Marhelorpe

Almost........There........
 

 

I thought it was great (much to Cooper's annoyance hehe) and in particular the pre and post ride sections. It has been cleverly thought out and I loved the darkness in places. The canteen section was fantastic as well with the live actors. A much better attraction than X! 
 

Was Tidal Wave seriously running one boat on one of the hottest days of the year?

Tidal Wave is currently running on one boat...
 
On a bank holiday...
 
In 24C temperatures...
 
With a 120 minute queue...
 
*golf clap*
 

Tidal Wave is currently running on one boat...
 
On a bank holiday...
 
In 24C temperatures...
 
With a 120 minute queue...
 
*golf clap*
 

Or anything else, for that matter!

They don't need a new ride anyway. They have the best and scariest attraction of all time in the Walking Dead. Why try and beat that?

If you haven’t already, go and buy the ICON soundtrack from iTunes. It’s amazing, and a bargain. I actually didn’t know about it until Amanda told me it was available. A great decision by BPB. 
 
So there’s no marketing about for ICON. Oh well; the queues will hopefully be Blackpool’s normal pleasant experiences!

Even if it doesn't open this year, at least one can stare at this beautiful station building...

Didn't know the Tiger Rock tunnel had a PopWorld IP but fair play for securing that one on the quiet, lads!

15/10 on the tunnel scale

FFS Merlin. Please give up, just go, leave our parks, sell them, close them frankly if this is what constitutes for improvements in you book.
 
That didn't just happen, obviously. Money has been spent to turn the fantastic dragons head into that. Actual money. By the people who supposedly can't afford basic upkeep or remotely appropriate opening hours.
 
So so sad.
 

This week I had my first ride on The Walking Dead Ride (or X version 3 (or 5/6)if you prefer).
 
Queue line is pretty much completely outdoors and seems to be your standard ‘rundown’ cattlepen. At first this may sound somewhat of a bad thing. However given this potentially cleans up the queue distribution (Main,Fastrack,RAP etc.) and the theming/setting, this may be one of the better uses for a cattlepen. The bagroom is now just before the indoor part, which is around where the ole bagroom many years ago once was.
 
There is a pre-show, which neither great or terrible, but does it’s job to setup the purpose of the safe zone. The former queue/walkways have been rethemed to like emergency corridors, with flashing lights and bits. There didn’t seem much noticeable from when it was X , at least as lighting is concerned. 
 
We arrive at the station, which is noticeably darker and gloomier. The new setup means there is almost no queue which is nice. The trains remain the same (the two person rule unfortunately remains, but they probably have little control over that). 
 
For the ride itself, gone is the upbeat vibe and replaced a dark apocalyptic one. There are numerous parts of theming representing zombies and other items. There are a few screens, but no noticeable animatronics, which is a shame really. The third stop has returned, which features new effects such. Whilst this makes the ride’s pacing a little strange, it somehow works as the last part of the ride feels like zombies chasing you. 
 
The action doesn’t  finish on the exit corridor, which now features a few effects and darkened areas making it gloomy and misleading. It’s almost like a scaremaze in one sense. After passing the bagroom, we take a strange detour on a path leading us into the megastore. Whilst this is a good upselling tactic, the route feels long winded and deliberately out of the way. The back pathway appears to have been removed, although it would’ve been a dead-end anyway.
 
In Summary, there are some things I really like about this retheme and some things not so much. I like that the park are trying to turn it more into an experience, there are some decent effects and this is one of the better ‘low investment’ year addictions. Most of which in the last 5-10 years have felt rather far-fetched. 
 
However, the attraction has resulted in ‘yet’ another dark apocalyptic theme, bringing that number now upto five, six if you include Tidal Wave (which is arguably a more upbeat theme). The park desperately more than ever needs more upbeat/mysterious themes and seems to have somewhat lost one through this retheme. I also think the ride doesn’t need to be a 1.4 and more like a 1.2 or 1.3. 
 
After all that, I haven’t decided whether I prefer X or TWD, but there are things I like about both attractions. The park have done quite well here, but now need to focus on more upbeat themes.
 
