exmouse

I was surpirsed too. We got there about 5 in the evening and stayed till the park closed at 10pm the queues never improved. Parque Warner had short queues on most rides except Batmand and Superman which were both 45 minutes.

Got back from 2 days in Madrid this morning. So can share some info you might find helpful. Parque De Attraciones nearest Metro station is Batan, forgotten which line it is. As you exit the station turn left, go down the hill under the train line and the park is on the right hand side. It is 26Euros for an unlimited ride pass. I was very unimpressed by the park. The queue jumping was the worst I've ever witnessed. In the queue for Abismo I was literally going backwards. Smoking is ripe in the park, ride operators do it and the queue lines are at times in a cloud of smoke. But by far my greatest concern was at no point did I ever have my lap bar checked. I find this appaling espeically on the likes of Abismo where you are completely dependent upon it. There wasn't even a visual check. There is no fast pass or SRQ at this park and the queues were very slow. Abismo and Tornado both 1 hour, Tarantula 30 minutes other rides mainly walk on. Parque Warner can be reached by train from Atocha Renfe station. You can buy a combined ticket for 33Euros which is park entry and return train ticket. You are given a receipt which you exchange at Geust services at the park for your entry ticket, they do have English park maps on request but they are from 2006. The train you need is C3, you have to get off at Pinto and get on the C3a and then get off at Parque Acios as someones else says. Trains leave Atocha Renfe at 02 and 32 minutes past the hour. Queue jumping and smoking in the queue lines wasn't anywhere near as bad as De Attraciones. I really liked this park and loved Supermand Floorless. They do have fast passes that can be bought from any of the shops. Hope that helps.

In the UK it is known as ERS. Exclusive Ride Session. I was under the impression in the US it was Exclusive Ride Time.

Make sure you check out Riverview park across the road from Mt. Olympus they have 1 adult credit and 2 kiddie credits.

They are very very cool. Luckily I'm at work so was able to nip into our outside broadcast store and swipe some off cuts of lighting gel. Do you have a website with any more on, if not why not it's bound to be a hit.

There is an aerial artist impression on this link where you can see how it interacts with their water rapids ride. http://coastertouring.blogspot.com/2007/05/20-spinners.html I was thinking of heading there this year. Have decided I might as well hold off till next year and go somewhere else instead.

There is a program repeated regularly on BBC3 called F**K Off I'm Fat starring a member of the Roller Coaster Club of Great Britain. Part of it was filmed at Alton Towers and Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Blackpool didn't come out too good for large people. Silly things like the old fashioned exit turnstyles caused problems, the now gone Spin Doctor and Bling were a no go. Your best bet is try to keep an eye on for the program and compare yourself to those in the program. Here's a link about the program http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/programmes/body_image/im_fat.shtml

Cheers for the quick delivery Robb, less than 10 days from order to door step on international delivery is great. Only criticism is the cases smell funny and the fumes had built up in the envelope.

The best way to get prices to go down is don't visit or buy the fast pass. IF no one buys them they'll have no choice but to lower the price.

Books like this also help you to win the games http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Amusement-Games-Revealed-Third/dp/0966965922/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-3707166-6400763?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178466163&sr=1-1

Isn't the grill a good place to mount the camera? Or is that not what you were getting at. What is the purpose of the large centre hubs sticking out of the wheels. Do they normally have those?

I use those at work and find it painfully slow and unreliable. 6 minutes to duplicate and print a 30 minute DVD isn't good. It often picks up multiple discs and gets its nickers in a twist forgetting where its already put a disc. We've got 2 and both are as bad as each other.

Denmark has some fantastic parks. Bakken and Tivoli are both great half day parks with classic Scenic Railways and modern stuff too. Both well worth doing if you are in the area. If you have time Bonbonland is good for a Benny Hill style day out. Talking of France what about Nigoland, don't they have quite a few roller coasters? As for Russia, I'm in the plaaning stage of a big trip there visiting Moscow and St Petersburg. There are quite a few small parks but the main ones appear to be Gorky Park and Divo Ostrov. The trip I'll be doing involves 5 days in Finland before getting a train to St Petersburg.

Went to Movie Park Germany last weekend as part of a long weekend of credit whoring. To me the park is bit blah!!! lacking that one amazing ride. On paper it looks good but there just isn't anything spectacular. As for the woodie Bandit they should have banned it. I manage to do the majority of the park in less than 3 hours only really avoiding the Ice Age rapids and the Top Spin. Anyway here are a few photos of the newly opened Sponge Bob Square Pants Splash Battle and construction shots of the new Santa Monica Pier area due to open next month with a Disk O Coaster, Ferris Wheel, Wave Swinger and Zamperla Fire Fighter. I guess this will be an entrance to the new area. Fire Fighter ride almost ready for action. The wave swinger is ready to start Schwinging Are enough rides built in Germany to have such a dedicated company? The next arm of the Ferris Wheel being lifted into place. In 2 hours I only saw 2 arms lifted into place. I'm sure it only takes Carnies this long to build the whole ride. Work is under way on the Ferris Wheel. Layout of the new Santa Monica Pier I think it's fair to say you get soaked on this ride. Finally it opens. Note I'm stood further away to avoid them shooting me. The big cheese. OK he's not cheese but he looks like it. At least the effects are now all working. More testing Sponge Bob tests still going on Sponge Bob still testing Sponge Bob

Imagineers must be near sucicidal after reading the comments posted on various message boards about Monsters Inc Laughter Floor. I know Tussauds managers regularly read a few of the UK message boards so I guess it's inevitable that companies like Disney would do the same. I've yet to see any of the suggestions about Tussauds parks ever appear in reality though.

