Mark9

I take it you don't mean the gigantic shed ruining every photo of this supposed themed ride..

Gonna be dead. John Lewis Partnership has limited the numbers to around 6000 people for the trip.

It was time for the Stars in their cars parade. Not great to be honest. Part of the problem here is that it's just generic cars and aren't that exciting to look at. It also blocks off the entrance/exit to the park so want to leave, nope you get stuck. Want to get on Tower whilst its quiet, no you have to wait for the Parade to pass. Not the greatest planning. Not long Remy, Not long... With the parade over and the two shows not starting for a while, we headed back to Toy Story playland and had a go on RC Racer. Luckily the queue was only 10 minutes long as the ride is so short it does push its luck. Not a bad effort by Disney, it's just a shame you have to queue in the shed area next to the station instead of the cool race track part of the queue line. The ride itself is comfy enough with enough speed to satisfy even the most hardened coaster fans. After that it was Slinky's piece of rubbish which is the most useless kids rides ever constructed. It's actually a little bit insulting. Shortly before we rode. Cinemagique and Animagique followed. Love them both with Animagique having the edge. Any attraction that has Donald in a tizz is a winner for me and I particularly liked the show. Our final stop was Tram Tour which felt as useless and convoluted as the Florida version. The main problem is both have been cut down from their original intent. Here, with Ratatouille construction the tour feels in two halves. A long jaunt over to the water canyon followed by a tedious return journey through a set of a film know one even remembers let alone heard of. We queued a good half an hour for it and it wasn't worth the wait. The queue was only that long due to only running two trams. With day at Studios over it was time for steak in Disney village before returning to Disney Parc for a trip on Dumbo and another showing off Dreams. Love that show.

Magic Hours just gives you part of Fantasyland and Discoveryland. All the times we went in for it, it was dead so there would be no point in the park opening for it. Buzz is crap in Florida so it is far superior in Paris IMO.

Double post because..

Had two rides on Smiler yesterday. Both were smooth and awesome. So far, so good, no Saw "I want to murder you" roughness yet.

I can round up my trip for you if you like. Shambhala - Awesome, as good as I remember and a proper crowd pleaser. Dragon Khan - Better then I remember. NOT samey, NOT too American. Just pure class from start to finish. Furius Baco - Abomination in ride form. Not a single enjoyable moment for me in any row, any seat. Just atrocious.

Admittedly when I saw the title I immediately thought you were talking about Inferno is a fine rollercoaster. Its lucky that not every rollercoaster has to be the best ride ever and Inferno has its place at Thorpe Park as the old reliable, the one that always works and eats through people like candy. It's my favourite Thorpe rollercoaster and this year has proved itself to be a great roller coaster; It's never ridden better then this year.

Add Baco trains to Rita.

83rd best topic on TPM.

I'll try to attend if we get rid of the name Maniacs.

Big fan of the lack of pre drop. What a colour scheme though, it looks so eye catching.

I don't know many people not going to Spain this month..

I can see Tidal Wave being added to that list as well. Rumba and Tidal Wave don't have very high ridership during Fright Nights and as some of the more expensive rides on park to run, they are logically the first to close. Surprised Tidal Wave isn't first on the list but then again they run that ride very oddly. On those freezing temperature days in March, Tidal Wave was one of the last to close.

It wasn't faff, at least if you were passionate about your role as a platformer, working on Vampire with three trains was The best experience you could have in the park. Managers and staff pulling together and working as fast and efficiently as possible to get trains in and out in 25 seconds. Of course I'm talking about a time where hey gave a damn about to roughputs ad reducing queue lengths. When it comes to it, Vampire will never run three trains again because it is cheaper to maintain two trains rather then three.

