tomglazed

Totally understand your point Steve but the GP are unlikely to make a disconnect between the ride and queue, they see them as an entire unit. Right now as far as the GP are concerned, someone has been injured at Tomb Blaster and I think they would rather the ride as a whole unit be closed until a full investigation is complete; and if anything, just out of respect for the girl to make doubly sure everything about the ride and its queue is safe. Times like this could also allow them to evaluate all kinds of aspects about the ride and their procedures.

If it is for staff training purposes then I'm far happier knowing that management do this rather than leave it for longer until the ride can be operated out of park hours; this way it seems they are doing it ASAP.

Completely understandable, until the investigation comes in as to what has happened and the news has finally died down, Tomb Blaster will likely remain closed or if there is a way of directing the queue away from where the incident occurred (not sure if this is possible).

Stealth is advertised as closing at 4pm on Wednesday 13th June on Thorpe's website. Possible reasons?

I have a feeling that with the coming of SW7 which appears to be using the usual rotting and decaying theme, would it not be possible to assume that Oblivion will likely be left to go the same way?

By the sounds of things, a lot of people do complain about how uncomfortable the shoulder restraints are. I would suggest to Thorpe that if Slammer is going to be remaining (and operating) at the park in the foreseeable future, that they include something in the boarding/loading announcements which asks riders to pull the shoulder harness so it rests lightly on your shoulders, and pull the lap bar snugly across your hips (almost like an airline safety video but if that is what it takes, so be it). The number of guests I've seen which have realised they have yanked them down too far is unreal and seems to be a big contributer to the pain factor of the ride.

It must be quite a complicated system to maintain: obviously it shouldn't really be an excuse as it should have been tried, tested and most issues should have been rectified by now. I'm guessing the complex part is when the train arrives back in the station is downloading the footage to computers which process it into the DVD package we get? Or does it work differently?

As long as the ride is not deemed to be too much of a drain on park resources then it will remain at the park. It is ironic that ride which wasn't built as a prototype is the ride which has struggled most with downtime. Does anyone know if the Sky Swat in the USA ever suffered from this amount of reliability problems?

Completely agree, and I thought Oblivion had finally gone through rehab for it's Fanta addiction and is now back on the coca cola or just a lesser amount of Fanta sponsorship?

I understand where you are coming from and it is frustrating to only be told "technical difficulties" every time but I personally understand why they don't give specific reasons. If for example they did go into specifics and tell the general public (who lets face it, are about 95% of those that ask) and said that it was something to do with say, the lift, all kinds of sensationalist stories would come about the safety of the ride; don't underestimate the public's ability to magic up a story out of thin air. It is far more sensible to just keep the real reason under wraps from those that would have little to no clue about the mechanics of a ride.

I like the email idea, a lot of people appear keen to post their DVD's onto Youtube anyway so posting them to an email address sounds good; not sure if there would be any limitations with regards to attachment size so maybe even have a system where you pay for your Onride video at the kiosk and have a window of about 30 days from the date of payment to download it from a link which is emailed to you? I appreciate that Oblivion hasn't been an overwhelming success with on ride DVD's but personally I wouldn't buy one if I went on Oblivion as the on ride photo for me captures the entire ride experience anyway: picture of me beginning the drop, picture of me post drop, done (I have not seen current Oblivion on ride photos so I may be incorrect in thinking they still take pictures at the two points in the ride). The fact that Oblivion is so short in my opinion may be a big reason as to why it has not been a success, installed on Nemesis and I'd have thought it would have seen more uptake.

Just thinking about the on ride DVD's which are now available on Thorpe's newest attractions. What do you think the possibilities are of more of the rides having the feature installed? I know that places such as Canada Wonderland and various USA based parks have installed the system where possible on their attractions. Some of the rides which I think could have it installed: Colossus Nemesis Inferno Stealth Slammer Flying Fish? (good for the family but I appreciate that the cost of installing the feature may not be worth while) Any ride I've listed above or haven't probably has each of their own limitations which may make it more difficult to install on certain attractions. So what do people think about the ride DVD's? do you think it would be a worthwhile addition to role out on more attractions?

