coasterverse

Monk's Walk is going to be a hive of activity over this closed season then! I can't wait until we get to see her testing, it's gonna be incredible.

I don't really think it's harsh, more of a reality check. Like I say, I have absolutely nothing but admiration for the dedication that Kieran and Jack put into these trailers - but at the end of the day, those trailers are pretty much just for the enthusiasts... aka people who are very much aware of Fright Nights and will likely attend the event anyway. I suppose the level of quality that the park get through Kieran and Jack for their money is unmatched by anybody else, not forgetting that these videos are produced by two individuals with a passion for theme parks and videography - something you won't get if you run to a bog-standard marketing agency - so they really hit the nail on the head each time when it comes to knowing what the people want. However, I must admit that the balance of storydriven narrative and actual genuine promotional material for the mazes/zones has been bang on point this year so far. The Trailers reveal last night had the narrative to kick off the video, panned into the box, and had a montage of what it's actually like inside of the maze... perfect! When leaning too heavily into a narrative you can often oversell an attraction and unfortunately I feel like that's definitely what was done last year, so it's great to see that they've finally found the perfect balance this year.

I’ve got a feeling Trailers will be staying (or the general concept at least) for quite a while - someone on the passholder group asked if it’s going through any changes for this year, to which they replied: “Trailers is remaining classic for this year at least!” Hopefully, if the park aren’t going to totally reimagine the attraction from the ground up, we get all new scenes for 2024. I’ve never been the biggest fan of Trailers (predicable and not even remotely scary imo), so a bit gutted it’s returning… although I can’t say I didn’t see it coming! Fingers crossed for next year 🤞

Well then... Death's Doors is returning, eh?! Who'd have thunk it!

I’ve even heard through the grapevine that one of them will be dressed as the Tidal Wave fire effect! Apparently that’s what Russ meant when he mentioned it all that time ago…

I think the idea of having storylines behind each maze is great (from an enthusiast point of view) but like you guys have mentioned, it gives the general public no real clue of what to expect from the mazes - so does it really do the job from a marketing point of view? I can't help but feel like it's setting the park up for failure when they have these incredibly produced videos (definitely can't fault Kieran and Jack here!) and then members of the general public attend the event and it's basically just MDF walls either in a tent or in shipping containers - an experience you can basically get at any of these scareparks around the country... definitely not something you'd expect from a premier theme park. I think the best option is to have a best of both worlds - have a storyline driven teaser, and then at the end of the video cut into a compilation of the maze(s) with teaser clips of what it looks like inside/the reactions of people that have gone through it, that way it controls expectations. Would be interesting to see if the park's marketing budget is worth it or not!

Given that we've now seen (probably) the font that the park will be using for the official branding once the coaster name is revealed - I decided to see how the leaked potential names and therefore coaster branding could look: Hyperia: And lastly... let's take a look at what could've been (if the application wasn't opposed)... Icarus: I don't hate it - definitely fits the vibes they're aiming for - but also looks very early 2000's to me (and not in a 'purposefully nostalgic' sense, but literally looks like it was designed in 2000). If somebody told me this was for a coaster set to open in 2003, I would believe you. Personally still would've preferred a slightly brighter gold (as it pretty much just looks brown to me), but I'm sure it'll grow on me.

The Future of Thrills (in the UK ‘cos we’re so bloody far behind)

Exciting! I must be honest, it’ll be exciting to see the coaster go up - but if we don’t get any theme confirmation before the station and maintenance shed goes vertical, it’ll be cool to see what kind of vibe it gives off!

You think Slammer will be reopened? No chance. That rust bucket has been stood SBNO for so long now that I guarantee if they tried to as much as budge it, it would crumble to a thousand pieces. That combined with the fact that S&S no longer manufacture said ride will make finding replacement parts a fairly impossible task. My prediction - it will be removed shortly after Exodus because the park will realise how disgusting it looks next to a brand new coaster, turned into a temporary picnic area with benches until 2025 when the park have the funds to invest in a brand new type of flat ride to sit in its place. It would've made much more sense to factor in Slammer's replacement into the Exodus plans, but I guess demolishing multiple rides in Old Town along with the buildings and infastructure, then rebuilding a few buildings on top of building the UK's tallest rollercoaster probably isn't the cheapest thing in the world. I hope the park put a system into place (hopefully not virtual queuing like Madrill Mayhem, but I guarantee we'll be getting that exact system) to help manage queues once Exodus opens - because without any supporting rides in the area, the queue is going to be absolutely heaving.

