Marhelorpe

1) Stealth. 2) Nemesis Inferno. 3) The Swarm. 4) Colossus. 5) X. 6) Flying Fish. 7) SAW The Ride. Stealth will always been No. 1 for me. Short, simple, fast and a theme that isn't doom and gloom like all recent investments in the park since 2008. Nemesis Inferno wasn't always in the top 3, but over the years, it has really grown on me even though the original Nemesis is still clearly better. The Swarm is lots of fun, smooth and re-rideable, but crawls too slowly through the inversions for my liking, not to mention it's very short. Colossus is too rough unless you get the front carriage of seats, but still like it for what it is since Colossus was what started making Thorpe Park a proper competitor to Chessington at the time. X is fun with the indoor music and lights, but I somehow wish it was a little darker inside the pyramid as everything is lit up too much. Flying Fish is fun. Enough said. Never liked Saw. It's just too rough for my liking, the beyond vertical drop feels forceless compared to other vertical drops and the outdoor layout (excluding the indoor section) I find boring frankly. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The preshow was thankfully working and it appears the slightly longer version of it was being used today. But just like yesterday, it's still in a bad state with delays and a tube train that still doesn't move. Felt sorry for those first timers in the queue today which peaked at 150 minutes as they were getting a half-working experience. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not sure why it didn't move, but there didn't seem to be any major delays in opening it today bizarrely. The actors inside seemed aware of it not moving, so my guess is it is broken. I just hope I'm wrong as my friend will be trying it for the first time tomorrow and he's really been looking forward to trying it. I certainly hope some major work takes place on the headsets. When they work, they work very well. But if one bit is off, it can ruin everything for the rider. EDIT: A day later as of 8th October, the moving tube train is still broken and not moving. EDIT 2: Still broken moving train in the half-way section. Embarrassing.

Wow. I mean, just... wow. Today was by far the worst experience I have ever had on Ghost Train. So many elements are not working the way they should that I wouldn't even wait 10 minutes for it right now. (Problem 1) The audio exterior wise keeps cutting out again, just like during the rehearsal week. Wasn't present last week. (Problem 2) The headset I used had the left headphone dead, so I was unable to get a surround sound experience. And to top it off, the left and right speakers were the other way round, so when I look to the right, the person's voice kept coming from the window, not the seat opposite me. Quality control obviously wasn't done here. (Problem 3) The visuals during the 1st half kept glitching out, so when I raised my hand to ask for assistance mid-ride, instead of moving to an available seat just 4 seats down, the staff member radioed to the control booth "reset headset 55" and then my screen became blank. No audio or video, just a black screen, so instead of moving to a working headset, I was told to sit there with the headset on seeing and hearing nothing, so I missed the 1st half altogether. (Problem 4 - the worst one) The walk through section was not working properly either. The part where the train comes racing towards you around the corner did not move at all, so all that happened was some lights lit up the tunnel, nothing else. To top it off, the shadow of the demon creatures that appears in the tunnel wasn't present or lit up in the smoke, so there was nothing to see except a pitch black tunnel. More broken or disused effects. (Problem 5) During the 2nd half of the VR, my headset lost tracking of where I was so when it began the video, I was positioned 4 feet further in front, so I was essentially sitting in the middle of the carriage, not the seat. So when the demon creatures looked around in the carriage, my position got in the way, so just like in video games, I just saw bizarre outlines and shapes of the creature in front of me when it looked straight at me. Amazingly, the green smoke section only lasted for 30 seconds, so that wasn't so bad. At the end, I wasn't the only one who had identical issues. After informing the staff my headset didn't work properly, I was told with about 7 others to go to the Fastrack entrance and explain the issues I had and they let me go round again without queueing the second time through the Fastrack queue. Granted, the VR second time round wasn't as bad this time, but the moving tube train was still stationary and my headset's audio still wasn't giving me stereo sound. It's not often I would say this, but I genuinely want the ride right now to stop running at present until all these issues are resolved. It's just absolutely shambolic and appalling that a ride that has been running for only 13 weeks is in a state as bad as this right now. My advice to anyone who is going to Fright Nights this weekend or today is do not even bother with Ghost Train. It's not even worth trying. So much for "completely re-writing the rules for what theme parks can do" when none of it works properly... Sorry for this long rant. As you can probably tell, it has annoyed me. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Let's be honest here. This advertisement for a "new destination" I'm very sure is the alternative ending that was originally going to debut on the ride this year, only this time Thorpe have decided to hold off implementing it until 2017 for unknown reasons. My theory is that there were either severe issues with the VR footage for the other ending which might partly explain the 2 month opening delay, or Merlin/Thorpe decided to hold off using it until 2017 deliberately in order to keep interest high for the attraction the following year. Considering guest feedback has been very mixed for this attraction over the last 3 months of it being open, Thorpe know they need to make some major changes to it in order to increase satisfaction levels from guests. If you ask me, the ride needs a lot more work than just simply adding more VR footage to make it worth queueing more than 30 minutes for at the moment!

