Mitchada04

I'm waiting for my Tesco voucher to come through and it's okay Luke you won't be the only one leaving early as the kids in my car have to get home for bed time as they have school the next day.

R'n'R uses the left hand side of the two queues at the main entrance with the right hand side being for the usual main queue, Fastrack queue for fastrack and exit for disabled.

Monday and Tuesday will probably be the busiest days of September. Summer Holidays don't actually end till Wednesday down here in Surrey with most Runnymede schools also having Wednesday off. Local colleges don't start till the following Monday so this week will still be pretty busy (a few years ago they had to extend opening on the first Monday and Tuesday to 6 due to the number of schools still off and they've extended previously on 6 close as well to 6:30).

I'll give a serious review here then It's a small park with most of it being generic stuff you see at all the parks (small coasters like Paultons have, an array of well run flat rides and so on). It's a beautiful park to walk around. The bottom half of it doesn't even feel like a theme park (reminded me of Virginia Water Lake for anyone who's been). Raptor Attack is so simple with the generic coaster etc yet so immersive with the small groups entering the mine, physically low beams and really well done animatronics. Great little dark ride. Skate Karts are brill and would be great if you were in a group of friends to race around! The Ultimate is an amazing ride. Really is, yes it's rough, rattly and stuff but it feels like an old school coaster and the second half never lets up. Gutted we only did it the once! We were warned about it being on one train all day (think it has been most of the holidays as well actually as the red train is buggered). We queued 40 minutes for it just before 11, was probably 90 minutes most of the day. Although the track is long the ride only takes 7 minutes due to the stupidly slow lift hills. However you get 38 people on a train so it moves in nice bursts and the music they play is pretty awesome too! Wouldn't be a bad queue if it were on 2 trains.

Certain levels of Disney annual passes exclude you from dates (some of which are entirely random) and same with Universal where Horror Nights isn't included or you can only go to one night free of charge. It is what it is, one of the perks of upgrading to the next tier of pass is to get free Fright Nights entry. There was a time when the £5 entry was implemented where there wasn't an annual pass even on offer that gave you free entry. Not once does the Merlin terms state that it will be £5, just an undecided booking fee that for the past few years has been £5. Don't like the system, don't go. It's as simple as that.

Is Nemesis better than Corkscrew?

Projection mapping was working Wednesday morning during ERT. Then it was obviously down before 4 as when I went in again it was off at first then fixed in the 10 minutes I was in there.

