Thorpe Park: General Discussion

[Enter Valhalla]

Well excuse me for having an opinion, obviously that's not allowed!

The exterior of the maze does look good, but it is idiotic to question the opinion of someone who has actually experienced the attraction by saying "it looks good on the outside."
The exterior doesn't tell you anything about what the maze is actually like!

And just to add, I'm not the only one who doesn't rate the new maze highly, but obviously everyone else who doesn't like it is talking rubbish as clearly only positive opinions are allowed!

If you say so. I've never once seen you leave a positive comment about anything at any park other than BPB. This does make me think that you're just picking faults in everything especially when it's Merlin. I do value the opinions of other people who've experienced it and who are being fair and unbiased but since you only ever seem to be negative about all things Merlin I value your opinion less because I think you're being deliberately negative and probably deciding that you don't like these things before even entering the park. It does beg the question of why you keep visiting these parks since all you do is criticise them. Would you not be happier just sticking to BPB since they seem to be the only park you have any good words to say about?

 

[Coaster]

If you say so. I've never once seen you leave a positive comment about anything at any park other than BPB. This does make me think that you're just picking faults in everything especially when it's Merlin.

You obviously haven't read many posts then, I credit things that they do well.

It does beg the question of why you keep visiting these parks since all you do is criticise them. Would you not be happier just sticking to BPB since they seem to be the only park you have any good words to say about?

Because BPB is five hours away from where I live, Thorpe is a 40 minute drive away. With that said, I have had 24 days at BPB this year (so far) and 11 at Thorpe.

I do value the opinions of other people who've experienced it and who are being fair and unbiased but since you only ever seem to be negative about all things Merlin I value your opinion less because I think you're being deliberately negative and probably deciding that you don't like these things before even entering the park.

On what grounds? I never go into an attraction with an existing opinion of it, I always like to have an open mind rather than expecting it to be really good/really bad. Unlike you who seems to judge mazes from what they look like from the outside!

To add to this, I have written some good points about Fright Nights, if you had read my TR from the preview night then you would see that I enjoyed Cabin in the Woods and Saw Alive.

 

[Rick]

With that said, I have had 24 days at BPB this year (so far) and 11 at Thorpe.

More than three weeks in the park since March, goodness... no wonder you nitpick. It must be hard to see the park as a regular guest when your visitation reaches those levels.

 

[ThemeParkCrafter]

You obviously haven't read many posts then, I credit things that they do well.


Because BPB is five hours away from where I live, Thorpe is a 40 minute drive away. With that said, I have had 24 days at BPB this year (so far) and 11 at Thorpe.


On what grounds? I never go into an attraction with an existing opinion of it, I always like to have an open mind rather than expecting it to be really good/really bad. Unlike you who seems to judge mazes from what they look like from the outside!

To add to this, I have written some good points about Fright Nights, if you had read my TR from the preview night then you would see that I enjoyed Cabin in the Woods and Saw Alive.

Can you stop arguing. We can tell from the forum that people preferred The Blair Witch Project and Saw Alive this year. People disliked MBV due to the length and some people were annoyed with The Big Top because it had too little scenery.

 

[Coaster]

Can you stop arguing. We can tell from the forum that people preferred The Blair Witch Project and Saw Alive this year. People disliked MBV due to the length and some people were annoyed with The Big Top because it had too little scenery.

That is what I was saying, that I wasn't the only one who didn't rate The Big Top.

More than three weeks in the park since March, goodness... no wonder you nitpick. It must be hard to see the park as a regular guest when your visitation reaches those levels.

What has visiting BPB 24 times got to do with how I see Thorpe as a regular guest?

 

[NickT04]

Made my first ever Fright Nights visit yesterday, after hearing about it over the years its safe to say I was looking forward to it. With 4 hours sleep in the bag and annual pass in hand we set off at 6am, the first thing I notice it Venus, the Moon, Mars and Jupiter all in close correlation - today will be epic I thought!

We arrived in good time, and went straight to THE SWARM. I hadn't been since March 2012 and my friend hadn't been since before SAW was built so we headed over there, I was eager to ride it backwards, he was eager to ride it full stop. And so we went around and did quite well ride wise in the day, few things like Quantum and the other flats I hadn't been on, all was well.

