TPJames

They may have been pressing the stop button early to try and reduce queue time(if that's even possible). The cycle is generally short anyway though. I hope they don't announce more as it really ruined my day last week.

Goes much quicker for me, it must have been only 20-30mins from the bit where you can see the main queue board in the first length(when it usually says 35mins). I would also hate to be there tonight, waiting over an hour for flat rides and over two hours for coasters is extremely unbearable. Nt mention the fact that mazes have massive lines as well. Hate to think its like this for the rest of half term though.

I swear rush' queueline is only long enough for 45mins. Every time it's advertised as 45mins it's right out of the entrance. It's currently at 60mins so I'm presuming the queue must be weaving along the main pathway a fair bit?

There should be trials where you can ONLY use reserve n ride, no main queue or fastrack crap. Just reserve n ride by itself. And thorpe actually properly advertise it as most people didn't have a clue what was going on last Saturday until about 5pm when the mazes went straight to 5 hours. There were no signs about it on the website or on park which were ovbious, and only a couple of leaflets being handed out at the entrance to mazes and people thinking it was a paid system. Only way it's going to show if the system will really work as this is how it was planned to be used.

It must be horrible today. Stealth and samurai are down, Colossus and saw are currently 140mins and inferno and swarm are currently 90mins. X is even 45mins and vortex, rush, detonator, slammer and zodiac are all over 40minutes at the moment as well. Dread to think what the mazes are like. (All according to queue-times.com). When I went last Saturday, the queue board was broken, however when they fixed it all mazes displayed 140mins straight away. In reality, we were told they were 3-4hours standby. To be honest, I think it's just the park don't want to look TOO bad with ridiculously long queue times. Thanks for the info.

Have no clue why they choose to store it at thorpe, clearly just a place nearby where they can then move it onto hyde park for the winter season. That's another ride confirmed for the line up anyway!

Sheesh.. That's nearly as long as the queue for guest services was last Saturday when there were loads of angry customers due to reserve n ride in operation...

Temple del fuego was awful and a waste of time. We must have waited well over an hour with express. In the end its just a anti-climatic fire show which lasts a couple of minutes with a long and tedious build up. They always put hurakan on 5sides at about 10pm at night to try and get the queue down so it could close on time. The sit down side was enjoyable, but the stand up side was significantly better. Think the side issue might be due to understaffing on the ride however unsure. I do love portaventura as a park though, it is amazingly themed as most of the attractions are of a really high quality.

How many sides was it running? On the first two days I was there, it decided to run one out of five sides, causing a 70minute queue. However, on the evenings, they decided to open up all 5 sides to try and reduce the queue so we got about 3 rides in a row in the evening with a 5 minute wait each time. We also got there around 11:30 on one day to be one of the first people on the standup in the day time.

Have you guys been on hurakan condor yet? Make sure you ride it standing up!! Also shambhala in the dark is amazing, if the park is open for night rides like it was in summer

The least painful seat is on front row on the inside. Alas, that is still pretty rough and intense, however I loved the ride myself and am a fan of it, despite there being so many haters of it on this forum

^^I thought Nemesis Sub-Terra was great. Apart from at the beginning, where the annoying music and screen kept repeating itself, the rest of it was great and all that the general public would want for a dark ride. I know this as a fact, as everyone else in my group was really enjoying it and was running out as if it was a real emergency evacuation. The drop ride was decent, and it had a great ending to make something which is a perfectly good dark ride. No one said thorpe had to create a major scale dark ride. Remember, the general public aren't looking for something disney standard. Swarm is a great success now and is gaining 120min queues on peak day mornings, an IP brand isn't needed to make something good. Something along the lines of the nemesis sub-terra standard would do it for most of the public, of course not the same experience, a classic dark ride like mystic manor or even Arthur would be good. I don't see why everyone here thinks that this dark ride has to be something amazing, it just has to be an immersive experience with a nice theme and just a decent attraction overall. I would like a dark ride, as long as it isn't a shooting gallery like duel or tomb blaster. Also, it better not set the coaster back too many years as in 2016, it will already be 4 years since a new rollercoaster and I don't think the public will enjoy having to wait a further three years for a major coaster. However, that would take the new coaster to 2019 so maybe thorpe are waiting to pull out all the stocks for the opening of paramount park?

The Olympia looping was a rumour which was flying around in 2012 for the coaster to come in the Olympic year. However, the fact that it is the largest portable coaster in the world, means it would be very difficult to get overseas and would be very hard to travel over to the UK. I'm not saying its impossible, it's just very unlikely. I would imagine Hollenblitz or even Testrecke(a similar coaster to Olympia looping), would be able to get over to the UK. This would highly depend on if the owners could be bothered to spend the time and money in getting their attractions over here. Also, the line up for this year has probably already been confirmed, and is just yet to be released. There are so many rides I would like to try out from abroad, inversion XXL, alpina bahn, KMG xxl, Olympia looping and hollenblitz are just a few of them. However, as I said before, it's very hard for ride owners to travel their rides over, so we are lucky with the specialities we get at the moment and can only hope for a few more this year and in years to come. I can also confirm that mannings will be returning with their 'Thriller' rollercoaster, 'Showtime' afterburner and 'Deep Impact' Miami. They have also said they are bringing something big to the fair line up this year. Rumour has it, a Kmg XXL is on the way, however we won't know until closer to the time. All we know at the moment is that a new thrill ride is on its way for the event this year.

Any chance superspin will be attending Milton Keynes along with rock rage this year?

