Mark9

Why do they insist on filling Amity Cove with so much stuff.

Its amazing how when I wrote about Colossus in 2012, I spent more time discussing Thorpe Parks history than Colossus itself. Maybe it's important to realise the sea change that this ride was. I can't imagine visiting Thorpe in the future without hearing that lift hill noise as the train disengages at the top or the odd shuffling noise the train makes as it travels the circuit. But then in 2008 it was unfathomable to imagine Alton Towers without the sound of Corkscrews motor echoing over the valley. And that was 14 years ago.

There’s been freight issues for over a year… it’s not just because of a car ferry service.

I do wonder if covid-19 hitting hard in December/January and the freight issues related to Brexit meaning the UK parks are in a position where things just aren't getting in to the country as easily as they were before. I don't want to make excuses for the parks but it is all a bit odd that none of them have had great starts to the year.

Is this actually the B&M 'surf;' coaster. The rumour came and went like a summer breeze and I feel like the park has said absolutely nothing about investment, neither have fan websites.

Bare in mind that December and January would have had massive covid-related issues which may explain why everything is far behind. That being said, a lot of European parks have had the same operational issues and still have been able to open with few issues. Merlin finished last season quite poorly and it seems to be continuing.

YAY! https://www.veejoy.de/en/series/the-construction-documentary

To be honest it’s one of those gimmicks that will last two or three years and then be removed. I really don’t see the point in it at all. I can’t imagine that doing Icon with spinning rows is going to be that great or better then the normal experience.

Nothing gives me greater satisfaction in knowing kids have to wait longer because me and my friends are taking up several row on the octonaughts rollercoaster.

KAREN GILLAN WAS ALSO IN DOCTOR WHO WHERE SHE BECAME A HOUSEHOLD NAME. DOCTOR WHO ROLLERCOASTER FOR CHESSINGTON.

It's okay, the name will change next year.

I'll ride them if I'm in the park and they have a short queue. In parks I visit regularly, sure I'll ride (Baaa Express at Europa Park for example). But say I'm at Kings Island, there's 14 rollercoasters to get on, I'm there one day in total. I won't be going out of my way to ride the Great Pumpkin Coaster as the bigger, more unique rides are far higher a priority. Our to put it this way, I wouldn't rush to Legoland Windsor to ride the Duplo coaster. So category C in general.

1989-2005 WAS THE WILDERNESS YEARS OF DOCTOR WHO OMG.

The only thing that requires planning really is restaurant reservations and booking your place in the theme parks. Even with that, we don't tend to eat in the super popular restaurants (Be Our Guest, Cinderellas Royal Table) so in theory you could just go to the park on a day and get lucky. Genie requires no forward planning, you buy it and then at 7am, WDW resort guests can book their first ride, non resort guests can start at park opening so staying at WDW does give you perks and benefits. The main difference is A) You now pay to skip queues b) There's no guarantee you get to skip the queues for the ride you want. A lot of it is pure luck and rides like Jungle Cruise, Slinky Dog and Peter Pan run out extremely quickly.