Day started with a 15 minute queue for breakfast. This was slightly chaotic with hundreds of people going for breakfast at the same time, a lot of people coming an hour early and not being turned away. Wouldn't happen at Towers From there it was on to Studios Park, our first stop Crush's Coaster. We didn't arrive dead on ten so when we got to Crush, the queue was already displayed at 60 minutes. We decided to bite the bullet and just go for it. This was the only ride where we saw a queue line monitor, a staff member regularly throwing out queue jumpers which was refreshing to see. Turns out, the queue for this isn't as bad as I first thought and its all down to Disney efficiency. Sure, this is a low throughput effort for Disney but even here the queue moves at a very steady pace. And its all down to the park running all twelve cars at once. As we watched we noticed cars are sent out every nine seconds. That is frankly astonishing to watch and throughput works out at roughly around 1200 an hour. So even for a low throughput affair, that is some impressive numbers from a Maurer. The ride itself is nice and quirky featuring some nice dark ride sections, a speedy lift hill and a reasonably good layout inside. I could argue that inside the shed, there's very little effects or theming but then again, its dark down below the water and the lack of things to look it increases the disorientation. This is far superior to Caligostro at Rainbow Magicland. Our next stop was Rock N Rollercoaster. Too say I'm not the biggest fan of the Florida version may be an exaggeration, here I find the ride just tiresome. I think the major problem is that for me, this just isn't a Disney type ride. Rip Ride Rockit at Universal Studios has issues but as a ride with a soundtrack it works fine. Here, Aerosmith just isn't a themed experience and I find the idea behind the ride so tedious. The theme here is... Aerosmith want to do something. I have no idea as unlike in Florida, the pre-show is very short and it seems to play continuously so you either walk in when its half way through or miss it completely. The station itself is similar to Florida except the cars are more pimped up and a tad silver. And as for the ride. I didn't notice how tedious the actual ride is in Florida because as the only upside down coaster at Disney World, it had a bit of difference to it. Here at Paris, which has Mission 2, a far superior version of what is the same ride type, Rock N Roller is just a little bit dire. Plain exteriors. Our next stop was Aarmageddon. Now I have a real problem with this type of attraction. If you told me that we were actually going into Space and we encounter problems then I'd probably come out loving it. But tell me I'm just an actor in a short scene being filmed for a film and I immediately switch off. It's exactly the same problem I have with similar rides in Florida. If anything, this is the only attraction that fits the bill of a studio park but I want to feel like I'm part of a narrative, not just being slotted in around loads of fire effects and smoke. Imagine if in the Hollywood Hotel you were told you weren't actually part of the narrative and just testing the ride system for the TV experience. It would be rubbish. Same applies to Armageddon so yes, probably my most hated experience in the day. Our next stop was Tower of Terror where we ended up queuing an hour. Crazy really, but it is the best ride in the entire resort so what the hey. After that we went for an English showing of Stitch Live where I was picked on by the character. I am Mark from the London and I am wanted for crimes against aliens. There we are, something new we learn everyday. I must have really bad luck as I was also picked on in the Laugh Floor in Florida.

Problem is someone joins the queue at 11am and queue displayed is 30 minutes. They queue an hour. They ring the helpline have a moan after their ride. By the time they've queued and got on, the queue may have gone down to 20 minutes. Thorpe recieve the call and change the queue to 60 minutes based on someones experience. The queue can change quickly so I'd like to know how Thorpe are going to base queue time changes based on how quickly or how slowly a queue fluctuates.

With my season effectively at an end, this is my top ten new rides for the year. Top ten new rollercoasters for 2013. 1. Juvelen. A sublime rollercoaster. Needs to be ridden to be believed. 2. Piraten. Two for two at Djurs Sommerland. Piraten is a perfect ride, particularly after several hours of running. 3. Rustchebanan (At Tivoli Gardens). Adore this ride. It looks so unassuming, then on you get and its fantastic. 4. The Smiler. Great roller coaster, sure it has issues but then what ride doesn't? 5. Wodan. A fantastic ride. Relentless. 6. Thors Hammer. A surprisingly excellent family rollercoaster. Very enjoyable 7. Big Thunder Mountain (At DLP). A decent coaster sandwiched between an excellent beginning and finale. 8. Space Mountain: Mission 2. Has issues but it is a very solid attraction 9. Polar XPlorer. A great beginning let down by a poor finale. That beginning is very good though. 10. Crush's Coaster. Big fan of this, the throughput is staggering for what is a Maurer spinner.

I'm hoping for an interactive laser mission ie Tomb Blaster or Duel. That would be amazing.

Of course they do. They make instant profit and have managed to make it seem that to enjoy your day, you need fastrack. Hence why people will queue immediately to buy fastrack at the beginning of the day even though the queues for the ride may be non-existant.

