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2025: General Discussion

It does slightly upset me that's it's not called The Chained Oak šŸ˜‚ - we tried to dine there earlier but it was an hour wait for food and after looking at the menu on the tablet the food does look pretty strange.
Steve74 said:

From: https://x.com/TowersStreet/status/1900890247770026490


Part of the Woodcutters The Oak In Chains menu:

From: https://x.com/TowersStreet/status/1900903815106212249
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C
Steve74 said:
Woodcutters has been rebranded to "The Oak In Chains Bar and Grill" complete with at table ordering on supplied devices:
1742044507829.png

From: https://x.com/HiItsOwen/status/1900867512029335864
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siralgenon said:
It does slightly upset me that's it's not called The Chained Oak šŸ˜‚ - we tried to dine there earlier but it was an hour wait for food and after looking at the menu on the tablet the food does look pretty strange.

C
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Based on what I've seen they're serving, you're right it is a bit strange. In that area of the park they are clearly going for the country mansion/National Trust style branding with all the new signs for that area so you'd expect the food in there to mirror that - traditional English pub food like a Ploughman's lunch, fish & chips, pie and chips, sausage and mash, not this weird borderline experimental food. But then again, maybe they're doing that off the back of the Earl's experiments in the vault?
 
Steve74 said:
Based on what I've seen they're serving, you're right it is a bit strange. In that area of the park they are clearly going for the country mansion/National Trust style branding with all the new signs for that area so you'd expect the food in there to mirror that - traditional English pub food like a Ploughman's lunch, fish & chips, pie and chips, sausage and mash, not this weird borderline experimental food. But then again, maybe they're doing that off the back of the Earl's experiments in the vault?
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Nothing wrong with hanging chicken skewers and the like.

Donut burger - yeh thatā€™s odd

In my view a change was needed - itā€™s nice to see some new ideas even if some of them are - odd. I guess theyā€™ll tweak things as they go depending on popularity.

From what Iā€™ve seen though online - donut burgers are selling
 
siralgenon said:
It does slightly upset me that's it's not called The Chained Oak šŸ˜‚ - we tried to dine there earlier but it was an hour wait for food and after looking at the menu on the tablet the food does look pretty strange.

C
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I expect the owners of the Chained Oak over the road would be having words if they did that wouldnā€™t they.

I canā€™t understand an hour wait for the menu at hand - theyā€™re hardly making every doughnut and flatbread from scratch
 
From those who have been over the past weekend, whatā€™s the entertainment like on-park? Are the Gloomy Wood/Forbidden Valley street performers still around in any capacity?

Iā€™ve seen Alton Bear is still about, so there is some capacity of non-CBeebies entertainment around, but other than that there seems to be nothing on socials!
 
Bert2theSpark said:
From those who have been over the past weekend, whatā€™s the entertainment like on-park? Are the Gloomy Wood/Forbidden Valley street performers still around in any capacity?

Iā€™ve seen Alton Bear is still about, so there is some capacity of non-CBeebies entertainment around, but other than that there seems to be nothing on socials!
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TPWW said in his vlog that there was no one outside the Curse so I guess non-existent apart from Alton Bear and CBeebies. Which is a huge shame and puzzling considering I've heard they've got (more/better) actors inside The Walking Dead at Thorpe this year. When you hear that, it does make you wonder if it's the individual park's decision if (and where) to have actors. Having said that, Thorpe doesn't have an IP land that contractually requires performers so if each park can only have a set number of actors, they can spare some for a ride area I guess.
 
Bert2theSpark said:
From those who have been over the past weekend, whatā€™s the entertainment like on-park? Are the Gloomy Wood/Forbidden Valley street performers still around in any capacity?

Iā€™ve seen Alton Bear is still about, so there is some capacity of non-CBeebies entertainment around, but other than that there seems to be nothing on socials!
Click to expand...
I was very disappointed not to see any of the forbidden valley crew from last year- really added a buzz on last years opening day with Clive the bus driver, the fake news crew, hazmat people, protestors e.t.c.

A real sad sight to see- what wouldā€™ve made yesterday more palatable would be some entertainment!
 
Went in on Sunday at 4pm to 8pm. Hoping people would leave early for work and school (good decision)

- Speaking to others, queues and availability were bad in the morning.

- Didn't really see the point of the Toxicator single rider. But I am very happy that single riders are on more rides, which is great for my solo travels as I live near the park.

- Toxicator is not really intense but still thrilling, just a nice level. Very re-ridable.

- Nemesis operations were very strange. It seems to meet operation targets. They would instead send a whole row empty; if a row needs to move or guests leave, they don't bother filling it back up. Very strange and seemed chaotic at times.

- All other coasters had great operations.

- Great lighting around the park in the dark. Just need to replace them ghastly bright white LED lights.

Personally I had a great solo trip. Maybe more pot luck getting in at 4pm though. At least they had quite a few hours before I came in, to get something to work.
 
