Cal

It was early this afternoon after a breakdown I believe. How dare you get a video you might get kicked out for this 🤣 Rumba rapids will now be opening in June instead of May to compensate for crane hire costs.

Oh dear, hope @MattyMoo got a ride on it this morning. This is becoming an absolute joke now though. Huge design flaw. They clearly just can't send any empty trains unless changes are made, which is an operational nightmare for them.

Well it didn't last very long, queue has been cleared. What on earth did they do to the lift hill over closed season... 🤣

Lots of issues with the lift so far this year it seems. Do feel sorry for them as it’s continuing to be a nightmare for them to operate. Swarm in comparison has probably had a handful of closed days since it opened 10 years ago, pretty sure it didn’t have a single day closed in its first couple seasons. Good to see they have sorted out the rest of the area (updates shared on theme park guide) as some it really looked a mess on AP day.

To be fair Thorpe do normally keep closed rides on the app unlike some of the other merlin parks, Stealth for example was kept on the app even though it was planned to be closed on the Sunday. Same for Hyperia during its issues last year. Yeah I noticed the change in post breakdown procedure on pass holder day. I wonder if this is for all breakdowns though or just certain issues? It is a quite disappointing to see the continuation of Hyperia opening late and hope that can be sorted. Really isn't a great customer experience having their new coaster opening over an hour late daily. I get that its more time consuming in the mornings with the dummys etc but they need a permanent solution or start testing earlier. Positive news, looking at queue-times it doesn't look like it had any shutdowns today so looks like they've sorted the issues causing all the stoppages.

Great news - never rode one of these but looks like a great flat. Nice to see PB making a big investment too. Do have to question from a business point of view making this announcement now. Will certainly put a lot of visits off till next year I imagine. Bit concerning last years losses rose to £2.8m too. https://riderater.co.uk/12451/blackpool-pleasure-beach-losses-rise-to-2-8m/

Shame to loose the the terraced seating and a smaller stage, wonder if the budget got slashed with all the recent merlin cuts. Maybe the park don't want to spend as much money on it now with all the recent cuts to entertainment too, as I imagine the stage will only be used for Fright Nights now. Happy its still going ahead though, looks a bit of a mess at the moment and isn't a great first impression. This along with the refreshed beach and depth charge will look nice.

Agreed, as much as a new flat in Slammers space to compliment Hyperia would've been nice, a year of stability isn't a bad thing. Especially at a time of other parks making cuts and removing rides. Nearly didn't bother with passholder day today after seeing Stealth down and Hyperia on 1 train yesterday, but glad I did. Great day, most rides didn't have a queue all day apart from Hyperia. Unfortunate about Stealth, I think the only other ride that was closed was Zodiac, which was pretty much cycling all day by engineering. Hyperia had a lot of shutdowns (I saw 5+) with trains stopping on the lift throughout the day. They were all dealt with very quickly and most of the time was back up again within 10 minutes. One thing I did notice today is they no longer send empty test trains on Hyperia after a shutdown. Once engineering attended and it was back in operation they just started loading trains again. Think we all know why that is.

It was open on Friday, but didn’t open yesterday. Didn’t see any visible work on it today and no trains on the circuit so likely waiting for a part.

Glad they managed to get Toxicator back open in the end. Do feel for the current management and staff as they are clearly trying. Just bad luck and not enough investment from Merlin. From what I've seen online, its running really well and looks great. We just need more of this. I'm really not sure replacing postman pat with another coaster should be the priority right now. Another flat in X Sector and Dark Forest is needed ASAP.

Opening day at Towers going well it seems. Ride availability as good as ever and Toxicators queue has been evaced as sewage has started to leak out in the tunnel ... UPDATE: The whole of Forbidden Valley is now being evacuated, meanwhile Oblivion and Rita have been down for over 3 hours...

Me too 🤷‍♂️ I noticed the scaffolding is still at the side of the station holding the test dummies too. I would've assumed that was a temporary solution too ... Don't see why it wouldn't be open unless its having issues or wind is too high, weather looks fine for tomorrow.

Looked pretty close to stalling yesterday during testing yesterday, 8 mins in. I really hope they've ironed out the issues it was having last season and they can get it open on time every day. I'm surprised they haven't added a front row queue in the station too (which they said was coming later last season) surely that would be really easy to implement?

Sounds like Hyperia has had its fair share of issues today. Credit where credits due though, they seem pretty on it maintenance wise this year. Can’t remember the last season all rides have opened at the start. Still 2 weeks till main season starts too. Saying that I have no idea how many trains the coasters were on. Still good to see though none the less.

On the app it shows 20%, and Magic Money accepted which would imply Aramark but maybe thats a mistake then? I've seen Project D Doughtnuts being sold at Towers (in the coffee shop on Towers street) but unsure about Planet Doughnut.

The app has updated a couple of food and drink outlets for this season. Grannys Apple Fries has been replaced by Harbor Deserts Co. serving soft serve ice cream and waffles on a stick. Doughnut time by Colossus and Vortex have been replaced by Planet Doughnut which seem to be very similar products to Doughnut time. 20% AP discount accepted at all 3 outlets.

Congo opening in April isn't the end of the world, but not great. Its a bit different to Thorpe, its in a central location so it doesn't look the best being closed. Its also more of a family park to a thrill focused park so I imagine it gets more riders, and Towers are in dire need of more filler rides so any ride closed isn't ideal. Under 1.4m have already lost Blade and Flavios this year... Skyride and Hex being closed is pretty poor though. Wonder if Hex is just maintenance being stretched or there has been further issues? A bit worrying if so...

Not fussed about Rumba being closed till May, its crap anyway. If cuts need to be made then I'd rather this than cutting staff elsewhere, less capacity on coasters or cutting opening hours. It would be nice, but realistically the only coaster they can add it to would be Stealth. There was plans to do this but it would've required them to do some work to the queues to implement, and they were worried it would impact throughput. They don't currently assign rows on Stealth and it works fairly well, so I doubt that will change. It would work well on some of the flats too, Rush and Vortex would be nice. I don't see why these couldn't operate the same way that Samurais do using the same queue as the Fasttrack queue. Vortex used to have one and it worked well.

SRQs confirmed to be returning on Galactica and Oblivion for the start of the season, and on Toxicator. Not sure how well this will work on Toxicator as I can only imagine it having 1 or 2 max per cycle? This means they’ve gone from 1 to 6 SRQs in less than a year which is great to see.

Astro have pretty much killed the park, no investment at all. Was the last major ride Speed in 2006? Thats before Astro took over. Gutted I never made the effort to get a ride on Megafobia. Certainly is an interesting time for UK theme parks.

Big loss having Wild Asia closed for the season, especially for a park that really struggles with capacity. Hopefully with Wild Asia being closed for the season they'll keep all other rides open off peak days...

I’ve had some good days at the Thorpe ones back in the day, and the Fright Nights passholder events I did were good too. Seen some terrible reviews from Chessington ones but Chessington is always terrible. I’ll probably go to this one with it being a 7pm close, depending on the ride availability they post nearer the time.

Passholder day has been announced for Sunday 16th March. Park is open 11am - 7pm which is nice, interesting as don’t think I’ve ever seen them open after 10am. Would love to see some more of this, opening later and staying open later. 11am - 10pm would be great for fright nights.

Highly doubt it. Will be interesting to see if there are any cuts ghost train wise with huge cuts to entertainment budgets Merlin wide.

I know it hasn't operated for years but still sad to see this go. To this day still my favorite flat ride by far. Interesting they're removing it without a replacement. Hopefully we'll get a new flat for 2026.