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It might be to do with how jarring it looks. If this attraction was more subtle with it's colours and fitted in with Thorpe's sky blue colour and the rest of Lost City, then maaaaaaaaaybe this would have been alright. But with colours as bright as this and looking so blatantly out-of-place next to the lake and Colossus/Rush/Zodiac, it looks visually revolting.
 
This is just humiliating for the park, similarly to Love Island Lates last year and this will only be 'popular' because it's free. I guarantee if this was an upcharge attraction, the majority of guests would tell Thorpe to shove BounceZilla up where the sun don't shine.

Remember when Thorpe used to be like the second best theme park in the UK? Well, past tense is fun..

I had low expectations, but **** me ?

If Vampire goes the whole park is basically dead. 
 
Its the one ride the park needs to ensure it can function with it’s current operation. 

Basically finished bar a few rails.

Flat rides probably don't draw in guests. For Merlin's rediculously high rate of return targets its pretty clear why very few flat rides are built. They cant sell them as a world's first so they stick a bunch of actors to them to make them an "experience" which in turn leads to negative feedback due to the low throughput and the attraction being inconsistent. So they now have an expensive to run actor led experience that will last 1-3 years.
This phenomenon is bad for the park but is being made significantly worse by the fact that the old flat rides have come to the end of their life. They need replacing. Which means instead of just all new attractions being inadequate and short lived, replacement ones now suffer the same fate. 

Flat rides have seemingly been neglected by Merlin recently, quantum is just the tip of the iceberg..
Merlin don't seem bothered to add them either.. Flat rides give such good support so I really don't understand why Merlin aren't investing in any for their parks at the moment..
 
Its really a shame Quantum is taking so long to open, though I guess it doesn't seem hopeless like Black Buccaneer or Enterprise (rip)..
I really think Merlin need to get their sh** together with their flat rides. Maintain your current ones properly and add in new flats, flat rides can draw in guests and aren't expensive to build.. Its that simple..

Oooft, yes please.

That doesn’t sound very Merlin-ish at all!

Spoilers: guest figures aren't up.

Proof Varney is actually Thanos.
 
Merlin will never reopen it unless it’s themed to a Donaldson I.P.

I'm sure it'll be making a splash back soon.
For the next 3 years.

A few thoughts from my first visit of the season yesterday.
 
Ride operations were fantastic all day with the exception of a delay on Galactica.  Wicker Man's dispatch times were nothing short of incredible, with the train entering the lift as the train before arrives back into the brakes.  Similarly across the park queues were moving very fast, the staff seemed focused on efficiency and despite the crowd level being fairly busy queue times were kept largely manageable.
 
Having the single rider queue back on Smiler is brilliant, long may it last!
 
Areas of the park look in need of a clean, Oblivion's and Nemesis's station for example (even though the latter has only just been re-done, it's looking tired again already on the queue-line side).  The cut scene in Oblivion's station video is horrendous and needs reinstating properly.
 
Wicker Man had no fire, it's unbelievable that this has become a persistent issue considering the ride is only in its second season and the foundation of the marketing was based around the (nonexistent) fire.  They knew about issues with the effect last year yet it still doesn't work consistently.  Extremely poor.
 
Hex was absolutely stunning.  To my knowledge everything was working with the exception of mist and the audio is back to its best in the vault.  Gave me goosebumps, it was that good!
 
Duel remains a complete waste of potential, despite having all the foundations of a great dark ride it continues to be let down by unprofessional lighting and broken effects.  What happened to phase 2 of the promised refurbishment?
 
My main criticism of yesterday would be that a 5pm close just isn't long enough when the park is anything but dead.  Even with good ride operations and planning our day around the shortest queues the only ride we managed a re-ride on was Wicker Man (joining the queue at the end) and we had to skip the rapids and mine train due to not enough time.  I'd therefore say the park still offers poor "value" in terms of a good day out, as there just isn't long enough to enjoy everything properly.
 
Overall, a decent day at Alton helped by hugely improved ride operations, but there's still a long way to go.

Thing is The UK really doesn't make that much money for the company, in comparison to international parks. There's a market for them to tap into across the world, and it works (apparently), so I do get why their focus is on international. 
 
However, that said, I also agree that there needs to be a bigger budget for CwOA, even if it's a one off, it would allow the park to make the changes and improvements it so desperately needs

Colossus is still running so Merlin won't spend money on fixing it...
 
Remember, they only spend it when they HAVE to.  

I managed to do Haunted House before it shut for the near future. How this ever got approved shows how little Merlin care at the top (theyve had over 5 years planning this ride and it's turned out THIS badly?)

