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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

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Just realise that I forgot to post about Angry Birds Land after last weekend, probably because it is that forgetful! The 4D is good, the rest is not. The theming is done as cheaply as possibly. Detonator's "re-theme" is a joke, even the ride music is exactly the same as before!

:)
 
Rob said:
Just realise that I forgot to post about Angry Birds Land after last weekend, probably because it is that forgetful! The 4D is good, the rest is not. The theming is done as cheaply as possibly. Detonator's "re-theme" is a joke, even the ride music is exactly the same as before!

:)
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Wow. I am looking forward to seeing this in person think I'm going to avoid the whole area next time I go.
 
Avoid the theme but do the rides! Detonators still good as ever even with the pathetic theming around it.
 
Visited Thorpe Park yesterday (Sun), and they were trialing the Reserve and Ride on the 5 main coasters again. Previous trials, the only way to ride was to reserve a time slot. Yesterday, you could queue as normal if you wished, or reserved a time slot, and when your time came, went to the Fastrack entrance, get the code scanned then get on the ride via Fastrack queue.

For the best part, from a guest who chose you use it point of view it tended to work quite well. Initially (until well in to afternoon) you were given a time slot as there and then, no waiting at all, but later on the time slots for Saw were around an hour after reserving, but the others tended to be less than 30 minutes. Between a couple or small group of you, can work the system to your advantage when it gets busier.

On the negative side. The system crashed and was down for around 2 hours late morning until around 1pm. One reservation disappeared, even though the time to use it still had not expired nor been cancelled. Trail was ended quite early, around 4pm, 2 hours before park close, even though time slots given were around 30 minutes later.

It must of had an impact on the Fastrack queue as reserve and ride people used this queue as well as normal paid Fastrack users. I did hear a couple of grumbles from those in the Fastrack queues about it.

You could obviously queue normally if you wished, which most people seemed to do. I guess people simply can't be bothered with what could seem a bit of a faff to reserve a time slot, though in reality it was very straight forward and took seconds. The main queue, on Saw & Colossus especially, must of been an awful experience, as not only did it have to endure the usual fastrack queue, this was worse due to Reserve and Ride guests in there too.

We got the impression that the way Reserve & Ride operated yesterday kind of reduced the value of the fastrack. Though from a guest perspective it worked a treat. Was at a fairly busy Thorpe Park, with queues ranging from 40-90 minutes and was able to get quite a large ride count in.

Other things to note from yesterday too. For the best part, staff seemed to be working to get the trains dispatched as quickly as possible. Inferno on occasions wasn't stacking, Swarms train was being dispatched just as the one on track had hit the first brakes. Even Colossus, they managed to get a train dispatched just as the one on track stopped in the brakes. Not often you see this at Thorpe. The only problem was at times they got a bit to distracted trying to find a single guest or 2 or 3 from the queue line to fill up the train, and seemingly forgot there was actually a train there waiting to dispatch. :0 The batching (or lack of) in the stations left a lot to be desired, which led to Inferno having something like 3 rows with 2 people on each etc. Also, Saws station was nothing short of a scrum with just a mass of people and no batching at all.
 
So last night was the first of late night rides at Thorpe, which they did last summer. I think its on now every Friday and Saturday night with select rides open till 10pm! I hope to attend later in the summer, as on a nice sunny day I think it would be great!

Today they also moved the stage, where they have music acts on. They normally have it in the dome on a Saturday, but today it was moved outside near Tidal wave (because of the nice weather!).
 
AstroDan said:
Wow...

I'm suprised they run it with such low affluence.
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They use the lack of queues as a massive selling point for the event, With just the coasters open I'm sure they easily make enough profit to make it worth while and no doubt the satisfaction from these events will be very good
 
It's a good way to test the market for later opening and also to get people used to later opening, if they can build it up, it could be a revenue generator moving forward - it's also great marketing as it will mean good reviews going around.

Very clever I think these Summer Nights.
 
AstroDan said:
Wow...

