2013 will forever be remembered as the year a roller-coaster fell apart before our very eyes. We excitedly looked on as The Smiler dismantled itself piece by piece amidst frantic claims that it is ‘definitely safe…honest it is’.
That wasn’t the only thing crumbling this year, as 40 people got stuck on Rameses Revenge. The media went mad, 40 people (some as young as 8) forced to sit down for a few hours with free food. What a disaster. Come on guys, when you go to Chessington you know what you’re getting yourself into – do you not read the Daily Mail?
In fact, Merlin proved their PR team was basically redundant this year with the Asylum protests storming the headlines. There was back-and-forth arguments about who had said what to who. It was like watching an argument in a playground. For me, the most entertaining part of it all was seeing how protective the campaigners got over the AsylumNO hashtag. When someone else tried to use it in protest against political asylum (you know, an issue that actually matters), she was accused of being a ‘hashtag troll’ and being unable to use Twitter. Apparently now these people have declared ownership of a hashtag. I might take the opportunity to declare my ownership of #YOLO.
It wasn’t just a year of Merlin theme parks, however. Oh, wait, yeah it was – sorry.
Sam Parsonage