Ian-S

Wouldn't the new stage show just replace the penguins one?

That's a whole bunch of new-ish wood on the floor there, could they not just be replacing the old cattle pen with a new one? Also, is the AP building open on zoo days?

Not according to the terms and conditions it isn't, entry to the circus is specifically excluded from standard and premium pass holders (it's s11 which is not covered by the s12 exclusion that the usual standard pass exclusions are). It's probably a £1 booking fee like Shrek was for Premium Pass holders this year, I know when we went I overheard a member of staff complaining that a load of 'pass holders' had not turned up and they could have sold the tickets instead of having seats empty, maybe that happens a lot and they've decided to make you book instead of turning up at 10am and snatching 4 free tickets for the 7.30 performance like I did.

Be careful if renewing, if you goto your home place and try to renew directly, you'll pay the higher price (or on Cheesy you did anyway). If you go via the Merlinannualpass.co.UK site, when you get redirected to your home attraction, it'll quote you the correct, cheaper price, it seems that at least on the chessington site, they hadn't updated the renewal sale pricing yet and it was still listed at the pre-sale price (it was only £10 a pass but you can buy a lot of penny sweets for a tenner). The standard at £89 is for renewals of 3 or more standard passes (family pack), the same setup for a new pass holder is £99 per pass (3 or more). The sale is on to mid-feb, so no hurry. It's £10 cheaper if you're renewing.The Tower Circus thing is to probably try and add value to the Premium Pass, or it's to stop people exploiting some loophole like only needing one Premium Pass to take advantage of extra discounts for everybody, like the free parking at the parks. They better tell the people working at the Tower though, since when we went there in August I had to explain to them what a Premium Pass was (maybe it was just a Summer job person, but you'd think they'd explain things before throwing them on the ticket desk).

Jesus Christ how hard is it to get these things right first time? It must get really boring constantly having to clarify what you meant.

Give it to Chessington for spare parts.

Yeah he's from Trek and has a huge following.

Does that mean anybody can turn up with it being at the science museum?

They wouldn't dare call it The Marmaliser now. Superlooper or thunderlooper would seem more 'sensible' but wouldn't really appeal to GenX where everything must be filled with drama and stupidity or it's boring.

He's probably confusing licensing with any particular license the venue holds, some local authorities will write into their licensing that hypnotism is excluded, say a pub or somewhere, or perhaps there is an industry body that 'licenses' professionals, I.e. accreditation, there's very little in the way of regulation the 'industry' is self policing and operates a code of conduct all performers agree to abide by, about the only thing that is set in law is that you must not do hypnosis on anybody under 18.

Yes but I'd rather not loose it lol

^^ Thorpe still have a duty of care, you can slap as many warnings on something as you want but if you don't actively enforce it, you'll be in the crapper. Hypnosis won't be included as it won't work on a lot of people, you really can avoid being hypnotised if you're in the right frame of mind, and the whole thing is a huge health and safety nightmare. Augmented reality, now that sounds plausible, especially with their 'future of theme parks' statement, my son has it on his DS and it's great fun, if you scaled that up and used 3d googles, then I can see where that would be a major selling point.

It's only a very reasonable £20 per passholder, quiet the bargain. /sarcasm

'Most Haunted Live'

In the back of the customer services office on the last weekend that's what they had, on the wall was photos of all the rides and pin notices over the ones which were closed, I can't remember what was on loggers but swear it was different to tidal wave (that had closed until 2016 on it).

We'll just have to agree to disagree, I don't see that having low expectations is the same as expecting something to be crap, to me having a low expectation is just not mentally building the excitement up about something to a level where you're going to be disappointed no matter what it is, because you were expecting more. *by you I mean generally, not you personally, like when you see someone at the cinema all excited before going in, saying things like 'this is going to be so awesome' and 'I can't wait to see the stunts', while everybody else is standing around talking about the weather, then when they come out they're like, 'well that was a load of crap', and everybody else is saying what a great film it was because they didn't go in with any preconceived ideas of how it was going to be, and Mr Grumpy did.

Having low expectations, and assuming something will be bad, are not the same thing.

We'll know when it one won't we? If it turns out to be an actor led 'experience' like Shrek, then no, I don't see that as the future of theme parks, not for me anyway.

If you set your expectations low then it's easier to be pleased with what you get. I went into Shrek with a similar attitude and completely enjoyed the experience, the only real gripe I had was being able to see the top of the screen in the simulator.The whole 'future of theme parks' tagline is marketing bull**** that could come back to bite them in the arse if they're not careful.

I thought Merlin had officially announced it when they released their Smiler report findings, a kind of sub-text of 'we got hit bad cos of this crash so this is what we're snowballing next year to keep our bloodthirsty shareholders happy'.

That's what I think it'll exactly be, a walkthrough maze, simulator tube ride to somewhere magical, then another maze/experience/interaction walk to the photo kiosk where they relieve you of £25 for a Derren Brown special edition album full of green screen photos, yeah just like shrek but without the kids. If it is I'll probably cut up my MAP and feed it to the park manager through that slot where the sun doesn't shine, because that is not 'the future of theme parks' in any way shape or form, especially when you can see the top of the screen from your seat, that kind of spoils the illusion a tad.

Now that's what Thorpe should have bought.

There's one thing present Labour suffer from and it's a lack of public speaking skills from all their front line people, which makes them look like a bunch of monkeys trying to **** a football.

If they paid someone to design that 'new' logo then they deserve to go bankrupt through incompetence.

^^ Isn't that what Thatcher said about the IRA?