Mitchada04

From TPM's FB

The Jack in the box wasn't under the bridge. It's in the final tent towards the end but wasn't working last night like many of the effects. The walls will be finished and like someone from Ents said to us, "it's only going to get better"

Can't take much from the map really. It will have gone into printing quite a while ago probably. The FN map still has Tidal on it although they knew that would be closed. It basically has no meaning on top of what we know, it might open this year or it might not.

Big Top improved throughout the night and still isn't finished so will only get better. Don't worry, the park are very aware of this. At concept it is very good.

Containment is open to press tonight I believe. That's why it's not open to pass holders.

Bit of Mako progress for those following the project. Bit of a time lapse in how land formation is shaping up behind Kraken. I love the tracks colour. Dark behind light should look great as Kraken will stand strong in front of Mako visually. Huge track like always. Lift hill track Bit by the lake so last turn into the station. Footers being started. It's going to look great behind Kraken! Can't wait to see it

Didn't want to put this in the Flume topic as it doesn't really fit there. Yes, all rides might be open at Blackpool at the moment but they aren't struggling, they're in the black apparently. But when they were struggling what did they do? Closed lots down. Monorail because it was expensive to run. And I bet the Flume isn't cheap to run. Trauma Towers still sits there idol and don't forget the lovely fountains. Plus the hate on other places doing staggered openings, Blackpool does it to! Valhalla was open 11:30-5 on a 10-8 day last year. Big One wasn't open till 11 either. That's two of your big stars down. As for the rides. Valhalla would be so much better at a Park with more money. I know it's expensive for them to run but other parks have expensive rides to. Shall we constantly complain about all the dead effects on Valhalla? Ice blast is pathetic, worst one of those I've done. Infusion, I don't dislike SLCs but the paint is peeling, it wasn't really an investment and with a 20 minute queue and only half an hour till close last year they took the second train off. Wasn't broken, they just wanted to start their checks early. Better to open on one and add a second in my eyes than close the ride to reduce the throughput when demand is still there. Heritage is nice, and the classics are alright but you can't live in the past forever. Plus the throughputs are awful at that place. And operations aren't great. Big One is a waste of steel. First drop fab then the monorail comes. Shame they wanted to keep it up high for as long as possible to give a better skyline than build a decent airtime machine from Arrow. And the ridiculous reasoning behind one train in the wind.

Good effort on the name. But seriously, apparently the longest flyer and tallest drop (height difference is the translation) opening spring 2016.

Okay then. Hellements: Apparently been rerouted. No idea, still awful. The best bit is before you put the bags on your head. Lots of fire going off this year though. Just really not great at all. Even though they apparently change it every year in some way in my eyes it should be flattened and replaced by something entirely new. Haunted House: This thing is insanely themed! Even a Chucky doll hiding in there! I had better interaction with the actors last year and a few of the effects weren't working but it is a fab little attraction. The Volt: Good concept, and there is one part that is hugely dark, but by this time you're aware of what the electric pads look like so avoid them. Not great, just different I guess. Nightshade Circus: The music in the queue is amazing! I want it! End of the day it took concepts from the brilliant Twisted Circus maze last year, had a change up but didn't live up to last year. The confusion of the patterns and everything just didn't work as well as previously. Ending was interesting. Colony: Loved it! Tunnel was my favourite last year and this is basically a huge overlay of that taking parts from it and adding more. It is ridiculously long, spans multiple tents and outside sections. Not overly scary but it was the best overall complete attraction. Would loved to have done that twice instead of bothering with Hellements at all. Hayride: Same as last year I believe so as fun as always. Some effects broken and annoyingly I think they're the same ones that didn't work for me last year too which is a shame. Cellar: This is the perfect example of a conga maze. It is done to perfection. Don't think it's changed at all either which is fine as it was great last year too. Chop Shop: Urgh. Had so much hope for this. Old cars, parts, hillbillys. Brilliant idea! Then it becomes a repetitive walk through some windy paths past white and red walls with every actor just having a chainsaw. Effect works once, kinda boring after that. Huge shame.

From the looks of the site, you will enter the Big Top in the red tent (bottom end of where Curse was) work through to the circular tent, under the bridge past the game stand things (exterior element to the maze?) and then into the clown headed tent. It looked like a structure was being built on the small side of the beach to hold the Big Top sign which is situated that side and the Fastrack sign so I'd say the queue will be on the small side too.

