BigBobJones

Nope, I quite like it.

But then again if they put something in its place which is no higher or larger, then they could have this covered under the retrospective planning permission?? Something like a *cough* Top *Cough* Spin?

I can see why they have to close the Zoo and Zufari/Skyway before it gets dark, but the rest of the theme park should really be open, other parks are making the effort, it seems like a poor show from them. Come on how many youngsters want to ride the Vampire in the dark, I know I do!

As much as I love Vortex, I feel it should be moved to the Towers to replace Sumbission and Thorpe should get a bigger and taller version

I'm looking forward to this

I'm going to play this one by ear as you never know we may have Slammer open for 2014, it may well be removed or it could indeed be replaced by something better.

TBH the noise it makes is worrying, but I don't think Thorpe would get rid of SS too soon anyway, what would the enthusiasts have to moan about *ducks head*

I would be interested to know the faults that the ride is having as many people have mentioned that the ride is often down for most of the year. Is it the same part which keeps going or is the fault different each time?

I don't think the ride is awful, nor the theming of it.... what drives me mad everytime, and also every other guest on the park silently mouthing WTF? to the way they load/unload the ride. They have the rule of having adults either end of the row which I understand why they do this, but they end up making such a song and dance about it and take so long to do it that even if the rides has not queue, you know full well it will be 10 mins before you get a second ride or you have to wait for additional adults to get on to fill up all of the rows. even when I have been on busy days they don't seem to use the batch area and what happens is people end up dotted all over the park and not sitting next to people in their own group, just to get he adults in the right location and many people decide not to ride. I don't see this happening at Chessington, but it does annoy me when they only have one member of staff running the entire ride as this does reduce the throughput. It is ok on quiet days, but not weekends and busy days.

But The Blade is pants compared to The Black Buccaneer, Dragon's Fury is much better than Spinball. It's all Monkey Swingers and roundabouts really.

PS Vita would go straight on ebay if I got one!

I disagree, The Swarm is fine, where as 15 years ago when I spent 2 hours in the queue for Oblivion watching it break down all the time, that TV did my head in. Stealth should have queueline TVs as well, showing drag racing or something to get you in the mood.

It had people talking about it at work today as they know I'm the Oracle of theme parks in the team. I just pointed out the no arms in the air due to BO campaign and 'got to be drum to ride The Swarm' one as well

Keeps your fingers crossed as there was a sign saying Samurai was not going to re-open until 2013 last year, but they got it up and running for Fright nights

The problem with listening to the GP is everyone has their own views, so if you listen to people who like thrill rides, they will say this is boring. Speak to people who want family rides and this may be too intense for them. If anything it is as good as it is going to get, a big improvement on NWO, and I believe it will be here to stay for a good time yet. A bonus is it adds variety to the park which can only be a good thing, plus the throughput when on 3+ trains is fairly good.

Isn't this what daily checks are for? Check everything is good to go and functioning? When I worked in a nightclub I knew the smoke machine needed filling up every 10 days (at the use it got), so I would make a point of checking it weekly. It really doesn't take any time at all to refill the liquid in a smoke machine It could well be that some effects are simply switched off as there have been reports that audio has not worked in queue lines and people have mentioned that it had been switched off. I asked for the audio to be switched on when I was on Rumba and I was told "We can't find the key to switch it on"

Well said. What do we as a guest get from advising them that a ride time is wrong? They could do a raffle for a prize / free Fast Track, free return tickets if your text was helpful and the queue times were indeed wrong. It doesn't have to be to all guests as this would get out of hand. But offer your guests something as at the end of the day they are giving you information, Thorpe should at least offer something back or the chance that they could get something. At the end of the day a Fast Track, free parking or free return tickets doesn't cost them anything, but to a guest this can make a big difference.

There is no reason why they can not run on 3 trains, one area which slows down the dispatch of trains is they only have 2 people checking the restraints, so you waste 30-60 seconds waiting for members of staff to go up and down the train, added to the fact they have to assist guests who don't listen to announcements about pulling in their restraints if they do not realise. If they added two members of staff so each member of staff had a quarter of the train to manage, they would have faster loading and unloading times. Fair enough only do this on busy times when it is required. This is all down to cost of doing this vs doing nothing and cashing in on Fast Track sales. What annoys me is people who say "Due to H&S..." It has nothing at all to do with Health and Safety, it is more often down to their policies/procedures and they have performed risk assessments. An example is that H&S doesn't say you can not take a camera on the ride. But their internal policy means they do not allow it unless you meet their criteria which have they in their risk assessment. It all comes down to risk, they don't care if you drop your camera and it breaks as this is down to you, but they do care if another guest gets hit by a falling camera as they will be sued. At the end of the day H&S has not gone mad, the culture of taking up on 'No win, no fee' is very attractive as people just try it to see how much money they can get and more than often companies just pay out rather than go to court. As the person making the claim, they really have nothing to loose. This in turn has resulted in many companies not wanting to get sued or if they have been sued, trying to prevent it from happening again. Then add the public liability insurance, they get a lower rate if they meet certain criteria.

Sadly I don't believe we will see any increase speed settings due to the fact that it is currently one of the top rides at the park and they are not aiming to be a thrill park, more a family park. So having Rameses intensity increased will not benefit them at all IMO.

That may well be true, but when the majority of their customers visit over the summer holidays and are expected to wait hours for rides, the least the parks can do is get things fixed. I understand they have to priortise their work, but why not increase the number of maintenance engineers or get contractors in during the busy times? At the end of the day the water adds to guest experience and the guests are paying a lot of money so expect the good experience.

But do we know what the break down rate at these parks is? We all know there is very good coverage at all the Merlin parks so as soon as they evac any queue it is all over social media/forums, but I don't believe we have the same coverage at the non Merlin parks. So the point I am getting at is that the other parks may well have the same level of breakdowns, but we simply don't hear about them as often.

Top tip is on a Chessie Pass day go to Thorpe as the queues are so much shorter as all the annual pass holders will be at Chessie

If they replace it I want a huge one like Maelstrom at Drayton.

No we don't need to give them a break, they need to pull their finger out and fix these issues as they are mostly caused by their own doing. Ride unavailability ie RMT Letting too many people in the park The price to get in Fast track sales These are all things they can control. I didn't include the RR incident as that can happen to any park. But when I went in the summer, Lorakeet Lagoon was closed, water effects not working on Monkey Swinger and over the last 12 months, I only ever got into the Monkey walk through once as it was closed every other time. Now this weekend I visit and they close a section of the Zoo off, RMT has been closed all season with very little work happening. Plus ride operations are not brilliant either (see other threads) Yes they are making improvements, but they really are shutting the gate after the horse has bolted with their maintenance. Merlin know exactly how popular the park is, look at the February half term where they were turning people away every day. The power of the MAP draws a lot of people into going to these parks, but Merlin are really short sighted as many people will not renew after multiple bad experiences at other parks. When I walk around Legoland there are many areas which are so well themed and it is cleaner and better presented than Chessington (Excluding faded bricks everywhere)

Well said. Now with Merlin going to float on the stock exchange those share holders are going to be wanting a lot of cash for their investments, so where do we all think this will come from... not investment into the park or customer service, but up selling and pushing fast track sales. One train operation anyone?