Aaron Tuckwell

They have gate attendance, increasing guest satisfaction scores and profit reports that would suggest otherwise...

I have to say, today was the best I think I have ever seen Thorpe - in both appearance and operations. It is clear that they have really pulled their socks up! Mist effect was working on Nemesis Inferno - a lot! Fire on Swarm (skimmers still missing though) Smoke effect on Stealth's launch Squirting water on Saw's body (plus the lights and hammers) Operations were spot on.. Even Colossus was quicker than usual. Swarm was often leaving the station before the previous train had returned - resulting in a walk-on from around 1pm There was a really great buzz on park today too. It was clear that they had prepped for it to be far busier than it was.. but that didn't stop there being a great vibe around the place.

Isn't this Saturday Ministry Of Sound though? So the rides are usually open to guests of that between 6/7 and 10...

Finally got to ride this yesterday.. and my short review? I'm glad I used Fast-track.. I'd be annoyed (insert your own expletive here) if I'd queued for 3 hours for that. While some parts are very well done (like being alone on in the first video and seeing different people in the second), the over-all thing lacked the "why" factor for me... For example, why am I on a train in the first place? Who are the Fracking company, what are they doing, why did it go wrong and what has happened for the 2 things to come together? The jump scares were too predictable; to the point that they were just unpleasant to see rather than shocking. I was more "oh, that's not nice" rather than "what the hell". The 4 elements (5 if you include the photo room bit) just seem to disconnected from each other. There were so many plot holes. For example, why would I leave the train carriage the way I went in (which was not relevant to the sequence I've just seen if I was on a journey) to be taken to a room, which seems to be part of the train tunnel by some shouty lady on a megaphone I can't understand, only to then be taken away from that room via a door (rather than heading back the way I came) through an underground station to the same train I was on before? There didn't seem to be any continuity to it at all. I get that the premise is to get you to question your own reality and I guess that kinda worked because the idea of not moving but being in a tube station is confusing, but the lack of stitching the stories together has made it a bit of a wet fish. Personally, I got lost in asking more questions about the story than I did about my reality. I didn't help that we were told that the ride was meant to question this reality in the intro video, but our reality is not that I'm on a train.. I'm on a ride. If I had been told as part of the first train ride that something that was said in the intro room has made me forget events between now and then and that I'm no longer at Thorpe Park etc then that at least would explain how and why I'm on a tube in the first place. I was aware that I had a headset on the whole time, so knew that none of it was real... I'll be honest - The opening day of The Swarm made me question my reality more than DBGT did.. At least that was all happening to me.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the proposed flying coaster for Canada Creek that was meant to fly out over the lake abandoned because it was found that the lake bed wasn't stable enough to support the footers and so they instead started a programme of infilling land instead? Can you get a decent dive machine out of a 50 metre height limit? We're never going to see a hyper, giga or anything similar at Thorpe. It was agreed when building Stealth that no future ride would ever exceed this height, that Stealth was a one-off and that any future ride's maximum height had to be a within a percentage of Stealth's total height (which I think made the height 60 metres if I remember correctly) Rumours were also rife about Spinball's relocation to Thorpe in the coming years that would sit where Thorpe Shark sits now, but obviously we won't see much of that until the hotel is started / finished...

I think that the island behind Swarm is most likely to be the newest area development (taking out potential regeneration of Canada Creek and Rumba areas).. The island has now been settling for as long as Saw and Swarm islands were and we know that Thorpe are keen to use the land they created, otherwise, why bother filling it in to start with!? Most likely things on the site? Probably a Mack (ala Helix) or a Dive coaster as they are the only ones I can think of that would offer a differing experience to the ride line-up. I don't think we'd see an RMC here, it's not the right location - if any-where that would be Canada Creek..

The MAP still mentions the rehearsal day on it.. As did the MAP facebook page a few weeks back too... So I'm assuming that this is similar to the Galactica rehearsal they did?

Sorry.. I've literally been out of the loop for so long. It's been that long that there were 42 pages to catch up on... But it's good to know that their work is well recognised! I should probably add that I knew this was IMAScore already and was a comment that this was CLEARLY their work based on the composition, sounds, structure etc

This has IMAScore all over it...

Has there been any word on the MAP preview tickets yet?

Aaaah, I was going to mention the Thorpe one not working currently.. But on that note too, given that you were planning on finishing the site and project.. on behalf of every-one every-where, thank you for not!!

There was a lot of activity at the top of Swarm's lift hill on Sunday.. maybe it's connected? It could have just been routine, but there were a lot of people up there..