 

Totally agree with what's being said, Thorpe were having a total nightmare!
 
Nemesis Inferno had the WORST rides team I've seen in years (insert witty comment about PortAventura just to annoy you), prancing around, at one point all the platformers were in position with dispatch buttons pressed, while the op chatted on the phone for over a minute, finished her conversation, then finally thought "oh maybe I should actually do my job now", shocking stuff. Can you blame the ride for constantly killing itself, I know I wanted to... Does anyone know what causes Inferno to repeatedly anchor itself and stop dead in the first set of brakes (I was lucky enough to get to sit there for 15 minutes!), my guess would be some sort of over speed alert being thrown up, but you guys being the Thorpe die hards might know.
 
Stealth went down while I was in the queue, then when I returned much later it was down again, didn't bother me though because it's only Stealth.
 
Ghost Train went down while I was in the queue and when I returned later, we waited over 20 minutes to be batched in, I've no idea how this thing operates, so you can decide whether that was yet more issues or rather it running on a lower capacity (if it can?).
 
Walking Dead was down all night, like I said in the official topic of that, how have they broken what is essentially a super reliable jumped up Vekoma Junior?
 
Detonator took over 10 minutes on 1 cycle to start, can we still blame the staff being new or was this just awful staff?
 
Swarm which before the event started had a train going up the lift every 10 seconds, was put on 1 train by the end of the event, why?
 
Rumba Rapids closed half an hour earlier than advertised, which annoyed me a bit, because as has been mentioned elsewhere, it appears to have been intensified.
 
Quantum, which was advertised as open, was in scaffolding, which was incredibly disappointing because it's fantastic.
 
Regardless I had an OK time, it was a free event after all.
 
The worst thing all night easily goes to the surge of the VIP pass holder, the scourge of the Earth...

Agree with Jamie. Certainly my worst visit in quite some time. Got on 5 rides all day due to numerous break downs. I was very unfortunate to have it happen after queueing some time and always when at the front of the queue. 
 
At one point nine rides were unavailable!
 
Inferno in particular was suffering badly and stopped many times at the start of the brake run. Haven't seen so many issues on Inferno since its issues in opening year. 
 
You missed Rush off of the list above just to add more ammunition! 
 
On a more positive note the eXpo event was great. Well done to Phill for that,  you did a fantastic job. 

Have to say, operations today were very poor. I’m pretty sure nearly every main attraction was down at some point during the day. The queue times were a complete mess, no accuracy. Waited 15 mins for an advertised 45 on Colossus. All of the photo scanners for the main rides were not working so couldn’t get any on-ride photos. Not sure what was going on with Inferno’s brakes, never seen a B&M so unreliable as this one today.

What on earth was going on at Thorpe today?!
 
Breakdowns on Nemesis Inferno, Colossus, Stealth, The Swarm, Depth Charge, Derren Brown's Ghost Train.  Samurai closed all afternoon/evening and Walking Dead: The Ride failed to open!
 
Got an E-stop in the final brake run of Inferno, noticed it had done that earlier in the day as well.  Fog looked great in the queueline and tunnel though, haven't seen it working that well in years.
 
Overall a very average visit, ride availability was terrible.

Err, thats because it is. 15/10 doesn't do it justice.

It sure is a weird way to advertise something. and with all the actors in the PR for it, which you wont get on the day. I was hoping for new train shells sadly not..
See, the idea of the safe zone is that they have "taken over X" so the remains of old X being there can work from a story point of view. despite it coming across lazy and cost saving.
 
I do agree, they could have created their own IP relating to the music and old X, a better music and light show throughout the attraction. Like rockin rollercoaster. done something that was actually pretty neat. some video wall at the blocks. using lights and sound to make the coaster feel faster. With the budget, some pretty neat stuff could have been done! But instead gone for a decreasing in interest IP. god knows what happens in 2 years time when walking dead is dead.

