Ian-S

I hope so, my wife said she'd have belted one of them if they'd sat next to her on the tube, so she deserves to be locked in a room with one just for ****s and giggles now.

It seems Merlin is good at that. You filled half the bus? Blimey we only had 6 in total, each person had a row to themselves with room to spare, and this was on what I'd have expected to be a fairly busy day (the normal eye queue was overflowing). Not an attraction that has a lot of return value in it, a theme I expect that will be shared with Derren Brown's experience thing.

Help Assad instead? You know the old saying 'enemy of my enemy is my friend'. Just because we don't like the way he runs his Country, it doesn't give us the right to tell him how to run it either, it's his Country after all. Or perhaps better still we shouldn't try and interfere in the first place, as it was that interference that led to the rise of the problem in the first place.

...yeah Dave, cos that worked out so well last time we did it didn't it? Ask Tony about it, you know the one you were slagging off a few years ago for rushing into a war unprepared and leaving the Countries akin to something from a Mad Max film (yet doing your best to delay the report that says this so it doesn't sway public opinion).... On the one hand I'm glad there are some among the younger generation that have your point of view, but k ow on the other hand the sad reality is, for every one of you, there's ten more baying for blood.

Glad I'm no the only one not seeing the wood for the trees.

Can't you 'request desktop' site on your phone? I have the option on my phone.

Vampire? There hasn't been any rumours about it closing has there? Or are you talking about the other photo that looks like Tomb Blaster?

Back in the good old days that was exactly how it worked, if a person hadn't been trained properly on a machine and they had or caused an accident, then the employer was liable, it seems a bit different nowadays though. I find it intriguing the information that has been released, they appear to be saying a young and inexperienced ride op was able to reset the ride manually, yet from all accounts the general concenous here is a ride op cannot do that and it needs a member of the engineering team to do the reset, so who's telling the truth? Earlier in the year I was corrected over who I saw reset the Swarm at Thorpe (I thought it was the ride ops) and when I went back I saw the guy again and asked him if he was engineering and he said yes, so I know we're talking about a red top here, but stuff isn't adding up for me.

Well we've had 17 degrees this November and when I got married, it was a sunny clear blue sky at a perky 18 degrees that February day after a mild winter, so I wouldn't assume temps will be that low next year ATM, we haven't even had a frost here yet.

So what's the story with Mack flumes? What made them go to the dark side after 20+ years of operation?

You've just described exactly how health and safety works.

You can bet like the BBC and NHS the ones making the decisions won't be the ones affected either. I bet it's something stupid like a bean counter that's never even been to the park who's said 'well most people come for the coasters, so let's cut the side shows', without realising most families spend an equal, if not more amount of time at the park doing the side-shows, you can only ride a coaster so many times before your body says enough is enough. We will probably renew our MAP's, but I doubt we'll make the effort to goto Alton next year, it's just not worth it if half the side shows that we spent most of our 3 days on are closed.

Wouldn't that be like Dragon's Fury on steroids? That'd be fun.

The one at Chessington? The ones at BPB and Legoland hardly qualify as having drops, an Pauton's one isn't that big.

First time the guy with the scanner had gone to the toilet, so the other guy just gave the wristbands, second time the girl just looked at the passes and tickets and handed over the wristband, pretty much rinse and repeat for all, the only time anything was done 'to book' was the last time when they made us goto the advanced ticket office to get our wristbands because they'd run out on the gate, everytime (apart from the last night) we had just walked up to the Annual Pass entrance at about 7pm and been waved through, they did look at the eventbrite tickets and our MAP's, but just handed them back immediately with the wristband. Apart from once on Swarm with Mr Magoo, we were also only ever asked to show our wristbands at X (every dam week too lol), there was one time we expected it on Nemesis and the ride op came walking up to us, but all they asked was where was my wife, aparantly she'd left quiet an impression celebrating her first ride earlier in the week lol.

Stop being sensible, we like rampant speculation....

I heard lots of people over SN say they paid a fiver for it having been on park during the day and they got an Island Beats wristband too. Went about 8 times in total, yet our MAP & Eventbrite tickets were only ever scanned the once, so as I think I said before, I hope they don't base their future decision making on the event on how many booked versus used tickets there was.

If you're changing your parks target audience to families, then closing/removing one of the few remaining family focused rides that you have does not make sense, unless the plan is refurbish the ride and entire area and make Canada Creek a new family friendly section of the park, whilst coinciding it with the big 'family friendly' push when it reopens. Opening 'experience' type attractions that have no 're-ridability' such as IAC and DB's new thing is not the way to get families into the park.

So have you heard different then?

Other than any technical upgrades, it only needs a clean, doesn't even need a re-route unless they're going to double it's length.

Nooooooooo Swarm is the second best ride there!

It's also naive to this the businesses would only be 'bumped' by the markets, never underestimate the vindictiveness of a scorned stockbroker, plus isn't Sealife pretty much integral to their business model? As all sites but Thorpe have one.

Dam wish I'd rode it last weekend now, but I had forgotten my coat and was suffering a bit with the cold so decided not to. Bugger.

The Summer Nights URL for reference, which is giving a 404 right now. https://www.thorpepark.com/events-experiences/events/summer-nights/ I do hope they continue Summer Nights in some form, if they don't then I may not renew our MAP's, there are some unfortunate circumstances that prevent us from visiting during the hot summer days, and the evening events were ideal for us.

Open it only Friday/Sat/Sun outside of the school trip and summer holiday periods.