TPJames

Can confirm Danter's air has risen to £8 this year. (was £6 two years back!!)

Olympia Looping- £9 Gladiator- £9 Hangover- £8 XXL- £8 Wild Maus XXL- £7 Starflyer- £7 Ice Mountain- £6 Ski Jump(Rock Rage)- £5 Superspin- £5 Yeti Jump&Smile- £4 Pirates Adventure- £4 Waltzer- £4 Ice Wall- £3 Thats all I can remember exactly but imagine air is £7-£8, Snow Jet and WW Express will most likely be £5 and then most of the Funhouses will all be £4 or £5. Hope this helps and pretty much covers most of the rides(if I have missed out anything specific feel free to ask) Just a side note, did Gladiator on preview night and we got a really long cycle with the spinning function enabled and although it was intense at some moments, I thought it was a bit pants over all to be honest! Maus XXL, Ice Mountain, Olympia Looping and Hangover have to be the best rides at the event this year I would say(although there are a lot of other strong contenders).

Thanks for the information. Having said that though, Air started off at £6 a couple of years back and when trade was going well they took up the opportunity to increase it to £7, so I could easily see them doing the same with Olympia once it gets busier if trade is going well.

I personally haven't heard anything to say that Rock Rage will not be called Ski Jump this year- as far as I'm aware they have all the theming from previous years as well as all the jingles programmed in already so it seems like an unlikely change- either of the two rides with clashing names may be called something different on the map however. I think it's a case of wait and see with this one. And yes there is a Mondial Furioso, known as "No Limit" from the Netherlands instead of Joillet's Maxximum 2 Capriolo this year. Havent anything about confirmation of OL pricing anywhere myself, where did you hear this?

As a regular attender each year(been visiting since 2011-2012 and went three times last year!) here is my advice for you: If you want value for money: the best and only option for good value for money is the preview night on Thursday 17th at 5-9pm, it's relatively busy however you can get on pretty much everything you want to in the time available. If you want the best atmosphere: Don't go on the preview night, everything is just getting started up and they have to get into the swing of things so it's all a bit here and there and you get less of that winter magic feeling, the best atmosphere tends to be on Friday, Saturday or Sunday evenings when it's bustling, there's lots of colourful lights, smells and lots of live music going on. The quietest times tend to be weekend mornings between 10-12 and then it tends to build up in business in the afternoon and then peaks in the evening around 7-8 I would say. Also off peak weekdays will tend to be quiet, especially weekdays in November, from morning Til afternoon then it builds up in the evening. Once we start approaching Christmas, weekdays tend to get a lot busier as people are off school or work etc. The only ride I can confirm the price of this year is "The Yeti"(Jump&Smile) which will be priced at £4. So I can give you a rough outline of prices and then if you drop me a message after the preview night I can hopefully give you a full list of pricing once I find out what the pricing structure is this year Ride prices are roughly as follows: Medium Sized Flat Rides and Funhouses- about £3-£5 ( for example Ski Jump, Snow Jet, Irrgarten, WW Express, Alpen Hotel etc) The minimum price for anything will about £3 and to be honest these days it's hard to find anything priced at less than £4. (Last year a very good haunted house walk through was priced at £3 however don't think it's returning this year but I will wait and see) Larger Flat Rides and Rollercoasters- about £6-£8 (e.g. Maus XXL, Ice Mountain, Hangover, Air, XXL, Starflyer etc). Gladiator was priced at £9 last year and was giving poor cycles so would advise staying away from that as it is unlikely to be worth it, especially if it's busy and they are only giving 60 second rides! Olympia Looping is likely to be priced between £9-£12 however I cannot confirm this Til nearer the time. In terms of the best rides to go on!: If you are a fan of rollercoasters I recommend Ice Mountain, Wild Maus XXL and Olympia looping- this should cost you about £22-£24. Stay away from the Euro Coaster or the Spinning Wild Maus in Santa Land as Ice mountain is much better. If you are a fan of flat rides there are so many to choose from so it depends on personal preference really. If you are a regular on the UK fair circuit and only want to experience foreign rides I would recommend: XXL- priced at £8 last year, gives about a 4minute cycle when it's less busy, 2-3mins when it's busy. Hangover the Tower- priced at £8 last year, gives a drop at 40m and a drop at 85m when it's less busy and only one drop from 85m in crowded times. Snow Jet- priced at £5 last year, cycles can range from 2-6minutes. If you want to experience some UK flat rides too I would recommend: Ski Jump- priced at £5 last year, can give between a 2-5minute cycle roughly, great ride, formerly known as rock rage and great value for money. Air- priced at £7 last year and another personal favourite. I would personally say stay away from the Starflyer as this usually gives very short rides and is usually priced at about £8. If you are a big fan of Funhouses the best ones are the Irrgarten and the Alpen Hotel, also "Fire department" is a new addition from the Netherlands this year and also looks good so that may be worth a try. Hope this helps a bit and message me if you have any questions

I believe it started off as a 5pm close.

