Mitchada04

See I liked Baron. It's a good ride and definitely one that grows on you. Go without any hype and you'll probably love it from the start but for me it was over hyped as a ride (looks as beautiful in person as I'd imagined though which is what I was looking forward to seeing most). Plus, we had just driven for an hour in 34 degrees from Toverland to then join a 60 minute queue in the heat for it which was a downer (they installed misters, fans and covers that night though which made it much more bearable). Ticket thing is nice, like your clocking in and out tag for work. Just inside the building you wait for the preshow with lots of details like staff clocking in and out tags, the machine, phones etc, all very very nice. Preshow is excellent! So many details in the room (and all the others) so each time we rode it we'd notice a lot more. Great storyline throughout as well for the mining for gold etc (the mist is basically a character so make sure you get your photo taken with it ). Baron animatronic is cool, very neat. The batching is clever too so you wait behind these doors which are essentially air gates and the light goes green when it's your turn and you walk down to the vehicle. Trains are nice, floorless is a pointless gimmick but luckily the B&M system is very quick so it's not a problem. The dispatch button people can see is on a lever that the staff pull which is brilliant! Before going up the lift hill is cool too, all very nice and it's the little touches throughout the ride. The ride for me is just a bit lacklustre, very floaty and eh, not bad just not amazing in any way. Was a shame the wheels throughout the station weren't turning as that would have made it just a bit more complete (although in one of the making of videos they said they were struggling with syncing them together properly). It's a solid ride.

I always thought when looking at the concept art "where is that going because that surely can't fit on the old dinosaur site" so this makes a lot more sense! That is a big site and it's a big development, good on Paultons! Now all we need is them to remove the go karts and put a haunted house/dark ride there and the park is complete basically.

Yes and no, I was showing that although a few people might decide against it because of the longer queue, when you look at the comparative queue times when Colossus was on one train against Saw, Saw was no busier than it would usually be, only Colossus had the overly large queue so it's effect on the whole Park and other rides was minimal (obviously people aren't happy and Colossus should have had a much shorter queue but it didn't affect the rest of the park drastically). As with the fire, the times I went in June it wasn't working so I was just commenting that it was as it has clearly been broken or very temperamental.

Banned for not capitalising the P in Phantasialand, it's a world class theme park that uses good English. Not all caps and not no caps, just a capital to start the name.

Banned for having just passed your CBT so you'll be getting in the way on the roads, woop.

I wouldn't put the problem of more trains seemingly breaking at Thorpe than say at Towers down to the maintenance budget or whatever. The trains are all going to be highly maintained to an exceptional level. Even with that, things break. Colossus's trains have always been known for breaking and taking ages to repair (one was out of use a whole FN season a few years back), Swarm's trains had an awful first season with certain rows being unavailable on each train for prolonged amount of times. So I wouldn't say the trains don't receive the attention and care they would at Towers, Merlin are meticulous with safety (and even more so now), the problem will probably just lie in the fact there isn't enough engineers or whatever to fix these broken trains as quickly as they could be at Towers so the effect is much more noticeable. Opening on one train is a mix of maintenance budget and park staffing budget. Some days they don't get enough staff in early enough to have all rides on two trains from the word go (say you could have 2 Stealth members turn up at 11 for the second train to be added) so it's a general park thing the one train at opening issue and has been for a long long time, it's not necessarily acceptable but the argument will go on for years. Plus, they do open on two trains quite a lot during peak seasons, Merlin just need to set better budgets to the parks in general for the park managers to be able to sensibly use the money (think of it as Thorpe open on one train to save money, Towers open areas at 11 to save money, both as bad as each other). Colossus and Inferno and to an extent Stealth being in the 900-1000 area is acceptable, the park was still small back then, larger capacity wasn't needed. Saw is an odd case, the park wanted a higher throughput, Merlin requested for an over 1000pph ride but with what they wanted from the ride as well it just never happened and Swarm can get 1200 easily. A rides throughput is almost irrelevant anyway, yes you should always aim high but it's not a huge issue. If people are willing to queue 2 hours for Saw they will irrespective of if its 1000pph or 500pph. It's like the argument of people will be queueing two hours for the flats when R'nR is in full swing, will they though? Will people CHOOSE to wait 2 hours for Vortex, doesn't matter to the public how many people can get on the ride in an hour, they'll either queue or they won't. IAC hasn't properly gone over 60 minutes yet because people won't wait that long for it, not because it's a slow queue but because they don't think it's worth it. How does Colossus being on one train mean people will ride Saw instead? If they want to ride Colossus they will, they'll make the decision based on a queue time, not one train op. Beginning of the season Colossus would get 2 hours due to its one train op but Saw would be at its normal 60 minutes that it would have had anyway, one train op only noticeably affects the ride one train op is occurring. Swarm was 2 hours one train yesterday, Inferno 50, Colossus 40 and Stealth 45. They'd have been that even if Swarm was on 2 trains because that's how busy the park was. Swarm would have had a 50 minute queue if it had 2 trains, that's all that would have really changed. You can throw as much maths at it as you want but what happens in reality is very different. Anyway, Swarm's fire was working yesterday for the first time in a good while!

