Fred

Smiler has been opening as early as possible for ages now. Most guests are still coming mainly for the smiler, so if the queue time is short enough it'll be guaranteed they'll re-ride this before heading off. They do it a lot when the queue is 5mins, so they'll do it a lot during ERT!

Woaaaahhh there. Nice that they've been kept to Alton's information board style and not adapted for Chessington (and that they're both black rather than the multitudes of colours that Alton has!)

They definitely do re-ride The Smiler - it's the queue time which puts it off. It's a good idea to add it onto ERT (loads just join the queue and wait currently anyway). They need to add some middle ground rides, really need to add those.. but otherwise it's a pretty good line-up, finally they've put the most popular and most busiest attractions onto ERT which means it's worthwhile having it. They say it's a trial, it's not a trial at all it's staying this way.. it says trial incase of negative feedback

I find "rough" coaster more comfortable slouched anyway. Colossus has this weird thing in that it rides perfectly if you dont hold on and have your arms up or out or whatever. If I decide to hold on for some mad reason it becomes uncomfortable.

Is thorpes canteen still externally run?

You totally had a huge hint off me there Benzin

£23 is very reasonable, until you think you can go to Towers for £2 extra (with a bogof). Always think theme parks are worth the £20 or so entry.

Didn't realise they allowed 3 carers though - their website and social media guys constantly say only 1 or 2 people extra!

Have they increased their ticket pricing? I swear I paid £21 online last year, which saved £2... so the same price as displayed on website?

Don't blame towers, blame the morons who own Oakwood in thinking they could replicate it in a park which is not suitable for it

th13teen - copy and paste your post to customer.services@thorpe-park.co.uk as they can log it and make sure the system is run properly!

It apparently works fine when there's no queues. Which is obvious, cos noone buys it. Second it gets busy it sparks demand. Staff are overstretched as it is, and the rides aren't designed to cope. I went beginning of August last year just as they introduced it apparently. Was very unsatisfactory for me.

It negatively impacted my visit last year. Actually completely forgot about this until that topic. Want to go soon cos After Dark. It's an awful system, they have no Guest Services either which is great. Just hope they take you seriously when complaining off park!

Yes Nigloland is certainly a great place to visit - I hope they increase in visitor numbers too, as they're a fantastic park!

Yeah Aspro forced them to sell fastrack after seeing it during a visit to Alton, and it's literally a case of no limits on the Fastrack, and no timeslots either. Poorly executed, as a small company would do. Bastards.

Nice photos of Hex on Alton's snapchat including their new hard hats and control panel. Mmm geeky!

A fair few I imagine judging on what I've heard Alton has!

It distorted everything over the PA system - so the operator sounded similar too! But yes. No more of that!

You're talking to someone who's worked at both the parks. Physical amount of rides does not equal - Oblivion which gets 1000 on a bad day way exceeds vampire. Enterprise throughputs exceed almost every flat at Chessie. Hex's throughput is 850, Sub Terras is 640/680. Bubbleworks doesn't get over 600, Tomb doesn't get over 600.

Hex isn't unpopular.. it has a throughput of 750pph and most peak times has a 20min queue. Families appreciate dark rides, however the throughputs of bubbles and tomb aren't anywhere near as good as Alton's counterparts.. let alone the fact there's way less rides at Chessington.. leads to a higher queue time.

There's a voice over in the station which has played on 5 minute intervals with 8 different speeches since time has began. They used to have a voice changer on it so he sounded better, but it broke about 10 years ago. Now he just sounds very excited. It is all part of the experience though, and is awesome "Nemeessiiisssss. Once dormant now resurrecteeeddd! *pop*" The ones I can remember: The one above Sit back. It's fright time. See the blood flow, approach if you dare. May be chained but still untamable. Are you ready for the awesome force? Pst, it's a PA system not a sodding tannoy.

I think they have. They've also changed their advert slightly for the summer - instead of this DROP, SPIN, WOO voiceover its talking about seeing their shows and entertainment.

Next week moderately busy cos not all schools have broken up until wedsish . Hold off til the week after if you can, you won't regret it.

I said it in my post ffs!!!! . Next week is quieter, 2 weeks time it'll be dead and well worth visiting. September is rather midweek from about the 2nd week onwards, however they also go down to 1 train at thorpe cos they believe in having queues, so it may be best visiting first week of Sept.

The only track I heard which wasn't Heide's own now is Battle Galleons on their version of Battle Galleons. Desert Race and Scream have music which was played at thorpe one time.. but that's thorpe stealing Heide's music rather than the other way around. IMAScores music makes the park what it is. Especially Fluggs and Colossos!!