JDann

For me, it comes down to responsibility and accountability. You can work your way up the hierarchy at the park, but do they even know themselves who to hold to account for these sorts of issues? In such a large park, with so many dependencies to get right before the beginning of a season it is a huge task with so many managers / team leaders involved to ensure everything goes to plan. I've seen it first hand before and when things don't go to plan like this, from the ground up, you cannot really see anything that changes. The only hope is that senior management are held accountable for these mistakes, regardless of why they happened as they are responsible and look to improve their process's to ensure that it does not happen again, but from the outside looking in (and from the inside when I worked there) this seems to be a very rare occurrence.

Double Sided printouts. What a farce they are.

It sounds like new members of staff failed to check a restraint and got worried and panicked, even though actually, it doesn't really matter a great deal. If your new to the job and you fail to check a restraint I can imagine that you would be upset, the reality is that the 'Check' actually does very little at all and some parks won't even bother. The ride system would not allow the ride to be dispatched with an unlocked restraint, but I can imagine that if you are new to the job, you may not know this. Impossible to really know what exactly happened, it's a guess, I've seen guests do mental things like try and sit on top of closed restraints before, so wouldn't even want to rule that out. Ultimately it is the platformers duty to ensure the platform is cleared and everybody is secured into the ride, but sometimes things can be out of your control, the public can be a mental bunch. It sounds like this was the first busy day of the season and for a number of staff it will be their first big challenge, maybe even their first ever job, some people may be daunted by this and not be able to cope, as you explained. It all gets easier with experience.

How good is Line of Duty. I watched the 3rd series on a flight 6 months ago and was completely gripped. New series is just as good. Brilliant.

My Friend is the New Releases and Buying Manager at HMV, gets to go to lots of movie premiers and everything. Seems like a pretty cool place to work! I worked for John Lewis a long while back, awesome company to work for, you'll be well looked after. I am currently the Senior Business Analyst and Product Specialist for North America. I work for a company called Kainos who specialize in IT based out of Northern Ireland. My specialty is building apps with Apple who are one of our partners and delivering them in the healthcare industry. It can be extremely interesting, I love working with doctors to help patient care across the country, some great things are capable with the use of technology. I started at Chessington as a rides host nearly10 years ago now and never went to college or University.

Interestingly, back when I was going to Thorpe on a weekly basis back in 2010 I never rode Colossus due to how rough it was. I'm not surprised to hear now that the General Public are noticing it if it's got even worse. It's an iconic ride, it would cost Millions upon millions to take it down and change the landscape. It may happen one day, but I can't see it for a long way off.

Not sure I can agree with you here. There are plenty of steel coasters around that are deep into their 30's and 40's.