It really depends, if you actually get in touch with the Park and book it through them you can get it cheaper, my primary school certainly did! Plus local schools get it a lot cheaper partly to do with the deal between the park and the council with the yellow school buses and "Thorpe Park neighbourhood watch"

Worst run through ever today. So boat ride wasn't working, fine I've heard that's regular and the lift works fine around that problem to get you straight to Guy Fawkes (as does the first script so they must have two). All is going fine, found some of the moving rats on the paths you can stroke, they were cool. Get to Miss Loveits pie shop and it's now a shop for cat food... oh? No body coming down the hatch, nothing. Oh. Turns out the Sweeney Todd section has been awfully overlayed as Jack the Ripper (because there isn't enough of that already). Well woop. Mirror maze was smashed so we had to go through the actor and staff area between the street and pub scene (quite cool but still eh). Pub scene wasn't fully working with many effects not working. New scripts for the court room were just silly. They were funny and kinda relatable before, now just stupid comedy effect, nothing else. Didn't ride Drop Dead, it's so rubbish compared to Extremis. Was just hugely disappointing, didn't have the atmosphere it usually does and it just seems to be getting more incoherent each time (especially with 6 scenes or something for Ripper).

Meanwhile on TPM, Matt Creek was jealous over a holiday of prancing fanboys who rode many surprisingly, monstrously large dark rides and drank lots of very strong beer! This meant Professor Drunk got more drunk with envy and jealousy

With a few more parks behind me let's see how they've faired. Coasters: 1. Hulk: This and Nemesis always move at the top. Last few rides on Nemesis were really smooth, no little rattle. It just seemed a bit tamer than usual and as that's what always makes it pip Hulk, Hulk is now top as I'd never had an off ride on either and sadly Nemesis fell first. 2. Nemesis: Just yeah. 3. Manta: I know this is less grrr than the two above so it can take bronze. 4. Mummy: It's not the best coaster segment so can't go much higher in my eyes but the whole experience is up there! 5. Black Mamba: Nothing on Nemesis, but a brilliant coaster, such an atmospheric station, well themed, some great choppers, nice bit of force and disorientation and the brake run is cool. 6. Everest: I still just remember riding it in SRQ loads of times as it was 5 minutes there and I don't just reride a coaster for the count if I don't see something worthwhile in it. 7. Kumba: It roars. 8. Troy: As a coaster this is sublime, relentless and just amazing! I think I prefer Joris en de Drakk more as a whole ride due to the whole fun element of racing, but Troy is a much better coaster so makes the 10. 9. Montu: Still just really really like it. 10. White Lightning: Let's end on something so fun it's just brilliant! Other things: 1. Spiderman: Done. 2. Tower of Terror: Boom 3. Maus au Chocolat: Just wow! So much fun, great story and just <3 4. Forbidden Journey: I really like it. 5. Dudley: Love it. 6. Chiapas: Not quite Dudley but a brilliantly executed ride. 7. Popeye: Don't know how this missed out the list twice as it definitely deserves its place. 8. Clyde & Seamore Take Pirate Island: Still worthy of it. 9. Transformers: Just is where it is. 10. Droomvulcht: Really liked this one. Parks: 1. Islands of Adventure 2. Animal Kingdom 3. Phantasialand 4. Universal Studios Florida 5. Seaworld Orlando 6. Efteling 7. Epcot 8. Magic Kingdom 9. Alton Towers 10. Busch Gardens Tampa