If we want to add to speculation. Read this over on CF and it could be very true as when Universal Dubai was being planned and even partly built it was to have a Hulk clone (Kong themed apparently) and the ride was fabricated but never used in the end as the entire project was scrapped. The entrance was built and still stands I believe. But yeah, so maybe Universal do own some new B&M track already that would work perfectly on Hulk as it is an exact clone. Believe what you wish. Speculation is fun!

Hulk is probably the most run B&M out there though. Yeah it's not as old as the others, but it's never had scheduled maintenance days every year like other B&Ms. Instead they run the maintenance throughout the season in the evenings. It's had very few days down at all. Was it down when they repainted it or did they do it in the evenings again? So although it's only 16 years old, it has run for almost 10 hours every day of the year for those 16 years. Dragon Challenge had a few months down during Potter phase. Seaworld and Busch close them for a week each year or so. Hulk never got that. Not to say it was ever under maintained, of course not. But it never got a break as such. I don't believe the supports are being changed minus the lift hill segment which is being rebuilt entirely and possibly over the lake area where they're talking about theming the footers (but even then that can just be done as a layer on top). Yeah it's a crazy partly unnecessary project but it's the ongoing upgrade of MSHI to get it in line with the MCU. Plus the queue was dire and the ride was getting quite dated with its style. They know how much of an iconic ride Hulk is, I really don't see them changing the layout. And as they'll want this open before Kong so you don't have to walk through a construction site at the entrance, can't see the layout being on their minds as something to change. Focus is on retheming and enhancing the ride experience.

Loggers has closed before night for a few years now. Just like Flume. It's to do with lighting and the case of an evacuation. They say 5pm, one of the busy busy days last year they ran it until they could do so safely. The 5pm is flexible basically with how dark it is. Rocky closes for BWP. Again, was meant to close at 5pm last year, was often running till 7pm. Rumba was meant to close at 7/8 each night. Ran till 10 on all nights. It's just a forewarning they might close at that time but in a lot of the cases they don't. Better to know that before you go and see they're still open at 7pm than to not have known and find them closed. IAC could be due to staffing. On Tuesday there were signs up around park saying they're after actors for FN, maybe they haven't had much success or input from people so are running low? Plus, mazes aren't cheap to run. And taking it FN is no more expensive for a guest to visit than a normal day and you get 5 free extra attractions and rides open an extra 4/5 hours you can see why some cuts have to be made, especially with the current situation at Merlin.

There are some rumours going around now that they'll change the second half of the layout to head towards the lighthouse so the area behind Storm is opened up and with Dr Doom supposedly leaving that'd leave a huge area for the rumoured Avengers dark ride. However the ride layout isn't changing, it is literally just track replacement to probably the new colouring style as well. Maybe green with purple running through it? The launch was supposed to be changing to LIM but Creative apparently really like the feeling the tyre drive gives and if they can sort out through energy consuming problem that causes then they'll probably keep that. The redoing of the launch is all for maintenance and running costs. The main thing is retheming it entirely. New queue line in style of the Potter ones to make them more interactive. New effects to make the whole experience more complete, talks of special lighting whether that be on the trains or track itself. New water effects on the pool under the cobra. And of course brand new trains and station. If you close your eyes and ears on it it'll just be a smoother/less rattly version of Hulk.

It's impossible to tell at the moment unfortunately. They're all good at soft openings out there. I remember Manta soft opened beginning of May in 2009 and officially opened on the 22nd. Transformers opened beginning of July with soft mid June. Hogsmeade soft opened beginning of June with official mid whereas Diagon Alley opened early July with only a few days of soft opening before. So literally impossible to tell. Mako I would say will be open, that'll probably be a May opening. Cobra's Curse is likely to be the same as track is on site for that now too and that won't be as big as Mako. Kong was rumoured to be opening late this year at one point and the rate they're going it should easily be ready for early summer so that will probably be June. Hulk might be July though. Depends if they want to separate the two openings at Islands or if they want them at the same time. Official dates will probably be released around Easter.

Time for an update! Firstly Hulk. DSC_0961 by awhenUO, on Flickr Not waiting around on this. Kong is progressing nicely. DSC_0990 by awhenUO, on Flickr DSC_0969 by awhenUO, on Flickr DSC_1002 by awhenUO, on Flickr No idea what the brown structure will become, part of the queue? Volcano Bay vb_pano_2 by awhenUO, on Flickr vb_pano_1 by awhenUO, on Flickr Huge foundation space for the volcano itself. So things are cracking on as ever.

