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Small News From The Theme Park Industry

Thorpe's Shark Cabins (the 'temporary hotel') only had permission up till this year. The park had hoped to get a permanent hotel open by now. The park have now put in an application to keep the Shark Cabins for a further 10 years, whilst they work on getting a permanent hotel out of developmental hell. The current issues for the park are the post-Covid recovery and current high costs for building materials, etc.:

 
The backwards facing seats on Tonnere 2 Zeus have been removed. The backwards facing final row has been replaced with 2 forward facing rows, increasing capacity from 26 to 28 passengers per train. Apparently this has always been the plan, a project manager said in 2022 the backwards experience would be removed in a few years. Shame really, would've loved to try this out

Two extra rows for regular visitors would help reduce the horrid queues it often has, at least. A longer train could mean more whip in the back too.
 
Merlin has acquired the 400ft observation wheel at Orlando’s Icon Park and renamed it ”The Orlando Eye”.

 
Not sure if this should have its own thread, but a 43 year-old maintenance worker has sadly lost his life in an accident while working on Taron at Phantasialand Monday afternoon. What and how it happened isn’t clear, and the park has yet to make any public statement, but local police have started an investigation into the matter.

 
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Not sure if this should have its own thread, but a 43 year-old maintenance worker has sadly lost his life in an accident while working on Taron at Phantasialand Monday afternoon. What and how it happened isn’t clear, and the park has yet to make any public statement, but local police have started an investigation into the matter.

More details came in this afternoon: The worker was doing maintenance work on one of Taron’s trains when they were apparently struck in the head by a moving vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene before ambulance could arrive. The park also put out an official statement:


Phantasialand is still set to open for the season on Thursday, but wether some form of tribute to the deceased worker will be held is unknown
 
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A new mountain coaster is coming to Scotland, located at Midlothian Snowsports Centre in Edinburgh. Receiving other upgrades as part of the redevelopment plans. The project is called 'Destination Hillend', and will reportedly cost around £30 million. The coaster is said to be 600 meters long.

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Source

Its great to see another one of these in the UK, below is a link to some drone footage.

see drone footage here

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Attractiepark Drievliet in the Netherlands has been acquired by the Looping Group, owners of Drayton Manor, Avonturenpark Hellendoorn, and Bagetelle, among others. The park was family operated from its inception in 1938, but the family is now taking a step back and only one member will still be working at the park. The family was initially in talks with Plopsa to sell the park a few years back, but Looping came through with the better offer in the end. Looping’s plans for the park are currently unknown, but given their investments into Drayton and Hellendoorn lately, a revitalization of the stagnant Drievliet may not be far off.

 
Well if anyone had been following the Disney/nasty-right-wing Florida politician news recently ;)

Disney now filing lawsuits in retaliation....



Not sure I follow the detail of the outcome of all that Florida vs Disney nonsense of the last few years to be honest, but the latest on the saga appears to be everyone agreeing to a score-draw?

 
Not a huge amount of "news" this morning but the usual suspects gave me a bit of a laugh:

Alton Towers said they're releasing a scratch and sniff map 😂:

Pleasure Beach once again pretending that Hyperia is only 1 foot taller than PMBO (when it is of course actually 30+ feet taller):
 
Here’s an April Fool’s joke that wasn’t: Karl’s Erlebnisdorf Elstal is opening a Gerstlauer Sky Fly themed to döner kebab in 2025, and despite being announced on April 1st, it isn’t a prank.

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Other Disney business news (not explicitly that Florida governance thing that I keep posting about in here)

Boardroom disruption foiled (I'd heard all this described as the "new DisneyWar" (which was the last (I think!) big boardroom thing going on at the Disney-behemoth))

 
Not sure how "small news" this is.

Vekoma is allegedly suing B&M as they claim Pipeline the Surf Coaster and its 'wave-jumping' seat movement infringes on one of their patents (from around 2011).

Article:

Patent itself:

Lawsuit link:
 
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Not sure how "small news" this is.

Vekoma is allegedly suing B&M as they claim Pipeline the Surf Coaster and its 'wave-jumping' seat movement infringes on one of their patents (from around 2011).

Article:

Patent itself:
Can't tell you hard I laughed when I'd seen the patent, B&M not done the homework?
 
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