Yup, Saw and/or Colossus as first ride of the day is always a good shout - they're both probably by far the coasters that get consistently large queues right from opening til' close, so makes sense to do them first imo. Stealth tends to maintain steady fairly low queues throughout the day from my own personal experience (depending on how the operations are on any given day) so doesn't really warrant to be your first ride of the day (unless you need that acceleration to wake you up!) Avoid The Swarm like the plague first thing - much like Wicker Man at Towers, people tend to flock to The Swarm for the first ride of the day so your time is better spent elsewhere rather than waiting in a queue when Saw/Colossus could be a walk-on at rope drop!

Yeah don't worry, I reckon it'll just receive either a generic overlay or another IP will be found once the sponsorship ends. I don't think Flying Jumbos is particularly temperamental - as long as this remains the case and parts are easily sourced as and when they're required, I can't see it going anywhere.

Didn't mean it in that sense, but just in the sense that the park will probably want to prolong Stealth's lifespan rather than getting rid of it altogether. In today's day and age, hydraulic launched coasters are becoming a thing of the past, so it's just a matter of time before they're either all gone or the LSM launches (or whatever technology is innovative at the time) retrofitted where the hydraulic launches used to be. This is the Stealth plaza at the minute (okay, it's the Stealth plaza in 2017, but very little (if anything) has changed since) - there's ample room there to do something else with the coaster if need be, but @JoshC. is right - as far as hydraulic launch coasters go, Stealth is the crème de la crème. Minimal downtime, extremely rare rollbacks, draws consistently large crowds. Compare that to a coaster like Rita at towers - whilst still pulling large crowds - is pretty problematic. But, worst case scenario - let's say 10 years down the line (optimistic I know) when the park have exhausted all other locations for rides and coasters, Stealth is showing its age and needs work doing to it. The park are faced with either removal or retrack and LSM (or something) retrofitting, I genuinely think the park would go down the route of the retrack and retrofit. It's an iconic, staple attraction and there's plenty of space in the plaza to incorporate a slightly different layout and spike with transfer track. Would be very expensive, yes - would enhance the iconic Stealth experience without too much compromise. I'd imagine in 10+ years, launch technology would probably even surpass that of hydraulic launches at this point too so we probably wouldn't even have to worry about a weaker launch - and who knows... maybe launch technology by the time Stealth's fate is sealed might have surpassed the acceleration challenges that LSM's hold presently and there'll be no need for a spike anyway - that would be the best outcome.

I can see both sides of the argument for this - on one hand, like you say, that entire side of the park takes up an extremely large footprint when you consider Rumba Rapids too. It could be a prime development spot for a brand new themed land with flats and probably even a couple of smaller scale coasters, or one large coaster. On the other hand, I think they've got other development areas that they will attack long before Stealth goes - that is unless Stealth becomes too much of a pain and too expensive to maintain. Even if this was the case, depending on how Zamperla execute the Top Thrill 2 reboot, I feel like getting the Top Thrill 2 treatment on Stealth would probably come before total annihilation - it's a staple iconic attraction for the park, one that still (currently) holds the UK speed record which I'd imagine the park would love to maintain... Thorpe Park - home to two of the UK's fastest rollercoasters. Maybe if the Zamperla reboot is a success it will give the park the option to change Stealth's layout too and utilise some more of the space in that area... the Stealth plaza is pretty large for a coaster with not a massive footprint!

I think now that the first Exodus 'reveal' is out of the way, Fright Nights will be next. That should then give them a bit of wiggleroom during Oktoberfest to do some more teasing, and that will likely continue through Fright Nights and definitely over closed season if everything hasn't been released by then.

Yeah I've got a feeling that the retrack at Oakwood is just the start of bigger and better things to come - it's a shame that Looping Group aren't willing to share any of their budget with Pleasurewood Hills and just seems to give it all to Drayton. The park has so much potential to be great - it's right by the seaside so could be a perfect draw for families all over the country. Even a couple of old second hand coasters to get them started investment-wise would be a good shout rather than them ordering direct from a manufacturer (defo not got the budget for that), but the park is crying out for more coasters. It's such a shame, because if the park had the budget of a park like BPB, Towers, Thorpe, or hell even Drayton, they could really be up there with the big dogs I think.

My thoughts exactly. Hyperion also being a hyper coaster (albeit an Intamin and not a Mack Produkt) doesn't really bode well for originality sake. I can see people who have ridden both coasters (even enthusiasts tbh) mixing them both up on a regular basis. Heck, I even made a TikTok about this today and had to do multiple takes because I kept mixing them up! It sounds cringeworthy and cheap - not something you should expect from a record beating coaster of Exodu..- ehem... Hyperia's stature.

