Ian-S

Neither Thorpe nor Chessington are getting massively bad reviews ATM, there is the odd one, but most are saying nice things. Two questions do spring to mind though, why would you plan a trip down from the other end of the Country and not check to see if the park is fully open beforehand? I also wonder whether the people who complain about 'miserable and rude' staff, are simply being treated the same way they are treating the staff themselves? Although the guy in customer services couldn't answer my question when I was at Thorpe, he did offer to call upstairs and remained jolly the whole time never once was he rude either to me or the fat impatient chav who kept interpupting and demanding she get a free fastpass for her entire family for her next trip because loggers was closed.

Wow that's not a risk I'd be happy taking with a flagship product, I'd have a spare one built up sitting ready. First rule of corporate finance, never build one when you can build two for half the price.

It's probably just to protect it, but I wouldn't want to be the person who had to unwrap it...

It's also not exactly great weather.

On the upside looks like Saw if finally open.....

Yeah wrong park lol.

So how many people are at the park today?

I though zodiac did more than 6, seemed like that anyway...

It's the British way, didn't you get the memo?

They are only required to provide facilities in which patrons can check if attractions are unavailable prior to arriving, typically this is a phone number because, believe it or not, there are still quiet a lot of people who don't have internet access at home (yes I know that's a hard concept to comprehend) and I'm pretty sure they have to provide information at the point of entry too. It wouldn't take a lot to offer up a page on their site about ride status though, if the guy can create the website we use to check queue times, I'm pretty sure their webmaster could knock something up (mind you back in January they didn't know their site calendar was broke till I told them, so then again, maybe not...).

Zodiac is about 15 seconds too long for me, I'm fine right up until a few seconds before it starts descending, then I get a bit dizzy.

I wasn't complaining, just curious. I hope they get saw up and running by the end of the month as it's the only one I've not ridden yet, but I won't cry if they don't, I'll just go back next month lol. Unfortunately we've scheduled our next visit for the same day the celeb thing opens, dam schools and their inset days.

Was swarm and stealth running one train today? They were the only two that had notable queue times.

I wasn't listening closely enough but someone in the queue Saturday was saying one of the water rides is basically dead because they didn't do the maintance on it properly and killed the pumps, and due to it's age either cannot or are having an extremely hard time finding a replacement. I assumed it was the other one (depth charge?) but they may have been talking about the rapids.

Lack of water? It was empty last week, dry as a bone.

Lack of water? It was empty last week, dry as a bone.

LOL at the VIP hate. The worst behaviour I saw over the weekend came from a Standard MAP holder.

Silly isn't a term I'd use to describe Surrey County Council. We just got our notifications for secondary school, we got the choice we wanted, our sons friend who lives no further away from the school, but in a different direction, got a school that's a seven mile round trip away. Silly? Insane more like.

No I meant someone at Thorpe looked at the 2014 surrey schools calender when deciding opening times because they were on holiday that week last year, Surrey have shifted it a week earlier this year so the kids go back round here on the 13th. Coastercameron98's answer is more plausible though.

LOL someone looked at a 2014 calender me thinks...

Just to clarify the VIP pass doesn't irk me, I just think Merlin could have implimened it better. I myself would consider buying one, but like others would have he sensible hat on with it in regard to queues. Also I don't know they were 100% demanding a second ride, they were talking to the ride operator and could have just been slow getting out, we were more interested in getting on the back ourselves, I may just have add 2+2 and got 5. I did see it on loggers though, my son ask to go around again and the girl said no, so he replied well you've let those girls go again (the boat in front had two girls on), she didn't say much but one of the girls had a silver leynard, I just said to DS we'd run round as there wasn't a queue and it would keep us fit, but he didn't want to cos we were all soaked lol.

No idea as we bundled onto the back, but on Saturday on Swarm some were told to get off and use a sneaky gate to jump the queue back to the cattle pen, I'm not sure they were demanding a re-ride though, just asking how to do it quickly, didn't bother us but we had only been standing there was 30 seconds and the ride was essentially walk on anyway, we got a similar deal too as we walked off I asked DS if he wanted another go and the ride operator heard and told us just to jump back on since no-one was in the pen. There will always be a minority who give the majority a bad name though, the effectiveness of the system is in how TPTB re-educate them so it doesn't happen again. Should have called it a Platinum Pass or something.

At the weekend the main queue on inferno was serving all but one row on the train, the row at the back, or second from back was serving disabled/vip's, the only time I saw that change was when a VIP wanted another seat, in which case they made them wait until the next train and temporarily blocked off the entry pen to that row, same for Colossus, most of the time the VIP's were not abusing the system. At one point the entire ride exit ramp on inferno was blocked by VIP's waiting, but the operator still only let one rows worth of people on at a time, the rest had to wait, and some got told off for cluttering up the exit ramp (how hard is it to queue in single file I ask?). If they run that operation throughout the year then I, as a general herded person, would have no problem with it, like most what annoys me is when the VIP's were refusing to vacate the ride and insisting the operators let them on for a second go, now that would piss me off, it should be made clear by Merlin that seat hogging is as unacceptable as main queue jumping. Also as I said, if there were no VIP/disabled people waiting, they just opened the pen temporarily and let enough people from the main queue through to fill up the vacant seats, I can't see that affecting throughput much, if at all, not when the train is still waiting to be dispatched while the other one is on track.

I think we've decided to skip Chessington this weekend, my son's tasted the elite rides at Thorpe now (totally the oppersite of our plans preseason, we planned to work up to Thorpe), so with so many rides out of operation it probably won't be worth it, and unless they performed miracles construction wise over the last two weeks, I can't see the penguin walkthrough thing being open either, it was still a building site week before last, and that,s about the only other thing he'd be interested in.

That wasn't hapenning over the weekend, on Inferno and Colossus (those were the rides we were on most) a lot of VIP's were going to the exit and being asked where they wanted to sit. I saw several unhappy people in the front row queue excitedly waiting their turn only to find some VIP's run down from the exit while the car was being unloaded to claim the front seats.