Here we are, the park home to Ultimate things like Raptor Attack, Angry Birds and some random stuff. Here we see the Ultimate wheel that they have. It's so good that even on busy days they only load half the carriages. Much like the annoying Drayton, LWV opens its gates at 10 but the main rides at 10:30. However, you can't even go down towards them from 10 so this happens. And with Ultimate things behind the man a queue of stampeding people formed! So we went on the wheel which was opened and then RAN (for people who know me that is an ultimate thing!) We ran, we saw, nothing Ultimate happening here. So did Raptor Attack which is Ultimate! So we went mining. This tunnel really is as small as it looks! And this beam really is low! Ultimate theming here. Raptor Attack is a generic coaster you find at fun fairs, however in the dark with a really well down internal queue and animatronic raptors throughout the ride it is pretty Ultimate! Speaking of which... They have a ladybird Zierer Tivoli! And yes in the background is indeed a Reverchon spinner! Ultimate green spin it was. While we're talking about green... The green Falls of Terror water slides! With a blue sign Like this man. And parts of the sky! The sky is blue! Ultimate British weather! This wall is blue too. YAY ABAP AT LWV! YAY All the space guys say hi To the generic guys Not a fan of oversized birds though. Ultimately they aren't real Through the rings we go back to the real world I will. If it's Ultimate that is. Important sign there ensuring you have Ultimate fun. Oh and a meh wood sculpture. This guy is a legend. He made a bird fly! Ultimate lad. He approves. Mr Ferret wasn't too sure though. His day clearly hadn't been Ultimate. Urgh camera was facing the wrong way guys. Sorry let's get back to Ultimate things. Like the insane Whirlwind. And Ultimately awesome skate karts! Weeee! Ultimate failing going on here! These are pretty good. Do like their green though. At least that way the rides are camouflaged. See! You can't see the rides! Ultimate camouflaging skills! Just watch out for the train. They are living on the edge without train gates so remember to look both ways for an Ultimate day out. Here are a few things that I find Ultimately sickening. This is my type of thing! Speedy tractor. Just know it's going to be fast with a sign like that! Camouflaged cherry picker. It's difficult to see I know but I'm Ultimate and can see it. Real animals This was my lunch the following day. After all, it was national hamburger day. Not even going to ask. It's that Ultimate. Something through the trees. Didn't look Ultimate enough though. Few more Ultimate things. Blur of Ultimateness. No blur. OOOOOO. Not bad. Ultimate lad up there on the lift hill. Not sure what ride this was. Still wasn't Ultimate enough for us. Yes Ultimate things So with the Carousel done we'd been on everything bar one ride. They call it "The Ultimate." Don't know why. It had a long queue. Only one working train. Boring signs. Not running is boring. Stupidly placed chains. Safety features like air gates. Lift hills everywhere which take an age to complete. Stupid thing. Just a shame it's so darn good! Ultimate is amazing! Relentlessly awesome! It has some gimmick too, not sure what but it doesn't need it! Best ride on park. Well after this bad boy!

Stealth was closed from 3:15 today and no one posted about that panicking about it possibly being the end for it! Okay it opened at 6:45 but it's not newsworthy. Was just a typical ride breakdown. Minor issues like restraint faults aren't a life or death situation.

Thorpe has the best one at the moment with unlimited digital downloads till the end of the season for £25 (only for AP holders though). It's only an extra £5 with that to also get a hard paper copy of any of the photos!

Not on park but I know that there are no queues. Not using R'n'R I'm using people I know who are at the park.

The system is fine today. The park is dead, 0 minute queues for everything due to the horrible weather.

It's not unfair. All of those people waiting 60 minutes could have used R'n'R and taken benefit of the 0 minute queue that system was offering. If you're willing to wait 60 minutes because you can't be bothered to log into the site which takes 2 minutes or get one of the cards then fine but it's your own loss. Thorpe offer you a system and you don't want to use it. It's a trial and until everyone knows about it it will start slow. The ratios for R'n'R have to be the highest as this is what they're promoting! Saw wouldn't have got a 3.5 hour virtual queue had it been an even higher allocation to the R'n'R queue. One day they need to just close the main queues for the coasters and make R'n'R the only way. That is when you'll get a true sense of how it affects other rides and so on. People will also have to understand the system then. Because those that use it love it.

It doesn't affect the other rides anywhere near that much! Today at one point on R'n'R: Saw had 3 hours, Swarm 1.5, Colossus Stealth and Nemesis just over 1 hour each. The standby queues weren't particularly busy for these coasters as in how many people were in them (just longer times because of the many systems operating). Flat ride times were as expected/usual.

It opening later is just because it's not top priority probably. It's always had to close half way through the day for checks and so on. The long gaps between cycles is just exceedingly slow staff! Engineering tested it three cycles in a row a few weeks ago with less than a minute between each cycle and then they opened the ride so it obviously can be done.