Then the night arrived at the whole point of FRIGHT NIGHTS, the night time riding and the mazes. First off, Stealth at night looks amazing, the light looked epic but after that it was just a big meh for me! Dawned on me that there was very little Halloween theming, like the pumpkins at Skeletons you normally get at Scarefest, just nothing. Used our Fastrack voucher through being a MAP holder to get quickly into the big top, was alright, seemed odd to come out of a tent into to just see people gawping down at you from on a bridge and it was just rather quickly over - certainly glad we hadn't paid £5 for it!

Always had a bit of a whinge at paying for mazes at Alton when there are so many more free ones at Thorpe but after queuing for one and seeing the queues for the others I will happily pay every time to get a time slot and have a chance of seeing the mazes!

We did the Cabin, maybe because I'm just not into my horror themes the licensed azes go WAYYYYYYY over my head an I can't appreciate them but there was no "story" to set the scene, I'm sure I'm not the only one not to see the films, we just got the "free flowing maze speil" then off we went, for if we were lucky five minutes and that was it, maybe its the free flowing maze part that makes you move quicker but I was not impressed at waiting an hour for that, We were certainly not going to lose anymore time on queuing at that time at night so we decided to ignore the mazes for the last hour and hit the rides... Which had mostly either broken down (Colussus, SWARM) or been reduced to one train creating queues that didn't need to be there and the queue time boards at Thorpe are useless!

So whilst it sounds negative I had an enjoyable day riding some great rollercoasters but, maybe its because it was the first night, or the fact there were so many school kids and the just wanted them gone perhaps it isn't up to speed yet. It's certainly not made me want to rush back in future years.

Who knows, with the cuts so far this year Alton's theming could too be abysmal but so far I'm definitely happy to stick with just seeing Alton's Halloween effort in the future.

 

[John]

I was also there yesterday, and as mentioned ride availability was really poor, especially in the evening, and it turns out that tonight isn't much better:

(+ I'm not a Celebrity, closed all on FN days)

 

[Leah]

We did the Cabin, maybe because I'm just not into my horror themes the licensed azes go WAYYYYYYY over my head an I can't appreciate them but there was no "story" to set the scene, I'm sure I'm not the only one not to see the films,

This is one of the reasons I'm glad Alton is my local park rather than thorpe. I don't really like horror films to much (I don't really find them entertaining) and I wouldn't understand the mazes. Wait... why is he wearing a gas mask ? At towers, you don't need to research the mazes before you go, you don't need to watch specific films.

I was also there yesterday, and as mentioned ride availability was really poor, especially in the evening, and it turns out that tonight isn't much better:

(+ I'm not a Celebrity, closed all on FN days)

That is the other reason I'm glad I live nearer to towers. 12 rides closed at once!

 

[Enter Valhalla]

On what grounds? I never go into an attraction with an existing opinion of it, I always like to have an open mind rather than expecting it to be really good/really bad. Unlike you who seems to judge mazes from what they look like from the outside!
.

Obviously you can't completely judge a maze from the outside but having walked past it several times and seen the quality of theming around the attraction and in the queue line as well as the section of the maze which actually IS outside then it's clear that this wasn't a bodge job. The standard of theming and quality of the exterior of the maze looks superb. If this quality extends inside then I am optimistic that we have a good maze. I look forward to eventually experiencing it and I plan to go in with an open mind and not be deliberately negative and pick holes in every little bit of it that I possibly can.

 

[Coaster]

^ Yes, I went in with an open mind (as I have said), and I found it lacklustre.

Just to reiterate, you cannot judge a maze from the theming outside it.

 

[stretchy]

Well I am so glad that the We (Stretchy wears his Towers Nerd hat for that We) didn't do a live yesterday. I think it would have turned into something that would have got us blacklisted from Thorpe forever for being painfully honest on how poorly it was all run. Brief trip report/rant. No spoilers ahead that aren't marked spoilers unless you don't want to know about bad running of events.

