Blublublub

It's loggers, isn't it? 😄

I should clarify, Its been sent to a few of my friends and family in Thorpe Village/Lea area too so its official!!

I should clarify, Its been sent to a few of my friends and family in Thorpe Village/Lea area too so its official!!

It has been up and down a lot this season, and I have heard that after its most recent closure it needed a lot of work. 
 
If they were getting rid of it, I'd be surprised they removed it so quickly. It's easier, and likely more cost effective, to just leave it in situ until end of the season, when the manpower is more available and engineers aren't focusing on running the park. So I do expect it's being removed with the view to do work to repair it.
 
Equally, one has to wonder at one point they cut their losses with Samurai. And if they do, what they do in turn? Surely at some point it's more sensible to buy a new top scan? And even if they decide not to, the park ideally can't lose a flat ride, especially in that section of the park.

I love how this "easter egg grabbing machine" alone sums up how self indulgent and out of touch Thorpe Park are with the public, fans, their own park's history and the theme park business

Popped to Thorpe briefly to check out ParkVibes.
 
It's nice to see a new event with stuff happening all over the park. It's pretty simple stuff, but it shouldn't be understated the importance of spreading the event around the park (issues which Fright Nights has had in the past, for example).
 
But honestly, it's not for me. I wasn't a fan of any of the music overlays, from the entrance remix done by IMA Score, to all the rap / festival themed ones that have appeared on certain rides. Probably the best one is the rap that occurs round Rumba RAPids, and even then, I found it on the wrong side of cringey despite its catchiness.
My worry is some of the new announcements make the park feel a bit fairgroundy.
 
It's nice that there's entertainment around (dancers, singers, etc). It adds a bit of atmosphere and mixes the day up a bit.
 
It's fine that I don't like the event as it's not for me and it's not something that would interest me. I just hope that the people who it is targeted at do end visiting and enjoying it, otherwise it's a bit of a miss.
 
Some 2021 updates:
-Vortex and Samurai are back open.
-The picnic tent has shrunk in size, but still exists
-There's a piece of 'graffiti artwork' coming to the ugly wall opposite Ghost Train. Watch this space?

For those asking about samurai. Significant work taking place but it's happening at least. 
 

I believe it is currently waiting on a part. I think it's been removed from the app, so will probably be down for a while. Rotten timing given the weather and it being half term.
 
 
This is a dreadful idea in my opinion.
 
Despite what many people think, queue prediction is hard. Few parks actually manage to do it well in my opinion. At the moment, it is even more volatile thanks to Covid and social distancing (or lack thereof).
 
I imagine this idea is being tried for the following reasons:
1. They don't know what the queue times are when they're very long
2. They're getting a lot of complaints because of long advertised queue times
 
When it comes to solving problem 1, there's not much they can do short term. The park is busy, queues will be long. But that in itself is a problem.
A quick look on social media suggests that plenty of people feel that numbers aren't being restricted enough for Covid. Should the park, in future, be restricting numbers more?
Should they now be looking at relaxing social distancing measures on rides (filling up all seats / rows)?
 
The second problem is more insightful to their thought process. Anyone who's filled out one of the park's survey machines will know that you're asked a question to the effect of 'Did queueing spoil your day?'. This is a pretty big KPI that all the Merlin parks (and likely parks outside of Merlin) are interested in. Presumably, at the moment, they're getting a very high percentage of people answering "Yes" to 'Did queueing spoil your day?'. They've probably also noticed that "Rides per head" (the average number of rides each person has ridden) is low.
 
As such, one possible conclusion that could be drawn is that "People aren't riding rides and saying that queueing has spoilt their day. We're advertising long queue times, so maybe people are put off by the long queue times". The solution there is then to not advertise long queue times, but instead advertise a minimum waiting time.
 
That might not be what has happened. To be honest, I'd be surprised if there's people looking into KPI scores and probing in that way to come to that conclusion in that way. But it's a possible thought process. Equally, it could just be that they're getting a ton of complaints of 'The queues are all saying they're 2 hours'.
 
As Matt says, people will not see the '+' here, and just assume a 90 minute queue. People leave common sense at the door when going to a theme park.
 
There's another problem I've skirted around here. Operations in general. In my experience this year, they've been a mixed bag. Certainly not as bad as they have been in recent years, but not as good as they should be. Why that is, I don't know. But they need to come up with practical solutions to be able to get more consistent operations that are sensible and in line with what the rides can achieve, and with what the park needs.
 
