Mark9

Rant: Airplane edition. The fact that you have to get to the airport really early just to make sure that you clear security without problems. After that, the plane is always delayed anyway so you just end up in the airport for four hours wasting your life. You arrive at your gate, they announce boarding. Everyone stands up and waits in a line even though everyone has an assigned seat No matter how organised you are, everyone around you faffs around when getting on the plane. They block the entire aisle trying to work out where their seats are or where to put their luggage. You find your seat, get down. Staff announce boarding complete. You sit around for another half an hour waiting for the plane to do something. Plane was supposed to leave at 14:20 but its now 16:50 and you're wondering if you are ever going to leave Gatwick. The baby/young child behind you (there's always a young child behind you) decides to either cry or kick your seat. This will go on for the entire flight. Plane leaves but now you are in an enormous queue to get to the runway because this country takes decades to make a decision on where a new runway is going to be. It's now 17:45. Plane finally takes off. Some idiot decides now is the time he wants to get up and go to the toilet. Staff bombard him saying how unsafe it is to get up during take off, but he doesn't care for he is English and he is made off stronger stuff. Plane lands, everything is fine. The other country is fantastic with little queue for passport checks and you're swiftly on your way. A few days later Naturally its home time and on this occasion the plane back home is now four hours delayed so now you're stuck at Gothenburg airport, all the shops and food places are closed so now there's nothing. Just empty time. You finally get on the plane just that little bit irritable. Pilot announces due to bad weather conditions at Gatwick, air traffic controller is advising another hour delay whilst they find a landing slot. You now want to kill everyone. Thank god you are on your way, but this time you have to face the dreaded passport checks at Gatwick. Plane lands. The seatbelt sign is turned off. Everyone decides to get up to get their luggage and just stand there waiting for the door to open to disembark. This takes ten minutes. You try to get through passport control quickly but unfortunately the plane is taxied as far away from the terminal as possible so after fifteen minutes of walking you finally make it. Due to Tory cuts only one border enforcer is working. You get through, now ready for suicide but unfortunately the door to the luggage compartment on the plane has frozen shut or your luggage has ended up in Lisbon. If you have managed to get through all that, the real nightmare begins as you either have to get a Southern service from Gatwick or the Piccadilly line from Heathrow.

They deliberately stack them now. Its ludicrous but they have little to no faith in their ride systems actually working.

The rumour mill never lies.

Both of your opinions on Swarm are probably in sync with guests in general and why it's rumoured to get some kind of gimmick to try and bolster its ratings. It makes sense that out of all the coasters at Thorpe, its one of the B&M"s that get it and I've noticed a slight resurgence of love for Inferno of late. It will just annoy all of us who waited for Swarm to quieten down to have a ride because that queue will never ever come down now. Operationally, VR destroys any throughput. I've heard that 10 minute dispatches on Kraken are not uncommon, that ride must be at least double the ride time of Swarm. It really highlights how desperate Merlin are to try and make everything they do a 'success'. Ironically, Swarm which is a ride that whilst never really hitting the mark with the general public, is the more valiant attempt to make a ride with a story and cohesive theming. Even if it fails on this, its definitely a better step then things like Storm Surge.

Best get our last rides on Swarm then.

I bloody love Mack. They take worthwhile risks with their rides. It's nice to see the Blue Fire spinning cars experiment has paid off. Just hope it rides well.

I'm a big fan of the Ratatouille place, you need to book a few days in advance I find as they increasingly close the place early at Studios. It's relatively affordable for a sit down meal and the steaks are good. I would say the chances of burn out aren't too high for the time of year you're going as Disneyland Park closes at 20:30, Studios 18:00. My only advice would be to take your time. DLP isn't like Florida where you have to rush through the park to get on everything. You can take things at a leisurely place and make sure you do things like the submarine in DIscoveryland, the dungeon under Sleeping Beauty's castle or exploring Pirates Cove in Adventureland. Also, with Illuminations the firework show, I've always turned up about 5 minutes before and got a good viewing spot. Unlike Dreams, you don't really need to see the projections because things like Star Wars and Pirates are just blurs on the castle.

I agree. This time around, I think this looks good. Obviously its had to use Mean Streak slightly but its the first RMC where I thought it has a good length to it and doesn't run out of steam after 20 seconds.

They're really struggling to get any interest on this. Merlin really are dragging their heels on everything their parks have to give these days. A new woodie at Alton, in the UK should be a massive thing.

Literal nazis marching in the US which Trumps fails to condemn. Trump bans Transexuals from serving in the army. China urges restraint over North Korea. Worrying times in the US.

Yay, more theme parks for Merlin to completely trash. The lack of vision or any exciting future for Thorpe, Chessington and Alton really don't inspire confidence that they could run the Busch parks well, aside from bleeding it dry from profits and budget cutting.

Surprise, surprise. You pay more, you get more perks. Thats the end of it.

Top twenty (I'm for the overkill here) 1. Katun 2. Nemesis 3. Superman de Acero 4. Blue Fire 5. Tatsu 6. Alpina Blitz 7. Oz'Iris 8. Manta 9. Taron 10. Helix 11. Shambhala 12. Kumba 13. Black Mamba 14. Dragon Khan 15. Juvelen 16. Wodan 17. Monster 18. Expedition Everest 19. Piraten 20. Euro-Mir

Pyrenees maybe. Can't imagine the likes of Talon or Patriot riding high to be honest...

And nor should it! I won't be going back to Waly unless they make a considerable turn around or add something that is irresistible.

