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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Dar you are right there, Universal could have done better there, but atleast the ride technology makes up for the exterior. Let's hope Thorpe will surprise us with this and the ride will be coherient with what the build inside. That's one thing that can be said about transformers.
 
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Theme Park Worldwide just tweeted this picture of slammer getting some more attention:
CEfugXVWoAASiyQ.jpg


Apparently it hasn't opened at all this season?

Surely it's time for them to cut their losses, get rid and install something actually worthwhile and reliable?

:)
 
Samurai is having similar trouble and has been closed for over a month. Thorpe should be looking at options for replacing both, as Samurai has really struggled over the past couple of years too, with multiple periods of extended closure (usually towards the start or end of the season). Samurai is probably the more popular of the two though, and should in theory be easier to obtain parts for.
 
It does appear that Slammer spends more time closed than open these days. Somewhat baffling that Merlin are letting Thorpe keep it and spend money on it.

:)
 
I would say both rides are usually closed when I visit Thorpe. At the start of the season both were closed, and when I went last year both were also closed!

Slammer I can understand as it is now a one off ride so it must be hard to get parts or even know what is wrong with it.

Samurai is a basic ride so I can't see why that has so much downtime. Would be easier to go out and buy a new one, it's a cheap fairground ride!
 
It does beg the question of if Samurai is so hard to maintain for a large multi-national, how can Lightwater keep theirs in such good condition!
 
Samurai gets a lot more abuse than Whirlwind does. LWV don't need to get such high throughput as Thorpe, they also have shorter opening hours and a much shorter season. Samurai probably needs to do at least 3x more cycles per year than Whirlwind is doing.
 
Not quite sure whether this is the right topic to post this, but I was just glancing down Merlin’s career page for curiosity. Thorpe Park are looking for a manager to run a rides team with 100 staff including 3 team leaders. They’re paying £18,000 a year:

https://merlin.taleo.net/careersection/4/jobdetail.ftl?job=THO0000H4

I got glancing at their other adverts and saw that caricature artists and Dungeon actors also get the minimum wage (At the London Dungeons staff get paid more for working in central London). I know the tourism industry has never been the best paid, and the pay doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of staff. If you pay too much you can get people doing the job for the wrong reasons, and dead wood who don’t move on simply because it pays well.

I also accept that Merlin are one of the few British parks who pay staff the same regardless of whether they are over or under 21, and the free tickets that can be used at any Merlin attraction is better than the perks independent parks can offer. I was shocked when I found that managers at Flamingo Land get paid 10p an hour above the minimum wage and staff have to pay for their uniforms (that's their lower ranking managers. Not all managers).

Anyway, I’m digressing. According to the job advert £18,000 for managing 100 staff is a competitive salary. Merlin’s salaries aren’t normally competitive compared to other industries, but compared to similar jobs in the theme park industry they often are. But even by theme park industry standards it seems like a lot of responsibility for the money. If you look at Merlin job adverts, the jobs at the very bottom have risen in wages because they have to. The minimum wage goes up. But the wages above the very bottom seem to be falling.

There’s been quite a bit of discussion about perceived cost cutting in guest facing areas (such as staggered openings), but it does give an insight into things behind the scenes. Like I said earlier, pay doesn’t always reflect the quality of staff, and Merlin generally do have very good people working for them which is partly why they’ve been so successful. But you wonder how little they can pay before they do start haemorrhaging talent.
 
£18,000 to run 3 team leaders and 100 staff is so low, such a low salary for the responsibility. Maybe I'm naïve but I would have expected that at least that for the team leader roles, let alone for the manager in charge of them.
 
No, you're totally right.

Who in their right mind would take that job? That salary is an insult to whoever takes it - if anyone does.

I know the leisure industry has different grades to 'the normal world' but this is really taking the p. I hope no-one is naive enough to get hoodwinked into this role.
 
The pay isn't great but it's certainly a lot better than the pay for department managers at a lot of the UK's independent parks. It is also less responsibility as there are various other managers and team leaders supporting managers at Merlin parks, whereas independent parks have far less managers and therefore more workload and responsibility than at a larger park.
 
£18k for all that responsibility is an insult. I've worked for companies that are really tight on wages in the past (like Serco), and even they pay better than that. Hell, I earn more for less responsibility!

They must be aware if they get anyone half decent, they'll leave when something opens up elsewhere that is better pay. You can't hope to retain good people on poor pay, particularly good management.
 
I am going to have one of those "I'm not a moaner" moan, but after a trip to Thorpe Park yesterday - It was positively the most diabolical visit I have had in my 14 years of visiting the park.

We got to the park at 10:30AM. When we arrived at the park the following rides had not even opened/had broken down.
  • Colossus
  • Samaurai (Now opening at 11)
  • Loggers Leap (Now opening at 11)
  • Tidal Wave (Now opening at 11)
  • Vortex
  • Rush
  • Swarm
  • Stealth
  • Slammer (Now opening at 11)
  • X
  • Depth Charge
  • Saw: The Ride (Closed after Smiler Incident)
We were literally wandering from ride to ride trying to actually find one that was open or had not broken down. It was ludicrous. We ended up waiting for Samurai which was on the worst setting I have ever experienced.

When stuff actually started to open it had a serious queue to, who would queue 60 minutes for X?

I tried to do the very british thing and keep a stiff upper lip but after queueing for Nemesis Inferno for an hour for it to break down I marched to guest services to make a complaint. The absolute moron on the desk made me fill in a complaint on a tablet and that was that, no sorry, no nothing. Which confirmed that the park really don't care. Once you are through those gates, that is it, they have your money and they do not care about the guest experience in the slightest.

Rant over!
 
I visited on Monday, although unlike you I had a very pleasant visit and managed to get nearly every ride done. There were problems on Colossus (no idea what they were) and was running on one train for most of the day, apart from that, everything was fine. But damn Themeparkmedia, it sounds like you had the most unlucky day there :/
 
It's clear that the combination of low capacity, staggered openings and breakdowns (plus lack of Saw) is having an impact this morning:

thorpe2-7-15_zps0byofme7.png
 
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