As for the more specific topic at hand...
1. If this is a trial to see if '90+' works, I hope they see it doesn't work, and they see that quickly.
2. If there's concerns about accuracy, introduce broader time frames, especially for higher values.
3. Work on actually make queue times accurate. More on this below.
4. The park need to understand that, ultimately, long queues are happening 
 
To expand on these points...
2.
Perhaps they should introduce ranges like '90-100', '100-120', '120-150', '150-180'. When a queue is at that high level, it doesn't matter if it's 120 or 140 really, it's still a 2-2.5hour commitment of your day. 
Next to no one is going to enter a 140 minute queue, and then check their watch just before boarding and go 'Ooh, well that queue only took us 137 minutes, great job!'
 
3.
I'm sure some remember a trial that happened on Saw a few years back to improve queue time accuracy. This would display queue times accurate to the minute, rather than in increments of 5-10 minutes. There's more details on this technology, provided by a company call Headmapper, here: http://www.headmapper.com/case-studies
 
Interestingly, there is also a report which outlines how successful the trial was in 2015, which is largely positive. The technology was again used in 2017 for another trial. One reason why it didn't seem to carry on was costs involved with the product. Another is because it's a bit of faffy system which requires fixed cameras at certain locations (when usually, cameras are need to be moveable for security purposes)....so it would involve the costly installation of more cameras.
 
So if the park really wants to improve queue accuracy and have a positive impact on people's day out, they could put their money where their mouth is and fork out for this. But then that still doesn't address the above point. And why spend out so much for something that doesn't tackle all the issues here.
 
There are alternatives though, which are much cheaper. However, getting people within the park to get on board with the idea that queue accuracy is important is much harder than one might expect. So unless there's a shift in philosophy on that, this will never happen.
 
4.
I'm not saying that the park don't know that long queues happen, or that they're bad or anything. But from my experience, there's a certain fear in acknowledging that the park will have long queues, and that this impacts that all important aforementioned KPI. Instead, there's an over-focus on improving queue accuracy, short term incentives to ride staff for improving throughputs and other weird stuff.
 
Instead, there should be an acceptance that queues will be long as it stands and looking at ways to sustainably ensure that this causes minimal impact to someone's day. This should include making queues more interesting to be in, investing in the park so there's more things to do and making the park a more pleasant place to be in outside of the rides. And that should happen on top of the park improving queue accuracy and throughputs. Even if that should be a secondary focus.
 
 
---
 
Wow, that was a bit of rambling rant. I'm sure some people on here know this is something I've had prior involvement in in one way or another. and even if not, it's probably clear I have some level of interest in this at a deeper level. Obviously there's many issues here, and many of them are long term, costly things to sort out. It's worth looking at short term alternatives, as well as little things that can be trialled in the short term to get a gauge on if they work. But honestly, this is the equivalent of sticking a used plaster on a wound that needs stitches.
 
In short, the park need to acknowledge that they will always have long queue times, invest in the park to improve the number of things people can do, have queue lines be more interesting to be in and put some actual thought into how to estimate queue lengths over just picking a number out of thin air

Today was really quite busy, most coasters going between 60-100 minutes and Samurai, Rush and Vortex being around 45-60. Really have no clue when schools break up/half-term dates but, being an off-peak day I was a bit surprised. I think if you like the fastrack then go for it because it seems people are eager to go now lockdown's easing off and its almost certain that the next few weeks are going to be REALLY busy.
 
I personally also dont love fastrack and you should really be able to squeeze all the coasters in and its quite expensive but, again, its up to you!

Hey!

I thought Id just tell some stories of what I gathered from things friends and employees used to say about the reason it closed. I really have no idea how much truth is in this (its probably very little so take it with a grain of salt) and I assume a lot of you are quite a bit more knowledgeable about this than me. 

Essentially, in the early to mid 2010s legislation in regards to the operation of water rides and attractions were updated, something to the effect that water rides at parks needed to guarantee a level of quality in the water used. I think it was  along the lines of if guests get wet enough the water must be treated for health and safety reasons. For Tidal Wave, not a problem as it already uses treated water in the splashdown but, obviously, with rides that used open-water systems (Rapids, Loggers and the Flume etc) Merlin would need to make some adjustments.

You can see this happen on pretty much all of the flumes in the UK and I guess I dont know enough to outright say if these updates included changes to water treatment but: Pirate Falls became Dynamite Drench, Dragons Falls received a mini-update removing some of the rock work, the Flume closed completely and Loggers.... well

I'm not sure of specific details in regards to the breakoff point to when this supposed restriction may have occurred but Thorpe held onto Loggers for as long as they could before officially going in for the rework in 2015. The plan was to keep it closed for 2016, and start work on it before the 2017 season. Now I dont think there was any planning permission applications and any evidence of this wouldve been dug up quite quickly so that makes me a bit sceptical of the whole thing, but then again if the update was just closing off the water system and slapping 'Re-Drenched' on the sign maybe it wouldnt have been necessary. 