What was already the Pathway From Hell now had this new ride with its entrance/exit backing on to it, seriously the most congested part the park! It's insane. A lot has been said about the 'warehouse' already but seriously, it's shockingly bad. You see the big black warehouse from the moment you look out at the view from The Beginning. Walking towards the ride, you see the box long before you get a proper view of the 'themed' front (which is also very cheap and boring). The "children wont see it" excuse is  nonsense

The queue is one of the worst cattlepen queues Ive ever seen. The development has totally obliterated what used to be a much needed landscaped buffer space in this part the park. Once looked very nice with the stream running into the lake, lots of models and the train skirting around. Not anymore!

The actual madhouse ride is fun and all the kids have a good laugh, which is great but largely thanks to the classic appeal of a madhouse. It's so much better than a drop tower would have been! The party theme is fun and I think it's great they added a colourful twist, but there's absolutely no surprises for kids.

All the parents were gearing their kids up for a spooky adventure, only to be greeted with en empty room and some TVs. The preshow is weirdly long considering nothing actually happens. We have a boogie with some disco balls but it reeks of "all the effects planned for this area were cut".

There's nothing remotely spooky about the attraction and you feel like you're just in a metal box the entire time. Maybe this won't be so obvious for kids, but design this lazy it takes away so much fun to be had for kids in a good dark ride.

The rest the park has made a steady effort to clean up and improve this year, some parts look very refreshing. But on the whole the place still feels tired and soulless. Everything is shoved in. Music will randomly fade out and change as you're walking through an area, suddenly drawing your attention to it. There's so little actual Lego or animations now, other than in Miniland.

A very different park to what it used to be. I'm sure there are only going to be more giant warehouses added filled with TVs in the years to come.

I think Hangover should be Sunken Gardens, as they're both places where people get high, which is how I assume this topic came about.

Opening a new park and a rebuild of a whole area is a ”quiet" year. ?

What's going on?

Because Varney is desperate to get to the 1000 rooms, that’s all the sheds are for a tick box for shareholders.

I just saw the stargazing pods for the first time and I couldn't help but laugh.
 
How are they stargazing pods when the ceiling is completely solid with no glass? You're paying to stay in a utility shed with no toilet.
 
Why do they keep wasting money on this pointless accommodation instead on spending it on the park?

Much like Alton village, Kaatsheuval suffers just as much as potentially gains from the existence of the park...
 
Unlike Towers however, access and travel to the park does not necessarily require a day trek to it from half of the country... Takes bout 90 minutes from Amsterdam so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of B&Bs would struggle in the area...
 
A quick look on Trivago shows a distinct lack of alternative hotels in the area (4 on the dates I looked at, one being the NH hotel), so perhaps Efteling have the majority on that? As for local foodstuffs, again hotel guests have some good options themselves (and Bosrijk has a proper food shop), and the options in the village aren't great either...
 
It's a rather simplistic view to think that new additions would only benefit locals without considering having to live with the consequences of this every single day of the year... 

Some information on the trial regarding the Rapids at Dreamworld has come out via CF/Reddit...
 
- The ride's pumps had failed twice the same day.

- Unqualified personnel were forced to reset the pumps due to lack of staff.

- There was no indicator of when the water was too low, as dreamworld didn't want to buy a bucket of paint to draw the line of "minimum water height" that would have altered staff that a pump had failed as the water was too low.

- Maintenance was $125,000 over budget, so Ardent Leisure (owners of the park) had a 100% complete shut off of maintenance funds.

- The park needed to have 6 safety managers, but due to cost cutting, only one was hired.

- Due to wanting to reduce maintenance, when a board broke on the conveyors belt, it was never replaced, they only ever fixed every 3rd board.

- While most rapids rides have approx. 6-7 employees operating the attraction, dreamworld had 2 to cut cost (against the ride maker's discretion).

- The unload operator was responsible for completing 36-38 tasks per minute, making it impossible to fully make sure that no corners were cut in performing all of them.

- The unload employee had received little to no training, and did not know what the big red button did (the emergency stop button).

- The unload employee was supposedly told what the button did, which she and others deny, however, she had never pushed it and didn't truly know what it's functions were.

- The load station employee was in the middle of checking restraints when the employee shouted to stop the ride, leading for a massive delay as he jumped out of the boat, sprinted across the platform, and got his key into the loading panel to activate it.

- The wiring was a "rat's nest" according to an electrician, meaning when he pushed the emergency stop, the circuit essentially fried and did nothing, so he had to push the slow stop button, which took almost 8 seconds to stop the ride (while this may sound quick, imagine people are being crushed under a conveyor in front of your eyes, intense screaming, blood pouring out, and knowing people are dying in front of your eyes and you can't do anything to stop it. now count to 8 Mississippi's in your head).

- Once the two employees got the ride to stop, they attempted to save the victims, however, they had never received any first aid training, so they provided little services except calling for actual help, and holding the mangled bodies that floated out, hoping that if they were alive, they wouldn't be feeling any pain.