Not exactly uncommon. Rita is like Stealth, has massive stretches of little downtime then gets hit by something. Ripsaw is just old, like Rameses, it's long overdue departure. Enterprise was meant to leave instead of Submission as it was more problematic and the older but stayed. Sub Terra has got the new restraint thing which will be settling in and 13 is always an odd one because the ride is plagued with problems from the word go (good job Intamin). Not great, but for those rides it's not unheard of.

I'd assume if all the other coasters were on 2 trains when you went and Colossus wasn't and had a long queue that there was something up with the second train. A lot of the time the demand thing is just the social team talk for "it's not ready/safe/checked to have 2 trains"

To be fair though, Towers have always done water rides at 11, Chessie don't open Falls till 12 on weekdays and the water rides are walk on most of the morning. Slammer is very rarely ready till 11 naturally, AB4D is hardly used by anyone in the week, Rocky never gets a queue and Samurai is just a lost cause. Not supporting them, but it makes sense (especially if they are short staffed or minimally staffed engineering wise then they should hopefully be able to open all the coasters on full capacity).

Or maybe the lack of marketing was always the plan. People who visit are able to see something is going on and there are the construction walls. The tactic might be to keep it a big secret sort of thing. Sometimes little marketing here and there can be as good as getting the image everywhere possible like Smiler did.

This doesn't really come as a surprise. Wet'n'Wild Orlando will be closing on December 31st 2016. http://blog.universalorlando.com/whats-new/wet-n-wild-orlando-closing/ Rumours are Universal are looking at building a few more hotels on the land and possibly another CityWalk style thing.

On Friday there was a guy with a microphone talking throughout the Dome about RnR and its benefits. It was also being advertised on the screens in the Dome and there were lots of staff on hand to help people out. The thing of your account getting loads of people on it could be the staff member who scanned your passes and then any further passes they scanned were going onto your account instead of the people it was meant to. The RnR queues are likely to be shorter anyway... they do get a higher throughput than the standby queue. At least 50% of the throughput is (or certainly has been) for RnR, then the rest divided up between Fastrack, disabled and main queue so the RnR queues will be shorter a lot of the time.

Very excited for this! Never been to Wales Will be a great way for me to forget about A-Level results which are a few days before this. Yay

Adventure land died with Jungle Coaster. Atlantis doesn't work with the area, wave surfer has had an awful overlay with stickers to make it squid surfer and there's a bright and colourful hotel in between them. The area hasn't worked for a long time! No surprise they're resubmitting Ghost, and a hotel expansion was to be expected. Nothing too exciting about the future really.

Get the feeling Colossus is on one train as it's by far the busiest with Stealth and Swarm being 20 minutes standard and 10 minutes RnR.

Zanperla sell it as a Disko'coaster when it has the bump in the middle and Chessington did class Kobra as a coaster for at least one Halloween season.

Well the launch was never increased in raw speed, it's always been 80mph, all that changed was the timing of the launch to make it under 2 seconds. It had a day last season where it rolled back when it had a full train as they tried filling it up 4 more seats at a time and as it hit 20 people it rolled back. Other than that it just doesn't do it any more and nothing seemed to change. I think maybe tweaked the trains or power in some way so it's more consistent. As the computer logs all the launch data and works out how much is needed etc, it's very clever and all that data gets sent back to Intamin.

