matt_g

Reports that some kids broke in and operated Blue Flyer for half an hour in the middle of the night before being caught: http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/news/crime/teens-4am-joyride-on-blackpool-pleasure-beach-rollercoaster-1-7975556#ixzz4CHknq6AD I'm surprising they got it working at all.

1. DVD 2. Netflix 3. 6 4. Chromecast 5. Far more videos on YouTube

Does this event come well recommended? We've got a night free in the area and I'm trying to decide whether it's worth buying tickets for this, vs. doing 'general sightseeing' in Hollywood (or the LA area generally). We're already doing SFMM Fright Fest the previous night, so just a bit nervous that they might be too similar...

Thanks, I was worried it was worse than that!

Does anyone have up-to-date information on which rides at SFMM have a mandatory fluffy medicine-filled bunny policy? We're visiting in October. I don't usually carry stuff around, but my girlfriend wears glasses and takes them off before going on most rides. At most parks we leave them in a bag at the station. Where there are mandatory locker policies, we'd need to get a locker before entering the line. That means she is 'blind' while lining up, so we only want to do this when we have to!

It's down for me too, on several different internet connections. Think it's a UK thing.

I went to the party on Wednesday and we also had a great time. Little touches like the free chocolate on the way out makes you feel looked-after.

Not sure what you're smoking. Google maps says London to PortAventura is 986 miles, London to Europa Park is 534 miles - case closed.

This is quite sad - several of us went to see it during the Tokyo tour and it was absolutely spectacular. I also saw Kooza (a CDS touring show that happened to be in Tokyo while we were there) and it wasn't nearly so impressive as Zed. I struggle to believe it's because of the earthquake. Tokyo Disneyland was absolutely heaving (60 minute line for Philharmagic) but the show had plenty of empty seats. The ticket prices for Zed were insanely high though - I think my seat was 14,000 yen, and for that price you can buy a 3-day ticket to Tokyo Disneyland.

This is an insanely good deal and I have completely taken advantage of it! Thank you!

Does anyone know if the 'new island' is being built up specifically for this coaster? Or does 'new' just mean 'previously undeveloped'?

Downloading now and looking forward to it - thanks!

These Merlin marketing gimmicks are getting quite strange. I think it's pretty obvious that Thirteen will be open on Friday 13th (short of actual maintenance being required), just like they haven't banned people under 16 or over 50 from riding or limited people to 1 ride a day. I guess they've calculated that the associated publicity makes it worth it.

Thorpe Park, Legoland and Chessington are all fairly accessible on public transport from London - the journey time from central London for each of them is (very roughly) about 30 minutes on the train. You can easily get there and back in a day - no need to stay nearby overnight unless you want to. You can walk to Chessington from the train station, for the others you need to get a bus which takes another 15 minutes or so. Do you know where abouts in London you're going to be living? The actual journey time will obviously vary massively depending on how far away you are. Alton Towers is possible to get to on train and bus, but it takes forever from London and can't really be done in a day - for that one I'd recommend booking a hotel or B&B nearby and staying there for a night or two. The only major restriction on the London Eye is that you can't use your pass on it in August. I think the same applies to the other central London attractions (Madame Tussauds, the London Dungeon, the Aquarium) - frankly I think all of these (except the London Eye) are rubbish anyway, there are much better things to do as a tourist in central London. The actual train stations you want to get to are: Staines for Thorpe Park (then 10-15 minutes on a bus) Windsor and Eton Riverside for Legoland (then 10-15 minutes on a bus) Chessington South for Chessington (10 minutes walk) Stoke on Trent or Uttoxeter for Alton Towers (then 30 minutes on a bus from Uttoxeter, or about an hour from Stoke on Trent) For train times and prices, go to http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/ and tell it where you're planning to go from and to. One thing to remember before buying a Merlin pass is that you can pretty easily get "2 for the price of 1" vouchers for all of the Merlin parks, so if you're going with someone you'll need to go about 7 times for it to be worth the price.

I guess they've had complaints that the signs were inaccurate - but just giving up and saying "0 to 30 minutes" isn't any better! Not to mention that the stuck-on sign looks incredibly cheap and tacky, and not something that a major park should be doing. Now they'll get complaints when the paper falls off and the sign underneath tells people that there's a 1 minute wait...

Before they spent thousands implementing accurate video recognition software for on-ride videos, I hope that someone from Six Flags would think "I know, we could just type 'Medusa POV' into a search engine".