Samurai is still down, just hitting the two week mark now without any sign of life. This happens every season, and if it continues to happen, I think the park should consider ordering an essential maintenance check from mondial or even considering ordering a new model. This must be at least the third year in a row this has happened and it's getting beyond annoying.

Anyone got a rough idea of what's going this year? Unlikely to go due to how expensive it is but might pop down and have a walk round with a couple of rides max at some point during the event.

Unsure about the time slots for the mazes, didn't go in either of the major ones so don't know if you are given a time slot or not. They were both very busy just before opening at 3pm though but I'd imagine they manage it to some extent so the mazes don't become too busy. They are on the queue times app however so the park must be expecting them to have queues to some extent. If you are going on several days, you will definately get everything done. Be sure to do ripsaw in the dark just before 9pm and you will get the best cycle with a soaking!

Just from personal experience, try and be in the surrounding area you want to be at night time unless you fancy a lot of walking. We walked from mutiny bay to adventure land followed by X-sector, then to dark forest before having to do a massive loop on the way back to the forbidden valley the long way(through kantaga canyon but we had a ride on #choochoo on the way!) The sky ride closes at dusk which will be between 4-5pm meaning there is a lot of walking involved, and if the park is busy will mean you get on less. Luckily there were no queues on Monday so I had to walk but it was good exercise and didn't really affect the amount of rides I got on. Just another point, the mazes were extremely busy when we walked past about 2:30pm and they hadn't even opened yet. I dread to think of what they will be like on half term week but I believe last Saturday they got up to 80mins at one point, however on Monday they were 15mins max after opening. The scare zones were also busy, zombies had a full length and it's only length of queue taken up and scary tales had the full two lengths of queueline full. Despite this only taking about 10-15mins to get in, bear in mind that this was an off peak day so on half term week they are probably likely to be flowing out of the rails. Unsure how alton will manage crowd control on this week though. I didn't really have any problems on Monday so I don't really have any advice except if you are getting there for park opening, arrive at the car park at 9:30am as the monorail will take you to the entrance for the gates already to be open. Also, come prepared with all types of clothing as the weather varies massively in the north

I didn't see but I just realised that I wasn't around stealth for most of the evening, it wasn't coming out of the tidal wave truck like it did on preview night though. In Blair witch project on Saturday, an actor was punched by a drunk person in the walkthrough. It's not bad when some people have the alcohol, it's just when it gets out of control and fights and things happen. It definitely should be limited and I'm also really annoyed at the storm surge staff as they let the drunk men take their beer on with them?? Seriously what were the staff thinking!? Also just to add to my report, storm surge was doing an alternate car operation all day meaning they sent every other one empty, not good for throughput ehh?

I thought there was a massive queue in Monday morning which turned out to be 15 minutes! In fact, the only reason it looked long was because everyone was walking slowly and trying to jump over all the massive puddles inside the queueline!! On Monday they were both okay, but the storm hadn't started yet. I do agree though that the smiler was particularly bad but on Monday all the other queue lines were fine. Not as bad as walking under storm surge though :3

Yet another problem which needs resolving. On Saturday we had to go and do the teacups AND rumba rapids after 12pm as we were waiting for the fish and chip shop to open. A lot of people are having lunch by 12:00 so the outlets should really be open by 11:30 or 12 at the absolute latest. Sunday the 12th was one of the less busy days of this years event. The Saturdays and half term week are painfully busy. So busy that's it's virtually impossible to get all the major mazes and coasters done unless you have done some serious planning before hand and get there before opening and leave after closing. Also, I think the park needs to sell less alcohol. I know it's not going to happen but we were accused by drunk men of queue jumping and they started continuously attacking me for queue jumping the storm surge queue, even though there wasn't one. I know it shouldn't have, but it did get to me emotionally so luckily I had some really kind people in my storm surge boat who cheered me up. Think this needs to be controlled as the amount of drunks on park and the amount of fights which take place is beyond control.

I have been told this information from someone who is on park, whether it is 100% true or not I am unable to specify.

This is what is dreadful though. It does NOT make sense. A 120minute queue at opening is not justifiable because staff haven't arrived yet and one train operation. This queue then doesn't go down all day meaning there is no chance to ride the swarm with no queue. At alton towers on an OFF PEAK day I experienced at least two trains on all rollercoasters with smiler, Rita, th13teen, nemesis and spinball all on full capicity(air on two trains, oblivion on 4 shuttles). Despite at times these rides were walk on, the teams continued to operate full capacity as they knew if they were to go down to one train a long queue would build up. Thorpe are dreadful on their operations, they need to follow in the footsteps of alton, one train operation on off peak days and in mornings leading to massive queues is not justifiable. May I also take the time to mention that slammer was closed a few weeks ago due to not enough staff to operate it. Thorpe really need to pick up their operations as it feels like they are getting worse.

Does anyone know why the whole of wild asia is closed off at the moment? Despite no queues on park so many rides are closed!! Dragons falls, Griffins Galleon, Hocus Pocus Hall, Kobra, Monkey swinger, Safari Skyway, Peaking Heights, Temple of Mayhem and Tuk Tuk turmoil are all closed at the moment.

To be honest on Monday I would have rather it had been on 2-3 trains instead of 4. There was no queue all day so it didn't matter(it got up to 5mins max) however we had to wait longer to get off than to get on!! I didn't really mind as the ride was amazing anyway but I don't think that having 4 instead of 2-3 shuttles made the throughput any higher as there was continuously 2 shuttles stacked in the break run after each ride.