Or Zamperla, or Fabbri, or Golden Horse

Here is an excert from their press release I got today. The London Dungeon has announced its largest development to date with plans to open a groundbreaking £1.5 million drop ride this Easter. Due to launch on 30th March, Extremis - meaning ‘at the very point of death’ in Latin, will see visitors stand in the shoes of the first prisoners hanged at Newgate in 1783. After being transported from their ‘cell’ by the hangman, riders will be placed back to back in the ride which will be taken to the top before dropping them to the floor. Oh and it is being supplied by ABC Rides.

I personally use Avid Express Pro, which isn't cheap, however they do a slimmed down free version, which depending on how complex you want to get might do. For effects as long as you don't want more than 2 video layers you'll be fine. Worse case scenario you do a video mix down and add another layer. Just do a search on Avids website for Free DV and you should find it.

I have mixed feelings on this one. I think it's good that Tussauds is owned by an amusment industry company rather than investment capitalists. However should they get much bigger we could lose competition in this sector thus driving up prices and a decline in investments. I predict that certain parks will see the addition of mini Legolands and Sea Life Centres. With Legoland Windsor and CWOA being so close and competing for the same market I suspect we'll see CWOA becoming more of a zoo. They already have lots of animal exhbitis and in the past 12 months have added and redeveloped more. So to parents and families the two parks will offer different days out. It would also be natural to add a Sea Life Centre to CWOA to stick with an animal theme. Although I gather this may already be happening with Legoaland Windsor. I can't see Thorpe changing much as it doesn't have a local competitor. The Sea Life and Lego brands wouldn't fit in at Thorpe. In terms of what's coming next I would be flabbergasted if it tursn out to be a 4D coaster. Given all the issues they've had with Rush and Slammer not sure they'd rush back to S&S. Plus as has already been stated size would be an issue. Having ridden several floorless coasters I don't get the hype. As sit down coasters they're great but the floorless aspect is a gimmick only good in the front row. Not sure what I'd like to see added to Thorpe but it better be something decent as Thorpe is lacking a good coaster. With regards Alton Towers I'm wondering if this buyout has lead to there being no progress with the new area and Woodie. I doubt DIC would make a massive investment at a time the sale of the business was in the pipeline. As to whether Merlin will continue with the project who knows. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets dealyed and opens in 2009. Given that Merlin are planning a new Legoland in the US I think we can rest easy that they plan to expand the business rather than shrink it. I only hope they don't go for a Six Flags cookie cutter plan.

Many congratulations, good to hear you're all doing well. Out of interest was the birth as painful as a ride on Gouderix or a Vekoma Hang 'n' Bang?

Barely a week goes by that there isn't a repeat of a coaster program on Discovery or Sky Travel here in the UK. At the moment Park Life (Alton Towers fly on the wall) is being repeated on Sky Travel. We sometimes even get coaster programs before the US, the Voyage/Rumbler/El Toro and Tatsu specials are examples. Last Autumn I worked on a program for the National Geographic channel that should be shown sometime soon.

Those LCD players (why didn't they go for DVDs?) were a nightmare and part of my responsibity as an entertainment technician. At least once a week I'd have to go and reset them in the middle of a meal/show. Were you onboard the night of the power failure when we were minutes away from having to evacuate the ship? Due to leaving late we tried to make up time but over laoded the generators and they all failed. In Wavebands some of the Frequent Sea played accapella to entertain the guests. We moved osme of the emergency lighting to create some spot lights. Or the night one of the deck hands had a go at steering and did the equivalent of a hand break turn. Bottles fell of shelves in the bars, people fell over etc. I was training a guy to do Mickey Mania in Stuido Sea when his chair start rolling through the tech booth. I had to grab hold of him and hold myself up at the same time. Or how about how the ship smelt of puke and orange freshner during Hurricane Floyd. The crew beach on Castaway never did look as good after Floyd. Those were the good old days.

Not quite sure what little tune you mean. Each area of the ship has different background music. It use to be a case that each area had a dedicated CD player that would loop. So you'd only hear the same song every hour or so and that's assuming you didn't move around the ship. I know when I went back in 2005 the music in some areas had been updated. Studio Sea had lost the god awful compilation of old TV theme tunes (Brady Bunch, Mister Ed etc.) and had more contemporary music. The Atrium, Buena Vista Theatre and Walt Disney Theatre were the only places you'd hear endless Disney tunes. One of the biggest frustrations when I went back was seeing lots of theme effects either broken or not being used. One of the reasons is over the years they'd been forgotten about and the information hadn't been passed down.

This is perfect timing. I was part of the inaugural installation team on the Wonder and loved it. I always said I'd go back and do the next DCL ship. And these new ships fit in with my schedule nicely. The good thing is my old management team are still very much involved and during my honeymoon in 05 they spent most of the cruise trying to convince me to come back. Yes there are some horror stories from Frank and Terrys ship yard. There was one day we'd isntalled some cupboards in our technical area. Came back a couple of days later to find ducting had been fitted in the room. We could no longer open the cupboard doors as the ducting went through the centre of the small room. Then there were issues like most of the technical kit being 220 volt (since it was purchased in Europe) then the spare parts we were given were 110volt since the parts were sent from the US. We were told back in 99 that the plan was for 6 ships running in different areas around the World but they were waiting for the exchange rate to improve and the cost of steel to drop before commencing the next ships. Fingers crossed I'll get to work on these babys.

Intamin do a powered and non powered version. Whether this refers to how it travels around the track or the spin as well I don't know. The one being built in Finland has a chain lift, not sure about this one.