Mark9

SO.. went to Thorpe yesterday with Marc. Good trip actually, Thorpes run of full ride availability continues and as it stands, is the best of the old three Tussaud parks. Started the day off by going to Stealth.Now this was a first...I have never visited the park and Stealth has been open on time. Well ladies and gentleman, boys and girls, I have witnessed a miracle as we got on Stealth at 9:30 for a front row ride. Having now ridden Blue Fire, I do think it is the better ride. However, Stealth does what it does very well and is still the only ride I go on still slightly scared. So really what I'm trying to say is... both are good rides and are Mark approved.Our next ride was Rumba for two goes rounds. Was nice, nothing awe inspiring though. Didn't bother with Inferno as it was closed and decided to ride X:\ No lights off. It wasn't bad actually, it's definitly a novelty seeing the ride in the light and just how compact it is in there. I just.. I can't help thinking the ride is so meaningless now. The order gets a bit blurry.. I think we next went on Saw and queued 30 minutes, then decided to just queue for Colossus because I love queueing. We queued about an hour for it and for some random reason, no one was using the front row queue so walked pretty much straight onto it. It was a very sly method of queue jumping as it wasn't intentional in the slightest. Had KFC, then probably rode a few more rides. We took advantage of the England game by riding Rush and Vortex together, both only had 5 minute queues so was worth the while. The England game totally changed the atmosphere on park though. In the morning the park was a very happy place. I liked the England flags on the top of Rush and the front of CCR and I had no pings of hatred from the England covered Stealth train. After the England match.. my there were glum faces. I hope no one was feeling suicidal yesterday...Thorpe have upped their game this year. They are finally in a position to say they are a fantastic park. Reliability is better. There's still the odd problems occuring but 95% of the time everything is going and the park is all the better for it.Stealth X2 (1 front row)Colossus X1 (Front row)Inferno X1X:\ No lights off X2Samurai X1Bear Hunt X1Saw the ride X1Vortex X1Detonator X1Rush X1Quantum X1Flying Fish X1Rumba Rapids X2

But they aren't crap. One bit. They may have lost one match, drew two and won one but they got to the world cup in the first place when so many countries failed to do so. I don't get the attitude that immediately says as soon as we lose we are a rubbish team.It's almost like people are trying to say germany only won because we were awful. No, they were by far the better team.

To be honest thats ludicrous. The website is an advertising tool, but it is also a means of informing guests about any potential problems the park may have. For instance, last year it said about the high number of school groups it was expecting during July. That's not putting people off, it's being honest with its customers which is far more important then the management packing the park out.It's all very well saying you can find out when you get there, but I'd be pretty pissed off if I came from quite a long way away to find out a ride has been closed for several days but it wasn't advertised on the website. And saying, call, yeah I could but 9/10 people won't as they don't expect rides to be down at all...

At my prom, everyone started getting stoned.I no longer talk to anyone from secondary school. That can't be a coincidence.. surely.

Could it be all the staff dressing up for the day for charity. OH MY GOD IT IS!Of course I shall not link to said photos as, well you know, merlin don't like staff on facebook showing where they work and so might issue a few firings

Part of him has Outfit.

Staff that don't even look at their rides? Rides so graffitied they wouldn't look out of place in Brick Lane? Rough, short and boring rides? A park that won't even put on a second train when said ride as an hour queue and can't even be bothered to purchase a second train for its second major coaster? A delapidated Zoo?A park that has quite literally fallen out of the 70's through a crack in time into 21st century Britain.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with not having a relationship at 21. You don't have to bow down to the pressures of modern day society and you shouldn't let it get you down. So what if you haven't had a relationship? You're 21, you're still young, you're going to unviersity, you have a plan for the future. Besides what is living anyway? I know you hate your aspergers but at least you try to overcome it. So many people wouldn't You're far stronger then you are giving yourself credit for.

Love you Dan.

Do you visit the place more then you actually work there?

Are you calling m,e a bad member of staff then Benin Anyone who has run a single rider queue will tell you they are absolute hell. The majority of single riders are selfish bastards and when they start telling you how to do your job.. well lets just say I'm glad they removed it from most of Thorpe's rides.

Get it right Peter..

What a match... Tennis players deserve so much respect.

(you are to by the way )

I'm a bit fed up of football to be honest. Particularly England fans who jump about from "we're the best" to "we're the worst" and back again within a few days. It means sod nothing.And yet all over BBC news it's how England won one match out of three. Jesus Christ, they don't deserve any praise as they got through by the skin of their teeth.The real winners today are playing a tennis match, carried over from yesterday, that has gone on for over 8 and a half hours.Currently it's two set points each and 50 points each. Thats real passion there, not 22 players randomly kicking a ball around for 90 minutes.

And yet some never shut up about it...

The old rock-work structure was close to collapsing. It was either goodbye rock-work or goodbye dragon falls.

I disagree with this. Battle Galleons is a clear example of how Merlin aren't all that different. Now admittedly I haven't ridden it since it's opening season, but back then even two months after it opened, half the targets didn't actually do anything and on our boat only three of the eight guns worked. I don't know if the blame could be put down at Merlin's doors because after all they are a multi attraction owning company and probably care less about one gun working on one of its minor attractions. But the point is, everything should work every single time without fail.

Peter mentioned something about themed characters in the morning rush and saying theres is the best ever.... it is.. in the Merlin parks. I hate comparing to Europa but its very hard not to. Over there you won't just see the characters during the morning rush and never see them again, they have the themed characters coming round the restraunts during breakfast saying hello to the kids. This in itself is such a small detail but then you get into the park and you see groups of themed characters all over the park. I really despise the merlin themed character thing. When I operated Sea Dragons I watched Spike and Cinder come out to that little meet and greet under Fury. They honestly stand there and if no one comes after two minutes they go.. whats the point in that. When I went to Parque Warner in Madrid, the powerpuff girls chased us through Cartoon Network village to try and hug us. It's that kind of effort which is severly lacking in our parks. Our parks have women in costumes, in Europe the actors become the character.The way I see it is our parks only care about rides and attractions in their first year. Look at the way so many Merlin rides have deterioated. It's not exactly Merlins fault, Tussauds did a lot of the damage but Merlin so far haven't really rectified the rides a hell of a lot. The rebranding has worked but what I would love to see (and this is Chessington specific) is them really going to town with what is the closest park to any European attraction by throwing money at the place. Retheme Bubbleworks, refurbish Runaway Train, retrack Safari Skyway and actually show that the park is more then just the new stuff. Because really the old stuff is what is keeping our parks alive at the moment.

Here is the post I deleted purely cause.. well I dunno just didn't feel right. Something else I've also thought of. I've had this discussion with Marc quite a lot recently. Basiclaly I've been invited to the parks a few times since I've got back and I've never had any kind of inclination to visit. Even when the boyfriend said "fancy going to Alton Towers" I immediately said no. My reasoning is just that I know it cannot live up to how European parks treat their guests. Marc said in conversation that the guests in this country don't expect amazing theming, they just go for high rides and cheap thrills. Which is fine but don't we want to be totally immersed in an experience? Don't we want our expectations to be smashed and to be taken away from the real world for 7 hours and totally enthralled? Isn't that why we really go to theme parks?You tell me.

People who, despite working at a theme park or even visit theme parks every week, decide to call forum users or other coaster enthusiasts geeks/nerds/losers/saddos/anoraks.What makes you so much better then the rest of us?

If someone put together a list of Merlin rides that need some serious TLC...........

We don't live on the forum kabz. Little alarm bells don't go off in my house whenever someone breaks the T&C's.

I don't think there is a single group of enthsuiasts that you haven't insulted