u/Observant_Lurker

Hello,

Just looking at the app to get a sense of queue times for my visit tomorrow and I see:

• The Smiler
• Thirteen
• Galactica
• Rita
• Spinball
• hex
• Curse at Alton Manor

Are all closed... And it's 10:45

Is this common for these rides or unusual? That's quite a large chunk of the parks main attractions..

If they remain closed, is there any refund scheme? It would be quite disappointing to spend a large chunk of money on a short stay and half the park is closed.

Hello,

How does breakfast / dinner work when staying for a short stay?

I've booked a short stay at the enchanted village, but never got a booking email for breakfast, and after some searching it seems like it's all too common so I went to do it manually, however the crooked spoon has zero availability on the days I'm going for breakfast or dinner...

I booked at the secret garden instead, but does booking actually matter?

Could I just show up to any for breakfast / dinner, as id prefer the restaurant closer to where im actually staying

Thanks

Hello,

I booked a short stay for the 1st - 3rd July. ;

My plan is to travel and check into the hotel on the 1st, followed by theme park on the 2nd, and then checkout + theme park again on the 3rd and drive home same evening.

I just received my tickets and the theme park 2 day pass says:

Valid From: 01/07/2026 Valid to: 01/07/2026;

What's going on here? Can I actually use my ticket on the 2nd and 3rd like I plan to? Did I buy the wrong package?

I wasn't able to select the days I wanted to go to the theme park, I could only do that for fast pass and the waterpark, and with hotel check in being at 3, I really don't want to be walking around the theme park with my luggage

Thank you

Hello,

I'm in the market for a new SSD but I was quite taken back by the prices of these things now!

I bought a 1TB Samsung 860 Evo 5 years ago £113, and now it's basically doubled in price sitting at £230, a 2TB version is sitting as a whopping £400, getting into GPU territory...

What are my best options for a 2TB SSD to store games and media etc for around £200? it won't be used as a boot drive for now.

Thanks

TL;DR:
If you're manually disabling your physical monitors in Windows display settings while streaming with a virtual display, and they're connected via a DisplayPort, either;

• Physically remove the DP Cable
• Physically change the Input Source to HDMI (not auto or DisplayPort)
  • Some monitors also support disabling Auto Detect entirely which might help with preventing HPD
• Change the cable to a HDMI and don't use DP
• Cut power to the monitor (standby does not work because the monitor is still powered and can send HPD Signals)
• Leave displays Enabled in Windows (runs the risk of apps opening on the wrong display in extended mode, so use duplicate)
• Use ControlMyMonitor.exe to force the input change when starting to stream (this is a bit flaky, and didn't work for me when trying to automate it)

Technical explanation
DisplayPort cables periodically send a "hot plug detect" (HPD) signal to check monitor connectivity. When this fires, the GPU driver notifies Windows of a display topology change. Windows then tears down and rebuilds its entire display configuration from scratch, which is an expensive operation and often causes GPU overhead to spike. (It's the same thing you see windows do when you disconnect a monitor and it shuffles everything around)

With physical monitors disabled in Windows display settings, every HPD signal from the DP cable triggers a full topology rebuild with nothing to stabilise it. Using windows debugging tools (GPUView, WPR, WPA), i was able to confirm that windows DWM's CHECKDEVICESTATE call stalls during the rebuild, the encode pipeline freezes behind it, and the stream drops for ~500ms. This repeats every time the monitor sends another HPD ping.

With physical monitors left enabled, the HPD signal fires, but Windows sees an active stable display topology and doesn't need to rebuild it. The encoder never stalls.

Notes
The HPD behaviour may vary based on monitor, GPU, or drivers. But if you're disabling your physical monitors while streaming, and you're stuttering, this is worth trying first.

I also never had issues like this in the past with my old setup on Win10 + RTX 2060, but since upgrading to Win11 + RTX 5070 TI, it's become a big problem, not quite sure why...