Matt N

Most relaxed
 
Disneyland Paris Parc. Wonderful park. I've been with Thunder and Space mountain both down all day and had a wonderful relaxed day
Animal Kingdom - Fantastic park to get lost in an animal trails or having a nice drink at Nomad lounge. 
Chessington - Yes Chessington is a lovely place to unwind in. Forget 40 minute Fury waits, just go around the Zoo or watch a show.
Efteling - I love this place. Its just so charming and easy to get lost in.
 
 
Most Stressed
 
Magic Kingdom - Way too stressful. Completely broken park which will take a lot to fix. I don't think it can be mended to be honest
Disneyland - So small, so cramped, so many rides to do but not enough time to do them. Great history but painful to visit. 
Port Aventura - Awful park to be in. Full of queue jumping neanderthals and unbearably hot and humid..
Cedar Point - This is here for Top Thrill Dragster alone which is the most stressful queuing experience of any major rollercoaster. Will it work properly, will it make it over. Awful.
 

I better be invited. 
 
My plans will be whatever Benin has planned as he is my wheels. 

There's some pretty neat signs, clearly geared towards enthusiasts, that can be seen through the construction fences, as seen by Theme Park Guide:
 
 
The plans should a standard 10 rows of 2 train, with no room for spinning. So I would think it's unlikely. 
Certainly not impossible, but very unlikely. 

Colossus opened 20 years ago today!
 
To celebrate its successful opening on what was a moderate Thursday in March, where the ride welcomed 7000 guests, we have taken a quick look back at the ride that put Thorpe Park on the map!
 
https://thorpeparkmania.co.uk/articles/09-03-2022/20+Years+of+Colossus
 
(This was heavily inspired by @Mark9's original 10 year article, which currently isn't on the main TPM site, but can still be viewed here!)
 

Some final new things, from Jack Silkstone's video:
 
A mini stage has been set up in Amity

This will apparently be used by the roaming actors
 
Some posters have appeared around Swarm island:

They're plastered on the station building too.
Not a fan of these. Way too many, and they lean very heavily on a theme away from the original Swarm story. Things change I guess, but it feels like adding something for the sake of it. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
 
Finally, a new graphic on the service road gates by Old Town Burger King (which originally had the Old Town logo on):

This seems to be a big nod towards Exodus, somewhat mimicking the lift/drop

If we are talking quality I feel Energylandia has the stronger coaster selection than say Liseberg.
 
Both parks have a main trio of thrill coasters and then in Lisebergs case a supporting family coaster in Banen. Energylandia has Formula and RMF Dragon as support to its trio.
 
Then lets look at each trio.
 
"Third wheel of the trio" - Not much in this one but thrill wise I would say Abyssus is better quality than Valkyria
 
"Secondary coaster" - This is an easy one. Balder is a good fun woody but Hyperion is a different level. Brilliant hyper
 
"Star coaster" - Do I REALLY need to answer this one?? Zadra is ten times better than what Helix is and I'm hard pressed to find anyone who would disagree from an unbalanced standpoint. That takes nothing away from Helix. Its just that Zadra is one of it not the best coasters on the entire planet.
 
So yeah all in all I'd say for coaster selection, Energylandia is Europes best park followed by Phantasia if we are talking strength of coasters.

TPM now has an article up: https://thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/14-03-2022/Project+Exodus+Plans+Submitted
I'll be updating it over the next day or so. It does give a fairly comprehensive look at everything covered. 
 
 
This is the most interesting thing to me right now. The plans don't reference theming. But what's more, they make very little reference to anything design/style related!
 
The track colour isn't mentioned, aside from the high points being "light in colour". There's no details about the buildings beyond their dimensions. Historically, Thorpe planning applications have also shown what fences would be used in the queues, including material, dimensions, etc.
 
Why this isn't mentioned I'm not sure. Maybe it simply isn't required now? Maybe they plan to submit those details later, if needed? Being 2 years away from opening, there's still plenty of time to finalise these things (even if the park have a solid idea in mind right now).
 
One thing I didn't pick up on, though, was that the position by the lake will be "the main theming feature":
 
That would certainly lend itself to being light on theming, and give us a potential direction of the style of the ride. 

They've painted the entrance sign this year.

PLANS HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED.
 
Some highlights:
-The ride will feature trains of 20; 10 rows of 2. The trains will have lapbars.
*Not too surprising, but nice to know.