Sorry, first time online since my last post a few days ago... For a clue for the last clue, if you still need it.. It'll be in the last place you search, but at the next stop you find.

Oh my god, that last clue is genius!

This is the beauty of Derren Brown's work - that it provokes this response. He's been very clear that it will challenge people's perception and that "things are not what they seem" Well.. This is where the clever bit comes in... There are 2 sides to this. There is the side that makes people recognise that there is nothing sinister or more to the video than a guy, presumably him, flashing in and out of a CCTV video that was hidden on the website designed to make you think that it has a deeper meaning because we want to be rewarded for having found it on the website. Then there's the other side that see's there IS a deeper meaning to it and go out looking for it, then going out to prove that there is something to it, in the hope that they have uncovered something that the masses didn't see (which is where those of us that do videos or pictures pointing out theories come in). Our imaginations and logic processing brains will look for things that don't seem right and interpret them. Hence how between myself and Ian, we have seen different things in the window even though the video is the exact same video. It's all OUR perception of it But the scary part is that this then becomes a bit of a Schrodinger moment where they are BOTH right because it's designed that way. What's even scarier is that the way Derren will have designed this is that we both will have missed the point and there will be a third thing that no-one has seen... Don't under-estimate his work. People on here at the moment seem quite dismissive of every-one else's theory for one reason or another when in reality Derren has us right where he wants us.. And it wouldn't surprise me if he's watching all of this unfold before his eyes

I've just done this video.. fingers crossed that the Thorpe Police don't come down! It's not overly clear and suffers from that usual "Most Haunted" grainy problem, but that's the light on the original.. Probably looking WAAAY too much in to it, but it was fun scouting for clues!

We are both definitely looking in he right place, but I just can't see it. The window directly above him when he walks away is too dark to see anything..

I genuinely cannot see anything in the right window in the last frames (when he is walking away) What I have just spotted though is a shadow move towards the position he first appears IN that window. It last for literally 2 or 3 frames and took me a couple of minutes of backing and forwarding...

Just thrown this in to some video editing software and there's nothing hidden in there.. The flashes are just that and nothing subliminal... the image of the bloke is static (he doesn't move) and playing it backwards kinda sounds like a station platform.. That's about it... The only interesting bit I found was an orb to the top of one of the images when the guy is there but I think that's lens-flare more than anything noteworthy..

Apparently, not according to Derren in an interview (which I'm struggling to find) where he said that even if you know what's going to happen, the power of suggestion takes you some-where else and you end up at the same result because there are loads of different paths that you can do down. It's apparently going to give every-one a different experience based on their own psychology, morals, fears and thought processing and a re-ride on it will give a whole new experience again

I'm amazed that no-one has even mentioned that performing hypnosis is illegal without a licence to do so... because of the implications involved... So I think that can be ruled out completely... The power of suggestion goes way beyond hypnosis. Look at the attraction in either US or Canada that just a dark empty room that makes you think all sorts of crazy stuff is going on in the dark then when the light unexpectedly comes on it scares the mush out of you.. That's all power of suggestion!

That was the easiest of the clues to have found so far! lol Does the picture bottom left look like some sort of dropping lift thing to any-one else?

It might be all to do with risk assessment.. They have assessed the other rides (rapids and the like) and can minimise the risk of serious injury, but can't with Mack Flumes... meaning that the only way to keep guests safe...? Close them... Could they be replacing them with Intamin flumes?

I'd personally love to see Rumba get some attention. It's looking old, out of place and run down (read: Typically Merlin "themed"). It could be themed to fit in with Nemesis Inferno as the river that runs alongside / down the volcano.. The queueline needs to be re-routed around the pond and interact with the ride (like Congo does at Alton), the exit path re-routed and the photo kiosk moved (that's the worst bit of the dilapidation). While they are at it, they could also re-route the rapids and work on the theme a lot more.. But given that we still haven't got a tunnel on Loggers or a Colossus repaint, I think any of this will be too far fetched. Thorpe need to increase their ride portfolio massively.. as their queues are starting to get to the complaining days of Alton back in the day.. Quiet days seeing an hour (on the rides that ARE on full capacity of course)... I can see the GP slowly growing tired of that.. So, they could just go all out one year and add flats like they did with Detonator , Vortex and Zodiac (just without the PR nightmare that followed it).. As for where you'd put them... ummmm... I'd love to see construction on the new coaster too.. That should be kicking in soon, surely?

Absolutely gutted that you're closing the site down.. It was one of my only sources of sanity when the season was on!! So, thank you for providing such an amazing site. Going to miss it!