All was going well till lunch time. (Well apart from the shambles at tickets where some of us waited for nearly 2 hours to pick up a pre booked ticket) We rode Inferno and did rumba the worlds unwettest water ride, We did XWTF which was lacking in sound. But apart from minor things like no audio all was ok. We Went for Pizza & Pasta and that was also good. It was at this point that the day started going DOWN hill. Firstly we noticed that we had tickets for Containment BUT they looked different. Some of us had home printed tickets, others had actual tickets. So we nipped over to Inferno Fasttrack office and stood around there whilst 2 groups kicked off and tried to get each other evicted (that was quite fun actually). Anyway once we eventually got served after about 20 minute wait, They then faffed around for 15-20 minutes unsure what to do and eventually told us that we needed to go to the Depth Charge fast track to get this sorted. NOTE THIS WASN'T THE FIRST NIGHT OF OPERATION IT WAS THE THIRD - THORPE - THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS INEPTITUDE. So we went to Depth Charge. There was a queue of probably 70 people waiting to but tickets and a pre-booked queue with 6 people in.... oh and only 1 person serving. THORPE!! HOW CAN YOU BE THIS UNPROFESSIONAL? 1 person serving?? are you serious??

OK after another 30 minutes another person arrives and the 1 person who was serving moves over to our side to serve the pre-booked queue (yes they had been only serving the normal queue). We have now spent over an hour trying to get tickets that we pre-booked just to save ourselves the agro. (added onto the 2 hours that had been spent waiting for tickets means 3 hours of waiting by 13:00 and none of that for rides. So the person then says that because there are more than 10 of us (admittedly over 2 bookings) that they couldn't book us in. The website had let us all book for 16:30 with no complaining. unfortunately Containment has a max of 10 people per slot, so already there were 13. So we had to wait for a manager to come over to sort it. Whilst waiting in the queue we looked at availability for the 16:30 slot. We could still book for that time slot on the website. This is the year 2015. Computers talk to each other. I think I could personally write a better ticketing system in a couple of hours. Come on Thorpe...

So after another 15 minutes the manager arrives. He says that the earliest he can get us into the maze is 18:45. Can we just say, at this point, I wasn't best pleased and leave it at that. The expletives used aren't really family friendly. Anyway they managed to find 16:40 and 16:50 timeslots. For us.

So it was now around 2pm so we thought we would go and queue for big top. We were first in the queue. YAY. A new maze, and what looked like a new and improved version of Carnival of Screams. I had heard rumors of the towers designs being used and improved on and the split design looked really good. So we queued and gradually a large queue appeared behind us. At around 2:45 they opened up the gate and let us into the actual queue. (for 45 minutes the queue had been clogging up the area around the beach which seemed a bit daft to me, but I assume that if the queue is inside the area then they have to staff it. If its outside the area then its not a problem staff need to think about (btw it was a problem as I saw at least 2 arguments/cross words where someone tried to walk through the queue and didn't use manors but just barged through the people in the queue didn't wasn't impressed. THORPE - GUEST EXPERIENCE IS NOT ONLY HOW STAFF AND GUESTS INTERACT ITS HOW GUESTS AND GUESTS INTERACT. IF YOU PUT GUESTS IN A SITUATION WHERE THEY ARE ANNOYING OTHER GUESTS THEN YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTCOME). You should have opened the queue once a queue started forming. That would have stopped queue jumping (there were some people quite a bit behind us getting annoyed at one group who were just growing continuously and also stopped the queue clogging up the paths, come on, common sense would dictate both outcomes.

15:05 A lady announces that the maze is going to open a bit late. Amazingly it was only 14 minutes past when they announced that it had actually opened. we were the first and second groups. I am not going to go into a review of the maze apart from saying it felt like we were rushed through it and we only saw 3 actors in entirety. I would rate it a 0/10 for scares - there weren't any at all or any point where a scare could happen. 5/10 for the tents. 1/10 for acting ability

Spoiler

[sub](the clairvoyant didn't know her lines at all I think, she said 'I see 2 paths in your future left or right. Some of us turned left, others turned right. "No. go right" she said as if she was telling us again what we had to do.).[/sub]

So we walked out really really not impressed with that. Actors make a maze or break it. A lack of actors really means no maze, unless you have really good effects or scenery. At different times it could have been better, but consistency SHOULD BE part of the mantra of any haunt maze. the scare at opening needs to be as good as the scare at close (unless you market it as low fear before 5 or something. At this point one of our guys had put how generally dissapointed we were at the whole affair on social media and Thorpe had socially communicated back to us asking us to pop over to Guest Services. We showed the communication to the poor girl and she handed us fast track passes for 2 of the mazes. I genuinly had the impression that she had had a string of the exact same complaints. It did actually placate us, and we left there still a bit miffed, but knowing that the hours of queuing we had already done had basically been offset from later in the day (or so we thought). It was coming onto 16:00 when we exited Guest Services. So we headed over to do some proper rides. Flying Fish and Tea cups. Both were genuinely fun and BOTH OF THEM were running smoothly with no problems.