I have complained about it. Nothing has changed. I've done all I can to change the situation. Now I can just sit back and think 'Gee its ironic that all these people queuing five minutes for their rides are ruining everyone elses day'

With fastrack you still have the massive queues except you have half the guests waltzing straight onto the ride and the other half standing around having to wait double the time for their ride. At least without fastrack the queue continually moves and everyone waits their turn equally.

Don't make me laugh. Chessington gave me my first rollercoaster, my first upside down experience, my first taste of what a proper theme park is. Does that mean that an achievement 15 years ago, gives them the right to be operationally poor now, conning their customers with poor admission price bands, rides closed because of their own poor refurbishment records. No it doesn't. Why should the visitors of this season be hurt and its all fine because the park did something well two decades ago. It's not on. The thing is though, and I'm not saying Chessington are lazy here but we have seen parks all over the world complete ride layouts and theming efforts and in that time Chessington have managed to pull down the theming and paint the track. What if there is a poor winter and the Runaway Train ends up getting more and more delayed because they haven't started the theming early enough. What if the ride opens again in March and because it hasn't been running for over a year and half, is operationally poor and refuses to work. We've seen what poor planing has done to the Smiler and other delayed ride projects (like Chiappa at Phantasialand). Why have they done barely anything when they've had six months so far to start it.

It probably had a full inspection back in the closed season of 2004-2005 when all the track from the first drop and immelman was replaced to determine whether more supports were needed for the lift hill which is where the major wobble is.

With the rain coming down it seemed like everyone rushed to the nearest food place. As we were at the back of Fantasyland we were stuck with Toads Hall, a tinyish place which could't cope with the amount of people coming in. People were arguing and fighting over tables and staff couldn't control who was next in wait for a table. We were lucky, a lovely French couple noticed I'd been waiting the longest and offered me the table, even telling off others who tried to take it from me. We had fish and chips which was about the only interesting thing the place sold. It was fine and we moved onto Pirates of the Caribbean which was now open. I 100% preferred this version to Florida and I think part of it is that Jack Sparrow from the films hasn't been shoehorned into the attraction. The Paris version is just lovely to ride, full of atmosphere, high throughput and well themed. Really like the ending with all the skeletons as well. It's only drawback is that it is hidden away at the very back of the park and doesn't get the attention it properly deserves. With the rain getting heavier we decided to take refuge and do some indoory things such as explore Sleeping Beauty's castle, the cave underneath which rather shamefully ruins what is hidden inside because its called Cave of the Dragon. *sighs* The rain was in heavy heavy mood so it was back to Discoveryland to try out Space Mountain again and ride Star Tours. I've done the Adventure continues at Florida so I was interested into how this version would be. Thankfully the queue was only five minutes long so we got on pretty much straight away. It's so early 90's I can't help love it. Sure its completely outclassed by its sequel but its still a decent enough ride. Next was Captain EO which was just as bad in Paris as it was in Florida. It may have been made by some very talented people but each one got it wrong here. Embarressing. Cake was had on Main Street and we next attempted to get on the Railroad. The queue advertised was 45 minutes and we weren't sure how this could be. Well when you are only running one train on a very long circuit and no one gets off at your station then it suddenly dawns on you. This will be a waste of the time. The bigger curiosity is that the other stations weren't open to board the train. You could get off at Frontierland for instance but no one would be able to get on. So were people just going round and round on the railroad. Instead we walked back to Fantasyland and did a few more attractions over there including the Carousel and Mad Tea Party which we never got the chance to ride in Florida. I can see why we skipped them. And with dawn quickly approaching we took a last ride of the day on Big Thunder Mountain (Two train operation, Florida this is not) and headed to Main Street for Dreams. Dreams is absolutely stunning. I wasn't going to waste time watching it through a camera lens or paying more attention taking photos then watching the artisty in front of me, I wanted to enjoy the show. And it is brilliant, featuring some of the greater Disney songs like Can't wait to be King and Never had a Friend like me. I also never knew how popular Merida from Brave is but everytime she came on the crowd cheered louder then the others. I was also pleased to see Dr Facillier from the Princess and the Frog feature so heavily, a very under-rated villian. The finale is of course an inspirational song (second star to the right), a load of fireworks and lots of flashing lights. My kind of show! Dreams is as good if not better then the Florida equivalents, not to be missed at any time on a Paris trip. And with that it was sleepy times, ready for the next day in Studio Park.