you this, are you this" etc. Disqualification can and will happen to cheaters. I will explain more on the day. What rides can I chose? In the past, Peaj has only allowed operational rides. This year, to extend the list a little, SBNO rides can also be used. For example, Gwazi. Can be a ride of any type, flat, coaster, water, dark, just has to be real. And the whole name. Please have a spare, as each ride can only be used by one person. There will be a few rides on the list I read out that aren't assigned to anyone. Good. That's the point. To throw you off To help you get an idea of past years, the 3 winners have been: 2013: Peter Pan's Flight 2014: Wacky Worm 2015: Steeplechase Hey, Adam, why do I want to play this game? For the flag. No other reason. So get your ride names in! EMPMIRE 2016 starts now!

I've just cancelled my trip to Europa. That video made me feel like I was there so I have no need to go. This meet might as well be changed to like Gullivers or somewhere else we haven't been to

As expected, Rivers of Light opens on 22nd April, Earth Day. Good luck to Avatar keeping that trend... unless they wait till Earth Day 2018 Few spoilers in the video of the show and how it will work, don't watch if you're living in secrecy. From Orlando Attractions Magazine Article: Apparently Kali River Rapids has had its annual refurb extended by a month, meant to open mid feb but is now opening next week. Could be to add lighting etc to make it suitable for night operation. Exciting times for AK!

Ryan, at least see the SeaLion show, they're brill! Although I appreciate leaving this will be hard... Only bit left to do is the teardrop turn thing.

Let's talk The deal goes final Friday. The yellow is the proposed plot of land for Japan. 6 acres is rumoured which lines up with the 6 available in KidZone in Florida. 350 million dollars. 2020 is the opening year apparently. 2019 in Florida, and 20/21 for whatever small version Hollywood will get. Although, there is a rumour Comcast has changed the timetable since buying more of Japan and want Nintendo there in 2018 with Diagon in 20. Especially as opening Nintendo Land in the home of Nintendo first is more likely. So who knows, but Nintendo didn't wait around last time a deal was signed about this project, so expect something in the next week or so. For Japan, they have anywhere up to 9 acres to play with though if they use the surrounding 4D cinemas and Space Fantasy. Endless rumours, endless hype. Let's see how this can compete with the likes of Star Wars land.

From Merin's site on FAQs. Colossus might not from rumours I've heard though.

Won't be long now. They've taken the decoration bits of the end of the launch tunnel too.

Apparently the SEGA contract has expired and this will no longer have the Sonic branding. Towers keep referring to it as Spinball and list it as that on the ERT listing. So Spinball it is.

I don't think it will run 5 trains because it was always pointless running 5 anyway, as you'd have at least 2 stacked majority of the time. 4 train operation achieved basically if not the same throughput as 5. So if Towers are tight with money, and they've even ordered a new train or anything, they'll probably only get one new one as the 5th was useless anyway (only really good as a spare). Like Pluk said, the staff on it will be trained highly with the new procedures. During testing they'll have no doubt had to deal with breakdowns and testing the new procedures. If anything, they need to run it as smoothly as possible. Long delays will make the public think something is wrong, or the ride is the issue. The block system did its job.

Draytons system was stupid though. Just staff asking you as you leave the park to go to your car. You can just walk out of the park and not pay.

Ended up discussing the car parking at Thorpe situation at the weekend with some other members. Learnt a few interesting things. The implementation of paid parking was a decision worked upon with the council to try and reduce the number of cars going to the park as that Staines road is bad enough in rush hour. So this paid situation could be the same for Chessie and Lego due to their local roads also being naturally busy. Admittedly I don't think the council sees the money but like everything price rises are inevitable. Had to pay to park at every single park I went to in Europe, and in the States it's a tax related thing. So we're quite lucky to have theme parks that don't charge to park as this isn't the norm these days. As for reinvesting the money they make, at Thorpe they can't concrete the car park entirely due to it being a flood plain and there needing to be so much permeable ground. They could work on the lighting though. And I wish they would.

Ignore Merlin, Disney Paris has easy links, the Disney name and still struggles money and attendance wise.

A maze for FN obviously. They aren't using that space for anything other than a purpose built space for FN. Definitely not lots of things that we still are in the dark about for this attraction. Like the transportation system etc.

It's not bad this being in the press though. Those who are set against visiting ever again had already made that choice, this doesn't change that. The papers are advertising when the ride will reopen, so for the many people constantly asking Towers when it will open and not returning until it reopens this answers their question. Gets it all out of the way and hopefully by summer the whole thing will hardly be mentioned. Plus, it makes people want to go opening weekend as if this, Air and the 6 closing rides were closed what would be the point. At least there will be 5 major coasters open now and Galactica will be up by easter.

The Sunday AP day at Chessington still has plenty of tickets... as most people are doing Chessie on the Saturday and Thorpe the Sunday. The weather is a big factor on AP days, even if it's sold out many may not turn up as it hasn't cost them anything, and lots of people are local so may pop in for a few hours, especially if the weather is poor. Since they've stopped letting you take two friends for a tenner the AP days have been a lot calmer and enjoyable.

This could all be timed against his tour dates tbf. Derren is in Woking the last week of April, then goes to Bristol for a week on the 9th. He is around the first week of May, coincidence?

Probably, they've been the same nights for a while now.

Towers can open Smiler when they want, it's their/Merlins decision now. Not an external factor. But, they may not want to open the ride if your story was going to still be ongoing and into the courts. With a court date settled, they may want to keep Smiler closed till after that. There was no real reason for Galactica not to be ready for start of season, maybe they had always aimed for Easter weekend but were saying April as they were hoping to just get Smiler out the way in March. Maybe Galactica would have soft opened in March. I doubt we'll know till the 19th March whether Smiler is opening at the beginning of the year or not as we all watch the Facebook pages post updates.

Yeah, annoyingly we were already there 21st-23rd so I guess we'll be extending our trip by a day. Sigh.