I choose Raptor because the theme of them really makes you forget they are rollercoaster trains; they appear to have gone to great lengths to hide all the core structural work as much as possible. X-Flight does look good and I'd probably rate them second behind Raptor but surprisingly I'd put the Wild Eagle trains last behind Baco because while the eagle does look good it really does leave a lot of structural steel on show and doesn't look as detailed as they could have been. As Mark said, the Intamin ones do however look a little chunky and much like they have just stuck their normal accelerator coaster seats and stuck them on a cross bar.

One thing that is confusing me is what identity (if any) are they really trying to give X right now. Are they giving the rave ride concept a go or sticking with an evil super computer research facility?

I think by the sounds of things, people have a different definition of "bracing themselves". I don't think anyone is expected to turn into statues during the course of a ride to be comfortable. For me, bracing just means making my body a little more rigid so that I don't get thrown about. Like Marc said, you are travelling at speed through a course which is technically not natural for your body so you have to prepare your body for it in order to be comfortable.

I would never say the roughness is enough to discourage me from riding but as we've clearly seen on this forum alone, people's sensitivity and perception of roughness is very different. I would have far rather seen trains for Colossus than Storm Surge; just saying. But like I said, doubt this'll happen as Marc has said, bracing yourself is an expectation placed on its riders by the park for their comfort and I can imagine Merlin would only invest in new trains if they offered a new experience (Vampire floorless trains), making it marketable; not aware of a train design out there which can radically change Colossus without more extensive modifications.

A real question I have is really what would cure the roughness of the ride. Some rides have new trains installed and it seems to work. Some rides even go to the measure of re-tracking the entire ride (in the case of Space Mountain). Unfortunately I do not envisage Thorpe Park doing either of these, especially considering the cut backs right now.

That picture looks awesome; very excited also to see the LEDs finally used. Do people think that it will be a short sharp burst of flame to create a fireball or do they think it will be drawn out so that it continues for the whole length of the train to pass? Assuming that it is triggered by an oncoming train which I hope it is

This makes me even more intrigued what the worst part is! But seriously, I was just thinking that while X No Way Out may not be all it used to be, seen as it is really the only all indoor attraction they have right now, it would probably be in the park's best interest to keep it until they at least have another sizable/main attraction to offer which is indoors and not exposed to the elements.

I am really not up on where Thorpe is at with X, because I thought they were experimenting with having lights on last season for a bit to reduce the number of people vomiting? It may have been a case where they had just had a few people already throwing up so they thought they'd turn them on just to try and sort it out. I have never worked at a theme park but I'd assume the low point of the job is managing vomit clean ups.

With any luck they can retheme it with Drench sponsorship; therefore the very theme of the ride just requires you to actually get wet

I know that obviously they have had The Swarm opening up this year so the park really would want the main focus of all the attention to be on their newest attraction but at some point, maybe even at the end of this season, I think Merlin really would be missing a trick if they didn't have some kind of spin about it being 10 seasons of the power of 10 and all that malarky. Wishful thinking really would be that they rejuvenate the ride over next closed season, with a fresh like of paint, get everything working like it should and maybe even add something new. A real treat really would be new trains but I'm not aware of any new models which Intamin have created which would work for Colossus; again this is all wishful/very far fetched thinking.

I think the restraints on Vortex are quite cool; quite funny seeing the nervous riders almost jumping when the restraints suddenly come down. They've always restedly quite nicely for me, never pinned me nor left me with an uncomfortable amount of room. It almost adds to the tense atmosphere, everyone looking in on each other waiting for the ride to start. Only gripe for me really is the floor, if that floor moved a little quicker then surely it would either increase throughput a little or better yet, more time on the ride could be spent actually in cycle as opposed to waiting for the ride floor to raise or lower.

Banned for thinking short people are immune to banning

Some people do not have the opportunity to go to Thorpe Park much so let's slow your rolls there; I've had a good year if I've gone to Thorpe just once a year. The new queue system definitely sounds better; as Lewish said, a lot of people sprinting down the steps to their pictures or some people just taking a very long time to clear the area as they scream and laugh in hilarity about what they've just experienced