Ian-S

The problem with being a public company is the markets expect, scrub that, demand you make an increase year on year profit-wise and if you don't increase your profits, you get punished by the institutions who dump their stock onto the market trashing your market value. The markets do not tolerate it if you do not increase profits year on year, while the real people running the company will just be glad they've still made a profit, Goldman Sachs won't give **** about that, Merlin didn't increase profits so dump stock. This is Merlin's way to try and keep these vultures happy. Capitalism, ladies and gentleman.

I would think most of the staff to go would be in the hotels and as you say food and bev, perhaps you won't be able to go into your room until 5pm instead of 3pm, since they'll cut the cleaning staff in half etc. etc. and dare I say it, less people selling fastrack, and less of those 'entertainment police' people they had riding round on that motorised bike that tormented people for not smiling. They wouldn't get away with cutting 'ride' staff, could you imagine the Mail headlines, "Horror ride Smiller re-opens with even less operators months after 'human error' caused horrific crash that left two girls leg-less and three hundred others traumatised" blah blah

Someone needs to take a broom and bucket into Loggers over the winter and give it a good scrub, should get it clean by next year.

Never mind Wild Asia, some of their staff can't even tell you the way to the exit from Rattlesnake.....

More chance of you being struck by lightning while sat on the bog.

What Management should have done was said to all staff hang about after, once the GP have left, you can have some rides to yourselves for a few hours, it's not like Thorpe has a curfew or anything. There was a young lady moaning in the slammer queue on Saturday about wanting fast-track cos she's been waiting so long too, some people just have an unrealistic sense of entitlement, there are some really nice staff at Thorpe, and they don't deserve such **** from people, having said that there's also some arseholes who deserve to be put on Rumba Rapids in nothing but a tea towel while it's raining.

Oh I dunno about that, our 'big' cat (he was the bigger than a Jack Russell) tried to kill the midwife who came for a home visit once.... aparantly he was too protective of the baby and should be destroyed, I said perhaps you shouldn't have kick him out the way, he was just saying hello, that's why he tried to have your hand off.... Ignorant woman wouldn't come back after that lol.

Haha, did you get scratched by a cat as a child?

Ah ****. Have sent you a pm Zach.

It had some issues yesterday too, they couldn't get the restraints to lock down (or whatever the usual problem is, when someone asked the ride op simply said 'usual stuff from slammer'). I found it quiet amusing, when the problems started we were stood at he split point in the queue line, by the time they sort the problems, 90% of the queue had walked out and I ended up on the next run on the back row alone, not because of the time (it was only about 15 minutes), but because one bloke blurted out he was leaving as he didn't want to be he the on the news that night being spattered over the park cos his restraint hadn't locked down, a chineese whisper went down each queue and the rest one by one all slowly chickened out, including my niece.

Yup.

We had a couple like that, although one was more a mummy's boy, and the other a daddy's girl. When our son was born they used to sleep either in, or very near the bottom of his Moses basket (we quiet often had to fish them out, but eventually gave up as they would just crawl back in and curl up at the bottom), if he stirred, they would come and find us in the house or jump on the bed and wake us up, one time boyo decided to try and get up on his hands and knees while in the basket, lost balance and fell out, our biggest cat jumped under him to break his fall (even though the basket was already on the floor). We've never had a dog, but we regularly dog-sit a friends, who is great fun too, so we love both cats and dogs equally. My son keeps going on about getting a dog since our cats died.

I hope that wasn't you I had to drag out of my nieces seat on Saw....

Pickout whatever you can, taken this afternoon. I also got a look from the X fire escape and unless my eyes deceived me, it looked like they were constructing what is commonly refereed to as drywall inside, it wasn't drywall, it was plywood or something similar, but to me it make it look like they were constructing a maze type walkway. I also tried to quiz a few staff and the only thing they would confirm was DB's involvement, which was as "creative consultant".

Most people would be on zero hours though wouldn't they? I dunno, it's been a long time since I thought of anybody but my reflection as my boss.

Let's hope they continue with Summer nights/Island Beats.

No suprise, we made several after school trip this year and I was amazed to find on more than one occassion we were the only people in a particular part of the park, infact there was more staff than customers sometimes. But it does make for re-riding Fury until you are sick quiet an experience.

Well it's not like he was ever going to answer 'yeah, fright night mazes usually hit 2 hour queues, my experience is going to be a glorified maze, so yes, of course you're going to spend more time queueing than inside the actual attraction you numbnut'.

If it's one of those 1983 2p's, and Merlin happen to have a jar full, then they're worth a great deal more than their face value..... just saying

'Not a rollercoaster' and 'experience' were slotted in pretty quick (we all know this, but he was really quick to correct Matt Baker when he said about him designing a rollercoaster for Thorpe Park).

I had nothing to compare Chessington to (aside from Dave's impromptu maze through his garden), so I'm glad I'm not the only one who was generally unimpressed with the parks efforts.

Nobody in their right mind watches an NBC show nowadays because they cancel more stuff than thy renew, the only good thing on NBC is the NASCAR and INDYCAR.

My son will be overjoyed at the news, as it'll mean daddy won't be dragging him on one last time this weekend. He'll just insist I ride Swarm 14 times instead... oh boy.

Usually open Feb half term iirc. This year it was Swarm, Stealth and Fish running. More prevelant, when is the last day this year?

I must admit even my boy asked 'is that it?' to the tree in trick or treat wood last night after he said 'that way to the exit'. Tonight we went proper trick or treating and there was this one house that had converted their garden into a maze and honestly Chessington could learn a thing or two from it, as much as I love the parks, when a fat chain smoking plumber on a council estate consummately out does you in all areas, it's time to sack those in charge of your special events and start from scratch.