Ian-S

Cheers, rescheduled for another day anyway because of the rain, so plenty time to book this one.

How late in the day can you buy Summer Nights tickets? My son wants to take a friend tomorrow but we won't know if he's going until about 5pm, just wondering if you can buy a ticket at the gate?

Could be even worse than that, how's about paying £100 and doing no proper rides at all.... That's what my neighbour did Sunday, took his son, who is just over the meter tall so had to pay full price for both (didn't take any of the discount forms), ended up only doing Angry Birds. This is the neighbour in the block nobody likes, and as they never bothered to check what height limits are for the rides, didn't take any vouchers with them nor book in advance, none of us felt the need to offer 'advice' when the sister (who was having a bonding day with the mother) said where her brother was..... We did laugh hysterically later though...

I can't remember cos I bought it ages ago, but I seem to remember doing screenshots once or twice before buying it.

You can do screenshots with the free version of fraps too iirc.

Yeah, billy the puppet, I just googled him, he freaks my son out too, he won't go on the ride now. I'll take a pass on the film too, the original Cary and Friday 13th series are the exent of my horror film experiences.

Or you could just hit print screen, alt-tab out the game and past the image into whatever generic painting program you have, alt-tab back in, rinse and repeat...

Oh so that's that little characters name. Never seen the films myself, too old for that stuff.

Single train on Colossus, Stealth, Inferno, not sure about X but it was more than one (could have been 3) and I'm pretty sure I counted 5 cars on Saw, I never saw a full train all night and I had a car to myself on Saw

Well just got back, not a fast track seller in sight Time on park 7.30 to 10pm Ride count: 21 Colossus x3 Saw x3 Detonator x1 x x1 Fish x1 Swarm x3 Stealth x4 Inferno x4 Storm surge x1 (I know! wife was looking bored so we gave her something to laugh about). Summer Night really are the best kept secret of theme parks, everything was walk on and all our multiple rides were re-rides, with the exception of Stealth where we walked through the station gate, and Swarm where we had to jump through the air gates to get to the cattle pens (much to the annoyance of the ride op when one girl inadvertantly got herself trapped in one, funny thing was she wasn't even doing what we were and was just chatting to her friend while they picked up their bags lol) , my wife was talking to one of the ride ops who had been there from 9am and she said at one point people were waiting 2 hours for rides during the day, madness. After the concert everybody in that headed for Colossus and X, so we went to Swarm, as they came over to Swarm we went to Stealth, both times 5-10 minute queues built up, we had a bit of a laugh playing queue pingpong to avoid them hehe. Still don't know who Little Mix is.

I wish slammer did a couple more spins, just enough to get you proper dizzy.

Thanks, I always try to have a mental note of queue length points and times, but I've been lucky and never had to queue for inferno

It wouldn't surprise me if someone has said 'put that on the back burner for now', they are dealing with an antagonistic press of which some quarters are out to hang them at the first opportunity, so the last thing they need is to start announcing, promoting or 'celebrating' something while the Smiler issue is ongoing. If I had to guess I would say nothing will be done until the Smiler investigation is finished and result made public and any litigation/charges/trials finished, then a decision will be made about The Smilers future, then after the storm surrounding that has blown over (they are damned whatever they do) they'll start moving forward, Merlin are playing the long game here. Until then the park is stuck in limbo, this isn't America where killer rides reopen a few weeks later or Germany where chain link fences take the place of our 3 meter high fences, this is the UK. The big question is what will happen to the budget, presumably it's already been allocated, so will Merlin just sit on it and wait, or will they reallocate it somewhere else within the group? Assuming the source is accurate of course, and you'd all probably be better qualified to say whether it is than I.

Sorry to go slightly OT but at the fast track merge point on the stairs of inferno, you're saying it's about a 15 minute wait?

Perhaps this is some Merlin magic master plan to upgrade all the hotels and turn the parks into Butlin style resorts. It's a good plan because other than a great pool and evening entertainment (which is cheap and easy), Butlins don't have a zoo or theme park on site, so they'll never need to do anything to upgrade them.

Typical NIMBYs. I can't blame them for whining about the roads, if what I hear about Legoland is right they need a serious redesign, but some of these parks have stupid local authorities. Maybe they should just offer to repave all the local roads or build some nice fences and be done with it, bribery seems to work for others just fine.

Nope I wasn't critising the pricing.

Perhaps I should have put it differently but this is what I meant, it wasn't whether they enjoyed the day that surprised me, it was that they considered the £148 (total) good value.

What do the stars represent, the f word or the s one?

I should have sad very low expectations, but what I did say is one and the same for them.

It would help if they did some promotion, other than social media. The advert was on the TV once the other night, the 10 second one that explains totally naff all about the event, nothing in the local papers either. Believe it or not there's still a lot of people that don't use social media.

Some friends went on Sunday last, 90 minute wait for Vampire each time, they literally only rode that (twice) and the flume (and a trip into the zoo). They were very happy and enjoyed it all, especially at the bargain price of £90, said they would be going back again soon. I picked myself up of the floor from laughing around 20 minutes later, I couldn't believe they considered that good value and enjoyable (granted they didn't stay past 3.30 which was a mistake). All in their day cost them £148 including their food and parking. Some people have very low standards.

*raises hand for bad back sufferer* As others have said it depend on what back problem your friend has, if it's anything vertabrea or disc related then some serious thinking needs to be done before riding. My wife has a terrible back with lumbar spine osteoarthritis, she is OK on small stuff like the flying fish and Vampires, she can even do Loggers, but we just know anything than induces a lot of maintained g like Swarm or Colossus will leave her in agony for a month so she doesn't venture near them. I'd recommend one of the flat rides first, like Rush, Vortex or Slammer, these rides are reasonably smooth in their operation but do include some g-force, so it'll allow your friend to ease themselves into things without subjecting themselves to the sudden changes in direction whilst under load that accompany the coasters, if they can take the g-forces of the flat rides without any discomfort, then they can start venturing onto the coasters, start with the flying fish, it might seem like a kiddy coaster but you do get chucked about quiet a bit. But as has been said, it really depends on your friends condition, I fractured some vertebrae some 20 odd years ago and am fine to ride pretty much everything, but know others who did far less and cannot even sit in a car.

More braking? Surely that would increase the chance of a stall.

Slightly ironic that one of the fences with the sign on is far more likely to kill you while you climb over it than not.