BigBobJones

At the end of last year I was feeling really negative about X, I loved the ride, but it was so clear Thorpe has done nothing to it for so long. Hopefully they have done a good job and the ride will be good for another 10-15 years. *fingers crossed*

Now Swarm ORP, what's happening there....

Moving to County hall would make sense and have all Merlin attractions together. If anything the current building they have isn't big enough and always rammed, but how much space is left in county hall?

In all fairness Marc, the ride was out of action at the back end of last season only opening for fright nights. There has been 4.5 months of additional time to get these problems sorted. I know there will be teething problems and I observed staff being trained, but the parking issue has been there for a while now as mentioned in previous posts. It is a shame as it puts a downer on the ride.

That would be handy, but is he above the maximum height requirement for the Swarm, I was looking earlier and one of the hosts was way over the maximum height, do they check the maximum height... well that's for the Swarm Topic.

The worst thing about row 5 is you can't touch the floor with your feet, but the entire gondola leans forwards and you struggle to hold yourself in then the ride staff ask you to hold your hands out and the restraints are lowered

This ride is getting embarrassing now, picture it: Very fast music pumping through the speakers (sounds great), the ride lights on creating lots of atmosphere But the ride, a little to the left, little to the right (repeat a good 10 times) *Music ends* Then the announcement "Your restraints will be released shortly" while guest are up in the air and the ride does more attempts to park than a very bad driver. Then repeat "Your restraints will be released shortly" then after a few more wiggles to the left and right, it parked. It seems to take longer to park than complete a cycle. I saw this happen at least three times today. Now you can see everyone looking at the ride wondering what is wrong with it and the people on the ride look shocked then they are told the restraints are going to be released shortly. Are this rides days really numbered?

I'm sure they have more theming planed for The Swarm and same old same old for the older rides, but that's my negative side coming out there. I would love to see a cash injection and a real park update.

to be honest if they can reduce the noise and keep the neighbours happy it can't be a bad thing, technology has moved on and most of the newer rides have quieter lift hills, I can't see anything wrong here

I didn't really rate the Swarm in 2012, but went on it today, positives: -A much much smoother ride than last year without the jerking -The near misses work well -Most effects working well Negative: -Queue not well organised -and yet again and every every every time I ride it, the fireball didn't go off, but a nice smell of gas

Saw them testing it this morning and it was spinning at twice the speed as normal and spinning for a good 20 turns. We saw it working, so when we went to ride it "It's unavailable for the next 30 minutes".....

Matty got there first OK lets go for a "Chav Central @ Thorpe Park" of I can see some Swarm Merch "Don't loose your head"

Merlin are just doing what will give them a bigger return for their shareholders, why spend money on a 25 year old ride like loggers, when throwing money at your newest ride and reversing the seats is very marketable and can easily be advertised. But if they keep on with this thinking, loggers and Rumba in a few years will be out of service and removed. For me log flumes, rapids rides are the staple for any theme park, name me one theme park which doesn't have either a log flume or rapids ride... I feel Merlin has their sights set on expansion abroad and where they see the biggest return on investment, anyone else noticed all the price increases all over the place, a £1 here and there adds up to a lot of cash for them, the ORP prices are just too high now digital downloads are £2 extra. I feel the MAP is excellent value for money, but if I had paid £45 to get in, I would be so disappointed I would expect a premium product and I just don't feel Merlin are providing a premium product.

Well the fact pigeons were nesting in them last year may be the reason for it.

There was no Amity radio station playing near tidal either, the speakers were not doing anything. Nice blown speaker near the Calypso BBQ Rumba audio was nice and loud in fact you could hear it clearly in the Nemesis queue line Nemesis seems to be all sorted which is a bonus.

I hope today's poor show is not how they expect to proceed, at one point the following rides were all down: -Stealth -Saw -Slammer -Vortex -Rush -Flying Fish if anything it was nice that they didn't let too many people into the park which was good as for the rides which were operating didn't have any queues.

It looks alright to me, I don't like nor hate it. The purple goes well with the Vampire and it has a Vampire logo on. Looking on the inside, it's bright clean, somewhere I want to visit, plus they kept the trees which give it a lot of atmosphere. The fact money is they are investing, I'd never go to the old Burger king as the prices were a complete rip off, but I'd visit the Burger Kitchen if the prices are ok.

Hmm everyone else has said what I was thinking.. New for 2014, Brave Loggers backwards as they loaded the boats in the wrong way and rather than change it, they thought it would be a good selling point! LOL

I guess they have extra cash as they didn't fix the Loggers tunnel

It's OK I don't really like the Swarm. If it was Stealth or Saw, I'd be there.

Sounds good, but I don't fit into Thorpe's target audience, so they wouldn't use me or have me out of sight :-) Plus I would turn up with a Smiler or Stealth T shirt on :-)

Have they spent the cash to replace the stickers on Zodiac so it doesn't say Tussards Thorpe park on every carriage.

IMO Air should be on the list as it doesn't matter when you go there is always a queue a mile long at 10am when its open and it opens with a 40 min queue which never really seems to reduce during the day. Even a 09:30 opening would be nice.

Looking at the POV on the CF page, Catapult looked like its operation was smoother and quicker than Slammer. For example when going down, Slammer stops goes up then continues to go down, where as Catapult just slowly goes down.

Just the basics of loading / unloading guests quicker would be nice, but then again it always has a long queue, so while they are all in line they are not going on anything else