I felt inclined to write this, particularly as the world opens up and restrictions and barriers come further down. A big part of my Florida trip was Disney World. During the pandemic, my fiancé and myself decided on buying into Disney Vacation Club and essentially having a home resort at Animal Kingdom Lodge. We use points to pay for rooms and as a 35 year investment, we in the long run will save money. Disney World was the busiest I have ever seen it. This was my sixth visit to the area and baring in mind my last trip was in the middle of a Hurricane, the parks were in very different places. Covid-19 has meant the parks have fundamentally changed. There is now no FastPass, magic hours have completely changed. Parades are still not running, lots of shows are either closed or seriously cut back and you must reserve a place to visit the park. I'll do a run down of each park and the impact of the new Disney Genie system which has dramatically changed the parks in what I personally think is a hugely damaging and derogative way. This new system works at $15 a day per person and like fastpass prefer, you can reserve a place for your party to skip the stand by lines and get on rides faster. We tried this on three days of our visit. We also purchased the higher tier Lightening Lane twice on Rise of the Resistance to guarantee rides. Animal Kingdom Perhaps the Park that has seen the smallest changes since 2019, Animal Kingdom remains my favourite park at WDW and reminds me of Disneyland Paris in that there's a peace and a tranquility to the place which is missing at the other three parks. Despite Everest being closed in its further long term refurbishment, AK was wonderful. We got on each ride in the park on both days we visited and this was by far my favourite days. Genie isn't required at AK. It's rides get far less affected by downtime and with the exception of Flight of Passage, the rides here take a lot longer to get long waits. With all the trails, animal areas and rides like Kali River Rapids which never got a queue, this park is a dream. Hollywood Studios Now that HS is a park with 7 E-ticket attractions and one filler ride, its very much a park full of busy busy rides and very little stuff to do in-between. Rise, Smugglers, Slinky, Tower, Runaway Railroad, R'N'R are packed out attractions with 60 minutes. Luckily, the rides are top quality but HS lisn't an easy park anymore. We did get Genie on this day and our first pass was Slinky. Because of the way the system works and the eagerness of Disney guests, the first time available was 4pm. This locked us out of the system for two hours. At 11am we booked our second pass for Rock and Roller at 4:40. Our next one we were able to book was at 1pm and stupidly was Tower of Terror at 5pm. So our Genie was never going to be properly useful to us until 7 hours after the park opened. You can have overlapping times but it's incredibly hard to get earlier times without pure luck playing its part. Extra Magical hours are no more. Instead early opens are the name of the game with each park opening earlier to Disney World resort guests. Jury is out on this move but on this day we chose to ride Micky and Minnies Runaway Railroad. This trackless dark ride has a really disjointed narrative and to be honest I enjoyed the pre-show more then the ride itself. We got two rides overall on it and its okay. Doesn't deserve a 90 minute wait. Magic Kingdom MK is fundamentally broken. It's too busy, its worn down, its over-stretched, there's not enough to entertain 80,000 guests on a park that gets busier and busier. Increasing prices is not putting people off Magic Kingdom and Tron is going to compound the issue in devastating ways. When I first visited Magic Kingdom was lovely. Haunted Mansion, Jungle Cruise and Pirates to name a few had reasonable waits and you could definitely get your monies worth. No more. Jungle Cruise 90 minutes, Pirates and Haunted Mansion, 60 minutes everyday. Small World at 40 minute waits? People-Mover at 35 minute. Ridiculous. We did use Genie on both days because I think it is now the only way to enjoy this park but sadly it has huge damaging effects on non-Genie guests. IMO, Genie is too powerful at MK. The system is too cheap, the amount of good high quality rides is too high so having it means substantial gains. Reliability was also in a terrible place here. At one point Space, Thunder and Splash were down and across the parks so was many other rides. Epcot Finally, Epcot was fine. It has the most boring selection of rides compared to the other parks and whilst I like Ratatouille, I can wait 30 minutes in Paris, I will not be waiting 90 in America for the same ride with no real changes whatsoever. We had a lot of food in Epcot as it was the arts festival and there was some fantastic stuff on offer. Genie isn't very effective here as rides like Spaceship Earth, Living with the Land, Figment, Three Caballeros and Mission Space don't get anywhere near as busy as the big rides and with good planning we got on Testrack, Frozen and Soarin' relatively easily. So a mixed bag and I think Genie needs significant price increases. At the moment 50% of guests use it so the main guests get absolutely screwed over and Genie feels like a waste of money when it feels difficult to get reasonable times. The magic at WDW is still there but its strained, less care free and a little bit harder to find. A real concern as the chase for financial gain ramps up under Bob Chapek.

I'm having a quieter theme park year with more emphasis on visiting places and finishing off things postponed from the last two years. February - Florida March/April - Disneyland Paris 30 year anniversary trip May - Off to San Francisco and Hawaii with a small trip to Californias Great America planned in. August - Tivoli Gardens followed by a cruise to Norway and Iceland Definitely some Merlin parks and Blackpool thrown in as per.