A company with the same IPO representative as Merlin Entertainments has been found to have filed for these trademarks. Although the trademark applications didn't come from Merlin Entertainments themselves, it's not uncommon for Merlin to use shell businesses to effectively hide the trademark applications from unwanted eyes. We can (allegedly, if proven to be true) see that Merlin originally filed for the name 'Icarus', but the application was opposed. The current trademark application is for the name 'Hyperia', which is currently being examined - but providing whoever looks into trademark applications don't have any objections (like they clearly did with the Icarus name), I think it's pretty likely we could be seeing the name of Project Exodus right here. If this is the case and Hyperia is the name for the new coaster... I absolutely hate it. It's not even just because I've gotten so used to the name Exodus that I don't like it, because I really like the sound of Icarus as a coaster name. It just sounds like they went "Okay, we're building a hyper coaster and we need a name for it - but it needs to sound like a mythological creature. How about Hyperia?" Feels like it's been shoehorned into the name to emphasise that it's a hyper coaster. I really, really dislike it... (and that's me biting my tongue!)

But I think the money that the park will lose not being able to offer food and drink to guests and even the money they will lose on not having as many hotel guests will easily be made up on ticket sales. At £20 a piece and if they're capping the tickets at 100-200 per day, that's £2,000-£4,000 they'll be making every day alone if these tickets sell out consistently (which considering it is a pretty good value I wouldn't be surprised if they did). You're absolutely right about guests being treated as wallets, but at the end of the day the park are a business and are purely in this game for making money. As gross is that is to hear, that is just the way the cookie crumbles. But this isn't going to affect your regular paying day guest in any way whatsoever - this is offered outside of standard park hours and was a luxury only offered to hotel guests previously, but I would imagine that there was significant wiggle room here for the park to feel like offering this as a standalone addon was feasable. The park wouldn't offer it if they felt the benefit wasn't there or would hurt paying hotel guests - because as much as the park don't really need the hotel guests if the ERT tickets sell out consistently, they're not going to want to actively do things that will turn away repeat visitors either.

They won't. I'm almost certain that tickets are limited to 100-200 per day (don't quote me on the exact amount), so will never be not worth the money when you consider that would be spread out across 10 different attractions. Very few people are staying in the hotel for the pure benefit of the ERT alone - I for one certainly wouldn't. It's mostly there for people who are travelling down and want the themed experience and the ERT came as an additional benefit. Now guests don't have to pay fortunes for a one-night stay, when they can just stay off site (if they don't care about the themed experience), and pay the £20 extra. It's a win-win - the park are still getting (some) money, the guests get away with paying considerably less for a night's stay. For people like myself who don't exactly live miles and miles away from the park and can easily do a roundtrip in a day, this is perfect because I no longer need to stay on the resort to get this benefit - and is certainly not something I would pay the price of an overnight stay to experience... however I would pay the £20. There'll be lots of folk out there in a similar situation, and I can see the park selling out of these ERT tickets on a regular basis as a result - therefore I guarantee the park will be making more money on these alone than the number of people staying at the resort hotel... especially off peak.

The park have confirmed that it'll be 81mph, so if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction Stealth could still lift the cup for being the fastest on any particular day... 😂 In regards to the trims, I really do hope it's not noticable either - however I'd rather it maintain decent, consistent pacing throughout and not one massive trim before the breakrun at the splashdown - there's so much riding on this coaster being executed properly, I bet Thorpe are feeling it big time!

7:39pm... #ProjectExodus 🔺👁️

I really don't see it as an issue - this is definitely a good thing. It's outside of regular park hours, therefore won't be creating a negative experience for regular paying guests, and is also limited each day as to not majorly impact those staying in the hotel. If you don't like it, don't use it. This doesn't hurt regular paying guests like buying a fast track would do - and is extremely cost efficient considering the fairly extensive rides and attractions that are included in the ERT pass. But, in the same vein, does not need to be purchased if you don't want to. Whether this succeeds or fails, at the end of the day it makes absolutely zero difference to your average paying guests - and even hotel guests will likely not see a dramatic increase in their ERT queuing times, as I have heard from many people who have stayed overnight at Chessington and experienced them - most, if not all, rides during this time have always essentially been a walkon anyway. When you compare it to the stampeed of guests during standard park hours, queuing for (probably) a maximum of 5-10 minutes for a ride on Mandrill Mayhem doesn't even come close to the time you'll be queuing after 10am. Bravo to the park for introducing something new, and especially bravo for them introducing it at such an affordable price.

Pretty much, it was in response to somebody asking when the marketing campaign will start. But I guess we'll find out later tonight!

At sunset tonight!