It was then time for containment. There was no queue at all for containment. The staff on this were good. The acting was good. The initial narrative, good. The puzzles were a bit non logical in places. It needed a maze manager though for this kind of operation. One that has screens of all the rooms and controls it. The first room we did in well less than a minute, the 2nd we struggled at, ministering a couple of times. But sorted out in a few minutes. the third room we solved really quickly and then bumped into the group in front. We were then subjected to some acting whilst we waited for them to be evicted. We only actually got about 2 minutes in the final room before we were told that we had run out of time in that room and therefore failed. To be honest I think we had how to crack the code sussed but just weren't given the allotted time. I think the problem we had was solving the first couple so quickly. I think a single room with a number of segmented clues might work better for this kind of attraction rather than a series of rooms. BUT it did have a story and the story was well executed. 0/10 for scares 9/10 for story and acting.

From this point onward NOTHING Worked. All of the mazes had queues of over 120 minutes, We decided to do MBV using our first fast track. we stood in the fast track queue for 10 minutes and the maze E stopped. We then waited round for 15 minutes whilst they extract the idiot and got into the batching area after only a further 20 minutes or so. All was good, we go into the first room and the lights once again go on. The maze was E stopped again. so we were evacuated into the loading area, with 2 other groups of people. We stood here for 15-20 minutes whilst the next idiot was extracted and then were launched into the maze. i say launched because once again it felt like we were really rushed through it, but this is a problem I have always had with MBV, it always seems a short maze. So that fast track allowed us to do a maze in only 1 hour. I felt for the people who were in the queue that was labeled 120 minutes. scare rating 3/10 (only because Rob went boo at me at one point) story 0/10 (they had removed ALL of the story from the maze for some reason, but that might have been because we were rushed through.)

We then headed over to Cabin to use our second fast track. After 15 minutes in the queue we were told that the maze had E stopped. Whilst waiting we notice that Colossus had broken down big time. One car was e stopped/parked half way up lift hill. It stayed there for the rest of the night. 45 minutes later it resumed operation and once again we were rushed through. THIS MAZE HAD ACTORS THOUGH AND THEY WERE ACTUALLY TRYING. It was never a scary maze though. 10/10 for quantity of actors. It also had all of the story it had originally. It just hadn't grown or been improved on. Best maze of the day (not including Containment which isn't really a scare maze).

Queues on all mazes were 120 minutes minimum still so we thought that we would go and ride Swarm in the dark. So we enter the queue and guess what. We get an E stop. This is a B&M, B&M's are reliable beasts. Swarm eventually gets made to work again and after only 50 minutes we are swooping round backwards. So it is now 9pm and we have done 2 fast tracks and 1 ride since 6. Every maze is still at 120 minutes apart from MBV which is walk on ans Saw live which is about 40 minutes. So some of our guys do and do saw live. They return around 9:45 with tails of more E stops and then go and do saw the ride, as their last ride of the day. I am by this time so dejected by the whole day that I choose not to join them. Low and behold , shortly after 10 Saw the ride E stops. So basically 100% of the attractions and rides that we went on after containment at 17:00 had e stopped. To their credit, they did re-open the ride after 40 minutes or so and put everyone who was in the queue onto the ride. That was a good move. 10/10 for the staff involved who must have really wanted to go home at that point.

So was it all rubbish. No despite everything we had a laugh. There were some staff who really tried. Around 4ish I went to refill drinks capsule at the pulled pork/beef butty place (near the event tent on the way to swarm island) who was asked me if I was having a good day and seemed genuinely interested when I said not really, and had me explain (allowed me to rant at him) about ticketing fiasco etc. There were other staff who were trying their hearts out. The problem is once the dominos start falling stopping them isn't easy. It felt like the whole of Thorpe Park was collapsing, or, as one of our guys said, run by school kids.

I don't like ranting without working out how it could have been done better.,

1. The entrance plaza REALLY needs sorting out. Waiting 1.5-2 hours for a pre booked ticket is just unacceptable. No other park has this problem that I know of, but Thorpe have always had it. Ticketing needs sorting.
   
2. The number of E stops throughout the park not only on mazes was unacceptable. Something is seriously going wrong if rides cant run for more than 30 minutes without an emergency happening.
   