-No manufacturer is confirmed; this is not of interest for planning permission, but it is acknowledged it is of interest to roller coaster enthusiasts. Equally, the application just mentions ride comparison are done to a 'similar ride in Europe'

-The ride will reach a maximum speed of around 130km/h (though this is not definite)

-The ride will have a light track colour high up, similar to Stealth
*This was mentioned in the consultation period. I haven't found confirmation of *what* the colour is for the high points, or the low points. This is usually contained within there somewhere.

-The ride's highest points are: 72m, 50m, 48m and 43m
*This puts to bed an initial thought I had that the park might try to go for the world's tallest inversion record.

-Lots of trees will be planted around the station building

-During construction, the lake will be infilled partially. Originally, the supports were meant to go into the lake, but it looks like they will go into a small part of land within the lake. I guess this is a compromise between having a nice looking lake and ease of maintenance.

-The expanded construction area appears to just be for the *full* demolition of Loggers Leap, as opposed to just the bits in the way. So no extended layout.

-Construction should start late this year, and the whole process should last 16 months. So Spring 2024 opening

Now some more photos:


An interesting look at an alternative layout


Trees





In past applications, we have gotten a look at the design of buildings, etc. But I can't find any of that. Usually we'd even get fencing plans, saying the style, height, material of every fence in an application. Again, doesn't seem to be here. Interesting, in a geeky sorta way. All I can say about the station is it has walls and a metal roof (a roof shouldn't be taken for granted). So there's no clarity on theming, style, colours or anything.

Random note: the transfer track is after the station and at the start of the ride, as opposed to at the end of the ride / before the station. Somewhat different.

We have an interesting update.
 
Pre-face: An image featured here is a drone image over the park. Whilst there is nothing 'wrong'/'illegal' about flying a drone over Thorpe without permission when the park is closed, it's not something I particularly condone.
 

We can see that some sort of paving has happened next to Creek Freak Massacre. Here's a comparison from Google Maps, from around 2019/2020:
 

Hi guys. While it’s probably one of the lesser known defunct UK theme parks these days, I’m led to believe we have quite a few people on here who grew up in the UK in the 1990s, or were more generally around in the UK in the 1990s for that matter, and know about Mr Blobby and Crinkley Bottom in Cricket St Thomas, Somerset. So I was intrigued to know; did anyone ever visit this park in the brief period it operated? And if so, what did you think?
 
I must say it’s a park that looks intriguing, and quite a strange one to imagine as someone who wasn’t alive in the 1990s. As someone who mainly knows Noel Edmunds as the host of Channel 4’s Deal or No Deal, I can never imagine him being a big celebrity with a huge TV show and theme park like that, but him and Mr Blobby were apparently huge in the 1990s!
 
I mainly posted this thread, though, because I’m currently staying in a lodge complex in Chard that’s only around a mile’s walk from the former site of Crinkley Bottom. As such, my dad and I took a walk down there today to see what we could find, and while the site is now a Warner hotel and no longer looks remotely theme park-like, like most other stately homes in Britain, there are still a few little oddities there to find if you know where to look. I mostly took pictures of stuff that I thought looked vaguely theme park-y, and like it could have been part of Crinkley Bottom, but having consulted a Crinkley Bottom park map and looked online after getting back to our lodge, I actually wasn’t far off. I did take a few photos that I thought might be of interest to you guys.
 
For reference, here’s the map me and my dad used, as a point of reference:

(Credit to dunblobbin.com for this image: https://www.dunblobbin.com/park-map)
 
Firstly, here are a few oddities I found that looked like they might have been from when it was a wildlife park:


And then we came to what was unmistakably the former railway bridge:

And I also photographed this building that was apparently home to the Animals of Farthing Wood attraction according to the map:

After that, we crossed what was marked as the Flamingo bridge on the park map, walked along the former railway line, and walked back to the other side along the Crinkley Bridge, at which point I photographed a distinctly colourful looking building, which I later ascertained was the Crinkley Bottom Art Gallery, with what looked like the Extremely Nice Thingy Shop next to it (possibly not in the photograph):

(It looked more colourful and stood out more in person… I was zoomed in a lot here)
 
We then came to the Holey Tree, listed on the park map:

 
And finally, we then took a walk up to Cricket House itself:

 
But that’s not all! As it turns out, the very track we walked down to get there used to be the track for the safari (which you can see once you know that was the case), and we also saw a tunnel that used to be Mr Blobby’s Lair, supposedly! (I didn’t photograph that because my dad thought it looked too new to be part of the park)
 
So I definitely had a very productive and interesting afternoon here in Chard; I hope you like my photos of remnants of this slightly more obscure piece of UK theme park history! Did anyone ever get to visit this interesting attraction, or do you remember it?

