Mark9

We should continue to compare Merlin to premium theme parks as that is how they price themselves. Ryanair don't price themselves like they're BA.

'Rooms'

What annoys me more is that Merlin food used to be pretty good and pretty affordable. But its completely the reverse now and the crap you get is no where near worth the money. I'll pay the premium for good food but I'll spend as little as possible if I know the food is questionable. And as I'm more then willing to shovel out $80 for a meal at Tiffins in Disney World, the fact that I really don't want to spend £10 for a burger and fries at The Burger Kitchen says a lot.

Supports are being installed, track has started to arrive. Ginger and Brown from twitter posting pictures of the installation of the track.

I'm sure Sony are impressed that Merlin are completely incapable of negotiating with the engineering team and stopping these strikes.

An absolute crime that Parc Asterix only has five pages of discussion whereas Port Aventura has 26. Anyway.. Toutatis is great. Top notch. I was worried about the pacing of the thing, especially as similar like Taron and Taiga are very well paced. Nothing to worry about though, this is a very fast rollercoaster with the most aggressive ejector air time I've experienced so far. Those little launch dips are just fantastic. The rest of the ride is also very pleasing and we had about 8 rides on it over two days. I didn't have a favourite seat preference. Loved the front and back equally. Definitely my favourite Intamin, traditionally, I'm a bit luke warm with their rides but they've really made a step forward since Taron. Oz'Iris, is excellent. It's just the best B&M inverter out there right now. It combines the whippiness of Nemesis with the weird floaty air time of one of their hypers. There's so much air time on Oz'Iris or zero g feeling, it's very odd to describe because aside from Monster, no other inverter rides like this and it's absolutely joyful. It's a shame that only Banshee and Monster were built after Oz'Iris, because actually, Oz'Iris feels like a proper evolution of what B&M were doing before. Managed eight rides, should have done more. Pegasus Express is lovely, we had three rides and really enjoyed each one. Chessington should really be getting something like this, not a wing rider but I digress. High capacity, lovely moments, fast and snappy. Really accessible for everyone. Tonnerre 2 Zeus was odd. Should have really re tracked the whole thing as there's a significant difference between the old and the new. It makes it a very mixed ride. I still enjoyed, but I also felt like there's a missed opportunity here. I don't like the trains. Really chunky, giant restraints that reminded me of Maurer Sohnes X car ones. A lot has changed at the park since I went in 2017. Every rollercoaster now has a batcher (before it was a free for all), operationally everything was on point and the staff work bloody hard to fill seats, even when the ride is walk on. Twice on Oz'Iris, they were making us run through the queue to fill two seats. Literal walk on. I don't know if we hit a quiet day as Toutatis queues were all over the place. From 90 minutes, to 20, then back to 45 and down to 15 then up again.

Don't be silly, they only do things like this for rides that people actually care about.

Nah, I don't believe that. Have you seen how awful all their signage is. Yikes.

Reality is a lot of AP holders are RAP holders. Therefore know how to exploit the system. And on busy days like Easter and Halloween, this will happen every single time. I don't think it can be fixed either, unless you made the queues wheelchair accessible and severely limited what qualifies for RAP and even then, I don't think Merlin would do it. Also, the really awful reliability and operations at the park are making this process 10 time worse.

The 5 minute queue time will be seared into that board by the end of the season.

Frankly they aren't interested in creating memorable experiences from a management level. There's no care for what the parks actually are, what they are supposed to be. It doesn't matter how fantastic Dragons Fury looks for example if you cannot get on the thing. They are heading for massive issues if Mandrill doesn't deliver the usual B&M efficiency and reliability. But even then, that one ride is not going to be enough when the rest of the park is like this.

Rattlesnake did open and it was displaying an 140 minute queue. Which is possible as when I went it was on a three car operation. It's unbelievable incompetence. Something is fundamentally wrong with the Merlin parks.

It could be coincidence. I don't know for sure. I just know Hex was closed nearly all of last year until Duel closed and then suddenly Hex was back. This year, they both operated for a few days and now Hex is just down as 'closed all day' on the app.

It really really really annoys me that Towers seem to have taken the decision that Duel/Curse of Alton Manor and Hex can never be open at the same time. In a park with frankly appalling ride offerings and ride availability, it is unacceptable that these two rides can never function at the same time.

Why are you excusing awful quality and excessive price rises?