Can confirm it was very bad in the morning. I entered via FV in the morning and both coasters were closed, then once they'd opened both coasters in DF were closed. The few major rides that were open were posting 60-90minute waits until we left at 2.

Re; Nemesis loading, we had the opposite experience at around 11am. They'd not loaded row 8 to keep it free for exit guests, then decided at the last minute they could fill it from the main queue after all. They held the train for an extra minute or so to load our group into back row rather than just send it out ASAP. Filling seats is all well and good but in this case it would probably have been more efficient to just send the train out with an empty row.

Generally, dispatch times on Nemesis are now far slower than they used to be. It is now normal to wait on the brakes for an extended period, prior to the refurb it was more common to roll straight into the station. Combined with the ride running at 50% RAP/FT on even moderately busy days, this makes for a notably worse queue experience.
 
Coaster said:
Something probably lost in the mess of how awful Saturday was - Smiler's trains looked absolutely atrocious for the first day of the season. Mouldy, dirty restraints, grimy seat-backs and the whole train felt very unclean. Do they even replace components over winter anymore?
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Those components are more complex, even when they look new they aren't (unless it is a new ride (nemesis reborn) they are often refurbished, from how I understand it only a few companies do the refurbishments due to their complexity as they have metal within the foam, and rollercoasters are only a small part of their business so lead times are multiple months, and it can be very expensive for a whole train. Rita from what I understand has got refurbed restrains
 
On Saturday Morning we got in the prequeue for Nemesis around 9:45 after looking around Toxicator for a bit. I think it only started testing at 10:22 one of the trains was making very interesting noises going around, Train 1 i'm pretty sure, we eventually got on the ride at 11:15 as we were queueing we noticed a lot of empty seats / rows on the trains, when we got off we even saw some trains with 4 rows not loaded! seemed to me like the person batching the rows was new and didn't have much training. The staff checking the restraints were even telling them to load the rows.
 
Now a quick question about Alton and also Merlin in general.

When a ride has not yet opened, and most commonly when a ride has had a breakdown and people ahve left to go elsewhere, why do they not allow people to enter the queue? They allow them to queue outside the queue but prevent them from entering (even if there are people in the queue who didn't leave (if it was a breakdown?)

I've never understood this. It creates uncessary crowds on pathways and guest flow areas when there is a dedicated area for holding guests (the queuelines themselves!!)

I understand that one reason may be that the ride may not open for a long (or even at all!), but surely all they ahve to do is let people know when they cross the threshold to enter the line that they are aware of that. It's not much different from when you enter a line normally, you are aware that the ride may go down or close at any point. So why stop people from entering it?


I agree there are some rides, places, times and scenarios where it makes sense to hold people outside a line. Emergencies, situations they don't wish to be published or photographed, when the queueline may be a dangerous place to be etc. I'm talking about the other 90% of times.
 
rctneil said:
Now a quick question about Alton and also Merlin in general.

When a ride has not yet opened, and most commonly when a ride has had a breakdown and people ahve left to go elsewhere, why do they not allow people to enter the queue? They allow them to queue outside the queue but prevent them from entering (even if there are people in the queue who didn't leave (if it was a breakdown?)

I've never understood this. It creates uncessary crowds on pathways and guest flow areas when there is a dedicated area for holding guests (the queuelines themselves!!)

I understand that one reason may be that the ride may not open for a long (or even at all!), but surely all they ahve to do is let people know when they cross the threshold to enter the line that they are aware of that. It's not much different from when you enter a line normally, you are aware that the ride may go down or close at any point. So why stop people from entering it?


I agree there are some rides, places, times and scenarios where it makes sense to hold people outside a line. Emergencies, situations they don't wish to be published or photographed, when the queueline may be a dangerous place to be etc. I'm talking about the other 90% of times.
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They discourage people from forming a queue outside the queue, when a ride is out of operation, but it's almost impossible to actually prevent it.

You can stop people from entering the queue, but you can't stop the British from forming a queue to eventually queue in the queue.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
They discourage people from forming a queue outside the queue, when a ride is out of operation, but it's almost impossible to actually prevent it.

You can stop people from entering the queue, but you can't stop the British from forming a queue to eventually queue in the queue.
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So why bother discouraging them? It's pointless. May as well just let them use the space designed to hold people.
 
rctneil said:
So why bother discouraging them? It's pointless. May as well just let them use the space designed to hold people.
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"I queued three hours for X ride and it never opened!"

"You didn't say I shouldn't spend all day in the queue for Y ride, because it's closed, I didn't see the sign!"

"No one stopped me from wasting my day!"

"If it's not going to be open then why open the queue? That's just encouraging people to waste their day!"

The typical expectation would then be some form of compensation.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
"I queued three hours for X ride and it never opened!"

"You didn't say I shouldn't spend all day in the queue for Y ride, because it's closed, I didn't see the sign!"

"No one stopped me from wasting my day!"

"If it's not going to be open then why open the queue? That's just encouraging people to waste their day!"
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I agree to disagree.
 
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