Sorry to double post, but for those who have absolutely no idea of what I’m talking about, here’s a documentary by Expedition Theme Park, for a bit more info on what Crinkley Bottom actually was:
https://youtu.be/Prr59WolXv4

I can imagine it now …..Daddy….. what are those silly people doing without kids they are to big for this ride ….
 
Daddies reply…. There just big babies and to scared for the big rides

Nothing gives me greater satisfaction in knowing kids have to wait longer because me and my friends are taking up several row on the octonaughts rollercoaster.

I'd say Category B.
 
I do my best to ride all of them, and would tack them on to a trip. But I don't have the time, money or inclination to travel way out of my way for a Wacky Worm for now.

You missed a category, you ride them as you have kids ……

So I made it to BPB yesterday (despite functioning on 4 hours sleep nursing a bit of a hangover). We were certainly lucky with the weather given the time of year which always helps.
 
This was my first time to BPB so I'm not sure what I expected but one thing I did notice is the theming is, in many parts, pretty pants. My friend noted that a Germanic theme seemed to crop up in various places but other bits of theming we were a tad confused by (e.g. giant silver turtles, a blue horse..) but I guess that makes for a certain charm in a way. Some parts could probably have done with a fresh coat of paint.
 
I do think the ticket price is a bit steep given the big one, grand national and valhalla are closed.! I overheard someone at the entrance was trying to persuade someone to pay the on the day price of £48 by saying they had 30 'rollercoasters' open (perhaps they are confused what that word means(!))
 
We went on icon, infusion, big dipper, avalanche, revolution, steeplechase, river caves, the ghost train and a few smaller rides here and there e.g. flying machines, derby racer. I can't say I was completely blown away by any of the rides, I did very much enjoy icon, great fun and good airtime but it is extremely smooth and its missing that adrenaline rush you get from other launch coasters, perhaps it was because I was on the back row. My friend's favourite was steeplechase, due to how unusual it is I think. Avalanche surprised me on speed but unfortunately quite short! Infusion is a bit like a weak and uncomfortable version of nemesis inferno, although with some fun parts.
 
On operations, other than steeplechase all the coasters were on one train (icon, infusion, big dipper, avalanche etc.) so although queues were very short you still waited 20+ minutes in some cases.
 
For those interested, one of the gift shops sold a range of parts from valhalla, from wheels and seatbelts to what appeared to be long bits of metal, if that's your thing.
 
Slightly off topic but if you're in the area, the water park is worth a visit, I enjoyed aztec falls, sidewinder and master blaster.

A.
 
No shame.
 
Unless I'm not physically allowed to ride it, such as Jellikins (which a certain member of the forum CAN ride).

I'll ride them if I'm in the park and they have a short queue. In parks I visit regularly, sure I'll ride (Baaa Express at Europa Park for example). But say I'm at Kings Island, there's 14 rollercoasters to get on, I'm there one day in total. I won't be going out of my way to ride the Great Pumpkin Coaster as the bigger, more unique rides are far higher a priority. Our to put it this way, I wouldn't rush to Legoland Windsor to ride the Duplo coaster.
 
So category C in general.
 
 

I've split the Fright Nights stuff into its own thread, because why not!
 
 
 
It's certainly possible. I know in the past, they have considered a more broader family friendly attraction, and you could argue that things like the Amity High dance show fit that too.
 
At the same time, Thorpe and Fright Nights are still gearing towards the more older / young adult market, and always have done, regardless of who visits. It would be a very stark change to create something for a broader market.
 
 
The last year they had mazes with IPs was 2019, which was the last year of The Walking Dead maze license. I remember hearing rumours that Do Or Die (the partial outdoor one by Rush) was being considered for 2020 before Covid happened and changed things. Obviously Living Nightmare was going to be replaced by Black Mirror regardless.
I also think there was a time when the park tried getting Stranger Things for Fright Nights too, or if not, at least ripping it off in some way.
 
So perhaps Covid played a bit of a role in a lack of IPs over the last couple of years. But it has equally shown how the park do have a good creative side to them, and the original stuff can work. So it would be interesting to see what happens if they did return to using an IP.
 
As for the Lionsgate thing, I'm not too sure. The standard length of many IP contracts within Thorpe (especially for the mazes) is 3 years, with possible extensions.
 
2013 and 2014, the park leaned in very heavily with the 'Thorpe Park Movie Studios' motif, and pushing the IPs. 2015, for whatever reason, they went away from that and introduced the Big Top. The space used previously by Asylum and Studio 13 was now used for I'm a Celeb, so they needed something new for a headline attraction. Maybe the short term plan was to edge away from IPs at Fright Nights, or the Lionsgate films just weren't as big a hit as they wanted for the cost they were paying?
 