I'll give you the Smiler and Saw and thats it. The only other rides I could think of that could have OTSR are Rita, Stealth & Desert Chase and at the time all Intamin accelerators were getting OTSR because of lap-bar concerns on intamin megas. Colossus also at the time of its construction wouldn't have had the option of OTSR. Otherwise I think it's just British culture. If you've worked on a ride platform in the UK, you know British people must be some of the most neurotic guests in Europe. Icon for example, worked great when it was just the bar but now with the seatbelt, its had a big effect on capacity.

I visited yesterday and some thoughts and bear in mind Chessington is a rose tinted glasses park for me- This park isn't really ready for Easter. It's going to struggle with one train on Vampire and what looks like to be only four functional cars on Rattlesnake. The second Vampire train is located just behind Scorpion Express at the moment. They also have 12pm opening for Wild Asia, Tiger Rock and Zufari. Which is fine, the park was pretty quiet. But three of the six weren't ready for 12. Scorpion Express's train has returned and was being put back together on the ride. So thats good. It's wonderful that they've done big projects like repainting Fury or the ground work near the Main Entrance. They need to go focus on the small details now. Some of the theming across the park is really aging, worn away and looking pretty shabby. I know, I want the world. The staff were absolutely miserable. The odd smile from a retail staff member was the best we really saw. But I can't help think this is from the top and some of the situations the staff seem to have to deal with. Like on Vampire they don't fill the station anymore. But they don't have someone batching people into rows, instead, the on load platformer has to do it. But on my ride, whilst she was checking bars, the people started batching themselves. Which meant she had to start shouting at all the guests (because the music is loud), the operator had to make an announcement. It was just very disorganised. When the park is this quiet, is it really necessary to stop us at the batching area or still continue to batch people into rows. Breakdowns. Oh boy. Lots of them. We got caught in a Kobra, Rattlesnake and Fury shutdown and we saw many others including being evacuated from Tomb Blaster. To clarify Fury wasn't a breakdown. It was an alignment gate issue. But because of the stupid rules inflicted top down, the attendants can't solve it. An engineer and management has to. So you stand there and wait and three managers turn up. But they cant' do it without the engineer. So you wait for the engineer. But they are probably attending another breakdown. You just wait. It's infuriating that what is a ten second fix becomes a ten minute shutdown. I bet the staff on Spinball, Tarantula, Salama or Winjas don't have to put up with this nonsense. If the issue is mistakes in the past, then have a well experienced platformer there at all times who is trusted to fix the alignment gate. Don't bold up 100's of people. It's so silly. Tomb Blaster evacuation Now, for a company that is obsessed with health and safety and the risk of death, this felt really haphazard and very perculiar. We got stuck in the first show scene and had to walk back to the station area. Yeah that fine. At the time I was slightly amused at the lack of communication from the ride hosts. They didn't tell us to hold onto the handrail or stay away from the big massive drop from the evac stairs to the track trough. This is a ride that 4 year old kids can go on after all, the one in front of us kept veering towards the drop. Towards the station you cross the transfer track and again, massive steps for young kids, no warning signs or communication from the staff. I had a good day and the work in improving the park has made the place look in parts, much better. But it's quite clear that the park is struggling on a lot of fronts. It was nice to see Mandrill but I'm worried that this shiny new ride will only highlight the sharp edges elsewhere.

Not really sure how it's taken them two decades to realise they were under paid and undervalued. There was never enough of them even in our time when we worked there.

Maybe they are managed by Amanda Thomson and actually have no idea on any project and how far its progressing.

I can't wait until everyone realises they actually hated this ride again. 2012 really was a magical time. (I loved it until they added the scare maze at the end, felt unnecessary to me)

Current Dragster update The rumours are for a swing launch with a giant spike. I'd be surprised if Iron Dragon is open for much of this season

They probably could have done a full re-track but they either couldn't afford it or didn't want to pay for it. I just can't get over the Thorpe park social media team for criticising Alton Towers for retracking Nemesis for marketing reasons. A theme park is a commercial enterprise. It's not done for fun or charity (Efteling excluded). They could have re-sold us Colossus as a revamped experience. Instead it's just partially retracked with the wrong sized track apparently and is just as closed as its commercialised brother up North.

Don't really know why they're being bitches towards Towers, whatever way you slice it, they are both closed with track missing.

Could you give us a run down of your day please. Why did you only get on two rides in seven hours?

I dunno, I just don't think Alty Mans is going to catch on.