- Medical experts assume the riders died almost instantly from being thrown and crushed, however, they did say that there was a high probability that they were in intense pain as they were crushed under the conveyor.

- The raft next in line when the accident occurred contained the father and child of the lady riding in the flipped raft, and they were forced to sit there for an hour while they pulled the girl's mother from the water.

- The park had limited medical staff, with little to no medical training, meaning that even if the riders had had a chance of making it, they probably wouldn't have due to a several minute delay in medical care.

- The reason this collision happened is the first boat bottomed out and the second boat collided and rolled up and over as the conveyor belt moved, this wouldn't have happened had the water level been at an acceptable height.

- Management cut the safety manual, that hadn't been updated in over 6 years, portion regarding the flipped rafts so they wouldn't appear in non-compliance for failing to train their employees on how to deal with it.

- Thunder rapids employees were supposedly trained that she never had permission to push an emergency stop button unless the safety manager okay-d it, and although ardent has denied this, several employees confirmed that claim.

- The acceptable water level line was explained, per trainers, as a scum line, and "If it drops below that, you keep the paying guests moving through that line, maintenance will show up and reset the pumps." Yes, they're resetting the attraction while guests were on it, yes, you read that correctly.

- The park had a policy stating that if a ride had a mechanical failure, you were to reboot it twice, and if it happened again, shut down the ride for the day, the raft flip was the 3rd mechanical failure that day.

- Only 2 of the 14 people on dreamworld's board had any sort of safety training at any time.

- Despite repeated notifications, the park never installed live-feed cameras throughout the attraction, so if this accident had happened anywhere else in the attraction, they wouldn't have known until the raft got back to the station.

- If live-feed cameras were there, there was a chance that in the 57 seconds between the raft bottoming out and the collision that security would have contacted the operator and stopped the attraction in time.

- The poor ride op had received under 40 minutes of training in the morning, and then was enjoying her first ever shift alone.

- The control panel was so outdated and so poorly wired that the e-stop wouldn't have worked without the key activating the panel where the e-stop was. This was because they modified the loading a couple years after it opened from a turntable loading system, to a 2 raft, straight lane loading system, and instead of hiring a reputable electrician, they hired a cheap one.

- The ride had a massive pileup and overturn during original testing time, so they put that in the safety pamphlet, then in 2012, they realized that they never trained any of their employees on how to deal with such a situation, so rather than have important information in the book and receive large fines for never training them on it, they simply cut it out (if it's not in the pamphlet, we can't be held liable for employees not knowing how to handle it).

- The manual would have told the girl to hit her e-stop button, but since it wasn't in there and she was told essentially "this is a big red button, don't push until someone higher ranking than you tells you to," she didn't push it.

- The employee was supposedly assisting a guest into their wheelchair when the tilt started, she turns back, sees the ride flipping and tries to figure out what to do. She makes a split second decision to ditch the "call maintenance and wait for approval to stop the ride" protocol, yells at the "senior" ride operator, he sees that a raft has flipped over and another one's about to hit it, sprints across the platform and stops the ride. While Ardent claims they trained her to always push in an emergency and that it was the e-stop, she and several others who worked the position before says they were told it would stop the ride, but if something happens, call maintenance supervisor, and if they give you the go-ahead, stop the ride, since they're going to be the ones that have to deal with it if you push it and it's not an emergency.
 
 
Quite simply, some of the scariest stuff I've ever read as a former ride staff...

As you may have worked out from my name, I code stuff for the internet. One such thing that I made, is Theme Park Queue Times, which provides live queue time data for 11 parks around the world(more are being added). You might ask, what is the point, considering all of the parks already have apps, however these apps only display queue times within the park, my website allows you to view queue times anywhere. The site also has some interesting graphs and statistics on each ride, and I am adding more features every day. I hope you find it useful, feel free to make suggestions as to how I can improve it.
 
Park list
Alton towers Thorpe park Chessington Disneyland Paris Epcot Magic Kingdom Hollywood Studios Animal Kingdom Parc Asterix Silver Dollar City Liseberg Gardaland Walibi Hersheypark PortAventura ...More coming soon!

Room On The Broom is awkward and has no fun factor. The beginning scene and the kids bashing the fire flies was as excited as they got.

Hocus Pocus Hall was more stupid and fun, and I think that worked better really. You didn't have to stop in each tiny, cramped room to watch a barely-moving animation or a TV. Yes, stop and watch a TV. Why?

The new stop and watch format means you awkwardly need to have a staff member stopping everyone from just walking past. In a corridor, people's instinct is of course to walk down it. It means the queue is now incredibly slow too. It's just not worth the slow pace you end up with.

It could have been really good, but the way it's turned out it feels like it's barely an attraction.