Mark9

See, this is why people should never post the things they've heard from managers or friends from the park. The 'rumour' is bang on though. Why we have to be secretive about a rocking tug, a frog hopper and a way past it Mack carousel I don't know.

I had a great time on my one visit of the year. About 40 rides, evacuated from Colossus, gorgeous weather, celebrated Vortex and Detonators 20th anniversary, Had a beer. Was wonderful. From what I can see Thorpe had been much more vibrant and reliable than Towers this year. I didn't visit in 2020 so maybe the year away did me some good. And I genuinely think an Annual Pass is the worst way to visit the parks. I used to be all for it over a decade ago but I think every visit, it loses that spark and enjoyment. It just becomes an obligation. Some AP holders think they deserve everything under the sun, that because they spent a bit of money, the park should completely ignore the every day paying guests. As one of those everyday paying guests, and someone who has been visiting now for 21 years (christ I'm old), I genuinely think I have more loyalty to Chessington, Thorpe and Towers then some of those gold lanyard wearing AP holders. Loyalty isn't how many times you visit, but the passion. I didn't visit for Halloween as for me its a complete waste of time. I hate the way guests behave at the Merlin trio at night, mazes don't do anything for me and the reliability of the rides across the Merlin group in October has been questionable.

A bunch of celebrities looked like they had a great time. No idea who they were mind.

If thats what they are offering, it probably is worth £150

Oh hi 'Fred'. I'll fill you in on my top five favourite theme park stories since 2014. 5. Everyone described Taron's second launch as 'sex'. 4. Energylandia added its 400th rollercoaster but I can never visit because Poland are a bunch of homophobic, back water biggots. 3. Thorpe Park's best investment was a bouncy castle. Chessington also added a bouncy castle but no one cared. 2. Ellens Energy Adventure closed in 2017 to be replaced by a Guardians rollercoaster, around the same time Tron started being built. We are still waiting. In that time Universal destroyed two B&M's but has already opened two replacements. And finally. 1. Frights nights is still a thing. It's played out girl, please just move on.

1) Yes 2) Yes Lets see what comes out of this before we accuse the park and maintenance team of gross negligence.

Ironically, it will still be the highest capacity rollercoaster at Chessington if it gets built. It's so refreshing that after close to two decades and no real major investments built in the park, that there is so much positivity in this thread.

I love how ugly it is.

I mean it isn't the woke brigade that jumped on this, it's just bots and trolls trying to cause division. The fact the original poster is an anti-vaccination, anti-lockdown, anti-mask conspiracy nut tells me all I need to know about the original tweet and in this example, its best not to engage at all as it spreads the rubbish further.

Triple Post alert. Lightwater Valley has been purchased by the Brighton pier group for 5 million pounds.

This is something I'm very glad about. The missing out row thing was performative at best. Have they jettisoned the cleaning thing as I didn't notice any of that on my visits this year.

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.