Matt N

Hard to know right now, but Blackpool I’ve done. 
 
Merlin lot, Paultons and a return to Blackpool should be on the cards along with other uk parks maybe. 
 
Abroad wise, fingers crossed for Orlando in October and Disneyland Paris in May/June time. 
 
Would like to get to Plopsa for their new ride and maybe some other European perks. Would like to get back to Europa, Efteling and Phantasialand for sure. 

Bit weird to now have two Rocking Tug attractions in one park, but heyho. Investment in that area is good, and some small new rides won't do any harm. I worry about the queues for the Watermania thing, especially as Chessington are pretty thin on the ground with water rides.
 
With a new Pirate Ship and a drop tower last year, investment is going in the right direction.
 
But if we're being truly honest, these investments follow from years of neglect and years of rethemes which had been aimed at fixing that neglect. So there's an air of 'It's about time!' that these things have happened, and I hope that this investment can continue, and the quality is of a good standard.
 
 
It was weird, I visited the park yesterday and walked right through the area these rides are going. Little did I know it would be the last time I'd walk through it, and probably the last time I'd walk through Pirates Cove.
The planning application says construction would start in March and the rides would open by June.

So I'll be doing the UK Merlin quartet and Paultons Park again this year. I'd like to do a bit more UK stuff too (Pleasurewood Hill maybe), but we'll see.
 
As for international stuff, after a break of not going abroad (due to Covid rules and finishing a PhD), this is what I have planned concretely:
 
April
Heide Park and Hansa Park
 
June
Six Flags Great Adventure
Hersheypark
Kings Dominion
Busch Gardens Williamsburg
+a selection (or all) of Six Flags America, Knoebels and Dorney
 
Also planning to return to Phantasialand and finally ride Fly, as well as go back to Plopsaland and Walibi Belgium for their new rides. I'd also like to do the Gardaland/Movieland Italy duo and a couple of parks in Denmark, butttttt those plans are a bit more up in the air at the moment.

Nothing international planned at the moment but expecting a trip to:
Blackpool Pleasure Beach (march) Alton Towers (likely October) Tulleys (October) Thorpe (at some point I'm sure) Also going to sandcastle water park (again on this hen do) if that counts...
 
edit: adding Siam Park to this list  

Has there really not been a post here for over a year, even with Velocicoaster opening. Wow. 
 
So I managed to get over to Florida after a two year delay and part of the trip was to give Universal a bit more time to enjoy. I usually give the whole resort a day to do everything but this time each park got a day. Which I think is more than enough as with good planning you can get on everything you want really easily. 
 
Whilst everyone rushes to Hagrid's and Velocicoaster, we started with Hulk, Spiderman, the Seuss rides, Forbidden Journey and Jurassic Park before 10:30. Which is the ideal order as it covers over half the major stuff before going into the longer waits. Baring in mind, the last time I went, the Dragons had only just stopped duelling so majority is new.
 
So:-
 
New Hulk- Rides better then the previous version and the soundtrack really adds to the ride. I still maintain that the last third of the ride are a complete waste of time but the first two thirds are so snappy, precisely paced and hit after hit that I am more forgiving than I was in 2012.
 
Spiderman is great, still remains a revolution in dark ride design and is a lot of fun.
 
Seuss land is nice.
 
Forbidden Journey has aged really well. It is a lot of fun and now that it doesn't command an hour queue at a minimum, its so much easier to ride and a lot less is hanging on the ride experience to deliver. My fiancé doesn't understand a thing about Harry Potter but appreciated the effects and ride experience.
 
I'm completely biased in saying River Adventure is one of my favourite rides at the resort. I love dinosaur themed attractions, I love Jurassic Park and I love the variation and story telling of this attraction. It's so much fun and the physical precense of the dinosaurs really adds to make this a 10/10 attraction. So there.
 
So to start..
 
Velocicoaster. So this is one of the best rides in the world. I think we all saw this coming but it further refines the successes that Intamin have had with Maverick, Taron and Taiga and I think adding this in a Universal park, one that commands huge attention  in the theme park industry will bring Intamin a lot of success. We got four rides in various rows and it delivers in every seat. It feels like what would happen if Taron were more refined. Thats not to say that I think its better then Phantasialands ride (The jury is still out on that front) but the two are very similar in terms of sensation and pops or airtime litter both rides. Pacing is important to me and this ride has it in droves. The theming is okay, I think the story itself is a bit forgotten the moment you complete the first launch and it just becomes another rollercoaster albeit this has a beautiful location over the lake.
 
