Mark9

I'm going to be picky about one thing here and that is Merlin have always said they want to be second to Disney in terms of visitor numbers not quality. Secondly, I don't think we can criticise Merlin for copy/pasting attractions when Disney add Avengers campuses to three of their resorts and Toy Story play lands all over the place. Aside from that, full agreement. It just comes across as anti-competition.

My take on this is always, its personal responsibility. The park can do announcements and have the signage but when its all said and done, people will do what they want. We're 18 months into this now, people are aware they should stay distant and still choose not to. It's why I'm choosing not to go until the rides are back to full capacity. I think its soul destroying to be sandwiched in queue lines whilst half of the seats go empty. That isn't the park fault and even if the ride staff run at full pelt for 9 hours a day, those issues in the queues will still remain.

Felt the same way on both of my trips to Towers. The parks just aren't enjoyable at the moment. They're fine outside of holiday times when the visitor numbers are lower and you are able to keep distant. But at the moment, the higher park capacity mixed with the lower ride capacities that haven't caught up yet, makes for a miserable experience.

Didn't get to ride Gangster Granny as it doesn't work. Spent most of the last two days closed and when it was open 70 minute queue. After 18 months of being completed and sitting their stationary, its a bit poor for the new ride to not work well. The area looks awful in my opinion. Painting things purple does not make it a themed area. I also found it slightly odd that Cuckoo cars still exists in that form. Why wasn't it integrated into the new area?

Was at Towers the last two days and as much as I love the rides there and the gardens I think I'l stop going until the ride capacities are restored. Despite all the markers and announcements, the public have given up on any form of social distancing. On our first attempt to ride the Smiler it was like a special form of torture with only the odd group following the guidance. Not until does it not feel safe after a year of social distancing but it also meant it took about 15 minutes to move ten metres. So until the parks can fill trains to maximum, I really would say don't bother visiting until September time. It was also excruciatingly busy which seemed to catch the park by surprise. All fastrack was sold out, the rides were unreliable as hell with only the Wickerman from the main coasters not experiencing significant downtime. I really felt for the staff as well, the Smiler team in particular were working so hard but no matter what they did, with such low capacity, there's not much they can realistically do to reduce that queue.

I too hate it when people enjoy things.

You sound completely underwhelmed and unexcited here.

I get the viewpoint, I just disagree with it completely. There's no way the Smiler and the Wicker Man soundtracks for example blend into one just because they use ITHOTMK briefly. I don't think there's an argument you could use to make me believe those two rides are bland with no identity. I just quite like the use of the park theme in the attraction soundtracks. The island like no other theme is actually really nice to listen to in general and I weirdly prefer it in that Black Mirror snippet then the entrance one.

That station picture just screams B&M wing-rider to me. I just don't see a Vekoma junior boomerang and it being a 1.4 metre height restriction being added here, it doesn't exactly scream massive investment. Potentially a new type of Vekoma/Intamin wing rider train maybe? One of the images seems to show an inversion over the land entrance plaza as well, and we know what ride does that extremely well.. 😉 (I'm choosing to ignore their description of what the rollercoaster does at this time, a B&M at Chessington would be my childhood dreams coming true)

Interesting. A few of the Time Traveller videos discuss how they control the spinning to slow it down. This one just based on this video alone seems far more spinny.

Probably best not to make predictions, I thought Samurai had two days left in it and it ended up still being operational five years later.

Closed by 2023 is all I could think of to be honest.

I said this about three or four years ago when it and Slammer would take turns in being down for half a season. Then Samurai rose from the ashes and it has been pretty well behaved for a few years now.

I also had a great time the other day, just highlights how when the weather is great and the park is dead that a fantastic time can be had. There was a few issues on my visits, the amount of shutdowns was the most I've seen at a park and we even ended up being evacuated from Colossus. But on the whole, park was in a better place then I anticipated. Can't go wrong with two trains on all the rollercoasters. Samurai was on such a bizarre setting, it was slow as anything but really intense.