Then we all know what happened in 2016...

Supposedly the budget went to the DBGT rework ROTD in 2017 instead and Thorpe, not knowing what to do with it, left Loggers hoping that theyd be able to work on it soon enough. This may explain why for a while afterwards the park were still insisting it would reopen, but as we know that didnt last. The ride began to literally rot and reached a point where they just had to abandon ship.

I think this would explain a lot of the blank spaces left but I dont know. The park definitely knew that Loggers was incredibly important that we know for sure. Its just a shame that it didnt survive longer. Oh and by the way you can identify a lot of the changes made to Congo and Rumba removing a lot of the features and effects that would soak riders in order to avoid having to update those as well: Rumbas waterfall into the tunnel, the sprinklers on the lift and the bucket next to the camera, I believe Congo has also become much more 'tame' in recent times but I'm not sure on specifics. 

Anyway, sorry for the long read. I hope it was entertaining and please feel free to debunk it, Id like to know more about Loggers as well.  

 

Hey!

I thought Id just tell some stories of what I gathered from things friends and employees used to say about the reason it closed. I really have no idea how much truth is in this (its probably very little so take it with a grain of salt) and I assume a lot of you are quite a bit more knowledgeable about this than me. 

Essentially, in the early to mid 2010s legislation in regards to the operation of water rides and attractions were updated, something to the effect that water rides at parks needed to guarantee a level of quality in the water used. I think it was  along the lines of if guests get wet enough the water must be treated for health and safety reasons. For Tidal Wave, not a problem as it already uses treated water in the splashdown but, obviously, with rides that used open-water systems (Rapids, Loggers and the Flume etc) Merlin would need to make some adjustments.

You can see this happen on pretty much all of the flumes in the UK and I guess I dont know enough to outright say if these updates included changes to water treatment but: Pirate Falls became Dynamite Drench, Dragons Falls received a mini-update removing some of the rock work, the Flume closed completely and Loggers.... well

I'm not sure of specific details in regards to the breakoff point to when this supposed restriction may have occurred but Thorpe held onto Loggers for as long as they could before officially going in for the rework in 2015. The plan was to keep it closed for 2016, and start work on it before the 2017 season. Now I dont think there was any planning permission applications and any evidence of this wouldve been dug up quite quickly so that makes me a bit sceptical of the whole thing, but then again if the update was just closing off the water system and slapping 'Re-Drenched' on the sign maybe it wouldnt have been necessary. 

Then we all know what happened in 2016...

Supposedly the budget went to the DBGT rework ROTD in 2017 instead and Thorpe, not knowing what to do with it, left Loggers hoping that theyd be able to work on it soon enough. This may explain why for a while afterwards the park were still insisting it would reopen, but as we know that didnt last. The ride began to literally rot and reached a point where they just had to abandon ship.

I think this would explain a lot of the blank spaces left but I dont know. The park definitely knew that Loggers was incredibly important that we know for sure. Its just a shame that it didnt survive longer. Oh and by the way you can identify a lot of the changes made to Congo and Rumba removing a lot of the features and effects that would soak riders in order to avoid having to update those as well: Rumbas waterfall into the tunnel, the sprinklers on the lift and the bucket next to the camera, I believe Congo has also become much more 'tame' in recent times but I'm not sure on specifics. 

Anyway, sorry for the long read. I hope it was entertaining and please feel free to debunk it, Id like to know more about Loggers as well.  

 

Hey!

I thought Id just tell some stories of what I gathered from things friends and employees used to say about the reason it closed. I really have no idea how much truth is in this (its probably very little so take it with a grain of salt) and I assume a lot of you are quite a bit more knowledgeable about this than me. 

Essentially, in the early to mid 2010s legislation in regards to the operation of water rides and attractions were updated, something to the effect that water rides at parks needed to guarantee a level of quality in the water used. I think it was  along the lines of if guests get wet enough the water must be treated for health and safety reasons. For Tidal Wave, not a problem as it already uses treated water in the splashdown but, obviously, with rides that used open-water systems (Rapids, Loggers and the Flume etc) Merlin would need to make some adjustments.

You can see this happen on pretty much all of the flumes in the UK and I guess I dont know enough to outright say if these updates included changes to water treatment but: Pirate Falls became Dynamite Drench, Dragons Falls received a mini-update removing some of the rock work, the Flume closed completely and Loggers.... well

I'm not sure of specific details in regards to the breakoff point to when this supposed restriction may have occurred but Thorpe held onto Loggers for as long as they could before officially going in for the rework in 2015. The plan was to keep it closed for 2016, and start work on it before the 2017 season. Now I dont think there was any planning permission applications and any evidence of this wouldve been dug up quite quickly so that makes me a bit sceptical of the whole thing, but then again if the update was just closing off the water system and slapping 'Re-Drenched' on the sign maybe it wouldnt have been necessary. 