Can I be added please? Had lots of fun during the last meet at Chessington and would love to make this one, if you'll have me that is! Regarding the Brave it Alone experience, I have always wanted to try this and never done this before mainly due to the fact I've had to leave the park in the evening before the event begins previously. But this time I should be able to do it, just as long as it doesn't last until after 11pm which I'm sure it won't.

I have no idea why, but the thought of Derren having no legs in the pre-show section makes it sound hilarious! But it's good to hear even more stuff isn't working just one day later..... I wonder if it will get to a stage where we will see a repeat of Smiler's projection room earlier this year where all the projectors were off but audio was still playing? Unlikely, but not impossible.

That's what I was thinking with them holding the carriage at the 2nd station just before you depart, but I could hear the other train in close proximity to my one a few seconds before we departed. My guess is that when the other carriage arrived on the exit side of the platform, my carriage departed straight afterwards. When this happened, we were held in the green smoke section for about 10 seconds before moving again. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Haven ridden it 2 times today, I am far from impressed from both experiences. How can an attraction that has only been running for just 9 weeks (excluding the 2 week downtime in August) be in such a dismal state already? Some of the differences I've noticed and problems I experienced are listed below: - Outdoor queue-line audio was silent with absolutely nothing coming through the speakers. Every few minutes, someone was tapping against a microphone which could be heard and that was about it. - Besides the outdoor audio not working, the interior audio was muted too, both the corridor up the stairs between the pre-show room and the warehouse as well as the sound effects used inside the warehouse too. - I had to change to a different headset 3 times in the first section of the VR experience on the first ride as the audio through the headphones was either not working or only one side was working. - The half-way walk through section was a lot quieter than before with the audio levels turned down, plus, there was almost no smoke coming from the tunnel with the moving tube train. - Worst part for me was when I boarded the carriage for the 2nd half of the VR experience, we all sat here motionless with nothing happening for approximately 3 minutes on both rides. It appears that Thorpe have decided in order to fix the green smoke scene where you were waiting for a few minutes, you instead wait here before the train begins to move and VR footage begins inside the carriage with no audio or visuals. As much as the green smoke scene kept you waiting, this new method is even worse as it kills the pace from the evacuation scene half-way through the attraction from earlier. Back when I rode this during the rehearsal periods in early July, I rated this attraction very highly as it worked quite well, the VR worked perfectly and the pace never dropped at any point. But now however, none of this is the case. It's half-finished whereby I've yet to experience more than 3 out of the supposed 12 different experiences and the other ending, the VR headsets were broken... every time, and the atmosphere for the ride is virtually non- existent any more. There might be a lot of new technology and mechanisms in this attraction, but that is not a good excuse for a ride that is technically only 9 weeks old. Is this "the future for theme parks across the world" now, where half the stuff stops working after a few weeks of use?

