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They can afford it, it's all state owned, it would be like the Queen owning Thorpe Park and giving it a limitless budget, their only restriction to doing things is the time it takes to design and build the stuff. That loop, it's a loop with a corkscrew at the top, so effectively three inversions.

Obviously not anymore lol

They should just bulldoze that whole area and redo it, but I know the insanity that is local government will likely not approve it for some bat**** stupid reason like noise (completely ignoring the fact that Dragon's fury is one of the loudest rides I've ever heard), so they're left in the embarrising situation of maintaining a prehistoric ride knowing full well that if push come to shove, the local authority wouldn't even let them replace it with a new version of the exact same ride. Also fun fact, I was at a house within a stones throw of Chessington last week on business, you couldn't hear the park, nor Fury, nor nothing actually, might be different for other houses, but sometimes I just shake my head in disbelief at LA's.

Knowing our luck it'll be a non-Merlin park.

LMAO

You're missing the point, if Alton was the only park, or I lived closer, then I would be there every weekend supporting them. But I don't live close and don't have a money tree in the back garden, so I'll stick to the other three ****holes that don't cost me a small fortune to visit until Alton fix their stuff.

If Alton was the only park then yes Marc I could buy that, but since Chessie, Thorpe and Legoland are within spitting distance, I don't see the point of driving all that way when I can drive for between 10 and 50 minutes and have the same experience. Not forgetting the cost of petrol, which isn't insignificant nowadays.

Or perhaps like me, he faces a four to five hour car journey to get to Alton, and doesn't see the point in spending all that time travelling when a quarter of the decent* rides are closed. *open to interpretation.

Did it today, is it worth the full entry cost? No, not unless you have kids with you (or have a big kid inside), if you're not one for getting 'into the mood' of the attraction, then it won't work for you, but if you love getting into character and playing along, it's great, we had a small enough group that there was lots of fun and banter with the actors, and everybody got picked on at least once, I have very bad coordination so do not do dancing ever, no prizes for guessing what bit I got pulled up for. There was only one person in our group that didn't get picked on, but the less said about her the better (nothing nasty, she was fine and a nice lady, but not someone you'd expect to see in there, hence why the actors appeared to be scared to interact with her). Is it worth the cost for a MAP holder (£1)? Definitely 100%, if for nothing more that to experience the buss ride, the only thing that let that down for me was from where I was sitting, I could see the top of the screen, which spoilt the expeience slightly, but it was only a slight blip on an otherwise great bit of hardware. If I could change one thing, it would be to have the buss ride as the finale too, to 'fly you back to London', the present exit is a bit boring compared to the rest of the experience.

Having experienced Shrek today, and knowing Thorpe's recent love affair with live actor maze type attractions, I'm now convinced more so than ever that this is going to be something along the lines of Shrek, I.e. simulator type experience + live actors.

It's probably a marketing thing, especially if they are going to have the Smiler open as suspected, they are going to get some **** from the fear porn obsessed media, so they have answers to all the accusations that will no doubt be slung in their direction. If you have not had to give your dob for your hotel booking, am not a MAP holder, are tall and look older than you are, then nobody will know your true age - there's always a point where the world has to stop making decisions for other people and let people be responsible for their actions, so if you want to go into the maze, you do so. I agree with the age 'recommendations' (I certainly wouldn't take a 8 and 10 year old into a maze like a friend is planning to) but if someone wants to ignore that recommendation, it's not really the parks fault if they get scared ****less as a result.

They can't unless they're going to start asking for ID. Can't say I'm surprised they're putting out a strongly worded release, there are always people that will think whatever rule/advise/recommendation doesn't apply to them and they bugger things up for the majority.

That's awesome, definitely going to make time to visit next year for this.

Either it's just me or Swarm and Inferno are a lot faster in the wet too. Greyout's are caused by low blood pressure btw (in the case of coasters, blood being drained away from your brain by the forces).

You don't need to login, it's there all the time.

Broke collar bone - disagreement with car over rights to the road Broke left wrist & fractured forearm - falling off a tree swing Fractured knee / compressed vertebrae / fractured wrist / broken toe / broken left knuckle - sports More cracked ribs, dislocated thumbs and concussions than I care to remember.

Avengers - Marvel Spiderman - Sony (with the co-op deal now in place with Marvel) X-Men - Fox (with Marvel in cohorts, but Marvel can't use the words 'mutants' in Avenger films or make reference to them, hence why quicksilver and the girl were described as 'enhanced' in Ultron iirc and X-Men films never make reference to the MCU characters). Film distribution rights are different again. So along with merchandising rights are different too (this may be the one that controls what rides go where). Toofpik pretty much summed it up, spaghetti rights rules the day, Disney may own 'XYZ' but they don't own the rights to it.

Plus the rights can also be different per Country.

Yeah the Mail article is quoted in the other Smiler thread, regardless of what is written in a newspaper, the ride won't reopen until the HSE lift the prohibition order on it, I'm half tempted to do a FOI request to them to see whether there was a time limit on it or whether they decide when it's lifted.

You should know by now no-one is truely ever dead in sci-fi.

Yeah, his original stories were OK, but the longer he's been in charge the more outlandish he's been. That Matt Smith storyline where he planted the jacket into a scene and various other stuff was genius, but as you say it seems he's running out of ideas, and every new story must one up the previous. Original Who had the same problem, there's only so many stories you can tell that involve time travel before you start contradicting yourself or creating/ignoring paradoxes.

Missy is there because fans liked her and the actress was available, she was eye candy for the dads and crazy amusement for the kids, she served no purpose to the story other than knowing how to strap Clara into the Dalek and bring along two vortex manipulators, even though I seem to remember Capt. Jack saying his was the only one that existed, yet they appear to be freely available when it's good for the plot. Daleks were there because they have to be used at least once a season otherwise the BBC looses the rights for them.

It was there when we went the weekend of the TPM meet, but after I couldn't tell you.

I'm mid 40's, seen and done plenty and stopped reading newspapers years ago, that was just the first article that came up on Google. You're immediate reaction was 'nobody would ever tell someone not to save a life' to my 'sweeping' statement, when the very article that originally sparked this debate, reported just that, medics ignoring health and safety rules to save the life of one of the accident victims.

Nope, wasn't shocked or surprised at all.