Completely forgot somehow after trying it last week what I thought of these changes made to Duel, so here they are. Honestly, not much has changed inside since last year, really, it hasn’t. This is what I noticed:
 
• The exterior building has been cleared of overgrown foliage along with a new soundtrack, which does suit the plaza better I think.
• The indoor queue has a few new vertical-orientated screens used as moving portraits to cover the old CRT screens from before.
• The first scene on the ride has been repainted with brighter UV paint.
• Many audio effects for each scene have either been turned off or are too quiet now.
• The flying heads are a lot brighter and colourful compared to before.
• New audio throughout the entire building, including the queue line.
 
Whilst it’s nice to see some of the smaller bits of theming being looked after and the main difference being they have been either repainted or given brighter colours, I must report that the UV lighting is still a massive problem with this ride despite being told it had been fixed and toned down. This is especially noticeable with the flying heads and bats just like previous years, so it’s still a major problem.
 
But the biggest problem myself and I’m sure quite a few will have is this new audio. Whilst the exterior sounds better compared to before and has a statsictially longer track, the one used inside is almost the complete opposite. This new audio sounds incredibly repetitive and doesn’t suit the ride at all in my view. Hopefully one day Duel’s old audio will return inside because this new one sounds horrible and slow-paced.
 
Mixed bag really. Some areas are nicer than before, but the UV lighting and new audio overshadows the improvements made in my view.

Right, I’ve finally ridden it twice now to get a good idea and feel for the ride. Given how against the idea I am for turning X into this, this might be a surprising statement to some I’m about to make but......
 
I liked it. I genuinely liked it. 

For the most part, an awful lot of it remains the same as before such as the corridoors, trains and station area, but the big differences lie inside the pyramid itself. There are plenty of interactions with guests on the brake runs and various turns and corners from beginning to end, mostly just static walkers lit up along with some theming and TV screens present on one brake run, which does incidentally have the random stops put back in place, but for a decent reason this time.

The pre-show room was quite nice and had some relevance to the whole experience this time unlike Wicker Man’s one and it makes good use of the audio and lighting effects present inside. However, the supposed window behind you with a TV screen was poorly done, mostly due to the massive air gap between the filter and the screen, so that ruined the effect slightly. But besides that, this is a nicely done room.

The walks from the entrance to/from the station are the same layout as before, just with added details and a shed load of themed audio and lighting effects. Thankfully, none of it is on an endless loop and changes every few minutes, so there is some variety offered here.

As for the station, the old lifts from the last decade have been demolished and the back of a van with wooden boxes containing supplies has been added here instead. Much better than before and doesn’t feel as cramped in this area to previous. But inside the station? It’s almost identical to before, just with a lot less lighting and added theming and audio on the platforms this time.
 
The ride experience itself is more or less exactly the same, just with some added scenery on two of the brake runs and lift hill, not much else. There was a big TV screen used between the 2nd and 3rd brake runs which shows someone shooting walkers in the head as you travel past at fast speeds and the last turn before the final breaks has a nice smoke effect you pass through lit up in orange before reaching the end of the ride.

So overall, whilst in truth this overlay of X is not amazing or groundbreaking, the park have done for the most part a pretty decent job with what they had and similar to Wicker Man, the best parts are the theatrical side of the experience, mostly down to the various audio and lighting effects used. Some of the theming was quite good too with lots of references to X:\ No Way Out.

But the whole thing wasn’t consistent in this retheme at all and this is present especially with the queue line and coridoors. Whilst the inside looks nicely detailed, the outdoor queue looks horribly cheap with no resurfaced paths, no attempt to remove broken Bose speakers, the watch tower looks nastily cheap up-close, the baggage room has no detail or attempt to be themed at all and the indoor corridoors still have a lot of it’s roof wide open with light leakage everywhere which I was hoping would be refitted finally.

My big issue is I still cannot get over the fact the park have turned what was rightfully a popular family coaster between 2013 - 2017 into this. This update just feels needless and for the most part, rushed. Whilst the ride was fun no doubt with the interactions and additional theming added, to see those between 1m - 1.4m no longer ride this coaster after 4 years annoys me greatly as it’s unfair on them in my view. This retheme didn’t need to happen.
 