3. It felt like the whole park wasn't prepared to deal with fright night specific issues. Simple communication would solve that. Our ticketing problem could have been solved at the first point and easily with just the staff that Thorpe expecting to deal with things having the knowledge to deal with them.
   
4. By day 3, EVERYONE should be professionals at their roles. They should be prepared for idiots doing moronic things in mazes since, by now, it should have happened numerous times. A guest caused E stop should be dealt with in a few minutes. OK if someone has been hurt I can understand, but every maze, every 15 minutes being down for 15-20 minutes???
   
5. A maze needs a story. It needs a reason. It needs something more than pretty lights and some set pieces.
   
6. Containment, even though was good, was still slightly overpriced for what you got. It didn't have a lot of theming. It didn't seem to have a lot of tech. It was fun. But ALL ATTRACTIONS SHOULD BE FUN.
   
7. "That will do" is never enough to provide a world class attraction, and "That will do" is how the whole event felt.

Merlin have had so much bad press this year due to the Smiler. They NEED to show the public not only are the parks SAFE, but they are FUN and GOOD VALUE and worth coming back to. They totally failed at Fright nights, I can only hope that they do better next weekend at Towers.

 

[John]

That's why I gave up on Saturdays at FN several years ago. It's just not worth the hassle for anyone who has to put in more than a token effort in getting there. Having said that, I did keep an eye on ride queue times yesterday and they didn't look anywhere near as long as I would have expected a few years ago when several rides maxed out the 2 digit queue time boards and mazes were claiming 3hr waits. If, as it seems, guest numbers are well below what they might be, it's concerning that the mazes are still completely failing to cope.

Part of me feels that FN deserves to fail as a result of years of misery brought about by poor ride availability, oversold fastrack and general mismanagement. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who have had enough and are staying away. I've stuck to the opening night for the past few years and done very well out of it each time (52 rides last year) and I quite enjoyed my visit on Friday, but I only did 2 mazes (one using my MAP fastrack voucher and the other with a 15min queue) so didn't waste much time with them, but ride availability was appalling and operations mediocre.

My main complaint from Friday was the needless removal of a train from Inferno and Stealth, resulting in 5min queues becoming 30-45min queues mid way through the evening. Part of the appeal of FN is rides in the dark, but with 2 main coasters closed all evening and unnecessary queues on others the opportunity for night riding was limited.

 

[DiogoJ42]

Blood hell.

Is now a bad time to mention what a great, hassle free day we had yesterday at Flamingoland, including friendly staff, walk on rides, and plentifull cheap beer?

 

[Rick]

My main complaint from Friday was the needless removal of a train from Inferno and Stealth, resulting in 5min queues becoming 30-45min queues mid way through the evening.

That's mathematically impossible - explain that to me.

 

[John]

When on 2 trains, Stealth's queue started just before the steps, when I came back later it was down to 1 train and they were into the extended queue. Similarly, Inferno's queue was barely out of the station by mid-afternoon, but shortly after taking a train off it was almost to the shop - though they hadn't updated the boards at that point which still said 5min.

Taking off a train means a queue of a given length takes longer to shift, but it then starts to grow as there aren't as many people getting on the ride.

 

[Coaster]

That's mathematically impossible - explain that to me.

How is that impossible? Taking a train off causes the queue to build up significantly due to the time it takes to do so, which then coupled with the fact that the capacity has been reduced, it could lead to a big increase in the queue time.

 

[John]

Once again Slammer has failed to make it to the end of the season, as Thorpe are now posting on twitter that both Slammer and Tidal Wave will be closed for the rest of the season.

As ever, everyone will now be asking if this time it's closed for good.

 

[ThemeParkCrafter]

Once again Slammer has failed to make it to the end of the season, as Thorpe are now posting on twitter that both Slammer and Tidal Wave will be closed for the rest of the season.

As ever, everyone will now be asking if this time it's closed for good.

I hate to say it but the reality is it will have its last season very soon.

 

[Leah]

I hate to say it but the reality is it will have its last season very soon.

It's a shame really with it being the last one. Would like to ride it but won't be too upset if I can't.

 

[ThemeParkCrafter]

It's a shame really with it being the last one. Would like to ride it but won't be too upset if I can't.

I have never rode it but it looks quite bizarre the way it turns.