Then we all know what happened in 2016...

Supposedly the budget went to the DBGT rework ROTD in 2017 instead and Thorpe, not knowing what to do with it, left Loggers hoping that theyd be able to work on it soon enough. This may explain why for a while afterwards the park were still insisting it would reopen, but as we know that didnt last. The ride began to literally rot and reached a point where they just had to abandon ship.

I think this would explain a lot of the blank spaces left but I dont know. The park definitely knew that Loggers was incredibly important that we know for sure. Its just a shame that it didnt survive longer. Oh and by the way you can identify a lot of the changes made to Congo and Rumba removing a lot of the features and effects that would soak riders in order to avoid having to update those as well: Rumbas waterfall into the tunnel, the sprinklers on the lift and the bucket next to the camera, I believe Congo has also become much more 'tame' in recent times but I'm not sure on specifics. 

Anyway, sorry for the long read. I hope it was entertaining and please feel free to debunk it, Id like to know more about Loggers as well.  

 

Hey!

I thought Id just tell some stories of what I gathered from things friends and employees used to say about the reason it closed. I really have no idea how much truth is in this (its probably very little so take it with a grain of salt) and I assume a lot of you are quite a bit more knowledgeable about this than me. 

Essentially, in the early to mid 2010s legislation in regards to the operation of water rides and attractions were updated, something to the effect that water rides at parks needed to guarantee a level of quality in the water used. I think it was  along the lines of if guests get wet enough the water must be treated for health and safety reasons. For Tidal Wave, not a problem as it already uses treated water in the splashdown but, obviously, with rides that used open-water systems (Rapids, Loggers and the Flume etc) Merlin would need to make some adjustments.

You can see this happen on pretty much all of the flumes in the UK and I guess I dont know enough to outright say if these updates included changes to water treatment but: Pirate Falls became Dynamite Drench, Dragons Falls received a mini-update removing some of the rock work, the Flume closed completely and Loggers.... well

I'm not sure of specific details in regards to the breakoff point to when this supposed restriction may have occurred but Thorpe held onto Loggers for as long as they could before officially going in for the rework in 2015. The plan was to keep it closed for 2016, and start work on it before the 2017 season. Now I dont think there was any planning permission applications and any evidence of this wouldve been dug up quite quickly so that makes me a bit sceptical of the whole thing, but then again if the update was just closing off the water system and slapping 'Re-Drenched' on the sign maybe it wouldnt have been necessary. 

Then we all know what happened in 2016...

Supposedly the budget went to the DBGT rework ROTD in 2017 instead and Thorpe, not knowing what to do with it, left Loggers hoping that theyd be able to work on it soon enough. This may explain why for a while afterwards the park were still insisting it would reopen, but as we know that didnt last. The ride began to literally rot and reached a point where they just had to abandon ship.

I think this would explain a lot of the blank spaces left but I dont know. The park definitely knew that Loggers was incredibly important that we know for sure. Its just a shame that it didnt survive longer. Oh and by the way you can identify a lot of the changes made to Congo and Rumba removing a lot of the features and effects that would soak riders in order to avoid having to update those as well: Rumbas waterfall into the tunnel, the sprinklers on the lift and the bucket next to the camera, I believe Congo has also become much more 'tame' in recent times but I'm not sure on specifics. 

Anyway, sorry for the long read. I hope it was entertaining and please feel free to debunk it, Id like to know more about Loggers as well.  

 

I dont think there anything to say that hasnt already been said... I would say the state of the park is embarrassing but I dont think Merlin have enough shame to be embarrassed by anything. 🥴 

I guess the glimmer of hope is that this season (and maybe the next few ones) will be setting the park up for some much needed overhauls and cleanin up. Especially seeing as Merlin are going to have to start competing with that London Resort soon but then again... 😞

I dont think there anything to say that hasnt already been said... I would say the state of the park is embarrassing but I dont think Merlin have enough shame to be embarrassed by anything. 🥴 

I guess the glimmer of hope is that this season (and maybe the next few ones) will be setting the park up for some much needed overhauls and cleanin up. Especially seeing as Merlin are going to have to start competing with that London Resort soon but then again... 😞

I dont think there anything to say that hasnt already been said... I would say the state of the park is embarrassing but I dont think Merlin have enough shame to be embarrassed by anything. 🥴 

I guess the glimmer of hope is that this season (and maybe the next few ones) will be setting the park up for some much needed overhauls and cleanin up. Especially seeing as Merlin are going to have to start competing with that London Resort soon but then again... 😞