So, better late than never. I had originally planned this trip for November, but with work and travelling the time never really came up for me to actually visit the park. I flew a friend of mine over here courtesy of my company last week, and this therefore granted me the perfect opportunity to drag someone along with me to Six Flags over the weekend. Our day started off pretty well, we were up and ready on time, hangover free as we played it sensible on the Friday night and didn't go out. The sun was blazing down in Santa Barbara as we got an Uber to the AMTrak station at 9am. Unfortunately, this is where things started to go tits up. We payed our $15 each for our one way ticket to Ventura, only to be informed of a 45 minute delay. This gave us a nice chance to walk down to the beach and stroll along the pier in the sun, but unfortunately, when we arrived back at the station at 10:15, the train was further delayed. Anyway, long story short, the train was 2 hours late, eating into valuable park time, not happy, The journey on the AMTrak down to Ventura was pleasant, we then got an Uber for the 50 mile remainder of the journey to six flags, which was about $60. The reason we headed to Ventura was just to cut down on the uber cost really. We ended up arriving at the park at 12:30. My original plan was for us to leave at 4pm, this was now out the window, we'd have to get an Uber the whole way home when we were finished at the park, or leave extremely early. Arriving into the park was pretty special, this is a place that as a kid playing Rollercoaster Tycoon I had always wanted to go to and never thought I'd have the chance.I had purchased 2 Season Passes $80 each and 2 Platinum flash passes at $115 each. The process for getting in the park was pretty easy, but it was extremely quiet. You are initially put through a metal scanned, and you can then proceed to the main gates. I presented my online receipt for our season passes at the gate, they scan these, take a fingerprint, give you your season pass and you're off. A very slick and smooth process compared to how I remember Tussauds & Merlin dealing with annual passes! Once in the park we headed to collect our Flash Pass. The system here is not like anything I've seen before, you are basically given a large tamagotchi looking thing, it has a list of every ride on it, each ride will have a time next to it, you select a ride and it will vibrate when it's time for you to go on, it works, I liked it Our first ride of the day was "New" Revolution. New revolution is old, and you can tell (It was 40 in May last year), but this doesn't mean it's a bad thing! The park have tried to update it with VR, but unfortunately the software was being updated on them so we were without them for the ride. We had a long walk around the Flash Pass entrance only to discover that there was actually no queue at all, we decided to queue for the front as I had a feeling that this old ride could be a little rough. I actually really enjoyed the ride itself, first ride of the day it always going to seem good, but this broke us in nicely and was quite enjoyable, I didn't find it all that rough either. Viper was next, used the Flash Pass and once again appeared to be no queue. There was a common theme now where we were just going up ride exits onto rides without a clue what they are. From what I could tell, It looked like it could be quite rough so once again we opted to ride in the front row, or risk a headache for the rest of the day. By now, the heavens had opened and the weather was terrible Viper really surprised us, I could only see a couple of inversions when we were going up to ride, so was pretty surprised by the 7 in total. Again, it wasn't really that rough considering it's age. So, by this point we are 30 minutes into our time at the park and already managed 2 rides, the weather was now terrible and it seems the park is pretty dead. We are also now, pretty lost as for some reason I decided against getting a Map like an idiot. We eventually found the tram thing that goes up the mountain to what we hoped was some other rides. We got up there and found Tatsu, which I was really looking forward to.... Closed. Gutted. So instead we head to Ninja, which actually had a bit of queue that we could skip which was nice. Having worked on Vampire after the old cars had been removed, I'd always wondered what it may have been like and it was really cool to be able to go on this classic. Ninja uses it's station location at the top of the mountain to it's advantage, you speed down and sweep past numerous water fountains and other rides and attractions before strangely, going up a lift hill to go into the station! Next up, Riddlers Revenge, which looked absolutely amazing from the outside. I was also looking forward to this as I'd never been on a Stand-Up coaster before....Closed. I thought as we were around the area we may aswell go on Apocolypse... Closed. Maybe we could go on Superman Esca....Closed. Now, you start to get a little pissed off when you've paid $115 for a Flash Pass with this unavailability, but I'll go into that later. We did eventually, find something that was open, Batman! I assumed we'd have to use the Lockers outside batman, so paid $8 for a re-usable locker, it didn't work, the guy came over and gave me a $1 for one-time use, which I didn't realize until after. Batman really packed a punch and was one of the better B&M rides I've been on for sure, very intense, not quite at the level of Nemesis, but certainly up there in terms of quality. Green Lantern was next...But it was closed. So we went on toward Twisted Colossus. I'd heard really good things about this, and I can honestly say that this was up there with one of the best rides that I have been on, it just delivers surprise after surprise and is ridiculously good fun without being overly intense, the first drop is something else. Unfortunately, the trains were not racing today and the staff were all pretty slow. I'm not sure why we only road this once, because it was pretty much our favorite ride. I think by now it was nearing 3pm and we wanted to make sure we got on everything else. When we got off the ride, my friend took his iPhone 6 out and it was majorly bent which was hilarious, for me anyway Scream is up near Twister Colossus and is a pretty Sad ride to be honest. I know Six Flags aren't well known for themeing, but this thing just has nothing going for it. After riding Twister Colossus, going down to this was pretty naff. It's the first time I've been on a steel floorless coaster aswell, but I just don't really see the point in them if I'm honest, they rarely offer anything that the likes of many other models don't. We headed to Goliath next, this was to be the tallest ride I have been on to-date. My one regret about Goliath is that we didn't ride the front, but I guess this was maybe a wise choice based on the fact it was pissing down with rain! It was an amazing ride, but I really struggled to enjoy it due to the fact I could barely keep my eyes open through the rain After Goliath, we headed towards Full Throttle, the ride with the largest loop in the world....and it's Closed. So. By this point, we've actually pretty much done everything, it's nearly 4pm. but there is one ride that I was looking forward to the most which was still left on the list. X2. I had no idea what to expect with this, it's an iconic ride and I was hoping it delivered. When we were stood in the station watching and the seats tilt back, it was instantly impressive. We ended up riding this twice, once at the front and once at the back. I've been on 100's of rides, mainly in the U.K but also across Europe aswell, X2 is my favorite, unfortunately I can't really describe why, but it is just mental. Get yourself over here and go on it, So, that was it. We'd missed our last train. Were completely soaked and starving hungry. But had an absolutely brilliant 5 hours at Six Flags. We got our Uber 80 miles home, which was actually not too pricey. Now, unfortunately. We're going to have to bring up a couple of things here that were simply, poor. Alot of the park is being renovated, I understand it's the low season and that, but walkways were blocked off, signs were few and far between, restaurants were closed and most importantly, the ride availability was bordering on disgusting. I purchased the tickets 2 days before we left, I wasn't informed that any rides would be down, didn't see anything on the site. I used to deal with complaints about ride downtime for Merlin, I know it can happen, but let me just list what downtime we had. Batman, Goliath and many others all experienced hour long periods of downtime as some point also, which can happen. Apocolypse (All Day) Tatsu (All Day) Riddlers Revenge (All Day) Superman (All Day) Full Throttle (All Day) Green Lantern (All Day) Now, if this many rides are unavailable, they should advertise it properly and also, selling a £100 Flash Pass for 15 rides when 1/3 of them are closed is pretty out of order. It's also worth mentioning that, the park was actually empty, so I've pretty much been fleeced out of £200 on the Flash Passes we didn't need. I can maybe put that down to my own stupidity of thinking it would be busy, but it still didn't sit right with me. The staff were okay, the cleanliness was okay, but I think it's right what people say about this place. You come here for big rollercoasters and thrills. If you are into the likes of themed rides and music then this isn't the place for you. But I'd suggest anyone that can to give this place a go and get your arse on X2. I've attached a few terrible pictures from the day. Didn't really get a chance to take many because of the rain, you wouldn't have expected it when you look at the pictures from the morning!