Ignoring my concerns about this shutting away families, the ride itself is not bad for what it offers and was still enjoyable, though it was nowhere near the absolutely, ludicrously laughable claim of being “15/10 on the scare scale”, not even close. Heck, I find the fastrack queue for I’m a Celeb scarier than this ride.

All I’ll say is give it a chance and see what you think. As a massive skeptic of this update, it was better than what I was expecting. Then again, I had zero expectations for this beforehand anyway, so that’s not saying a lot. 

I've got no problem admitting I was wrong and I'm very happy to report that I was most certainly wrong and too quick to cast judgement on Wicker Man. Never again will I doubt GCI, their track record is still perfect.
 
Now while I still agree that Alton Towers could and should have done more with the UK's first modern wooden roller coaster, what we have ended up with is great.
 
The Story: Wicker Man's story about the creepy cult of weirdos, worshipping the Wicker Man for years in the forest and bringing him sacrifices in return for one day him returning their favour and gifting them with freedom and safety, is simple, effective and quite unnerving, I like it.
 
Theming & Effects: Those involved have done a great job with the theming. The Wicker Man himself, in person looks damn impressive. The sheer amount of fire, mist and smoke effects used (please keep these running for the life of the ride) is so overwhelming and surprising and really adds to the experience. Not only that but the buildings (preshow and station) inside and out are incredibly well done. As a package, as present, Wicker Man is probably the best themed roller coaster in the UK.
 
Queueline: After a couple of switchbacks to begin with, the queue ends up becoming a nice swooping semi circle which provides great views of the coaster layout and really helps build excitement. This style of queue over the crap that is Smiler's queue anyday, much appreciated.
 
Preshow: I really enjoyed this, it's creepy, gets you hyped for what's about to transpire and in all honesty is alot of fun to watch.
 
The Coaster: This little GCI is great. Great laterals, a few pops of good airtime, 1 insane ejector moment, that perfect amount of out of control that all woodies need and a real sense of speed. Also to my surprise, it's alot longer than I was expecting, so you get a decent length ride out of it.
 
If you're into ranking things, after 2 laps, I'd probably put Wicker Man above Wodan and Troy, just below Draak, which I feel is a stronger layout and the racing aspect adds so much fun to the experience.
 
I really feel Wicker Man is going to do great things for Alton Towers and I really hope they can quickly improve the up time and maintain both the coaster and effects to the quality they were on opening.
 

Right, I’ve finally ridden it twice now to get a good idea and feel for the ride. Given how against the idea I am for turning X into this, this might be a surprising statement to some I’m about to make but......
 
I liked it. I genuinely liked it. 

For the most part, an awful lot of it remains the same as before such as the corridoors, trains and station area, but the big differences lie inside the pyramid itself. There are plenty of interactions with guests on the brake runs and various turns and corners from beginning to end, mostly just static walkers lit up along with some theming and TV screens present on one brake run, which does incidentally have the random stops put back in place, but for a decent reason this time.

The pre-show room was quite nice and had some relevance to the whole experience this time unlike Wicker Man’s one and it makes good use of the audio and lighting effects present inside. However, the supposed window behind you with a TV screen was poorly done, mostly due to the massive air gap between the filter and the screen, so that ruined the effect slightly. But besides that, this is a nicely done room.

The walks from the entrance to/from the station are the same layout as before, just with added details and a shed load of themed audio and lighting effects. Thankfully, none of it is on an endless loop and changes every few minutes, so there is some variety offered here.

As for the station, the old lifts from the last decade have been demolished and the back of a van with wooden boxes containing supplies has been added here instead. Much better than before and doesn’t feel as cramped in this area to previous. But inside the station? It’s almost identical to before, just with a lot less lighting and added theming and audio on the platforms this time.
 
The ride experience itself is more or less exactly the same, just with some added scenery on two of the brake runs and lift hill, not much else. There was a big TV screen used between the 2nd and 3rd brake runs which shows someone shooting walkers in the head as you travel past at fast speeds and the last turn before the final breaks has a nice smoke effect you pass through lit up in orange before reaching the end of the ride.