I am *really* looking forward to this now. It's not just 15 minutes of early rides on Medusa, it's 15 minutes of early rides on Medusa after a 45 minute exclusive tour and with another hour of ERT on other rides in the evening - and in case you didn't get enough time on Medusa earlier on, half price Flash Passes for the rest of the day! Oh, and I forgot, lunch and plenty of hours to see the rest of the park, and all for about the same price as normal admission. I almost didn't post here because it felt like things were getting a little bit heated but I thought I really had to point out that it's actually pretty obvious, even without being there, that masses of effort goes into organising these events. So, thanks Robb and Elissa, looking forward to meeting you for the West Coast Tour next week!

I completely agree with you - I've been on Pirates of the Caribbean with someone in the boat in front taking flash photos continuously and it ruined the ride for me.

Unless things have changed since last September when we bought ours, it's available to everyone. A few years back it was "french people only" but the rules changed. It doesn't take any time to get it if you buy one in person - you can buy a temporary pass outside the park and enter on the same day. You then have your photo taken and get a permanent pass at the annual pass processing centre (inside the park) - this has to be on the first day you enter. The Francilien pass does have blackout days, and in particular the 2nd and 3rd day after you buy it are extra blackout days - ie. if you buy on Monday you can visit on Monday, but not on Tuesday or Wednesday. They've done this because the Francilien pass is quite a lot cheaper than a 3-day ticket and they would rather foreigners on holiday bought the more expensive ticket! Edit: full details at this site, which confirms that anyone can buy one.

Yes, the entrance fee includes all rides. There are lots of half price or 2-for-1 entry vouchers available for the park making it much more affordable. If you're going Monday to Friday before 31st July, there's one voucher available here - be careful though, it's a silly movie promotion website and you might prefer not to give them real email addresses! At Waterloo just ask for a return ticket to Staines. At Staines you need to pay for the shuttle as you get on - it's pretty easy to find and has a sign saying "Thorpe Park shuttle" on the front. If you're in a group then a taxi might be easier and no more expensive - there are usually plenty of taxis waiting outside the station with "we'll take you to Thorpe Park too" signs outside!

I'm sure that Disney are considering several markets - but I think Yellow Jacket has hit the nail on the head by saying "we're not normal". I went to the three parks that were open in 1996-ish (I was 9 or so) and again in 2001 when I was 14. As first and second time visitors, no-one in the family comented that MGM (as it was then) or Animal Kingdom didn't have enough in them. In fact, Epcot and Magic Kingdom took a couple of days each. Yes, we wandered around slowly and spent 20 minutes shopping at every possible opportunity - but I bet we weren't that unusual, especially for first time international visitors. I'm sure that lots has changed since 2001 and I obviously have no idea what's necessary now. Frankly it sounds like Disney have a much better idea about how to run the US parks than the people running Disneyland Paris - which has added several new attractions in the last couple of years but has let most of the original things fall apart.

I'm a bit surprised at the notion of an Intamin backwards launch to be honest. I love Rita and Stealth (Thorpe Park) and I think the acceleration of the launches is a massive thrill. I'm just not sure how the concept is going to convert into going backwads. Assuming it doesn't have some sort of crazy restraint system it simply can't be especially powerful - unless Alton Towers enjoys giving people whiplash. And if there's not much acceleration, what's the point? Stil, I'm prepared to be surprised. Maybe it can be more powerful that I'm expecting. I'm just a bit dubious of backwards rides in general after X:\No Way Out made me feel sick earlier this year.

Several trip reports have got the itinerary listed with them (e.g. see here) and the original trip flyer (here) has a rough list of the parks included. If you're struggling with the TPR search feature, you might want to try using Google instead, which I tend to find works better. You can add "site:themeparkreview.com" to limit your search to TPR pages - e.g. searching for "east coast itinerary site:themeparkreview.com" immediately finds lots of relevant pages.

You look like such a sweet couple! Congratulations! I love the idea of just going into a theme park and getting married unannounced - although I know you tried to tell them! Good news that Mr Six was enthusiastic about it too!

How does the whirlpool work? It looks like the raft's going to go down the drop towards the middle of it, does it go underneath the rest of the whirlpool there? As for the "slide", was it working for long at all? This page seems to suggest that it "hadn't opened yet" in 2001, so was the bypass track built from the start? They can't have had much faith in the slide if that's the case!