Yep Yep, fantastic additions to the park, Cyclonator is probably the best frisbee ride I've ever done. Crazily forceful and intense for a park like Paultons. Storm Chaser is solid Mack and the perfect family ride with kids absolutely loving it. I haven't been since 2009 and the difference between the new rides then (Cobra and the Edge) are like night and day when compared with what they add now. Lost Kingdom, Peppa Pig World and now Tornado Springs are such beautiful areas, full of things to do and packed with little theming areas that make the areas feel alive. Cobra's area feels like a corporate away day for big business in comparison, soul-less and empty. What Paultons really nails for me is the in between stuff. They know a park isn't just headliners, its about the little kid play areas, the restaurants, the little theming touches sprinkled around that engage everyone in the family so no one feels left out. Lost Kingdom just seems to keep going, the amount packed into what is in reality, a very small area. It's real testament to the owners of the park in understanding their target audience perfectly. Clean, beautiful, well maintained. Easily the best park in the country right now.

Good to see Chessington teaching annual pass holders the birds and the bees.

Does Chessington merge the fastrack queue with the RAP queue?

I don't even know what they can do as they've created this culture and that will be hard to break. Sometimes it feels like a lot of RAP users only seem to go too Chessington to exploit a system. I know that sounds incredibly ignorant but its hard to ignore pictures of Fury in particular. It never got to that amount of people waiting when I worked there for example.

It's a pretty small park. if you don't get on Buffalo straight away then don't bother with it. Other stand out rides are Shockwave (best pun ever), Maelstrom and Apocalypse. If you have kids, then Thomas Land is a must. if you don't then at the very least go in to ride Troublesome Trucks and the Toby the tram's spinning flat ride. it's far from being an all day park these days but it still has something worth doing.

Hard to not see it as extortionate and opportunist. It's a clown price for a clown park.

I thought it was going to have 6 rows so 7 is a nice capacity boost. The swift first drop that made its debut with Oz'Iris makes me wish B&M hadn't stuck with the pre-drop for so long. I also like that big bulky support. This should be good. Might be one of the last B&M inverters to be built as well so I hope its a good one to bow out on.

2021 Edition Part two. The other day, someone said Steel Vengeance was over-rated. I'm going to stand out here, shout to the world that if you decide to refer to something as over-rated then you have no critical discourse whatsoever and you need to pick up a thesaurus and learn some new descriptive language. Saying something is over-rated is the laziest critique anyone can possibly muster up because it requires no explanation and only looks to disregard peoples opinion. It says to others, 'sure you like a ride but thats only because you're following the crowd. No, I am the only true oracle, the only one that can see past the rose tinted glasses of hype and I stand before you now to tell you that you're a blind sheeple. Follow me, I declare that Steel vengeance/Taron/Nemesis/anything people quite like isn't as good as you think it is'. Under-rated is different. There are so many attractions out there (Alpina Blitz at Nigloland for example) that fall completely under the radar and deserve to be spoken about more. The term under-rated is actually quite nice because it can be used to inspire people to try something or go somewhere they wouldn't necessarily go to without the recommendation. Over-rated is an awful awful phrase and looks to just belittle others viewpoints and enjoyment.

2021 edition Part 1 People who think in a Nemesis vs Nemesis Inferno poll, that preferring Inferno is a controversial opinion. It's not, it's completely understandable and is discussed almost weekly by twitter coaster enthusiasts. People who think Southerners hate Blackpool Pleasure Beach because its in the North. What kind of stupidity is that? I also hate Margate for similar reasons to the town of Blackpool for the sole reason its an absolute dive. I really think its ludicrous that people will completely dismiss rides like Icon and Helix because their launches aren't as good as other rides. It's also equally as ludicrous that the respective parks sell the ride on the launches alone when they are nowhere near the most interesting part of those rides.

I mean you wouldn't when you have another four Legolands to build.