Next Hagrid's motorbike thing. We waited an hour each for both of our rides and this ride is okay. It throws every Intamin trick in the book at you and its frankly a miracle that this works. I don't think its the greatest ride in the world because the Harry Potter implementation is a tad too weak for a Hogsmeade ride and frankly a lot of it is just a bit meandering. I admire the ambition if nothing else.
 
So thats IoA for another decade. A great visit.
26F85C4E-CCD9-4EB2-801F-3CFE4F83D57B.heic

The app has high striker's new location updated already on the map, going on the pathway between storm surge and the beach basically in front of Doughnut factory. I though they would of put it next to flying fish either way good its staying.

April - Phantasialand
May - Cedar Point/Kings Island
August - Energylandia/Legendia
October - FLORIDA!!
 
Also be having a few visits to Blackpool as I now have a pass for it and may also try to squeeze in Plopsaland for RTH and Walibi Belgium for Kondaa

Lumber Jump is now in Amity.
https://www.facebook.com/thorpepark/posts/10159696666915867

Depends on the attraction.
 
I always find the best dark rides try to entice you into particular settings. Whether that’s the ballroom in Symbolica, the battle scene in Pirates. Or the likes of attractions such as Rise Of The Resistance or Forbidden Journey, which I’m yet to experience.
 
Screen-based rides can be great when done right and the best ones use scenery, effects and even animatronics in order to achieve this. However they can come across as a cheaper (cost cutting) alternative to classic rides, where cheap screens are plastered over the ride instead of building set pieces. 
 
Hopefully the future of dark rides will involve a combination of screens, set pieces and animatronics. 

The best dark rides combine screens with physical effects and animatronics. I find rides that are screen based only incredibly lazy (even though I know they technically aren't). Whereas something like Forbidden Journey or Rise of the Resistance really appeal to me because they use all areas of technology to create the experience.
 
 

Iron Gwazi is open now for Busch pass holders and opens next month for the public!!
 
This video shows this thing to look absolute nuts!! I can see a lot of Zadra in this. The intensity looks there, the pacing looks there and my lord that death roll looks like its trying to rip you from the seat. Also promising how it slams into the breaks Zadra style.
 
Seriously can not wait to ride this AND Velocicoaster!!

The park have announced 2 new events: Mardi Gras and Carnival. Mardi Gras takes places in May/June, and Carnival in July/August. These accompany Oktoberfest (September) and Fright Nights (October):
 
 
The descriptions for the new events do sound reasonably similar. And with Oktoberfest too, it is 3 events which sound incredibly similar at heart, just dressed with different colours.
 
It's good to see the park diversify and include more events. But hopefully they are sufficiently different and worthwhile in their own right.

New promotional picture.  Still no re-opening date, "summer 2022" is the official line at the moment.
 

Thinking about this made me realise that most (possibly all) of the screen-heavy dark rides I've done have been interactive (ie shooters). And as I enjoy shooters, I've got positive experiences with dark rides with screens.
 
But at the same time, the ones which are better are the ones where the use of screens is justified and is blended in with real world environments.
 
I certainly think that more traditional dark rides can benefit from screens if done correctly. I would be more cautious to experience a dark ride which is screen, blank, screen, blank. 

Things like mouse au chocolate / ninjago as they are interactive its fine, but I wouldnt like a screens that are for non interactive purposes

Much the same with me really - I quite like screens on dark rides, especially when properly combined with physical sets.
 
I do understand people's issue with screens though. Some rides really do rely too heavily on them, and I do sometimes think they can take away from what a dark ride should be. I haven't been on Skull Island, but it looks almost as disappointing as Fast and Furious, which was an absolute joke.
 
When used subtly though they're great - one ride that impressed me was Revenge of the Mummy - that uses physical sets and fire etc, along with subtle screens that are only used briefly to simulate scarab beetles coming out of the cracks in the wall - brilliant.