It's not a clone reasoning, I find La Fuga a bit 'safe' whilst riding (I.e., a bit boring) and I did the Batman at Magic Mountain during its backwards phase and the thrill of the ride is completely lost. The dragons aren't great either but I like the gimmick behind them even if I find the rides a tad mundane.

I went to Walygator Parc the other day. I've heard awful things about the place. Truly awful. Whether its the closed down rides, the chipped paint, the queues, the roughness of the rollercoasters, Walygator has it all. I thought it was okay. To get there, we stayed in Luxembourg city and travelled down by train which takes about 45 minutes. (OFF WE GO TO FRANCE'S PREMIER ALLIGATOR THEMED THEME PARK) Our first port of call was Monster, the B&M inverter that originated in Expoland, Japan in 1996 and moved to France in 2010 after Expoland closed down. Now, unlike every other B&M inverter in Europe, Monster has no theming whatsoever. It is a B&M in field, a solitary patch of grass leading to the ride. The ride retains its white and pink livery that it had in Japan except now the pink has faded considerably. There are plans afoot for Monster to receive a theme change in the future, the ride to be painted brown and themed around pirates. Whether this happens or not remains to be seen. (who needs themed environments anyway?) The station is bare minimum which I'm fine with and loading is okay for a park of this type. They wait for the train to stop and empty before loading into batching lanes. Not sure why. Also, I hate that there is no front row queue and that fastpass people can choose any row meaning we just missed out on a front row ride. Damn. So the ride.. well one thing I love about Monster is its length. Whilst Nemesis, Black Mamba and Nemesis Inferno are great rides, they are short and for the time you queue, it doesn't always feel worth it. Monster goes on forever. Starts off with a very traditional inverter layout, which is forceful in a way that new B&M's just aren't. The snappiness the train darts through the inline twist or the top of the cobra roll are very enjoyable. Reminds me of Dragon Khan. At this point the ride does a few tight turns into the mid course break run. Which has no breaks because Walygator never intends to run three trains (they only own two and that might seem a stretch here!) and so the trim breaks were never built when it moved. This allows the train to speed along through the rest of its layout in a way that Katun, Montu, even its clone equivalent Raptor at Cedar Point can only dream of. The intensity of the two left hander corkscrews is pretty high and the train at full speed rushes through the final helix that is probably my favourite element of the attraction. So when it comes to it, how would I rate Monster? Thats a difficult question as I'm a huge fan of themed attractions, they do far more for me because the imagination that goes into a ride like Oz'Iris or Nemesis is far more fulfilling then a ride shoved into a field on a perimeter of a theme park. I do like Monster though, its nice to ride an older ride that has a bit of punch to it and you get a lengthy ride out of it. Suffice to say, it's better then larger American B&M's like Montu and Silver Bullet but doesn't quite match up to what we already have over here. A solid B rating probably fits. What is the longest ride in Europe? Derren Brown features up there, as does Temple of the Knight Hawk or many omnimovers.. The winner though is the fantastically named Walyboats which lasts for a rather spectacular 25 minutes. Exploring some countries around the world, this slowly paced ride will take up a good chunk of your day. It's not worth it. Brilliant. Anaconda is the parks second in command rollercoaster, this woodie had an horrendous reputation for its roughness in the past. No longer the case as its pretty smooth now but my god its boring. The ride has no airtime, it has no speed, the train just goes through the motions creating much no sensations or feeling. We came off not really feeling anything or having much to say about it. The parks other big rollercoaster is Comet, a Vekoma sit down attraction which was perfectly acceptable. I'm sure it has a bad rep but we thought it did its job without much fuss. The parks final rollercoaster turned out to be 250th rollercoaster. It was the perfect choice. Introducing.. Family Coaster We loved it. Here's hoping my 300th is something a little bit more memorable. We didn't bother with the rapids and log flume as they seemed to be running two boats each and 45 minutes for each seemed a tad excessive. There was a few spinning rides such as an Air race which did bad things to my stomach or a random swinging carousel which I'd never seen before. That was okay. So Walygator is very much a red park. Its not a terrible place but it clearly is the weakest park in France. The place just needs some loving from its owners to bring it up to standard. Monster is a great ride but it somehow doesn't fit with the other rides in the place.

Top ten B&M Inverters. 1. Katun 2. Nemesis 3. Oz'Iris 4. Black Mamba 5. Monster 6. Nemesis Inferno 7. Montu 8. Silver Bullet 9. Hungarian Hungtail 10. Chinese Fireball The ones who didn't make it:- Batman: La Fuga and Batman the ride at Magic Mountain

Oh no, I completely understand why people do the 1/2 day at a park thing. It's just not for me.

This is kind of the reason I don't do the credit running thing to be honest, if I'm only going to treat a place like a tick box exercise, then I don't see the point in visiting.

Of course. However look at the list of parks that the OP has been on, Thorpe would be a 'credit' run at best for him with the limited time he had back in May. Nothing at Thorpe really stands out.

Oz'Iris seems to be the most marmite of B&M's out there and for every person that loves it, I can find another that despises it. Ive loved it ever since my first ride and my trip this year only cemented that love. I like its unconventional layout, its near perfect zero g, the way it dives off the lift hill through the first drop.

I believe there is a difference between park and funfair versions. Thats a horrific incident and by the sounds of it, this funfair has very strict health and safety as several rides weren't open due to not passing inspections. That footage of the gondola hitting what looks like the floor/barrier is haunting and gut wrenching.

(Still better then 90% of Intamins and Gerstlauers)