Today's operations are pretty poor despite it being a moderately busy day. As of now (12:30pm), Colossus, Stealth, Nemesis Inferno, DBGT and Flying Fish are all closed. Colossus and Inferno have been down for at least an hour now with no testing or work being done visibly. As a result, all of the flat rides currently have ridiculously long queue times that are much slower than they theoretically are. To top it all off, I'm currently standing in Detonator's queue and what should be a simple 20 minute queue is turning out to be nearly an hour instead. Why? Because the staff are loading guests 50:50 with the Fastrack/main queue. On one dispatch, they loaded 7 people from Fastrack and 4 from the main queue...... Also, it's taking roughly 5-6 minutes per dispatch for Detonator. I understand it's expected to be busy with large queues during the summer holidays, but I wasn't expecting these many attractions to be down with literally the slowest staff I have seen for quite some time on some of their rides. It's getting frustrating. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Some may see this as a positive and others may see this as a negative, but both times I've ridden it today, it appears that Chessington have changed the pacing of the ride whereby at the two scenes where the train usually stops still for 30 seconds before proceeding (namely the mummy and snake scenes) they have both been reduced to just 3-5 seconds now. This is the first time I've ever experienced this on Tomb Blaster and it really threw me off as I was wondering if something wrong was happening. So now when you pass both of these scenes you stop stationary for about 5 seconds now instead of the usual 30 seconds and as a result, all of the music, effects and scenery ahead after you leave these scenes is massively out of sync with the movement of the train. If you're at the front of the train you are about 15 seconds ahead of the effects so you pass through silent and lifeless sets with no audio. I thought it might be they were speeding up the circuit as they were running low on a train as the queue has reached 60 minutes today, but on the brake run another train ahead was still offloading guests in addition to the third one in the station loading guests. So all trains seemed to be operational. Has this happens with anyone else before?

After looking through some of the promotional images Thorpe have used for the attraction, it does seem that Jack's theory adds up when you really turn up the contrast and brightness on the following image below. The illusion that the train is suspending in the air does indeed use some giant mirror panels on both sides of the carriage and underneath. For the side mirror (green highlighted), it looks like four vertical panels are used with specifically shaped edges to create a perfect outline of the victorian carriage shell design. The big hint that massive mirrors are used here is the distorted shape in the reflection which isn't a perfectly formed rectangular shape of the tiled window. Another giveaway is above the outline of the green mirror, you can see the warehouse roof not lining up with the wall which means the mirror doesn't seem to go any higher than the top of the carriage. (The red lines are the panel edges of each mirror.) As for the yellow mirror however, this is used underneath the carriage in the very middle all along from the front to the back. The brown pipe in view underneath the carriage is actually half the length it appears to look in this photo. With this, it creates the illusion that this pipe is directly underneath the carriage when in fact only part of it is. At the other end of the warehouse where the carriage moves into another section of the warehouse, much like the green mirror, a massive one is used here too to cover up the mechanics behind the wall in addition to the tunnel it travels through. This is why the platform you walk on doesn't lead to this other end of the warehouse - you would see yourself in the mirrors if you did. (I didn't highlight it in this image as it's a difficult perspective to show easily). So in terms of how the system works, it looks like the entire movement of the carriages work in a clockwise motion where the 1st half of the VR involves the train moving linearly from the victorian shell into the other section of the building, and when it arrives back into the warehouse during the 2nd half of the VR experience it moves horizontally back into position as the carriage rocks and moves to hide this sense of movement for the riders.

After riding it again yesterday when it officially opened it seems that there have been some minor changes made to the attraction compared to the technical rehearsals the previous week: • The intro or pre-show with Derren Brown at the beginning has been shortened slightly and some parts of his speech have been cut out before he appears in front of you. I can only assume that this is to help speed up the groups going inside. As a result, when it skips this section, the rest of what he says afterwards doesn't fit together as well anymore. • As mentioned previously, when you reach up the flight of stairs into the warehouse with the train carriage you can hear an ambience track of people shouting against fracking which fits with the posters all around the ride. • Maybe I was lucky both times, but the in the second half of the VR experience the looped scene where the carriage is filled with smoke/dust only lasted about 10-15 seconds instead of the nearly 2 minutes as previously. Maybe it's because they were sending groups around the attraction much faster or used all three trains this time. However, it's been less than a week since it officially opened and already we are seeing issues visual and audio wise with the headsets. More were unavailable to use than before, both times I rode one of the stereo headphones was dead/broken, and the visuals kept on jumping around (literally) by forgetting which direction I was facing in. Thankfully, the visuals fixed themselves immediately. Another point of interest is I'm beginning to wonder if these 12 different experiences and 2 different endings that are supposedly offered by the attraction are actually being used. I've ridden this 6 times now and I've had the same first half with only 2 different people and the same ending every time. If you look at the behind the scenes footage broadcast by the BBC a few weeks ago, it showed more characters, different creatures and different speech to before. Have these been scrapped due to technical difficulties with the content during the 8 week delay period or are they not rolling it out just yet? Without them being used, it's literally the same thing every time you ride now, the only difference is you either get a woman or a man on the train with you in the first half of the VR experience.