What I think should be kept in mind is that Thorpe and Lionsgate still have a reasonably good working relationship. They still have Saw going very strong, and that's clearly mutually beneficial and is regularly renewed. They scrapped Blair Witch for one year to focus on Walking Dead, but then bought it back. So there wasn't necessarily a bad reason for it disappearing. I guess it was just a creative decision when it boils down to it.

The only thing that requires planning really is restaurant reservations and booking your place in the theme parks. Even with that, we don't tend to eat in the super popular restaurants (Be Our Guest, Cinderellas Royal Table) so in theory you could just go to the park on a day and get lucky.
 
Genie requires no forward planning, you buy it and then at 7am, WDW resort guests can book their first ride, non resort guests can start at park opening so staying at WDW does give you perks and benefits. The main difference is
 
A) You now pay to skip queues
b) There's no guarantee you get to skip the queues for the ride you want. A lot of it is pure luck and rides like Jungle Cruise, Slinky Dog and Peter Pan run out extremely quickly.

I felt inclined to write this, particularly as the world opens up and restrictions and barriers come further down. A big part of my Florida trip was Disney World. During the pandemic, my fiancé and myself decided on buying into Disney Vacation Club and essentially having a home resort at Animal Kingdom Lodge. We use points to pay for rooms and as a 35 year investment, we in the long run will save money. 
 
Disney World was the busiest I have ever seen it. This was my sixth visit to the area and baring in mind my last trip was in the middle of a Hurricane, the parks were in very different places. Covid-19 has meant the parks have fundamentally changed. There is now no FastPass, magic hours have completely changed. Parades are still not running, lots of shows are either closed or seriously cut back and you must reserve a place to visit the park. I'll do a run down of each park and the impact of the new Disney Genie system which has dramatically changed the parks in what I personally think is a hugely damaging and derogative way. This new system works at $15 a day per person and like fastpass prefer, you can reserve a place for your party to skip the stand by lines and get on rides faster. We tried this on three days of our visit. We also purchased the higher tier Lightening Lane twice on Rise of the Resistance to guarantee rides. 
 
Animal Kingdom
Perhaps the Park that has seen the smallest changes since 2019, Animal Kingdom remains my favourite park at WDW and reminds me of Disneyland Paris in that there's a peace and a tranquility to the place which is missing at the other three parks. Despite Everest being closed in its further long term refurbishment, AK was wonderful. We got on each ride in the park on both days we visited and this was by far my favourite days. Genie isn't required at AK. It's rides get far less affected by downtime and with the exception of Flight of Passage, the rides here take a lot longer to get long waits. With all the trails, animal areas and rides like Kali River Rapids which never got a queue, this park is a dream.
 
Hollywood Studios
Now that HS is a park with 7 E-ticket attractions and one filler ride, its very much a park full of busy busy rides and very little stuff to do in-between. Rise, Smugglers, Slinky, Tower, Runaway Railroad, R'N'R are packed out attractions with 60 minutes. Luckily, the rides are top quality but HS lisn't an easy park anymore. We did get Genie on this day and our first pass was Slinky. Because of the way the system works and the eagerness of Disney guests, the first time available was 4pm. This locked us out of the system for two hours. At 11am we booked our second pass for Rock and Roller at 4:40. Our next one we were able to book was at 1pm and stupidly was Tower of Terror at 5pm. So our Genie was never going to be properly useful to us until 7 hours after the park opened. You can have overlapping times but it's incredibly hard to get earlier times without pure luck playing its part. 
 
Extra Magical hours are no more. Instead early opens are the name of the game with each park opening earlier to Disney World resort guests. Jury is out on this move but on this day we chose to ride Micky and Minnies Runaway Railroad. This trackless dark ride has a really disjointed narrative and to be honest I enjoyed the pre-show more then the ride itself. We got two rides overall on it and its okay. Doesn't deserve a 90 minute wait. 
 
Magic Kingdom
MK is fundamentally broken. It's too busy, its worn down, its over-stretched, there's not enough to entertain 80,000 guests on a park that gets busier and busier. Increasing prices is not putting people off Magic Kingdom and Tron is going to compound the issue in devastating ways. When I first visited Magic Kingdom was lovely. Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise and Pirates to name a few had reasonable waits and you could definitely get your monies worth. No more. Jungle Cruise 90 minutes, Pirates and Haunted Mansion, 60 minutes everyday. Small World at 40 minute waits? People-Mover at 35 minute. Ridiculous.
We did use Genie on both days because I think it is now the only way to enjoy this park but sadly it has huge damaging effects on non-Genie guests. IMO, Genie is too powerful at MK. The system is too cheap, the amount of good high quality rides is too high so having it means substantial gains. Reliability was also in a terrible place here. At one point Space, Thunder and Splash were down and across the parks so was many other rides. 
 
