Zach

How was it coping with the crowds? Long queues?

Pretty busy I would day, this is the wait times for the same day last year (the second Saturday of the Easter holidays that is) https://queue-times.com/parks/2/open_periods/119

Honestly this was looking like such a great promotion for the park, seemed to be shared all over the Internet, everyone from social media to news sites were advertising it - and then they managed to mess it up so bad. "Oopsy it was a technical error" is probably the best apology we'll ever get.

Yes! When it opens for summer I will try and add Europa to the site. Sadly Thorpe seem to have dropped support for their really old mobile app (which was the source of the data). I can't really blame them given that the app hasn't even been on the store for about a year, but its still a shame. Hopefully merlin will make a new mobile app for Thorpe (Chessington recently had a new one made), I'm afraid that until then there is no way of getting the data. Queue times at PortAventura have always been a bit dodgy, the park was really bad at updating the times for their app, and seem to have also given up updating them. And yes, I really should add universal Essentially Chessington seem to have two sources of wait times, but each one seems to display something different (one is only sometimes available). It's really confusing, but the way it is at the moment the last updated one will appear at the top of the list. Thanks, it is a shame that the Thorpe Park page is no longer updated. I've been trying to make it easier to access data the site has collected, particularly Thorpe, so now if you go on the calendar you can go back to dates in the past and click on a date, you will be taken to a page with queue times and eventually other stats for just that day.

Did he say it was a merlin annual pass, I was under the impression it was just a normal thorpe one.

More paultons bloggy stuff Also, they've been sending press invites out to people: Cool stuff!

First direct "review" of the ride here from express.co.uk. While they manage to make it sound really good, if you read between the lines you can kinda see the negatives. I'm sure throughput will be amazing then... Is that a nice way of telling us they are a little crap. Well Air never was that forceful, but maybe slightly concerning for a non-enthusiast to say that.

They got in an astronaut (Chris Hadfield) for some photos and things, heres a picture and a news [article

Peppa pig world was also not that expensive (£6 million) and when you consider how much business that brought to the park, it really does go to show that going with tried and tested rides often works out better than splashing out stupid amounts of money on emerging technology. I saw this picture on twitter There's nothing complicated about the themeing in that picture, but it just looks good

Lets just hope no one discovers the photocopier.

Don't know if anyone noticed, Chessington has a new app which is actually pretty good. Haven't used it for very long, but it is very snappy and seems to have quite a bit of info.

I'm so confused I thought the annual pass day was tomorrow :/

Griffin's Galleon, Kobra, Rameses and Rattlesnake are currently closed.

Yeah, especially when you think about parks like Paultons - £8 million gets them two rollercoasters and a load of dinosaurs, where as £5 million at Alton gets a load of consumer grade VR headsets (£600 each), and a restaurant (despite the fact that other food places around the park are being closed).

Isn't it just a training day for new staff?

Made me cringe slightly given how desperately Towers needs new rides.

Based on how well advertised these tickets are, no doubt they will sell very quickly. Also I wouldn't be surprised if there is a limit of one per person or something stupid.

Don't know if anyone's seen this yet, 12p tickets! https://www.thorpepark.com/12p-ticket

There were two annual pass days, the wait times for the first one, (7/3/2015) can be seen here https://queue-times.com/parks/2/open_periods/87and the wait times for day two (8/3/2015) here https://queue-times.com/parks/2/open_periods/88

At least they're honest...

The fact that "physical transit" has been mentioned in a few press releases makes me assume that something will move, the only thing I can think of is the train carriage?

Preliminary 2015 results are up, there is a report and a webcast you can watch if you are extra keen. http://www.merlinentertainments.biz/results-and-presentations Some random bits

Not the most exciting of news, but a a few new parks have been added to the park: some other disney parks, and I've started to add the six flags parks (although there are so many this could be quite time consuming).

I mean, not big enough to have a significant impact on merlin's finances.

The fines imposed by HSE are normally not very big, you can look at previous fines on their website.