That is a sound suggestion that makes a lot of sense… I didn’t think of that.

I haven’t ridden the ride yet, I hope to in March. But perhaps it’s for accessibility reasons and to prevent sensory overloads although a flying cinema probably already does that.

Merlin are just trying to bog down their opponents with paperwork to delay them whilst they build their own 2023-2024 attractions. I don't think they expect their attempt at this to be successful however considering the government has taken an interest in it.
 
Matt N's link above is the same as this: https://riderater.co.uk/9543/merlin-calls-for-withdrawal-of-london-resort-plans/

From an engineering perspective it is likely to be mandated that the structure survives 25 years. Where the pieces of track are deemed replaceable. Non replaceable parts will be designed for atleast 50.
 
Fatigue issues in steel start occuring at 2x10^6 load cycles which rollercoasters will start hitting around 25-30 years old. So if we assume 240 operating days a year at 8 hours. In that time lets assume perfect capacity for nemesis of 37.5 dispatches an hour. It would result in a lifespan of 27.7 years. 
 
Time to hit 2,000,000 cycles.
Colossus - 24y
Nemesis Inferno -29y
Stealth - 19y
Saw - 21y*
 
You can design for more cycles. The eurocodes permit allowances up to 5x10^6 but it requires the stresses in the steel to be low. Saw can probably get away with that hence it not being 8 years. I cant be bothered to work out allowable cycle ranges so for saw I assumed the maximum and the other coasters the minimum. 
 
Basically Thorpe park would have an expensive few years coming up if you couldn't extend lifespan in other ways. It would just come down to is it worth extending. Unfortunately for Colossus I think the answer is no. 

As if by magic, we have an update, posted by "Theme park Nation" on Facebook. 
 
So Inversion is set to open this summer. The park are on a skeletal engineering crew, but their winter maintenance schedule is edging to completion, and the train could be put onto the track next week.
 
What this means is anyone's guess, as painting and commissioning are still big things which need to be done.

The planning application has finally been approved and work can now go ahead!
 
https://chessingtonbuzz.com/news/project-amazon-gets-the-go-ahead/

To me it depends on use and if they are combined well with physical sets
 
A dark ride like Pirates over at Shanghai disney looks a masterclass in the correct use of screens as they blend well with the sets. The same can be applied to the potter dark rides at Universal.
 
On the flip side, rides like Skull Island which is 95 percent screens with an amazing Kong animatronic I find very lazy. I wouldn't want dark rides going down this route.
 
Hope that explains my stance on them!!

Personally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we see Colossus go before the end of the 2020s, and I'll be stunned if it's not the first of the big thrill coasters to go. It's not an especially popular ride (among enthusiasts, at very least, and none of my family especially like it), it's lost its original USP even within the UK, it takes up a not insignificant amount of land within a park that will soon be tight on space for new rides, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't subsidence causing issues with the ride's footers?
 
However, I would counter that by saying that I don't think coasters necessarily have a set lifespan. For every ride getting removed at 30 years old, there's a similarly specced ride still hanging in there for decades afterwards, and I don't think that a ride hitting a certain age is necessarily an indicator that "[x ride] is due for removal or retracking". I think it's more nuanced than that, personally.

With the recent news of Nemesis being re-tracked after almost 30 years of service, it's got me thinking about the fate of Thorpe Park's ageing coasters.
 
If we take Nemesis' life-span as a guide, and apply it to Thorpe's coasters, it means they might need major work doing sooner rather than later.
Colossus - 8 years from now Nemesis Inferno - 9 years from now Stealth - 12 years from now Saw - 15 years from now (supposedly, although I think it'll need doing far sooner)  
I'd imagine that Colossus and Saw might need retiring/re-tracking earlier than Nemesis.
 
The reason I bring this up is that this could leave Thorpe in a bit of a pickle..
They had an unusual few years where they invested heavily in new coasters and rides almost back to back, which was great at the time, but it does mean they are all ageing together.
 
Could this mean that Thorpe will soon enter a difficult period where some of their major rides need to be either removed or overhauled? And what would this mean financially, could it affect investment in new attractions again?
 
I might be completely wrong to assume this, but thought it was worth a discussion!