Ian-S

Well I hope they overhaul operations as well as the theme, bit strange to see a dozen boats go round empty in between dispatches, made what should have been a 20 minute queue crawl to 70.

Don't worry, most speak English and if all else fails, hand signals usually work Congrats.

I think what he's saying is knowing Thorpe's target audience and the type of clientele that attracts, there's bound to be someone who has seen the many facebook posts about it and made the trip banking on free return tickets who'll now bitch about not getting them. Funny story a friend went last week specifically to ride DBGT and Stealth (totally ignoring me when I told them both were closed), so around 6pm he puts up a post on Facebook of the letters they were giving out and proudly says what a stand up job they've done, so I jokingly replied 'hope you stopped off at advanced ticket collections to get them' to which I got replied to with 'of course I did, I'm not stupid'. That was just after his phone had 'checked in' at Ripley Services. 30 minutes later his phone checks him in at 'Thorpe Park'....

They had to call an enginer, ride ops not allowed to give it a push anymore.

Anybody considered it might be something out the ordinary that's caused the shutdown? Like one of the mirrors got broke?

Yup, ironically the most power hungry ride op I've come across was at a non-Merlin park.

Does anybody near / works there know if Merlin have ever tried to do a takeover of the park? Just something one of the staff said to me last week made me curious.

Earlier in the year we asked the same and got the same reply, but then the place was empty, aparantly they can only run the ride if the first six rows are filled, if there's less the train stalls on the approach to the second lift hill, evident by the fact this did indeed happen to us twice the next week within the space of an hour (well common sense would tell you if you send the exact same train around again as a bonus to the occupants to make up for being trapped on the ride for half an hour, chances are it's going to stall again, which it did). But that wouldn't be the reason today, some staff are either incapable of thinking for themselves or love the false sense of power being a ride host gives them, I never ask for permission to queue for a particular seat, it's easier to just say sorry and move if they ask.

As above, although I prefer the second or third row.

Not much airtime no, it's like Air as in the seats are really comfortable and it's a dam smooth ride, probably my favourite overall.

I don't disagree with you, there is a world of difference between this, and say what the McCanns got away with, but I can also see why some people may take the attitude of "should have been looking after your kids instead of your phone" if they don't know that area well, especially when it's very young children who really, should never be let 'out of sight' for even a second, let alone a moment.

Yup and besides, there's a much better fake beach a few miles down the A3, and that one is free to enter.

To be fair (and I'll admit I don't know the full details), if the parents were off having a fag or coffee and were not supervising their kids properly (they were six year old girls right?) then they should shoulder a small part of the blame for what happened, it's this little thing called parental responsibility, you'll understand when you have kids.

Funny, last time I was at Thorpe all I heard was angry parents yelling at their kids "I didn't pay a hundred quid so you could sit on the ****ing beach all day catching Pokemon"

It was down last Saturday too (13th).

No, not unless you include the one or two miserable members of staff buzzing around. I disagree on the food, it's no worse than any cookie cutter Merlin outlet. As others have said the place needs a decent thrill ride, a longer flume and it'll be a major contender, it's already ahead of Chessington imho.

Given how unreliable it is, they'll probably never mention how much it cost ever.

If you went at the end of August could I borrow your time machine to go back and buy some apple shares?

Can't disagree, my son said today he'd rather suffer the four hour trip and sleeping in a tent than half hour up the road to Thorpe if there was a 'choice' (we were discussing which park to goto Saturday with some friends).

Green belt can be reclassified, depends how long you're willing to wait...

it's good business sense to buy up land to stop NIMBY's building houses close by then complaining about the noise, didn't Disney do the same in Paris?

They weren't three young teenage boys were they? one really fat? They were going round asking people where rides were for ****s and giggles on the Tuesday, they made the mistake of asking me twice in an hour where the Nemesis entrance was, while standing outside it, the second time I said same place it was when you asked me an hour ago along with something unrepeatable here beginning f and ending wit, they didn't see the funny side but didn't bother us again.

I love winding people up in the queue line.

I doubt it was even a consideration.

If you know where to look it's quite easy to see the edges, one section is the inline twist over the ice as it's falling away, and another is on the approach to the breakrun, also if you look backwards at the sphere in the station, it stops to quickly which spoils the effect. The ice section is the worst, once you've seen it, it'll stick out like a sore thumb thereafter. Oh and Sam, if you can do Air, do Swarm, it's very similar in feel (apart from you are sitting, not hanging).