Back in 2010 the first Harry Potter attraction opened at Universal Orlando and a single ride changed themed attractions forever. No longer were theme park fans really satisfied with cookie cutter themes with a hint of a story, immersion was now the name of the game. The area of Hogsmeade increased Islands of Adventure's attendance by 1.5 million guests, an astounding figure by any standard. Since the Harry Potter franchise has given birth to two further expansions and is now home in California and Beijing. But Universal isn't completely my bag. I prefer the Disney parks. Universal has so much dross like Jimmy Fallon, Kong and Fast and Furious. Those attractions just feel thrown in whilst every Disney attraction feels placed and fits in to its surroundings. Naturally Disney saw the success of the Wizarding World and went off first with the world of Pandora (and the guest favourite Flight of Passage) and secondly with Galaxy Edge. Now, I'd previously visited the Floridian version back in its opening week in 2019 and whilst I loved it, it felt like something was missing. Smugglers Run is great, the look is great but where was that top tier attraction? Rise of the Resistance was delayed due to technical issues with the attraction and would be opening later. Looking back it was a mistake to open Galaxy's Edge without Rise. People put off visiting until it opened anyway and the area was seen as a failure for a while by the media. But now, with everything open and the world now able to visit, how exactly does Rise fit in. This review will feature big spoilers for this ride. Scroll to the final paragraph for a summary with none of the spoilers. Rise of the Resistance puts you in the position of joining the Resistance and fighting against Kylo Ren and the new Empire. Unlike the rest of Batu which is basically a trading town, Rise is set in an abandoned ruins with the queue taking place in small rocky corridors. The queue is long and mostly outdoors It commands a waiting time of an average of 100 minutes and is by the busiest ride in Disney World. We were fortunate and that it was open on time on one of our hotel extra hours times and over two trips we managed three rides. Once you hit the batching point you are assigned a room, I'm happy to call this the war room. Inside, BB8 greets you beeping away before being shooed away with a holographic Ray who tells you about the mission and welcomes you to the cause of the rebel alliance. The door opens and you are now outside with Poe's X-Wing and your transporter awaits in front of you. You board and the ship takes off. You leave the planet of Batu and it doesn't take long for some Tie fighters and a Star destroyer to appear and trap you in a tractor beam. The captain begs you to not reveal the rebel base to the First Order. Your ship is boarded and you leave from the day you came in from (I cannot tell you what an amazing effect this is, no video can do it justice. For all intents and purposes you have literally left the outside world and are now indoors on a space ship. It's outstanding). You are now prisoners and surrounding you are storm troopers, Tie fighters and droids. The group is escorted to the prison cells. where you are batched into interrogation groups. The cast members are outstanding, calling people scum and coming down hard on dissent. Think Nemesis Sub terra but with subtle acting and not unnecessary shouting. You enter your cell where Kylo Ren tells you how he will get the truth out of you personally. They leave and then a secret door is burnt through by the rebel alliance. Another great effect. You board your vehicle and the ride begins. What begins is a tour de force of physical effects, screens and Disney firing on every single cylinder. R5 will be driving you to escape pods on the ship but this is a long journey and I probably won't do the ride justice with my words. To start off with your R5 needs to convince other vehicles that he is escorting prisoners. These are just the new ride vehicles going to the loading area but the story implies these are evil droids and I just found it so clever. You almost make it to pods when Storm Troopers appear and start firing at you. The vehicles head backwards and after two corridors enter a room full of AT-AT's. More storm troopers appear and Finn appears from behind some crates and urges R5 to take you down to the pods. Instead the lift takes you half way up the building and out into the control room of the Star destroyer. Kylo Ren and Hux are here, discussing the torture of the prisoners (ie Us). In front of them, rebel ships appear for the attack and Kylo turns around and sees us. He gives chase, first attempting to use the force to bring us back, luckily some doors close on him. We then head into a lift shaft but his light saber appears through the ceiling. We escape and head past some gun turrets firing at the rebel ships. These weren't working on our visit but they are supposed to move back and forth and your vehicle is supposed to move back and forth between them avoiding the gun fire. `You take a turn to the left and the rebels score a hit with the room being half destroyed. Around another corner and Kylo appears declaring your end. But we are in luck as another rebel hit reaches his target and it is implied Kylo is blown out of the ship. R5 takes you to the escape pods which works in the same way as a towers of terror lift shaft with a star tours motion simulator screen. You really feel like you've been jettisoned out of a ship and are crash landing onto Batu. The Vehicle exists the pod and you are now back outside and have successfully defeated the First Order, hooray. It wouldn't be an understatement to say this is one of the best dark rides ever created. Disney have taken all of their 65 years of theme park knowledge and it feels like everything has been put into this ride. I was mightily impressed by every trick in the book being used to create this attraction and the perfect integration of screen based media and physical effects to put on the show. It works incredibly well and it is a miracle that it works as well as it does. Back to my original point, Galaxy's Edge needed Rise because it is the main event, the reason people want to be in a Star Wars themed area. it is incredible. This is an attraction that on a first ride will shock you and surprise you consistently. And that is more then 99% of rides out there can ever hope to achieve. A triumph in so many ways.

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

No VELOCICOASTER IS THE BEST RIDE EVER. NO ICE BREAKER IS THE BEST RIDE EVER. NO IRON GWAZI IS THE BEST RIDE EVER. I understand this is the Florida discourse here.

My sole memory is riding Flying Jumbos in that area and not wanting to go up into the air so we just stayed on the ground. Bare in mind I was 4 at the time.

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.

Woo, the ride that everyone hates is coming. 🥳

The owners of Flamingoland donate to the conservatives so I can't say I'm sad.

This ride is cursed.

More importantly, does this make it a new cred or not? It's not a full on new coaster after all..