Mark9

After seeing what 12 million bought us with Stealth......

Went up for the Farewell Corkscrew event. I think emotional is pushing it but there was something definitely odd about the trip. Got there about opening time and ended up in the Corkscrew Hall of Memories first. Lots of Corkscrew memorabilia and posters dedicated to Corky, certainly hit home what an icon it was back in its day. They were selling Corkscrew posters and Corkscrew last day T-shirts. I would have bought one but.. well.. didn't want to.Headed to Nemesis which, as always was awesome. Air was great too although had a 5 minute silence for remembrance day in the station. Very surreal as normally its all hustle and bustle. Duel was as great as always, Blade was well crap, RMT fun, Marauders Mayhem awesome, Oblivion off the scale, Spinball good, Rita painful in the rain and then theres Corkscrew. I've written a few things for a feature I've written. Nonetheless today was all about Corkscrew. Empty train on Rita, 10 minute queue for Corky. Even though its apparently rough, crap and awful, today it was like so many year ago, the main attraction. Quite frankly it deserves it. I feel a bit gutted now actually.

I think I saw you. Was an odd kind of day actually. I enjoyed them but riding Corkscrew, knowing it was my last time was really bizarre.

Either unemployment city and survive on my student loan or get a job somewhere. To lazy though tbh

Saw XI (Its inevitable)Living on a Prayer or Summer of 69?

GayThe Eff Word or the C word

Last night was the best Chessington party I've ever been to and I am so sad that a lot of them I'll never work with again. Whenever you say you work at a theme park all people ask you is what is it like working on the rides. They are fun but like everything in life it is always about the people. This year I'm so upset to be leaving all the friends I've made.So yeah.. me is

Omg. Did you call two stalwarts of the coaster industry crap. Trains and Buses are both as bad as each other. Trains because they either leave too early or arrive really late or buses which get horrendously packed and can't cope with demand.Red B&M's or Blue B&M's

BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!Samurai is half the ride it used to be, don't even try and pretend you owned it in its golden years.JUST DIE!

Guys try and keep this off the forum, we don't want it to look like there's an inner chessie staff war do we (Although why is it Area 1 staff always tell people they can use there bubbleworks express tickets at Fury, or tell them that they can go on different RAP rides even if they are supposed to wait an hour)

God that says a lot... It would have had a queue anyway, 14,000 isn't exactly a walk on to rides number

I'm straight!

Are you being sarcastic or do you genuinely believe its great. (How about using the rolly eye smiley properly!)

That's exactly the problem with fastrack. It's actually a means to reduce the queuing time but its sold to guests as a beat the queues, walk straight onto the ride which creates the problem. Technically if you buy fastrack you still get on the ride much faster then the other queue. For it to even be 45 minutes, the main queue must be approaching at least 2 hours.

Shocking? Really? At Thorpe Park?

Try working at 7:50 at night in the bloody freezing cold at tiny truckers. I swear, parents who make their kids stay till 8 o clock at night just to ride Truckers and Carousel are sadistic idiots who would make their kids walk ten miles in the freezing cold to get a pint of milk. FROM A FRIDGE. WHICH IS COLD. ALSO

Interesting place to have a theme park discussion but here goes:-Thorpe park relies purely on the mazes at its fright night main events. I mean its fair enough, they are a massive draw for guests and their popularity means Thorpe don't have to do anything park wide. But why shouldn't they? I mean they make a hell of a lot of money at fright nights, it is after there the biggest two weeks the park has all year. So if Cwoa can cater events such as many actors around park, trick or treat mazes, Halloween theming dotted in and around the place and several smoke machines then why do Thorpe rest on their laurels and keep the smoke machines at the entrance, Samurai (that's never been seen before after all) and Inferno where the smoke machine is anyway. They don't need to do silly kiddy theming, they can be far more extreme with the theming considering the target audience of the park.It seems to be that with Hellgate and Assylum, they've got them set to a tee. Both have had great reviews this year and work well. The other two aren't nearly as good (judging by reports from you lot). So it seems to me that Thorpe know Fright Nights are a success, they put not as much effort into the event as they used to.That being said, Halloween Hocus Pocus this year is not as good theming wise as the last three years. Less stuff dotted around and less pumpkins. Still, they've got a smoke machine outside the Mexican diner and I could barely see to park Runaway on Sunday

Its a very good idea for a theme park but it was just built at the wrong time. With the global credit crunch hitting and the lack of interest in the park its had a pretty disastrous first season despite opening new B&M Led Zepplin and having some interesting unique ideas such as the Ferris wheel lift-hill. If it can open and recover well we're be hearing more things from Hard Rock.

Marc defending Thorpe to the bitter end as always. The money Thorpe makes from its millions of fastrack schemes per day could probably run the mazes for an entire year. As could pissing off hundreds of people as its star attraction launches a train every ten minutes.

Do it(I apologize fellow admins and moderators but this is something I must see!)

Your turn first Simon

Thats such a moot point. If people are travelling 100's of miles to be at Chessington they probably wouldn't be able to access the internet that easily. If they did its doubtful they would cancel a trip on that basis anyway. Secondly, as you said a ride status can change very quickly. I agree, should be on the website but Cwoa and Alton have never been good at that. We had no idea Hex was to be closed and I didn't know Oblivion was closed for the first day of my two day visit last month. Thorpe are the only ones who have ever been good at that sort of stuff. But that's the only credit I can ever give to them.

We need pictures of all these hot gay guys people..

That's true HOWEVER, at the entrance it was made explicitly clear Dragons Fury would not be available on Friday.

Hey Stealth Supreme, I'm about to disporve everything you just said, so enjoy this.Firstly the engineers attempted to get it open on Friday. They didn't succeed because the ride wasn't having any of it. I was in the park on Friday between 12 and 5. I saw engineers in the control box, on the ride platform and at the top of the lift hill.Secondly, Friday and Saturday had equal amount of guests. There was a couple 100 more on Saturday but not nearly enough to justify them closing Fury for a whole day just to piss a few people off. You may also notice Fury is back open, Bash Street Bus is not. The fact they got Fury open at all when it was due to be closed for the rest of the season shows that Chessington's engineers put their best into getting it open for half term week should be complimented, not criticized just because it wasn't open on your visit.Frankly your point about Falls and Tomb is neither their nor here. Fury's staff aren't just split round those two rides, they aren't part of the same area. To add to this it costs more to run Dragon Falls per hour then Fury so surely if they were cutting costs they'd get Fury open straight away.Now Stealth, here's the crux of things. Alex and I work at Chessington. You can believe what you want but when we say they were trying to fix the rides, we're telling the truth. Its the same for all of the Merlin group. If rides are down behind the scenes the engineers are working their arses of to get them open.