tomglazed

If that effect is broken that for me, detracts so much from the ride experience it isn't even worth mentioning. If you are the first car out of the two sets which are dispatched then that means you get little to no interaction with Billy .

If they are going to use a scream track then they need to at least make it realistic. But this is very hard to achieve so probably just not bother with one and go to town with music and effects like swooping effects when going past near misses.

I do love Oblivion but really my only real gripe about it is the restraints. It seems every seat has a different shade of orange (or peach maybe a more accurate colour ) and alot have faded right down to black around where riders' heads are; I think it would go a long way to tidying up it's appearance if it was sorted.

I don't think Saw did but Stealth definitely had the whole "from the people that brought you (insert rides here)". I don't think/would hope that Thorpe wouldn't do it for The Swarm's advert because saying "from the park that brought you Colossus, Nemesis Inferno, Saw The Ride and Stealth" is quite a mouth full and takes up a good chunk of ad time which they could spend focussing on promoting The Swarm alone.

Also, rain actually can actually make a rollercoaster run slightly faster as it means there is less friction between the wheels and the track. It is a fair point to ponder about though, it is a forum for open discussion =].

As far as I'm aware they can't use the transfer track in the brake run area anymore as the new trains extend about a meter beyond the end of the moveable track so it has been welded up since the Vekoma refit. Any trains that are stored/needed to be taken off of the track are done on the other store track off of the final bend.I'm trying to get my head around the cost cutting measure and what they aim to achieve by taking a train to pieces. Would they not get more of their money's worth from the investment in the three trains by running two trains at a time but swapping the trains out periodically so they each get their own downtime (similar to what disney do). Running purely the same two trains would mean their parts would need to be replaced quicker and yes, I know that means they can take parts from the other train but eventually that source will run out.EDIT: This is assuming that there is a third train which is being taken out of service completely.

Christ that really shows how gullible I am, I fully believed that they had actually gone to the effort of tweaking the accumulators with Intamin on hand; dreaming a dream clearly

I thought that too. How soon was it after Stealth opened was it tweeked to accelerate faster?

As far as I remember, I do not think that we are getting much fuselage, I think we are only getting minute bits of fuselage like shards of metal to make it look like it really has been snapped off of a commercial jet. It has been a while though since I've seen the plans.

Completely agree. Numerous times and a lot of the time on Saw and the other main rides at the park, you see people queueing with shoes that I don't think they have thought through properly that morning. If your going to go to Thorpe and be the designated bag person then okay excusable but the first thing I think when I go to Thorpe or any theme park? Zip pocket trousers, snug fitting converse and stuff that I don't mind getting very wet; can't go wrong.

I think that submarine on top of Depth Charge looks pretty much like it's been hit by urban devastation anyway On the topic of a pre-drop, I'm glad there isn't one. It means you can slowly glide into that roll just before the dive; little bit of hangtime.

They are taking pictures at least, they are giving us what we want; up to date progress on Construction. Let's not bite the hand that feeds you now...

Definitely a little strange but maybe the catwalks make the track pieces too heavy to lift in one piece so it has to be done separately. Probably wrong though

LOL you mean me when I said that there are few opportunities to have trims except for a few location such as going into the zero G roll and so forth ? Not feeling foolish at all.Have to agree with the steepness of the lift hill from an off ride perspective being very intimidating. My personal worst part of a roller coaster is going up a slow lift hill (Saw on my first ride was my worst nightmare).

I haven't seen Raptor in person but I have seen one or two POV's and I'd say that the brake run on Swarm after the inline twist looks extremely like the first set of brakes on Raptor which merely slow down the train (on Raptor they appear to slow the train down to a crawl but it doesn't totally stop) and then the second set on Raptor are pinch types which stop the train. Stopping the train after the inline as a block, as has already been said, would be total overkill.On the topic of additional trimming mid course, there is very little straight and unbanked track minus coming into the zero roll and out of it so there are very few opportunities they have to install trim brakes in my opinion. I haven't been on many B&Ms around the world but do these random trims really affect the speed that much?

By the looks of things, unless I've missed a picture or two, the brake run after the inline only has magnetic brakes fitted and correct me if I'm wrong on this but I think B&M only use magnetic brakes to control the speed of the train and use pinch brakes should they want the train to come to a complete stop.

Aaahhh, that's fair enough. I never got the chance to ride with the old restraints and side plates; was back when I'd wimp out every ride going.

This might just me being overly optimistic, but what are the chances that this "PR" actually isn't instigated by the Park PR team and just a Journo on a day out who finally looked up when boarding Nemesis Inferno? I mean it isn't like it has become a page filler in the Sun or Daily Mirror.

I do like Colossus and how you are quite exposed to the side of you; especially effective during heart line rolls. But I'm wondering how many people would rather have the side plates reinstalled and have the less leg pinning restraints brought back?

... and in regards to your points Benin, when did I indicate in my post that on said student nights out that I personally go to each one? NO WHERE; I was pointing out that a vast majority (and yes, a lot of the time me included ) go out on the big midweek nights which are Mondays and Wednesdays. So giving 9am starts on the Tuesday and Thursday will not result in the best turn out that they'd like; we have had extremely hungover people turn up to lectures after nights out, only to run out of the theatre half way through to throw up or one famous incident, just upchuck down themselves (it wasn't pretty). And another thing, I do drink (but no drugs ever) but I can have a perfectly decent night having no alcohol what so ever; so get down off your pedestal Benin Luckily team projects doesn't begin until term 2, further illustrating how little work there is for it compared to my other five. My timetable really could be worse but here it is for now...

I'd be interested to see how this is all going to happen as well. The music they have used in the promo video on the mini site would work awesome as a station/dispatch track (yes, I know it is the Vortex lowering music/Some track Alton had for Scarefest at some point). Only other idea I can see them doing is a lot of radio static with walkie talkie effects/screaming but I'd hope they wouldn't do that as that is extremely similar to Saw's area.

University timetables!!1. Seemingly squeezing as many 9am starts in as possible; especially after large student nights out. Do they seriously expect a full turn out from that? And to boot, Integrating Team Projects? ... It shouldn't even be a unit! It's something to be done in one of our other units.2. Having three hour gaps in between sessions and having just one hour lecture for a day is so pointless. Please lump it all together on a few days. Jam it in the middle of the week so long weekends to travel home and around would be nice.

I never knew that. I always thought the Enterprise was drafted in to replace the burnt out Witches and damaged Tropical Travels. Then they rethemed it and made it Zodiac, built Detonator and Vortex all together to create the "Sensory Overload" campaign they had. So was it only Detonator which was originally temporary or was Vortex and Zodiac originally temporary as well?

I never heard anything about Stealth being a mistake; as much as people may gripe about some of Merlin's decisions, I highly doubt they would make a multi-million icon ride investment kind of mistake. Only thing I ever heard about the two Intamin Accelerators for the Merlin Parks was that they got Rita cheap because it was pre-built for some reason (a test model or built for another park but the order was cancelled) and Alton jumped at the chance to take it cheaply and almost shoe horn it in as quickly as possible.

Emphasis on the word abandoned! Surely it is in the park's best interest to maintain the track. I'm not an expert on track paint but I'd assume that it provides some form of protection for the steel from all the elements mother nature and day to day running chucks at it.