I'm suprised they run it with such low affluence.
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Was a great event last year, literally waited for a trains worth of guests before getting on.

Think they've added a few extras this year with a BBQ on the beach as well as games and a couple of live bands. I know the place gets slated a lot on here but it's a great event!
 
I second that - last year was my first visit to Thorpe in years and I went specifically for the Summer nights event and really enjoyed it. Think the entry count was 120 or so people for the entire park between 7 and 10pm. Have booked for this year again and cant wait. Riding Swarm and Stealth in the dark was awesome.
 
Slightly off topic to above, Thorpe have now followed suit with Alton in having a snapchat. Their respective ones are 'thorpe-park' and 'alton-towers'.

Always good to see this kind of stuff, thorpes particularly good at showing their geekiness over Twitter already so hopefully there'll be more of it on Snapchat!
 
I really want to do the summer nights this year, they got good reviews last year with short queues and if its a nice day i'm sure it will be nice to relax with a drink outside.

And I have added Thorpe and Towers on Snapchat :p
 
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Well I visited the park last week Wednesday. I think they may hve done something to make Colossus smoother as it felt A LOT smoother than last time I rode it. I was slightly annoyed stealth was down most of the day because of a late nitrogen delivery. But I did get to see a failed launch and a small rollback. Only bad thing is they were selling fast tracks for a 60 min queue on colossus which made for a huge fasttrack queue and an even longer main queue. Grrr
 
Visited Thorpe for Summer nights Friday/Saturday. Friday was quiet, but weather was awful sadly. Saturday was much busier, and still quite a lot of people not wearing wristbands still on park well in to a couple of hours after normal ride close. Queues for the first hour or so were quite long, due to going down to one train operation, and still needing to clear the lines of normal day visit guests. By around 8:30 had got much better, with longest wait probably around 10 minutes.

The one main bugbear of our visit was the food outlets that were open, or otherwise as it would seem, especially on Friday. Tried to get some food around 6:30pm, but Calypso Bar & Grill was closed for food, serving drinks only. Bar 360, even though park was still open to day guests as well at this time, was exclusively for hotel guests only, and were refused service. So followed a visit to guest services to find out what was happening, and they kindly informed us that Calypso bar and Grill should be open, so should Bar 360, so they were rather surprised when I told them one was closed and the other was exclusive to hotel guests only. We were also told Pizza Hut was open, but that too was also closed.

With this, that left us with a choice of KFC or BK. Obviously decided to go without instead. In the end, decided to go hungry instead, which didn't bode to well for later. There were more food outlets open on Saturday, though Calypso Bar still wasn't serving food, no idea if Bar 360 was still Hotel Guests only.
 
The University of Roehampton have hired out Thorpe Park on the 18th September, so anyone planning to visit that day may want to take note, as it's still listed as open on the website confusingly :p

The Tab said:
Colossus of fun: Roehampton rent Thorpe Park for Freshers' Week

Students at Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester must have thought their Freshers' Week was the best in the country – until now.

Because Roehampton have rented out Thorpe Park for Freshers' Week.

The SU are taking 1,400 thrill-seeking freshers for a huge day out on September 18th.

Students will pay £20 for a day at Thorpe Park with all the rides reserved for them.

And although Freshers' Week is usually seen as a week of boozing and puking, the SU insists that this event is alcohol free.

Roehampton Student Union President Siobhan Kelly said: “We're specifically branding it as an alternative to our union bar and nightclub events – no alcohol will be allowed on the transport we're providing, and the early start and finish will appeal to first years who don't want to stay up until the early hours.

“It's the perfect way for new students to get to know their new housemates and have a great experience to talk about.”

Just in case, Thorpe Park are ready for bus-loads of drunken, vomiting freshers arriving on the 18th.

Park employee Natasha said: “There is not exactly a policy in place, but obviously if students were drunk and disorderly they would be removed from the park.

“But if they were just sick on the rides like you would normally be if you had sickness, then it would not be such a big deal.”
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Source
 
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