Cal

Went to Oktoberfest yesterday and had a good day. Great weather, great operations, great atmosphere and low crowds. Was my first time on Black Mirror, which was different. It was better than I thought it was going to be, but now I've done it once I can't see myself going back on it anytime soon. Surprisingly quite a lot of actors for an off peak weekday. Normally not my kind of thing, but I actually thought they did a great job of making a good atmosphere in the Oktoberfest area whilst having a pint, without being too cringe or annoying. Samurai is running awfully slow since its reopened since its downtime. A shame as it had been running really well, but its almost pointless running it in its current state. Just buy a new one or replace with a different flat please. On the whole, audio is still sounding great around the park. Makes a real difference. Must say, I've enjoyed my visits to Thorpe a lot more this year. Hopefully we have a much better Fright Nights this year, and PLEASE bring back 10pm closes.

What is the 'Bavarian Bingo' which takes over the rides? I didn't spot this on any of my visits last year

Would love to see that happen, purely just to see the black hole theme music on Detty again 🥰

The mighty warrior is back in action

I've received an email from Merlin today which confirms that the Crows will be back for this year. Another good decision in my opinion, about the only positive from last years Fright Nights.

As expected, pay per maze will be returning this year which is a shame. Platform 15 and Creek Freak Massacre are also confirmed to be returning. Happy to see Creek Freak returning, thought that was the strongest maze in 2019.

I liked the idea of it, but I think that looks awful to be honest

Towers have removed social distancing on a number of rides as part of a 1 week trial. Wicker man and thirteen leaving no gaps and the Smiler filling all available seats. This is great to see and is clearly having a big impact on queues, Wicker man is currently only half an hour!

I really hope so too, as you said there is demand for it and the 1 hour really does make a difference. The only thing that makes me think otherwise is with the 9pm closes there is 20 hours knocked off Fright Nights, and exactly 20 hours have been added to Oktoberfest (+2 hours on 5 Fridays and Saturdays) which makes me think they didn't get any extra budget for opening hours for Oktoberfest and have simply moved the hours from Fright Nights.

Good to see them extending hours again, I imagine this will just continue getting extended and we will see the park close at 7 throughout the summer holidays + weekends. Really hoping we'll get 10pm Fright Nights back, but looks like they've used them hours on Fridays / Saturdays during Oktoberfest instead which is a shame.

The capacity has been reduced, but pre covid the park never really hit capacity anyway. So even though the capacity has been reduced, there is pretty much the same amount of people they would get on a standard weekend. Mix that in with the reduced capacity on rides and social distancing, the park looks and feels busier than pre covid. I really don't think they should be advertising the fact they have a reduced capacity, same with all the merlin parks. It's giving people the wrong idea that the parks are going to be less crowded when in reality, there is pretty much the same crowds as normal.

Ghost train and Black mirror are both still open, I assume they have been taken off the app as they are pre book only so do not display a queue time

Here's the link, will only work in the morning when the park opens

Tidal Wave, Flying Fish and Samurai have all been removed from the app over the last few days so I assume they will all be down for some time. Shame as they need as many rides available as possible this week, and Tidal Wave is a huge loss with the weather we have had this week. I agree the '90 mins +' is an awful idea and is just going to result in more complaints. Its quite clear that all the merlin parks across the board have had there capacities increased this year, and while they are still running reduced capacities on a lot of rides this is a problem. Hopefully social distancing will be scrapped as planned next month, if not I think merlin really need to look at the capacity at all there parks ... Interesting stuff re Saws queue times a few years back, I didn't realise a third party company was involved. Shame they didn't continue it and roll it out to more rides as I thought it worked quite well.

The summer event is 21st June - 25th July, so over a month long I would also love to see Summer Nights return, its a shame seeing the park close at 6 or 7 when the parks still busy

Nice to see they've extended the opening hours over the holidays, defiantly needed. Thorpe arguably has the worst opening hours out of the 4 merlin parks in the last year so hopefully more extensions to come. Evening, I personally would never pay for unlimited fast track but that's up to you really. It's hard to predict really how busy it'll be, its a weekday the week after school holidays so should be off peak. But with social distancing and unis/colleges breaking up it may be busy.

I really hope the coaster is different to what's shown on the plans there. A boomerang style coaster is not a high throughput coaster that the park desperately needs. Also a weird decision if they go for a 1.4m coaster considering Chessingtons target market.

Yep that was her!

They have been on the last couple of days, apart from the 1 broken light of course Stealth was flying round the final bend on Tuesday morning which was fun

They were doing some filming on it today, so maybe they'll post something soon. There was someone (probably who has been on love island or only way is Essex, not a clue) standing outside with a filming crew saying they were going to be the first ones on it. I do agree its odd they don't seem to be promoting it apart from the signs outside saying its opening on the 21st.

Good to hear. As I said on the whole the park sounded great, there was only very few spots with no audio like Dragons Fury and broken speakers on Kobra. Oh that is odd. The operator said he's not aloud to use it at the moment due to covid but that doesn't make sense if they were using it last year. Who knows

I also visited for the first time in a good few years and had a great time. It's great to see a park that in my opinion was going downhill transform itself. - Park as a whole is looking fresh, much better than the last time I went - Although I loved Ramesis and sad to see it gone, Croc drop is a great addition and for families and I enjoyed it much more than I expected - Park audio on the whole was good and don't think it needs a complete overhaul like Thorpe, but couple of dead spots that need sorting - Vampire area and station looking the best it has in years. I hate the new audio in the station though and it doesn't create the same atmosphere as the old one. Don't fix what isn't broken - No water jets on monkey swinger, apparently this is due to covid somehow - Blue Barnacle isn't as good as Black Buccaneer but glad it has been replaced and the area looking fresh. Also worth noting opening hours are great this season. 4pm closures have been scrapped so its 5pm every weekday, and 7pm every weekend and peak day the whole season. Great to see Chessington and Alton having better opening this season and hope that works out for them. Chessington really is in need of a high throughput major coaster to help with the busy days, so I really hope it actually goes ahead this time.

Thinking of going midweek, is everything running 2 trains on off peak days like last year or is everything on 1 train?

I went last week and everything was running full capacity and walk on queues Open 10 - 5 and the only staggered openings was Zufari and Tiger Rock opening at 11 so didn't affect the day at all Highly recommend visiting on midweek days

Samurai has been back open the last few days It has been noticeably a lot more reliable the last few years