So overall, whilst in truth this overlay of X is not amazing or groundbreaking, the park have done for the most part a pretty decent job with what they had and similar to Wicker Man, the best parts are the theatrical side of the experience, mostly down to the various audio and lighting effects used. Some of the theming was quite good too with lots of references to X:\ No Way Out.

But the whole thing wasn’t consistent in this retheme at all and this is present especially with the queue line and coridoors. Whilst the inside looks nicely detailed, the outdoor queue looks horribly cheap with no resurfaced paths, no attempt to remove broken Bose speakers, the watch tower looks nastily cheap up-close, the baggage room has no detail or attempt to be themed at all and the indoor corridoors still have a lot of it’s roof wide open with light leakage everywhere which I was hoping would be refitted finally.

My big issue is I still cannot get over the fact the park have turned what was rightfully a popular family coaster between 2013 - 2017 into this. This update just feels needless and for the most part, rushed. Whilst the ride was fun no doubt with the interactions and additional theming added, to see those between 1m - 1.4m no longer ride this coaster after 4 years annoys me greatly as it’s unfair on them in my view. This retheme didn’t need to happen.
 
Ignoring my concerns about this shutting away families, the ride itself is not bad for what it offers and was still enjoyable, though it was nowhere near the absolutely, ludicrously laughable claim of being “15/10 on the scare scale”, not even close. Heck, I find the fastrack queue for I’m a Celeb scarier than this ride.

All I’ll say is give it a chance and see what you think. As a massive skeptic of this update, it was better than what I was expecting. Then again, I had zero expectations for this beforehand anyway, so that’s not saying a lot. 

Right, I’ve finally ridden it twice now to get a good idea and feel for the ride. Given how against the idea I am for turning X into this, this might be a surprising statement to some I’m about to make but......
 
I liked it. I genuinely liked it. 

For the most part, an awful lot of it remains the same as before such as the corridoors, trains and station area, but the big differences lie inside the pyramid itself. There are plenty of interactions with guests on the brake runs and various turns and corners from beginning to end, mostly just static walkers lit up along with some theming and TV screens present on one brake run, which does incidentally have the random stops put back in place, but for a decent reason this time.

The pre-show room was quite nice and had some relevance to the whole experience this time unlike Wicker Man’s one and it makes good use of the audio and lighting effects present inside. However, the supposed window behind you with a TV screen was poorly done, mostly due to the massive air gap between the filter and the screen, so that ruined the effect slightly. But besides that, this is a nicely done room.

The walks from the entrance to/from the station are the same layout as before, just with added details and a shed load of themed audio and lighting effects. Thankfully, none of it is on an endless loop and changes every few minutes, so there is some variety offered here.

As for the station, the old lifts from the last decade have been demolished and the back of a van with wooden boxes containing supplies has been added here instead. Much better than before and doesn’t feel as cramped in this area to previous. But inside the station? It’s almost identical to before, just with a lot less lighting and added theming and audio on the platforms this time.
 
The ride experience itself is more or less exactly the same, just with some added scenery on two of the brake runs and lift hill, not much else. There was a big TV screen used between the 2nd and 3rd brake runs which shows someone shooting walkers in the head as you travel past at fast speeds and the last turn before the final breaks has a nice smoke effect you pass through lit up in orange before reaching the end of the ride.

So overall, whilst in truth this overlay of X is not amazing or groundbreaking, the park have done for the most part a pretty decent job with what they had and similar to Wicker Man, the best parts are the theatrical side of the experience, mostly down to the various audio and lighting effects used. Some of the theming was quite good too with lots of references to X:\ No Way Out.

But the whole thing wasn’t consistent in this retheme at all and this is present especially with the queue line and coridoors. Whilst the inside looks nicely detailed, the outdoor queue looks horribly cheap with no resurfaced paths, no attempt to remove broken Bose speakers, the watch tower looks nastily cheap up-close, the baggage room has no detail or attempt to be themed at all and the indoor corridoors still have a lot of it’s roof wide open with light leakage everywhere which I was hoping would be refitted finally.