Apart from the fact next weekend will be the busiest sounds like you had a good day

Reserve'n'Ride is still free, you can just also buy Fastrack through it. That complaint about Nemesis (and other coaster queues today) isn't down to Fastrack, it's down to R'n'R which is getting the majority of the allocation obviously as they want to push it. If people hadn't complained so much when you couldn't use the main queue normally during R'n'R trials then none of these issues would be occurring. Thorpe need to just enforce R'n'R on days it's being trialled as with main queue, R'n'R. fastrack and priority pass it is a mess! But it's only that way because of the amount of people who complained last time. The majority of people using R'n'R love it, and those who don't use it because they are soooo against the idea of change hate it and the fact that their queue hardly moves. Thorpe offer a free system for you to queue for the big coasters without being in a queue and people refuse to use it? Strange. Try it, R'n'R works and hopefully one day on this 5 day trial they enforce it so it's either Fastrack or R'n'R, no main queue because then everyone will see that it can work!

The flats weren't meant to be on the trial. Only the big 5 coasters are, everything else is on the system for you to buy fastrack for if you want. They're trialling it to trial it and see if it works! Now the main issues have been resolved and people heavily complained about not being able to queue normally it works quite well. It's updating quickly with ride closures and so on, hasn't crashed so far today.

Samurai reopened today as scheduled.

Rubbish. Inferno has opened at 9:15 with two trains many many many times this season.

The park is meant to open at 9:30 over the summer and all weekends I believe with ERT starting at 9:15. Samurai's been down the last few days. And it's good to hear that rides like teacups and banana boat are getting queues as it shows there's more of a diverse demographic on park. Your Day could have been worse, on Monday Saw stalled and Inferno opened for 15 minutes in total with Samurai also down all day.

Well I'm now hoping to get my current car sorted as my dad's friend (this isn't dodgy ) said he'd sort it out for me at a much cheaper price so if money permits Little Bluey will be heading up to Blackpool.

Don't ride it because it's not worth it? Or hope it's on ERT which is entirely possible as we now know they can open it at 9.

SeaWorld are still struggling this year after Blackfish last year. Their Q2 results show a drop in attendance although they had hoped that the opening of Diagon Alley and New Fantasyland at the competition would give them a general boost as more people are in the area (although surely that'd be more noticeable in the Q3 results). So how are SeaWorld battling this? Well there's all the general ideas of cutting costs etc but they are going to expand all of the Killer Whale enclosures with San Diego being the first to receive this in 2018. It's called the Blue World Project and does look really good and an improvement but is it too late? Would they benefit more from just removing the Orcas and focus on re-branding themselves and continue to push their conservation? Here's some concept art. This is certainly how all animal enclosures should be like but it's going too take 4 years to complete just one of them with Orlando and San Antonio receiving theirs in 2019/20. Will it all be over for SeaWorld before then? In other news, the 15 year old Clyde and Seamore take Pirate Island show has come to an end this was by far the best attraction at SeaWorld that wasn't Manta and it's been part of every visit I've made to Florida. Fans of the park and the public love this show and everything about it and in my eyes it's quite risky to be changing it in a time where they are already struggling. The new show could be just as good, better or worse. If it's the later then many will be disappointed. SeaWorld have filed for a name though: Clyde and Seamore Sealion High. As long as they keep to the same ideas and them mime is still used at the beginning I can see it being great. Concept art for it has also gone up. And some interesting information about it all here: http://behindthethrills.com/2014/08/rumor-mill-permits-filed-show-that-clyde-and-seamore-will-go-back-to-school-at-seaworld-orlando-next-year/ And finally, with plummeting share prices rumours are beginning to swirl about a buyout. Two companies rumoured, one being the Chinese Wanda Group which is seeming more likely (although with the Chinese's stereotypical treatment of animals and Orcas in particular that could be an awful move) and the other being Comcast. Now with Comcast investing so heavily into Universal and planning to continue on doing so they are loving the theme park side of entertainment and talks of a third Universal park still go on. With a buyout of SeaWorld could they transform it into that third park and bring in some IPs to help boost visitor numbers. Only time will tell. Yay for bringing a topic back from the dead!

Will there be a preview night though if Friday the 10th is now an official Fright Night? Would they hold a preview night on the Thursday for annual pass holders? Can't remember if they have done before.