Epcot
Finally, Epcot was fine. It has the most boring selection of rides compared to the other parks and whilst I like Ratatouille, I can wait 30 minutes in Paris, I will not be waiting 90 in America for the same ride with no real changes whatsoever. We had a lot of food in Epcot as it was the arts festival and there was some fantastic stuff on offer. Genie isn't very effective here as rides like Spaceship Earth, Living with the Land, Figment, Three Caballeros and Mission Space don't get anywhere near as busy as the big rides and with good planning we got on Testrack, Frozen and Soarin' relatively easily.
 
So a mixed bag and I think Genie needs significant price increases. At the moment 50% of guests use it so the main guests get absolutely screwed over and Genie feels like a waste of money when it feels difficult to get reasonable times. The magic at WDW is still there but its strained, less care free and a little bit harder to find. A real concern as the chase for financial gain ramps up under Bob Chapek.

It could well be for a layout change; I do think it would be nice if they were able to add in a few straight airtime hills, as much as I think the layout is very impressive already given the site and Merlin’s tight budget! And Merlin may well have listened to some of the enthusiasts complaining about the length and lengthened it slightly!
 
However, there’s one thing that puts me off the prospect of a layout change, and that’s the wording and level of detail they’ve chosen to justify this change. If this was for a layout change, surely it would say something like “an alteration to the scope of the ride” that would have been spelled out to the planners in more depth (for instance, I imagine they’d have to outline any new footers being poured or whatever, as well as any new high points in that area), as opposed to “cut and edge landscaping”. That to me suggests some sort of more minor work away from the ride itself; I did notice that the new area encompasses the entirety of Loggers’ former plot whereas the old area didn’t, so perhaps the “design development” is that they’ve decided to demolish the remaining bits of Logger’s that weren’t covered in the initial scope? Also, the original layout doesn’t quite fill the originally outlined area, so surely a layout extension could in theory be done within the current boundary if they wanted one?
 
Don’t get me wrong, it could well be for a layout change (I don’t know much about how planning works for that type of thing), but something tells me that the planners wouldn’t be happy if Thorpe tried to pass off a layout extension as “landscaping”… I’d expect them to have to go into greater detail for something like that, or at very least specify “an extension to the scope of the ride”.
 
It’s worth remembering that the wooded section of The Flume was technically considered part of Wicker Man’s site during the planning process, but this was only due to the removal of the wooded section of The Flume; Wicker Man did not ultimately end up using the wooded area at all.
 
To be honest, I don’t think Exodus really needs a layout change, personally. Yes, it’s not the longest coaster, and it doesn’t look to be a straight airtime machine in the way that many were hoping for, but given the site, the budget and the brief, I think it’s already pretty impressive myself!

This is something I've seen suggested a few times, and it's certainly possible. There are two things that make me think it won't (just) be demolishing the entirety of Loggers:
 
1. Merlin don't demolish stuff unless they need to. They keep things for as long as physically possible. If something can be left SBNO they will. Look at Thorpe and Loggers and Slammer as examples. Towers only removed the likes of Submission and Ripsaw because they would be too obvious if left standing. 
They won't decide to just remove bits of Loggers they don't need to. They will remove what needs to be removed and nothing else.
 
2. Usually, you don't need permission to remove a ride. You just...remove it. There's exceptions and caveats of course, but generally speaking, parks are free to simply take something down if they want to. It's another reason why UK parks like to keep rides SBNO until they're replaced: when it comes to planning applications, they can say "look, we have something here, we're just replacing it with something else".
 
If this is just for the removal of Loggers and nothing else, it's possible they're including this addition because it covers themselves in case someone moans about work happening outside of the permitted zone. Would be a grey area I guess.
 
 
As said, the likely course here is that they're extending the zone for practicality purposes: either for ease of construction for the ride, or for extra engineering / maintenance once the ride is open. That would definitely fall under "design developments". But equally, a change in layout isn't something to completely rule out, and would also fall under design developments.

Merlin can build new parks from scratch without a wince, they don't have a tight budget in the slightest.
They could put a full size coaster in here if they fancied it, they are choosing not too.
 
This change looks insignificant, likely for groundworks, utilities, access.