Neilfever

The usual Merlin marketing kicks in for The Swarm... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9035463/Thorpe-Park-orders-rollercoaster-improvements-after-dummies-lose-limbs.html

Actually, all of the other seats, inside and outside have nothing restricting you. This leg restraint is only on the front inside seats. Raptor's trains are so big and comfortable, allowing your legs to reach right out. It's odd there's only the two inside seats like this and they really bruise your leg too. In the front row especially, I found it really difficult having only one leg restricted down.

That reason is based soley on the last Gerstlauer Merlin installed with SAW's jolty, headache of a ride.

To be fair, the slight bounce on Raptor is NOTHING compared to the outside seats on Furious Baco! Jesus, now that IS painful..

At the end of the day, if Thorpe wanted this inversion as their own, they could have paid for it. As the dive coaster, it could easily have been the 'THORPE PARK inversion' if they paid for the right. As it stands, it's an exciting new element, that B&M obviously want the world to see. Thorpe Park is enough for Europe, as Six Flags is the US.. They're not close enough for all of this tbh.. No-one as a local 'guest' is going to comapre the two. Anyhoooo, lift hill construction is up for starts this week, that's exciting enough eh?

Thorpe Park have released a statement to Thorpe Park Mania, in regards to Six Flags GA's wing rider and it's first inversion: ''Hi THORPE PARK Mania fans. We hope you're all excited about the arrival of THE SWARM. We're having great fun building up to its launch and we hope you are too! We wanted to write a little message to you all following the news that Six Flags Great America will also be launching a winged rollercoaster next year very similar to THE SWARM. Some of you may have noticed that when we say it's going to be very similar, it really is going to be VERY similar. When we set about designing and developing our winged coaster we had to make sure it had the THORPE PARK stamp on it. One of the ways we achieved this was by developing the unique inverted dive at the start of the ride that will be sure to kick-off your awesome apocalyptic flight in adrenaline-fuelled style! As you can imagine then, we were quite surprised to see that the new ride at Six Flags will also adopt the 'THORPE PARK Inversion'! While we could be bitter about this, we would actually like to wish Six Flags Great America the best of luck with the 'THORPE PARK Inversion' and we hope that this is a start of things to come, that one day the 'THORPE PARK Inversion' will become famous in the rollercoaster world! We aim high! Thanks again for all your support and we'll see you all at Fright Nights. The THORPE PARK Team''

The Swarm it is then.. http://www.theswarm.co.uk/

I'd take that as Raptor being the prototype, being the first is in itself the testing ground for LC12. Same ride type and all.. The priest has nothing to do with LC12. A priest was called in to bless Stealth in 2006, one of Thorpe's many PR stunts.

I love Space Mountain in Paris. I just wish they'd update those painful, painful trains!

Public soft openings today at DHS, sounds great!!!

'Les Coogan' the LC of LC12 has on his Facebook page, been posting these all day.. Perhaps watching a certain other theme parks efforts, but interesting still 62 .... 62 is the first .... code. What could it .... mean? Something that's been ... locked down, help me fine the answer, .... save them. 2 .... 958 is the next .... code I stole from .... them, the temperature is .... sky high now. We must .... crack the codes, 2 more to come Quickly, I have .... the third code, 3343. We have to crack it, no big capitals and .... I can breathe better now, but time is running out The last code .... is 4806, It points to a dark .... orifice deep within the .... earth, but the perenial message is Don't Look .... Down

Not great quality, but here it is

Few pics from today..

http://lc12.net/

Video of couple of the test launches on YouTube