Matt N

We did run it with 5 trains a few times back in 2014. Our rides manager at the time was really pushing for it, but the ride kept going down daily with various issues. Because of that, he decided to scale it back to 4 trains permanently, or 3 on off-peak days. After that, it never operated with 5 trains again during the time I worked there.

Could hit 1k pph if it had 5 trains on.
 
Which I've no idea when last happened.

Rode Tomb Blaster today.
 
It remains bloody dreadful.
 
-Every train had at least one car not in use. One train had two cars not in use.
-The 'story' is beyond dull, with the voiceover being one of the worst-sounding, boring and grating things I've ever heard on a theme park
-The guns are rubbish
-Pacing of the ride feels so off. Partially because of the story they shoehorned in, but also just because the ride system feels like it's on its last legs
-Audio is either too quiet or too loud.
-Most of the screens in the on ride photo viewpoint were broken (not necessarily turned off, but physically broken).
 
Honestly, of everything that the park are doing, adding and changing, sorting out Tomb Blaster should really have been number 1 priority.

Thorpe top this for me for reasons similar to the above. Rides are often operated well, especially the likes of Stealth & Hyperia and reliability has been better than from previous years. 
 
Towers contrary though has seen a noticeable decline in operations and reliability lately. Some rides like Thirteen still smash it but it’s not like how it was. 
 
Chessington is hit and miss, but I’ve seen some poor operations lately, with rides like Rattlesnake operating so badly now and too many rides on low or reduced capacity now. 
 
LEGOLAND is ok, but I still find it exaggerated where staff have to say “you’re secure” after checking a simple door or restraint once or even twice. It’s the most safety exaggerated park out there I’ve done! 

To be honest, there won't be any real differences in how busy it is. Weather might play a factor, but the Saturdays in September will all be equally busy really.
 
Saturdays will be the busiest day of the week, but it still won't be that busy.

The way SFA is running I don't think half the rides will make it till then even...
 
 
Stealth's repeated downtime is very different. 
 
It had its issue at the start of the season, which was a big unexpected hiccup from winter maintenance. Since then, it's had two, pre-planned, periods of downtime. One of them was for a launch cable replacement, which happens yearly. The other I do not know, but since it was short, pre-planned and stayed on schedule, I don't think is a major concern.
 
Rita has suffered longer, not-planned closures, with no known opening date advertised during those closures. That indicates that those issues are actual problems with the ride which needed fixing / parts replacing. 
 
I don't think the two are linked, and it's more coincidence that there's two rides of the same time that have experienced downtime in the same year. 

Upon Kingda Ka's passing, it cursed all the accelerator models. 

Easy winner is Thorpe. Best operated rides, best opening hours and better reliability. 

The last few years, I'd say Thorpe park by a long way. Best ride availability, best throughputs and best opening hours.
 
Crazy because going back 5+ years or so I would've always said Towers. 1 train ops on off peak days was standard at Thorpe, resulting in long queues even on quiet days.

Got to be Thorpe for me these days - they have had quite the turnaround over the last few years.

Thorpe comes out on top for me. Speaking across the board, availability is decent and throughputs are good. Towers do well with throughputs, but their availability feels a lot worse.
 
Legoland comes next for me. They cope well with what they have.
 
Chessington isn't awful, but they have a lot of low throughput rides and they struggle to operate them well.

The actual operations at Towers are broadly always excellent. It's whether the rides are actually open that is Altons problem. 

The Easter Egg culture for Merlin has become a lot. 
 
Realistically, sticking in an Easter Egg takes very little effort. Taking Toxicator as an example, it wouldn't have taken any real energy and time away from the creative team to throw in references to 1997, seeing that "Ripsaw" spelt backwards was "Waspir", and that could be used to spell something that sounded vaguely acidic in "Waspirium", a poster with "Can you cut it?", etc. It's a fun little nod. Designers putting their name on an attraction is also a trend which has been around a long time too.
 
But there's now an innate expectation for Easter Eggs which has come from influencers and enthusiasts seeking them out and really pushing them. It erred too far. My favourite example of how far it went was how Survival Games at Thorpe Park features a prop of a severed penis (behind a fence, in a box, not in an obvious place, I believe), with a tag labelled "JS" on it, which stood for Jack Silkstone, an 'Easter Egg' to how Jack was involved in the marketing for it. Again, not something that takes up time, money or energy to create really, but extremely convoluted, and by bringing it to people's attention and encouraging them to look out for it, actively takes away from the experience.
 
And that's the issue now. People fixate more on Easter Eggs and finding these nods and feeling clever than actually taking in the bigger picture. Going back to Toxicator, whilst all the references make sense and that, does Toxicator really fit and work with Forbidden Valley? Well, it's certainly changed the area more and continued to turn of it into X Sector 2.0.

