Fred
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Posts posted by Fred
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Whats the difference between this and my poor old other poll topic?!
Anyway:
Best Paid: Sanctuary
Best Free: TOTT
Overall: Sanctuary.
Sanctuary was little short of perfect for me - I dislike stupid strobe mazes at the end, thoroughly dislike them. But other than that, I adored this maze. I was literally in immersive heaven. I was going home and dreaming of it, it was that good for me personally. Yes, I was happy.
Why are none of thorpes mazes in the tops for me? Because they're all samey and boring. They can try and scare, but I don't get scared by anything in the mazes so that'll bore me. Storylines and immersion wins hands down with me.
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Enterprise needed work done to it though - by end of year it was pretty much knackered apparently.
It was a case of either replace, or scrap.
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Wah I wish I used skype.
Damn young people and their technical abilities.
- pluk and Phill Pritchard
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Err, amazingly everyone would have the same view here. The only one's who don't are people who work at the park (this topic is obvious who does), and people who protect the park because they are used to the status quo.I think the main issue here is between what enthusiasts expect from visiting the park and what the core audience expect.
If you asked a guest if they would like to visit a park, have no queues because the rides on two trains on offpeak days.. or visit and have 40min queues because the rides on one train and they're selling fastrack for it.. We all know, ALL know, what the answer will be.
Ultimately, thorpe has this awful status quo and attitude towards its guests. This is something which should, and needs, to be challenged. Otherwise nothing happens.
For the "long hours" thing. Towers engineers work 6am - 1030pm on the split shift. They managed to have Nemesis on two trains every single day this season (albeit about 3 days of it coming out by 11am due to maintenance). That's one example - coasters are always available for full service, only one's which run on less is when they have dual stations (Air and Oblivion) which can increase and do so. There is no excuse. None.
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H&S is a very subjective thing - majority of which are park implemented, not anything else - X could probably have a full indoor queue, as many many escapes etc, however it's uncomfortable to queue in there for so long with so many people, so does not happen due to "H&S".
Vampire and Bubbles is fine to have a full queue inside their stations, quite easy flow to exit. However, the fire door is/was useless on Vampire leading to many accidental openings and alarms. Instead of improving that system, they didn't like people queuing next to it - also when fastrack is in operation they don't like many people in stations as it affects fastrackers experience - so does not happen due to "H&S".
Rita has been perfectly fine until the incident this year, the park took it upon themselves to ensure noone goes under the launch track now, including queueline, rather than told from above/HSE.
Only one I can agree with is SAW really, as a billion steps in an emergency situation can cause problems. The building itself probably doesn't need ventilation systems due to the fact half of the building is just wooden slats with space inbetween anyway.
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I miss the days of Tim Burton music being played everywhere. Far more atmosphere, far more fun. Thought the tracks I could hear on monday were very.. depressing or dull
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They'll have records of you working there - they have to legally keep them for 6yrs. They won't keep personal details (such as disciplinaries etc), beyond stated times, usually maximum a year.
Not passing probation is different to being sacked or being blacklisted, and you're older so attitude is likely to have changed. Just state you worked there, and should be okay.
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I hate the excuses for thorpe one train - it's not required, it's not needed. They seemingly never are doing any maintenance with the other train. It's just sitting there.
They're aiming at guests going during offpeak times, yes. So is towers. Do you see towers running one train Nemesis? Air runs one station until the queue is 20mins, to which point they'll open the other station making it full capacity with no queue - only time they don't do this is if one station is borked. Oblivion is the only one which can go slow when running "one station" but at least that's one ride, still capable of getting 960pph (16 riders every minute), rather than all of thorpes rides.
Guest satisfaction and enjoyment should be number one here. Thorpe rarely, if ever, seemingly grasps this concept. It's such an embarrassment for the merlin portfolio.
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I don't see why they're not at all - they save next to no money (maybe a whole one extra member of staff), yet make a huge impact on a guests day.
A manager stated to me reason why they don't do it, or takes a while is because it takes 3hrs to check a train. Not an excuse in my opinion, if towers can manage with exactly same opening hours (ala last couple of weeks of season), then thorpe can definitely do it.
As for Air - they'dve got that wrong. It was open 2 stations, 3 crafts majority of the day. Only reason one station would be down and a train "stripped" is due to a locking pin error. It happens almost daily on that ride, where they have to remove the hiberglass off one of the rows to remove and change the pin. It was on full capacity by end of the day. They don't do any stripping of any crafts whatsoever in the stations for winter work.
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Don't even need a headstart. They've got til late march to get rides done. Plenty, seriously plenty, of time.
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Warwick Castle is interesting in it's own right. It's okay, but extremely "merlin".
If you don't have a premium annual pass, expect to pay a lot to enter or do most of the attractions around the site. For free, there's a couple of shows, you can walk about in a few of the rooms (with added tussauds waxworks which makes no sense - speak to a guide and all of the figures in the rooms never visited the place), and you get to walk that 500odd step thing. That's a good view though.
Foodwise - they do an amazing carvery there. Amazing.
Apart from that, it's really just a castle. And if you like castles, it's better going to somewhere run by English Heritage.
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Definitely family orientated accomodation again, hence the 4 bed things.
Unsure if it says in planning applications, as haven't read them, but they are aiming to be like Centerparcs. I imagine it'll be for longer stays than hotels.
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Yeah he's definitely right - only a quick google search confirms that they Pizza Hut own and run the brand at thorpe.
Wonder if KFC is run by YUM! as well, don't pay too much attention to the registered business documents on the walls when ordering.
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Hotels, apart from this year, are usually fully booked throughout the season. Sure, they give discounts, but it's still a hefty profit in the making.
They know exactly what they're doing - and to have theming like this has actually surprised me. I know they're aiming for the multi-night visitors, those which'll also visit the nearby Peak District and stuff. If they end up being anything like this, well that's just impressive.
I wanna be a hobbit.
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The system, if indeed it is like Ian says, is flawed as sales can very easily ignore whatever live information they get fed (of which, I doubt is any), and just use their maximum fastrack slots available for each ride.
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So that's why they have problems then - at least both Towers and Chessie have maximum limits, and do actually sell out of tickets etc, particularly time slotted ones.
Shame/weird.
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Best thing about thorpe is their lack of sales and info points - it steadies the flow further of fastrack sales having one central unit rather than loads. If anything, sort out the queueline or increase prices so they don't wanna buy, rather than increase units - they'll just end up having same problems they had in first place, and reason they shut them in first place!
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^Is that in favour of fastrack, coming from a fastracker then? Getting front row of every other car is awful.
Don't blame poor retail benin, fastrack come under Marketing dept in all the parks bar lego, where it's concessions. Poor guys.
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There is literally two bits of track on carpark J against the side. They aren't fenced off, but do however have a sign asking people not to climb on them!!
London Dungeons
in UK Attractions
Posted
I think they are replacing pretty much everything as new. The rides are certainly new ones.
I hope it is as good as the current London one. I think London is the strongest out of the brand (having done all of them in UK this year), and would be a shame to lose it's feeling whilst moving.