I didn't see the point in going last year, I haven't been since 2014 and studio 13 and am not particularly interested in what's going on with FN this year(if I do visit a scare attraction this year it's likely to be Tulleys Farm instead). The main issue I have with fright nights, and it seems even more an issue this year, is that the popularity of the event is ever increasing yet the number of mazes never actually expands! This year, they've even lost a maze and replaced it with a walk through attraction, meaning we only have the big top, saw alive, CITW and two walk throughs to accompany this. Thats a major issue in my eyes, with the mazes being so popular and all being relatively low throughput and suffering 'technical difficulties' all the time, only having 5 attractions, only 3 of them being mazes and two of them being walk throughs seems like a real issue. The event really should be expanding, and in fact instead it's stayed the same size, although feels like it's got even smaller with the fact they've replaced a maze with a walk through attraction. It it just implies that there will be completely horrendous queues, poor operations with too many fastracks sold and potentially sub-standard mazes. What the park really needs to be doing is putting on additional entertainment; shows, performances, street entertainment etc which will entice people to watch them and reduce the impact of the queues on the mazes.

To be honest, Hotel Transylvania would be far more in 'trend' than the grufalo is, and would fit in with Chessington's Transylvania themed land(vaguely). Not that I think that would be a better idea though, both ideas are absolutely appalling.

I was with my friend waiting for samurai and I said "I hope we have a good ride, but it's complete luck whether you get a good spin on your pod or not" and my friend replied "It doesn't make a difference anyway, the seats are all programmed to spin exactly the same anyway". Is this really how the GP think a mondial Topscan works, don't they understand that the pods are able to spin freely and that every ride and every pod has a different experience every cycle!?

On the edge, the leg belt was far too tight for me so I was able to get an extension strap, which made the experience much more comfortable!(although the restraints on a disko coaster are severely uncomfortable anyway!)

After the car explosions and the train(on your VR headset) starts to fill with green smoke and stays like that for about 5-10 mins, the staff members start running around and touching your legs while they heat up the transit massively. I don't know why during this particular moment the staff started hitting our legs as this was completely irrelevant with the scene and also the heating of the room was very uncomfortable indeed. It's always very interesting to wonder if the ride had been completely transit and actor based if the ride would have been delayed at all or whether it would be suffering from any major issues at all like it is at the moment. Obviously it's completely irrelevant but its an interesting "what if" scenario.

You've just hit the nail right on the head here - the GP have been waiting for a new major investment for "years" now and it's all very well and good planning a new rollercoaster for 5-10 years time but it's something which should have happened "years" ago . Not to mention, the 'new ride' for 2016 fell through so what's to say history doesn't repeat itself and these plans never happen as they aren't set in stone whatsoever. Even if these plans were successful and a new rollercoaster did arrive in 5-10 years time, the rest of the park will be rotting even more and a new rollercoaster won't cover up the fact that the rest of the park is on its last dying legs. Unfortunately for chessington they have made too many mistakes in the past(investing their money in more accommodation instead of actually fixing up the park etc) and are about to make another potentially drastic mistake in the future by scrapping bubbleworks, one of the parks most beloved rides and potentially replacing it with something which could be terrible(equally it could be an improvement but only time will tell on this). Chessington have made too many mistakes and the park is falling apart so I look forward to seeing paultons beccoming the 'new chessington' as it continues to expand and improve. If this happens and it's a disaster; 1. It will be the most hilarious mistake of merlins career 2. Customer satisfaction levels will drop so dramatically ; people are already upset that bubbleworks is being removed and think the whole ride system is being replaced so if they visit to find the same ride system with a hideous retheme then people are going to be really peed off. Even if it's not a disaster it would still be a massive mistake as bubbleworks catered to the whole family market, ranging from young kids to teenagers and adults whereas theming it as the grufalo means most likely only little kids will be able to enjoy it ruining the target market of bubbleworks making there one less ride in the park which older guests are able to enjoy .