Its cool to have an Easter Egg or two within a new or reimagined attraction (say for example, Piraten in Batavia having a survivor boat from the fire and a Roland Mack animatronic), but when the majority of the attraction becomes "DO YOU GET IT?" it misses the point somewhat as you feel like they're trying too hard to bash you over the head with references.
 
 
The other issue is that the park has been so run down that a number of rides have needed a full refurbishment. Sub Terra came back out of necessity more than anything, Duel was in a sorry state since it opened, Nemesis was also refurbished out of necessity or be closed.
 
Don't really think it's anything to do with nostalgia. Just those are the rides they could either redo over a closed season or needed to be done for reasons.

It's a very interesting one that's been touched on before in other topics.
 
Apart from the excellent Wickerman, they've spent vast amounts of money over the last several years replacing the Haunted House, Hex, Sub Terra, Nemesis, Skyride and Ripsaw with... The Haunted House, Hex, Sub Terra, Nemesis, Skyride and Ripsaw...
Yes they're all updated and in a couple of cases very different, but they're all essentially the same thing at the end of the day, and it's difficult to argue with that.
 
Someone who last visited Alton Towers in 2014, over a decade ago, would realistically not see a lot of difference in terms of ride offering if they visited again tomorrow. In fact, there are fewer rides on offer.
 
Don't get me wrong - I think its a very good thing that Skyride was saved, I think Curse is a vast improvement on Duel, and Nemesis' renewal and tart-up was a good thing to secure its future, but I agree with what you've said above.  Realistically, to most people at least, none of it is truly new. It's neatly all been (granted, expensive) maintenance to existing attractions to keep them running...
And the trouble is, they're not finished yet either.  Galactica is crying out for a refurbishment and retime... so could that be yet another (all be it badly needed) large investment that needs doing instead of something truly new? It wouldn't surprise me, as it will probably be deemed worth investing in rather than scrapping.
 
I think the truth is that Merlin has run nearly everything in to the ground, with little thought for the future. Although we all rode the wave of Merlin's success a decade ago, with new things coming in fairly regularly, their short-term thinking and obsession with only ever investing in a 'sure moneymaker' to satisfy the shareholders one year at a time has landed Towers here.
The money that should have been spent on refurbishments and maintenance over the years was instead given to the top execs and the shareholders, and now everything's timed out at the same time, and is hoovering up all the money that would otherwise be available to invest in to new attractions etc.
 
I'm very sad about the situation Alton Towers has been put in to by such poor leadership in the past.
Clearly there is a lot of money being spent at Towers on getting things back on track.  The recent renovations have mostly been excellent.  But with more expensive fix-ups surely to come, and ongoing problems with reliability and aging rides elsewhere (Rita, Galactica, etc), they're not out of the woods yet.
 
I hope there will be news soon on something truly new and exciting coming to Towers. They just can't keep replacing or re-theming everything for ever - even Disney have accepted that!

Hi guys. In recent years, I think it’s fair to say that Alton Towers have had a bit of a nostalgia push, for lack of a better term. In 2023, the park revamped Duel into The Curse at Alton Manor, which harked back to the ride’s roots and brought back something more akin to the Haunted House from 1992 (while Curse is not the Haunted House, it’s a haunted house with enough shared DNA that I think the two could be conflated with one another by a casual visitor). In 2024, the park retracked Nemesis. And in 2025, the park have opened Toxicator, which brings back a ride akin to the late Ripsaw from 1997 (while Toxicator is not the Ripsaw, it’s a Top Spin with enough shared DNA that I think the two could be conflated with one another by a casual visitor). Argaubly more so than ever before, Alton Towers’ recent investments seem to be leaning heavily into nostalgia for the park’s past. This is an interesting change of pace for the park compared to years gone by, so I’d be interested to know; what are your thoughts on the recent nostalgia push at Alton Towers? Do you love that the park is harking back to the glory days of the past? Or do you think that the park is fixating overly on past glories and not bringing enough new things to the table?
 
Personally, I’m in two minds. I think there’s a balance to be struck between nostalgia and new ideas.
 
On the one hand, I don’t think any of the projects that have been done have been unnecessary projects or excessively fixated on nostalgia to their detriment. Curse did not attempt to synthetically “revive” the 1992 Haunted House as some were advocating for and as I feared might happen; it did attempt to put its own spin on the haunted house concept and I think it works really well. Nemesis Reborn was a revival of a ride that was by all accounts revered and a core part of the park’s DNA, and I think the changes were excellent and breathed new life into the concept to bring it into the 21st century. Toxicator, perhaps ironically with it being the only new piece of ride hardware, is perhaps the one that feels like it was most done for nostalgia’s sake; there are a lot of other types of flat ride to pick from, and they still went for the one that the park had in 1997. But even still, Alton Towers lacks flat rides and the Top Spin as a ride type does objectively offer a lot of positive attributes. These projects have good ideas at their core, and one could argue; why should a good idea go unused just because it has been used before? Newness for newness’s sake is not necessarily a good thing; sometimes the old ones are the best, as they say!
 