"The Colossus" according to the BBC... Maybe it's just me but out of every roller coaster at Thorpe, Alton or Chessington, Colossus is the last one I would expect someone to be able to stick their leg out of the carriage due to the very restrictive restraints they use. Correct me if I'm wrong someone, but back when Colossus was new in 2002/3, weren't there temporary metal plates put in the carriages to prevent people from sticking their legs out before the current restraints used today were fitted? I seem to remember Colossus having a similar problem to this a while ago but can't remember if this was why.

Full review written as blog post should anyone want to read it. It's very, very long however!!

Am I allowed permission to create a blog post on the experience containing spoilers? My review will be very long and I don't want to make a post that will be too long to read on a discussion topic. I'll put spoilers in capitals in the title if that helps. Currently heading home, so the review will be up later tonight! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'd just like to add that the queue board for quite a while now has said its 150 minutes, but the real waiting time throughout the day has been 30-40 minutes instead. Not sure why it hasn't been updated yet... Thankfully, it's short enough to manage it 3 times today! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nobody has gone in yet, but already the queue is full! Current position: Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It could be the staff/actors finished their training this afternoon and instead of waiting until tomorrow morning to deliver they instead decided to rehearse their roles with a few people in the park before the masses ride it this weekend/tomorrow perhaps? Think of it like an annual pass preview the day before official opening, but instead for park guests instead, similar to I'm a Celeb last year. Don't think it will happen, but still hoping as I'm there tomorrow.

Was it available to a selected number of people with tickets similar to the previews, or was it open for all with no ticket checks required?

Seems odd if this tent is for timed tickets because Thorpe generally like seeing big queues on their rides so they can sell more Fastrack to the guests, so wouldn't this reduce Fastrack sales instead? Either that or we could be seeing something similar again to Vampire in April 2015 where it only ran a 1 train operation and unless you made it to the ride's entrance before 10:15am just after the park opens, you couldn't get on it for the day as they sold out of time slots. Hopefully that won't happen if it does open this weekend as it will annoy a lot of people who arrive later into the park.

As well as providing people with less than a week's notice for a second time, the bigger concern for me is that Thorpe are still using the excuse of "creative reasons" for this delay. This results in people's expectations coupled with the constant marketing for the ride to be higher than previously, and some people (I'm not) will be expecting an amazing experience that will make it the best ride in the park, when the truth might be that it doesn't add up at all to the hype. I'm not saying that I'm expecting the experience to be bad, I'm just saying this excuse Thorpe are using currently for the delay will ultimately not sit well with many guests when they come to ride it on opening weekend and many of whom will wonder what caused the postponed date in the first place if they aren't impressed by the experience. This ride is essentially turning into another version of Th13teen - overhyped, under-delivered.

Just to add, the email also said the following message: It also said they can be held by the park in the Ghost Train Shop for up to 2 weeks ready for you to collect and purchase. Hopefully that will be it time for when the ride actually opens!

Looking at the image a bit more after turning the brightness and contrast up heavily, those brown pistons look more like they're guide tubes for the chains to pass through to the mechanics underneath the gravel on the floor. There's also one laying flat on the floor directly beneath the carriage. If I were to guess looking at this photo, there might be two possibilities for them being there: • The chains will move in accordance to the movement of the carriage when it moves vertically upwards/downwards and side-to-side with the black pillar in the middle supporting the weight of the carriage (which brings it to the second guess). • The noise the chains will make are there for the sound effect only when they move and are not for movement of the carriage. The carriage doesn't look as though those pistons are holding it in place, it looks as though a black support directly underneath is holding it in place instead, though, I could be wrong.

Blimey, I never thought they would ever get the high pitch fixed for Colossus. Makes you wonder if they even noticed since it changed in 2012 until now or whether they didn't see it as an issue all this time. As for Colossus' theme playing over the Lost City ambience instead, honestly, that's a better move. The ambience played there previously was also high pitched (I think) and didn't sound right at all around Quantum, Zodiac or Vortex with that pitch. Good to see they're noticing and fixing small things like this!