My big issue is I still cannot get over the fact the park have turned what was rightfully a popular family coaster between 2013 - 2017 into this. This update just feels needless and for the most part, rushed. Whilst the ride was fun no doubt with the interactions and additional theming added, to see those between 1m - 1.4m no longer ride this coaster after 4 years annoys me greatly as it’s unfair on them in my view. This retheme didn’t need to happen.
 
Ignoring my concerns about this shutting away families, the ride itself is not bad for what it offers and was still enjoyable, though it was nowhere near the absolutely, ludicrously laughable claim of being “15/10 on the scare scale”, not even close. Heck, I find the fastrack queue for I’m a Celeb scarier than this ride.

All I’ll say is give it a chance and see what you think. As a massive skeptic of this update, it was better than what I was expecting. Then again, I had zero expectations for this beforehand anyway, so that’s not saying a lot. 

Right, I’ve finally ridden it twice now to get a good idea and feel for the ride. Given how against the idea I am for turning X into this, this might be a surprising statement to some I’m about to make but......
 
I liked it. I genuinely liked it. 

For the most part, an awful lot of it remains the same as before such as the corridoors, trains and station area, but the big differences lie inside the pyramid itself. There are plenty of interactions with guests on the brake runs and various turns and corners from beginning to end, mostly just static walkers lit up along with some theming and TV screens present on one brake run, which does incidentally have the random stops put back in place, but for a decent reason this time.

The pre-show room was quite nice and had some relevance to the whole experience this time unlike Wicker Man’s one and it makes good use of the audio and lighting effects present inside. However, the supposed window behind you with a TV screen was poorly done, mostly due to the massive air gap between the filter and the screen, so that ruined the effect slightly. But besides that, this is a nicely done room.

The walks from the entrance to/from the station are the same layout as before, just with added details and a shed load of themed audio and lighting effects. Thankfully, none of it is on an endless loop and changes every few minutes, so there is some variety offered here.

As for the station, the old lifts from the last decade have been demolished and the back of a van with wooden boxes containing supplies has been added here instead. Much better than before and doesn’t feel as cramped in this area to previous. But inside the station? It’s almost identical to before, just with a lot less lighting and added theming and audio on the platforms this time.
 
The ride experience itself is more or less exactly the same, just with some added scenery on two of the brake runs and lift hill, not much else. There was a big TV screen used between the 2nd and 3rd brake runs which shows someone shooting walkers in the head as you travel past at fast speeds and the last turn before the final breaks has a nice smoke effect you pass through lit up in orange before reaching the end of the ride.

So overall, whilst in truth this overlay of X is not amazing or groundbreaking, the park have done for the most part a pretty decent job with what they had and similar to Wicker Man, the best parts are the theatrical side of the experience, mostly down to the various audio and lighting effects used. Some of the theming was quite good too with lots of references to X:\ No Way Out.

But the whole thing wasn’t consistent in this retheme at all and this is present especially with the queue line and coridoors. Whilst the inside looks nicely detailed, the outdoor queue looks horribly cheap with no resurfaced paths, no attempt to remove broken Bose speakers, the watch tower looks nastily cheap up-close, the baggage room has no detail or attempt to be themed at all and the indoor corridoors still have a lot of it’s roof wide open with light leakage everywhere which I was hoping would be refitted finally.

My big issue is I still cannot get over the fact the park have turned what was rightfully a popular family coaster between 2013 - 2017 into this. This update just feels needless and for the most part, rushed. Whilst the ride was fun no doubt with the interactions and additional theming added, to see those between 1m - 1.4m no longer ride this coaster after 4 years annoys me greatly as it’s unfair on them in my view. This retheme didn’t need to happen.
 
Ignoring my concerns about this shutting away families, the ride itself is not bad for what it offers and was still enjoyable, though it was nowhere near the absolutely, ludicrously laughable claim of being “15/10 on the scare scale”, not even close. Heck, I find the fastrack queue for I’m a Celeb scarier than this ride.

All I’ll say is give it a chance and see what you think. As a massive skeptic of this update, it was better than what I was expecting. Then again, I had zero expectations for this beforehand anyway, so that’s not saying a lot.