For anyone visiting Towers. http://www.altontowers.com/FAQ So as well as giving out free tickets to people who go, if you have sun tickets you can visit the other places listed with them on the dates listed (basically until X-Sector reopens which as you can tell they have no idea how long that'll be). Oh, and Smiler's testing earlier... Fromt TowersStreet FB

The Swarm trial was never going to work as the system is intended. Putting it on one ride was to simply trial the technology and system, of course people were going to book straight away leading to it becoming full or whatever and it crashed severely multiple times. But when it worked, it worked quite well and must have got good reviews. FN was a disaster. No hiding the fact. The system was ideal for mazes but the overselling of Fastrack remains a problem at FN, plus the park was a lot busier than anyone could have expected. The huge fluctuation in maze throughputs, multiple shutdowns etc always makes the throughput virtually impossible to get accurate and joining any maze queue is basically a "who knows how long this will take" decision. People had also worked out how to work the system with multiple phones using it for one group, the ability to book and move your time slot and so on. But when it was on the 5 coasters over summer it worked on a whole. Yes there were some complaints, but overall it was well received. The first trial that was on all the coasters was meant to have standbys closed, and for the first 30 minutes or so they were. And this can work, in the first hour you overallocate each ride by a bit giving it a 10 minute queue when you arrive (as I believe that's the aim for the system you'll only have to wait 5/10 minutes upon arrival) then there's always a small amount of people waiting. Plus, if the ride gets quieter the system does allow you to choose to "Ride right now" if you want to even if you had say 30 minutes on the countdown left. You don't have to of course, but the option can turn up. Standbys were mainly opened because people complained so much about not wanting to use the system and then these same people will have moaned at the end of the day about having to queue when they had the opportunity to use RnR. Maybe it should be promoted more about how to use the system and that it's free, but last year there were stands everywhere and the RnR staff at ride entrances (of which there were a few at each ride) were trying to tell guests that say Stealth is a 5 minute wait for free on this virtual system or you can wait 45 minutes in the actual queue. People still ignored that and I think that's more the issue. Not that the system can't work as a system, but how there will always be people who want to queue physically. It's an odd one but I like the system and have only had better days because of it (and I've even had rerides on days RnR is working).

Nice to see some of the press actually picking up on how well Merlin have dealt with this. Yes, it should never have happened but Merlin could very easily have started blaming Gerst or refusing to speak as the investigation is on going. Varney looked genuinely upset because he probably was. Merlin have put those injured first and dealing with them, making sure they get the compensation and care they deserve should and is the forefront, even with an ongoing investigation that COULD (note that word) put the blame somewhere else. Rebrand I see unlikely. It makes sense to remove Smiler from the logo and park if they know it's going to be closed a long time. Let's say it had a huge technical issue and they knew it was going to be closed for a few months they probably would remove its influence from branding. Okay, merch might not be removed but selling that at the moment might come across insensitive. I can't see Smiler being rethemed. It's such an influential ride because of its theme,it's so unique and creepy. Retheming it is likely to make it lose what it has, plus, the public won't be fooled by a retheme that much. It'll always be that ride that crashed if it''s called Smiler or Geoff. Retheming it might come off worse as people think Towers are trying to hide what happened. Leave it a while, fix the problem, test is massively to reassure the public and let the press blow over. Don't have a big fanfare when reopening it, just do it and it should be fine. People will still ride it.

Thought I'd use this thread instead of starting another! So Potterworld Japan has been open for a while now, and Forbidden Journey out there has received an upgrade to 4K3D technology (the one in Orlando remains 2D and not 4K). Also... Posted on Twitter yesterday. Now there are some great dinosaur rides out there, notable Jurassic Park River Adventure and Dinosaur at Animal Kingdom. One of the original concepts for the JP areas was a B&M flyer in a huge aviary with Pteradactyls. Looks like a Pteradactyl in the photo, and Japan only has one major coaster so something large like a flyer could be very well received.