I lived in Bristol for a bit, quite like Somerset, good if you like Cider aswell!

Santa Barbara, California. Previously spent 21 years in Raynes Park and Kingston, 2 years in Bury St Edmunds!

I've just found all of my photos from a while back. If people are interested, I have tonnes more. Any requests of certain rides and I'll post them up!

I like the sound of this. With this Flash Pass I am near on certain on unconsciousness.

Yeah, easy on the socks and sandles. Nobody likes a nonce!

Samurai is the best ride at Thorpe Park. Top Buzz is the best ride on the planet.

Trip postponed until this Saturday due to Hilton being a bunch of arse heads.

John Lewis! Crazy how it doesn't feel like Christmas for me. It's still 20 degrees every day. (I'm not rubbing it in, honest)

I used to love working there at Christmas! Thanksgiving in the U.S today. Completely not arsed but I get to eat Turkey which is alright by me.

Samurai (Chessington)

Nice one Marc, thanks, will certainly do that. I'd imagine the new Macbook Pro should certainly be able to run it fine doing this.

Yeah I assumed for £2000 that I'd be able to run the game but unfortunately it's just not been released for Mac. Not sure how much development it would take them to make it available on a different operating system, I'd hope that by the time it comes in 4-6 weeks there might be some more news on it!

So after 20 Years of using a PC I've now had to order a MacBook for the first time as we have a partnership with Apple. Anyone else made the switch and how did you find it?

Just ordered the new MacBook thinking I can run Planet Coaster... It's not compatible for Mac... So annoying. Literally have to shed out £800 for a gaming PC or laptop if you want to be able to run this game. I'm not a 'Gamer' at all, so it's completely not worth it. Such a shame.

Went on wild mouse at Brighton Pier, loved it and my parents took me to Thorpe Park in 2002 a year later. They went to take me onto Colossus, I was denied at the entrance by a hide host as I was too small. As we walked away, he called me back and allowed me to go on the ride. You could say that decision changed my life really, I wouldn't have ended up working in the Theme Park Industry and eventually being in the job I am now if it wasn't for that moment!

The Carousel was one of the most intense rides in the UK. Seriously.

Lemon Lucozade. Forever in our hearts RIP.