IMO Paultons and Blackpool are the best two parks in the UK. Blackpool just because of how crazy the place is and also I feel like it has a very historic charm to it. There are certain aspects of paultons, such as the log flume which are falling apart however these will be catered to in future years as we can see the more modern areas of the park are really well kept, such as the gardens, the carousel, lost kingdom, critter creek, peppa pig etc I can see why trip advisor have voted it best UK park as the customer satisfaction is top notch unlike the merlin parks as the place is well kept , most areas have good theming and operations are good overall. I feel like the only let down was the food, we found one decent fast food place, the railroad diner, where the food was reasonably priced and decent however at the rest of the food outlets, including the signature cafe "wild woods ", the food looked horrendous and was ridiculously overpriced. It's strange there was such a diversity of nice looking and horrendous looking food within such a small park.

Went on this today and have to say for a park which hasn't produced a decent attraction since the swarm back in 2012, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. The first illusion is brilliant as its so difficult to understand how the whole ride technology works, with the fact that it looks like the train carriage is unable to move(obviously there is more than one carriage operating as well I believe but this confused me so much!) as its tied to the wall by chains yet in reality it does(and I have no clue how this works). The VR technology is fantastic and the fact you can look around you in all directions and immerse yourself in the experience is incredible. The only downside was that I had to hold my head seat on as there were no instructions or time available to adjust it and it was falling off. Considering the fact that I thought it was just the one train journey, to have the first journey, a scene in the middle and then the second train journey is brilliant. The scenes we got were rather awesome too and had me screaming a lot. Yes, it could have been better at times and I think the photo points in the queue line are absolutely stupid(although they didn't stop us in infection check so not sure what this is) but for a new dark ride, considering dark rides is something the UK is seriously lacking, I think it has been executed to a high standard. Obviously the technology is complicated as it opened a few hours late, broke down whilst we were in the queue then closed early which is quite incovenient for most people however we only waited 80 mins with a break down which was reasonable and I think the attraction was worth the wait. The whole queue line was confused however when it broke down and announcements played saying 'There will be a short delay, please remain seated' and suddenly the whole queueline sat down on the ground both annoyed and confused.

Drove past today on the motorway and it was operating... was unable to tell whether there were people on it or whether it was just testing.

It was raining on and off, however it wasn't particularly heavy rain. They were advertising an 8pm close yesterday when in fact they decided to close at 6pm and today they are advertising a 7pm close however we have left now so I don't know whether they stuck to this (although the weather was a lot nicer today!).I reckon queues reached about 20-30 mins max yesterday. We certainly waited 20 - 25mins for red arrows and also waited about the same for infusion and avalanche. We didn't wait too long for the big one however it looked like it got to about a 15-20 min queue on 1.5 train service. Wild mouse we also probably waited around 20 mins and most other rides were between 5 - 10mins wait on average. Something which annoyed me was the fact that they were reducing capacity of the rides while the park was open! It always bugs me at thorpe park when they open up their rides on minimum capacity and then have to close them to add an extra train to the service, but here instead they closed avalanche halfway through the day to remove a train to reduce capacity to a one train op(we rode it in the morning on two then in the afternoon on one) and on grand national where they reduced the capacity at 11 am from a two train (on either side) to a one train service. They also opened up steeplechase on two lanes, increased capacity to three, then after no more than a couple of hours, reduced it back to one. I would love an explanation as to why they are doing this. It's just crazy!? Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Argh, park was advertised to be open til 8pm tonight and they've just changed the closing time to 6pm! [emoji35] Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

It's operating 1 and a half trains today! Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

It wasn't actually that busy though, everything was just ridiculously slow. Swarm, stealth and inferno all had fast operations in the afternoon and they were all under 30 minutes. Saw and Colossus(and inferno in the morning) had slow operations and were only 45mins+ish because of that reason.All the flat rides were pretty dead too- I'd be interested to see the gate figures for yesterday in relation to last year as when I visited last year even though operations were still relatively slow the queues were a lot longer across all of the rides. I imagine things will pick up when DGBT opens though. Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