On the other hand, however, I have a key concern about the park relying on nostalgia for multiple recent investments. That concern is that an excessive focus on nostalgia for multiple investments in a row might contribute to a public perception that the park is stood still, and isn’t moving forward. I’m not saying that projects like the revamps weren’t good, but I think more so than any decade prior, Alton Towers has felt like it’s stood still during the 2020s so far. We as enthusiasts might be interested in projects like Curse and Nemesis Reborn, and the park are undeniably splashing the cash, but for the casual visitor, I have my concerns that it looks like the park is simply living off past glories and rehashing the past. To the casual observer, I can see why Curse is “just the Haunted House in a new colour”, Nemesis Reborn is “just Nemesis in a new colour”, and Toxicator is “just Ripsaw in a new colour”. In isolation, I think all of these projects were fundamentally good and beneficial, and nostalgia in moderate doses is not necessarily a bad thing… but when put together and being the only things done for multiple years in a row, they give off an impression that the park has run out of ideas and hasn’t done anything meaningfully new in years.
 
People might rhapsodise about “the experience” in years gone by, but I feel this sentiment ignores the key thing that gave Alton Towers its popularity and status in the first place. During the 1980s and 1990s, the park was forward-thinking and brought several new and innovative ride installations to the table, and it attracted the public’s attention in a big way. Heck, even during the 2010s, the park was still forward-thinking and bringing new and innovative ride installations to the table in the form of rides like Thirteen, Smiler and Wicker Man. But when Alton Towers has spent the last few years in a row doing nothing but refurbishing and/or “reviving” things from the park’s past, I fear that that forward-thinking and innovating mentality that gave the park its name will be perceived to have gone. Multiple nostalgia-driven projects in a row could feel like the park is rehashing the old hits and living in the past rather than bringing anything new to the table.
 
So personally, my view is that there is a place for nostalgia, and good ideas should not necessarily be abandoned for newness’s sake, but that the park’s reliance on it in recent years could perhaps be excessive, particularly if continued into 2026 and beyond. If we, for instance, see a new enterprise to “revive” Enterprise in 2027 and a new pirate ship to “revive” Blade in 2028, I fear it will just fuel a perception that the park is stood still and living in the past. We need some legitimately new blood interspersed in with nostalgia to make it feel like the park is moving forwards, and I’d argue we’ve reached a juncture where Alton Towers could perhaps do with some new blood rides-wise.
 
But I’d be keen to know; what are your thoughts on Alton Towers’ recent nostalgia push? Do you think it’s a good idea to hark back to the glory days? Or do you think the park could do with bringing some new ideas to the table?

Thanks, both!
 
I doubt I'll end up doing it anyway. If there are probably actors in it, I'm not sure I'd want to take the chance, and besides, there's too much at Thorpe that I actually like for me to be overly worried about not having done The Walking Dead! I'll probably be far too tempted by the bigger coasters on my next visit, particularly seeing as I definitely need more goes on Hyperia...

Actors are in there in the afternoons most days this year in my experience.
 
They always place a sign outside the entrance when there are actors, and there almost always won't be actors in there if that sign isn't out.
 
If you want to experience it without actors, I'd try to ride it before noon.

I’m sorry I can’t answer your question, but in my experience it’s extremely rare, and on the few occasions when they have had actors in there during my visits over the years, it’s simply one in the pre-show room, but the “scares” are minimal and it’s more of an “opening and closing the doors” sort of role.  Another actor or 2 is then in the corridor just after the station exit, although realistically the scares here are minimal too and it’s more for show as you file past.

My advice would be, if you’re really wanting to ride TWD, depending on your phobia of course, it isn’t comparable to a scare maze and is a very brief interaction. You’ll be walking past them for a few seconds at most, and the environment doesn’t lend itself to being scary or really give the staff any opportunity to hide.
you’ll also be one of a trainload of people so it’s safety in numbers!
 
If you just come through the doors, keep your head down and walk, once you’re in to the narrow corridor you’re past where the actors usually are (if there are any!)
 
I think there will always be someone in the preshow room, who often has a mask of some sort on, but as I’ve mentioned it’s far from a scary experience and really no different than any member of staff dealing with a preshow 🤷‍♂️ 
 
Do they even have actors in there anymore actually?
 

Out of curiosity, how often do actors appear in The Walking Dead? And do they ever appear when not advertised outside?
 