Well it is possible. This is closed early due to maintenance. Not budget. It's been a nightmare all year often only being able to run just one boat. It needs a serious amount of TLC. Plus the bridge you can walk across past the fireball and water tower needs to be re-decked. The water tower was worked on and actually fixed from what I heard. It was just never turned back on probably because it would have effected the summer stage by Tidal. Never say never.

You go to the big Top at 2:45 or something for the selection process. Then mazes at 10pm.

At least Merlin are utilising a current brand with their Dreamworks deal! Taking it the third film isn't coming out until 2018 now and how well received both films are it is definitely a living IP. Shame it is only a smaller investment and primarily a kids area. I'd love a park to build the Isle of Berk with a rollercoaster swooping around, a dark ride about the battle between Toothless and the Alpha maybe. Feel like if it was done properly that would be sublime but only Universal or Disney would probably have the budget to go all out on that level. I can dream.

Saying a B&M is bad is odd. I wouldn't say any of them are bad in that sense. Okay maybe not the best but it's B&M, they don't do uncomfortable stupid unreliable bad rides. They started with some true greats. Built this reputation as coaster kings and then when something doesn't top Nemesis or whatever it's because B&M went bad for a bit. Thing to remember with them. They build to perfection. They don't build much because those they build are engineering perfection. They also build exactly what the client wants. For example Leviathan. They are asked why they'd never built a 300 foot coaster before. Their answer was because no one had asked them too. They will happily build new stuff but a lot of the time the park has to ask. They won't just develop new products unless they know there's a client for it. Air, Oblivion, Raptor. All had a client working with B&M from day one basically. If the park designs a ride and B&M agree to manufacture it they will do it down to a tee. So if anything you should look at the parks who design the ride layouts or ask for a clone instead of at B&M for being boring. Swarm is settling in beautifully and getting a lovely amount of force. It's graceful. Not every ride has to tear your head off. Jordan. You'll hate Baron if you hate Swarm. It's a floaty forceless ride which to me doesn't do much. Florida has a good set of B&Ms. Kumba is fab, Montu great. Kraken is solid and Manta superb for an 09 B&M as they were supposedly bad at that time. Then there's the Dragons and Hulk. And Sheikra that actually does something with the drop.

I really hope the roaming actors are clowns like a few years ago (for the 10th birthday I think it was) as personally they were my favourite over the years.

Early June actually isn't that busy. It's a pretty moderate time of busyness so you shouldn't have any problems with queues. It depends really. Kong looks like it's going up really quick so could potentially be done for early June maybe even May. Odds are you'll at least see some soft opening of it if it's not officially open. I would assume Hulk will be the same although that probably won't soft open.

I'm confused. So X was being sold to make room for the dark ride but last minute they couldn't sell it so completely redid the whole dark ride plans when it was long down the development line (because dark rides take a LONG time to come up with). But before this they were going to strip it out and make it an indoor rave place for MoS? So dark ride scraped that idea and some park not wanting to buy X scraped the idea of dark ride going there? Yes? So now the dark ride is being built happily where it was always planned to be and X hasn't been sold it is staying? Or is it only staying till they move Rameses from Chessington and want to put it inside? Because the guy at Inferno's fastrack entrance on 31st June told me that's what's happening

It is a mix. If no rides had ever had seatbelts then there would be no lack of confidence. It's just weird going from loads of rides having them then going on something like Saw which has none. The seatbelts (at least at the beginning) had a purpose. You wouldn't stick them on when designing something if they were irrelevant. Money, weight. All adds up. They definitely aren't a fail safe, they have hardly any strength in them. On Colossus they are a good indicator that the seat is actually locked as the computer requests. Seatbelt in they know it's locked, without it in the computer will pick up it isn't far enough down (thus why they can't just put extendible seat belts anywhere). Then on some rides they are used for evac purposes. On Inferno which releases a whole row or two it allows the staff to keep people in their seats or stop the bar coming all the way up when they're busy dealing with the first person. Whereas Saw has a little box that they plug into the car to release seats individually so seatbelts aren't needed in that situation.

And I've knew in January that X wouldn't be open for February half term. Let's show off If they make VR the only choice or something then odds are they'll make the ride less liked or popular as end of the day this comes down to the KPI scores and stuff. Nothing is wrong with the coaster. People will just want to ride it as it is. Otherwise it's just a stupidly fancy simulator really.