I can only disagree with you when you say that the new station announcements are good- they used to play the music playlist in the station however they have now replaced it with these annoying tacky announcements which are completely unnecessary. As with the detonator drop being in time with the countdown, that's nothing to do with the soundtrack- it's to do with when the operator releases the car from the top of the ride. The old countdown would only ever not be in time with the ride if the operator chose to hold people shorter/longer than the soundtrack (and this is still the case with the new soundtrack). The new soundtrack is just so tacky and it honestly sounds like there was no thought put into it whatsoever (although there obviously was otherwise they wouldn't have changed the old theme- however they've just simply done a terrible job with it). Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Just a few pointers about park - wide music today. -The new X playlist is absolutely terrible, when we were on the ride we couldn't actually hear the song because all you could hear was the beat thumping away in the background (also the new song choices don't fit the ride experience at all). The new announcements which randomly overlay the music as well are pretty awful. -The new amity play list is okay, but they have removed some of the best songs off there from previous years. -Vortex and rush had good soundtracks playing although unfortunately quantum was silent. -Nemesis inferno music was a bit dodgy; in the queue the music kept jumping between jungle noises and the main theme- in the station the main theme was playing but there were these really quiet announcements in the background which couldn't be heard properly. -The addition to the soundtrack of Colossus is lovely with the new whispering effects once the train has dispatched, really creates a dramatic atmosphere! -Finally, the new detonator soundtrack is absolutely TERRIBLE; I don't know who created it but the old theme was a million times better; it honestly just makes the ride feel so unatmospheric, although maybe this is what they were going for seeing as the whole of ABL has a dead atmosphere! Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

I honestly didn't feel it was that bad, but maybe that's just because there was barely anyone on park anyway. If operations had been up to scratch then maybe all the queues would have been a lot shorter (although they weren't long anyway...).It may have just been the order in which we did the rides but inferno was on two by the time we got to it and we only waited 20 mins or so... Colossus was a massive pain on one train but there physically weren't many people in the queue when we arrived so again that was only 20-30 minutes, although it wouldn't have been nearly as long as that if it was on two trains and 4 rows weren't closed off for the exit lane! Colossus did have a painfully long queue at one point in the day though and on one train it would have been a nightmare. Didn't notice any breakdowns on vortex but there were noticeable breakdowns on Colossus, saw, inferno and slammer- however they did manage to get them all running after a couple of hours of downtime each so it could have been worse. Something I just don't seem to understand is that the park have had months of winter maintenance yet samurai is no where near ready to be reopened, rush still has one pathetically dodgy swing, vortex still has a load of seats closed off, Colossus and X still only have the amount of trains ready for minimum capacity!? It just makes you wonder sometimes if they are really giving enough attention to each ride/have enough engineering staff as year upon year the rides at the start of the season are always on reduced capacity and breakdowns are frequent upon the rides. ------ Another thing I did notice which bugged me a lot was the half arsed attitude staff were attending to restraints today- I don't know whether they were new or just couldn't be bothered but when loading on to the rides they were going at a snails pace!? Slammer was taking a good 10-15 minutes to load each cycle; vortex taking around 10 minutes also; Colossus they were so slow to check the bars and dispatch the train which was completely unreasonable seeing as there was only 2/3 of a one train operation available to the main queue; on rush they would just be having a chat at the end of each cycle so people would be locked in each time for a good 2-3 mins after it had ended. Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Didn't go in the shop but I must admit the building looks very impressive from the outside and gives off a great first impression- I have a feeling this is going to be very popular! (Although whether it is any good or not will be a different matter entirely of course).Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Went past this thing today and it looks completely lifeless. The reason I'm posting is towards the end of the day an engineer (or someone of the sorts) came over to the ride and started taking all the signs down. They took down the electronic queue board and also took down the signs stating safety information, height restrictions and opening times of the ride etc. In exchange for removing these signs they replaced them by attaching a sign to the fence saying "Samurai will be returning for the summer of 2016" indicating it will be closed for another few months. Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk

Was really surprised as it was actually pretty dead today, especially for a school holiday. It was worth noting the queue boards were ALL wrong; the main boards were broken and the rest of them were either displaying "queue time unavailable" or just simply weren't updated all day e.g. rush stated 25mins all day and it was actually walk on, X stated 60 mins all day and it was only 15. Colossus was on one train so that was pretty long, the queue looked like it peaked at about 100mins or so but we waited 20 towards the end of the day. Waited 50mins for saw in the morning and the queue looked about the same length ish for the rest of the day. Waited 30mins for stealth and was similar all day. Waited 15-20 mins for inferno but at one point it did look like a good 30-40mins wait. Swarm was practically walk on all day. Everything else was pretty much dead, X was about 15mins (was a tiny queue outside the building) and the rest of the flat rides were all walk on or between 1-3 cycles wait (although we must have waited 30-40mins for 3 cycles on slammer because it was literally taking 10 minutes to load the damn thing). Reasonable amount of breakdowns noticed; Colossus and saw spent most of the morning/early afternoon closed by the looks of things(saw broke straight after we got off about 11) and nemesis inferno broke down for a reasonable portion of the day too. Samurai was again closed and it will be for another few months. Sent from my GT-I9195 using Tapatalk