jmgpannal

It's going in the location where the London Film Museum was, I may have got that name wrong but it's similar. County Hall will contain Merlin's SeaLife London Aquarium, London Dungeons, Shrek, London Eye Cinema & Ticket Office. Also in there will be the McDonalds and the Arcade. Makes sense and with DreamWorks now hinting at Shrek 5 it makes even more sense. Merlin already do combo tickets and with all the above within a 3 minute walk of each other and do able in a day they'll really cash in. On another note, it's one more thing for me to use my Merlin Annual Pass on! Regards the actors, it's not been an issue for the Dungeons so doubt it will be for this either.

Legoland Windsor - 30 minutes Thorpe Park - 35 minutes Chessington World of Adventures - 50 minutes

Alton Towers is a much larger site and very spread out it takes a good 25 minutes to walk from one side to the other through some beautiful landscaped gardens. The range of rides are more varied too with rides for the whole family. Thorpe Park is small and very concentrated, probably only takes 5 minutes to walk round. Thorpe Park is described as the "Thrill Capital of the UK" and is aimed more at a teen/young adult market. Apart from the Smiler the biggest rides in the UK are at Thorpe. Some very good and unique flat rides too, such as Slammer the only remaining SkySwat! I love both parks and always have a good time at either but if you're staying in Crawley and have to pick one I'd go with Thorpe purely down to travel times. You'd probably manage to get more out of your day in the summer as its not a big walk between rides. Any questions feel free to ask

In Crawley you're only 45 minutes or so at the most away from Thorpe Park. Which is an excellent park and if it's busy as it usually is on a weekend it's a good idea to get FastTrack Alton Towers would take probably 5 hours from Crawley.

Yup it got stuck at the top of lift 2 again. But the new reversing system seems to be much more efficient than most euro fighters as they just reset and send again! This not great quality video shows it pretty well! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlRscrwg_WU

Sorry for double post: Picture from TowersTimes Facebook Whoops!

Right, some bad news today. According to both TowersStreet and TowersTimes, Alton Towers have just evacuated the X-Sector part of the park and the Smiler will not be opening today due to technical issues. Both are reporting that a train has stalled on the batwing and valleyed during testing this morning. They've probably closed x-sector so they can get the crane in to remove the train, not a very good sign.

Oh yeah!! 24th May can't come quickly enough. My 5 year old daughter seems to be obsessed with it, obviously gets it from me. Was most upset to find out she needs to grow another 30cm before riding!

And I'm there on the 24th! Woohoo!! Can't wait

Video part three is out now!

^^ Actually think this makes it more likely to be official. They've generously dismissed fan made stuff. Pretty cunning to release it and allow people to find it and those people ask Alton Towers about it. Then Alton have an excuse! They can say and have, "look at this video someone has found, what do you think?"

^ Or even Smile Sacred!

Anyone remember this video from a while back? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUFWBN9xSIQ Well lets have a comparison: Thanks to Cheese on TS

^Just watched this after seeing a link elsewhere. The twitter feeds are very well done! My favourite tweet has to be from Trisha of the book at Amazon!! Brilliant!! Jon

Pics courtesy of Official Alton Towers Twitter And relax, track construction is complete!

Ooh, my photo appeared above!!! The May 2013 opening date still appears everywhere else in the park. The banners were removed due to high winds turning them into sails and pulling the construction fences down. Large amounts of electrical work have been done, in fact I saw platform dispatch button being taken out of the Gerst shipping container/office and taken into the station building today. The whole thing looks mad! Not really shown in the pics is that there also appears to be fins on the first lift hill too. Maybe a silent anti-rollback system? Which would make sense considering the numerous issues & complaints Alton Towers have had regarding noise. I reckon they'll want to be open for the Spring Bank Holiday long weekend, which is the Sat/Sun/Mon 25/26/27th May

There is still a blue square, yes - but on other images posted on other websites, there are pictures which clearly show that there is just an inversion in that position. Towerstimes have removed all news articles that they originally released about the washing machine element. But they have also put their rep on the line by claiming that there IS something record breaking. E.g a secret element. Lets say you're right and there is just a straight Peice of track there, then how is this a worlds first? How is it record breaking? There are 8 inversions outside, to break that record WITHOUT the secret element would take what, 6 more inversions inside? Not a chance that is happening. Unless its to do with the trains, I can't see how there won't be a secret element. Not necessarily a washing machine, but something new and groundbreaking. The above is all based around whether the original drawings are accurate. Alton Towers are well within their rights to alter the coaster layout to what was originally revealed, as they do not require planning permission for the coaster (only the building). I reckon they'll be going for the inversion record. Don't want to bitch or something, but that still not answer the why to this date the site of the Smiler (Of Alton Towers it self) says it's a World First. Besides I don't really know the construction rules over there, but my guess is that you can't chance something like that without a permit. It has to deal then with new environmental rules and harms and also noise emissions. Like I said I don't know how that goes over there but here you need to have an other permit for that. The rollercoaster doesn't need any planning permission as it is sited within an already permitted development area. So long as it remains below a height limit. So they could, for example, add a heart line roll in one of the straight bits. Or add a corkscrew where the s-bends are shown. The building however isn't included in the general development area and therefore has to stick to the approved permissions. But we won't really know until those bits of track are put up! Jon

Further to this the council has given planning permission for the resort side of things. Planned to open in 2014/2015 depending on which report or press release you read!

Hi, I'm jmgpannal73 and been playing on and off for a while. Only just noticed this list was here and am adding people to my friends list in case you get a request! Jon

The Ultimate at Lightwater Valley for me! Still love the ride though!