I only ask because I haven’t actually done it since the retheme due to a bit of a phobia of/aversion to costumed actors, particularly scare actors. I rode the coaster hardware itself in 2014, prior to the retheme, but I haven’t ridden it since.
 
I’m wondering if I should rip the plaster off and try it next time I’m at Thorpe, but I’d really prefer not to risk it if there’s a strong chance of actors being in there.

Any Hippogriff ride. I will never wait an hour for a Vekoma junior coaster. Not on your life.
I don't generally spite myself out of any rollercoaster. If I've done it before then I won't do a lot of Gerstlauer rollercoasters. Saw is awful to ride, Smiler is painful to queue for. Eurofighters are generally quite meh.
Generally I avoid Tidal Wave type rides now, there's no fun in walking abound in soggy clothes. 

In a nice, but admittedly very random, addition, Colossus now has a smoke effect!
 
https://x.com/ThorpeParkMania/status/1936799436602065404?t=uY0MNotqAIdP5sGeIsb4tA&s=19

Ooh interesting one!
 
I think yes, a park can definitely be too quiet.  
 
Thorpe is by far my most visited park, and back when I had an annual pass I’d frequently visit on quieter days.  The trouble is, it was occasionally possible to have everything, and I mean literally everything, done by lunchtime with ease.
Fantastic for re-rides etc, but it didn’t feel like a “full day out” if you know what I mean, and it certainly lacked the atmosphere and that buzz you get from a bustling theme park.
 
I remember going to a very quiet fright nights one year, having arrived at opening time. We had ridden and re-ridden everything all day, and then when the mazes opened we went through all of them several times, to the point that we weren’t fussed about doing Asylum anymore that night even though it was literally “walk on” with hours to go - unheard of these days for a maze.
 
Don't get me wrong - I look back on those visits with fond memories, and LOVED the amount of rides we could get on, but overall I think it’s a better overall experience when the queue times are around 10 minutes for things.
 
Queueing a little definitely helps space the day out nicely, especially in smaller parks like Thorpe.  It also builds up that anticipation a bit, and forces you to take in the atmosphere and theming around you.
 
Staying with the fright nights as an example - my favourite ever FN was the year Cabin in the Woods opened. The atmosphere around the park really added to the experience, particularly around Cabin where we spoke to several strangers around the park about the different routes etc that could be taken. There was a real buzz about it that could only be felt because so many people were sharing the enjoyment.
 
So yeah, as much as I adore a re-riding marathon, I really do enjoy experiencing a park that is alive and visibly thriving.  The perfect balance for me would probably be no queue exceeding 20 - 30 mins all day, but the last hour or so having walk ons. 👌🏼 best of both worlds!

Depends on the park for me, especially if such place has x amount of rides that requires a minimum number of people to ride in order for it to operate. 
 
some parks when quiet feel pleasant to visit, enabling numerous re-rides and getting lots done, assuming they don’t have silly operating hours (glares at Towers). But then again, with empty paths, areas, fewer or no entertainment (depending on the park), it can definitely impact atmosphere and environment. Making it feel more flat and empty as a result. 
 
Not sure where everyone else is on this, but I find parks on average the most enjoyable when they are between the busier end of quiet and the busier event of lively. But that might just be me. 

Hi guys. On paper, everyone’s dream theme park visit is one with no queues. Queues are the bane of everyone’s existence when it comes to theme parks, so to not have them sounds like a dream… right? After a recent visit to Paultons Park on 5th June that was particularly deserted, as well as some ensuing discussion with people off the back of that, I’ve been pondering this notion. With this in mind, I’d be interested to know; in your view, can a theme park ever be too quiet? Is the theoretical ideal of a park with no queues and no crowds really such an ideal in reality?
 
Personally, I’m actually somewhat undecided on this.
 
From my own perspective, a large part of me would say no. A quiet park means all the more rides for you, and as a person who doesn’t mind doing a good number of rerides on things I enjoy, that suits me down to the ground! There are very few things better than a nice riding marathon, in my view, and depending on the park, some of my best memories in theme parks have been from times where I’ve just been able to ride over and over (a 30-ride day at Thorpe Park in September 2023 sticks particularly fondly in my mind)!
 
On the other hand, though, some might argue that depending on your own tolerance for reriding, queues are almost necessary to lengthen the day and break up the rides a bit. There’s also the argument about atmosphere that I can see; I had a brilliant day, but at points, my Paultons visit was almost quite surreal due to the sheer lack of crowds. When you’re the only person within visible eyeshot at points, it is certainly quite an odd experience!
 
So on balance, I would probably lean towards no, but I can see some of the arguments for yes. I can also see that the answer might differ depending on the park; I’ve certainly found riding lots of rides easier and more enjoyable in some parks on a quiet day than in others!
 
But I’d be keen to know; do you think a theme park can ever be too quiet?