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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

There's been no focus to the park ever since Merlin took over. One minute they want to add thrills, then family, and then thrills, and then somehow retheme a family coaster to a horror IP?! It's a mess. Since Swarm, they've installed what is - at best - a mediocre kids area, a laughable excuse of a "dark ride", the aforementioned TWD retheme, and what was the final straw for me personally, the removal of Loggers Leap. Loads of parks around the world have had a massive focus of thrills but still managed to keep and not alienate families. While it was a good idea to more the park more thrill friendly, alienating families is what led to its downfall in the long run. In London, guests have the mindset of visiting Chessington for families and Thorpe for thrills it's not really an issue for the former, but the latter has a limited catchment because in essence, teens and young adults can't actually go to theme parks as much as need.

Everyone talks about how much damage Merlin have done to Chessie and Towers, but they have absolutely destroyed Thorpe as well and it's a disgrace how the 2nd biggest park in the UK has fallen so hard.
 
Had the momentum of the 2000s continued, would Thorpe Park possibly be revered as the country’s largest and most loved theme park in the same way that Alton Towers is today?

I know it might sound minor, but I personally think that building Saw instead of the planned GCI was a mistake. Even though this GCI looked pretty thrilling, GCIs aren’t too daunting and can still have an element of family appeal about them (height restriction of 1.2m, no inversions), so it would arguably have rounded the park’s coaster selection out a little more and given the park an all-round crowd pleaser.

I get why the park went with Saw at the time, because I admit that it fit what Merlin wanted to do with the park at the time, the Eurofighter sold itself effectively in marketing and Merlin were also wary of building wooden coasters at that point, but I can’t help but long for the GCI that once could have been on that plot of land (for clarity, I don’t particularly enjoy Saw, as it never fails to leave me with a pounding headache after riding), as I feel like it may have been a greater long-term hit than Saw.
 
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Matt N said:
I admit that it fit what Merlin wanted to do with the park at the time
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What did Merlin want to do with the park at that time, or any time? I don't think even they knew.

Saw was just a declining IP and the ride was cheap enough hardware, so it was standard formula. I don't think it was what the park needed, though it was incredibly popular when it opened (all hype in my opinion). The whole park needs to be invested in, not just adding new attractions and IPs, which I think they've realised too late now.
 
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OilyWater said:
What did Merlin want to do with the park at that time, or any time? I don't think even they knew.
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They wanted to make it a thrill park and attract young adults as their primary market; their aim was to be “the thrill capital of the UK”, and this was when all of the big heads imagery was around. This lasted until the failure of The Swarm in 2012, which caused this to begin to be reversed for the 2013 season with X’s retheme and accelerated the reversal in 2014 with the Island Like No Other branding and Angry Birds Land.
 
The issue they had with going wholy for the Thrill seekers market was it dissuaded families from going. When families go together there's more chance of secondary spending, little kids wanting random toys etc.

Whereas Thorpe went for a market were the parents could drop the teenagers at the gate (armed with their dirt cheap annual pass) and maybe with some money for food/drinks which when I was that age and being dropped off at similar sort attractions I'd be doing my best to spend as little of it as possible.
 
The island in itself has the potential to be a very pleasant place, with some of the existing infrastructure back from the early 2000s period of heavy investment highlighting that. Despite the areas not receiving any love for a long time, Amity Cove, Lost City and the Jungle are bang on the kind of atmosphere they should be going for.

In recent years everything added just looks like what you will find at a disused industrial estate.

You really don’t need dark and dingy in order to convey a thrill ride. And areas absolutely dont need to be entirely dedicated to thrill. You can easily put some decent family rides in Lost City, the Jungle etc, and have something for everyone. The same cant be said for the parts of the park that look like a crack den.


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Are Thorpe letting too many people in? Inferno 90, Swarm 100, Colossus 120, SAW 130, Stealth 150! That seems ridiculous for the 3rd September!!
 
Danscott22 said:
Are Thorpe letting too many people in? Inferno 90, Swarm 100, Colossus 120, SAW 130, Stealth 150! That seems ridiculous for the 3rd September!!
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Not all kids are back to school. Those queue times are bad, but sort of to be expected in school holidays.

Whether social distancing can be done in the queue lines is a separate issue to the length of the wait time. The wait time is "normal" for the time of year (last chance visit before school goes back etc). But if it is impossible to distance while waiting then too many people are in the park.
 
jon81uk said:
Not all kids are back to school. Those queue times are bad, but sort of to be expected in school holidays.

Whether social distancing can be done in the queue lines is a separate issue to the length of the wait time. The wait time is "normal" for the time of year (last chance visit before school goes back etc). But if it is impossible to distance while waiting then too many people are in the park.
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It's not impossible to distance, it is at times impossible to distance and contain the queue inside the actual queue line, but that's been an issue at THORPE at times even before distancing.
 
imanautie said:
It's not impossible to distance, it is at times impossible to distance and contain the queue inside the actual queue line, but that's been an issue at THORPE at times even before distancing.
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and I don't think queues should be this long in general at a park, they should invest so that queues are under 2hours for everything except the brand new attraction. But they are routinely this long, this doesn't seem like anything new.
 
So the Fright Nights info has been updated on the Thorpe Park website.

‘Fright Nights Fearstival’ is the name and there are seemingly lots of changes.

Online booking price for Fright Nights dates is now £42pp. Park hours are 10am-9pm, so an hour shorter than previous years.

It seems there will be only two Scaremazes this year - Roots of Evil and Platform 15. Both are now an upcharge at £10pp for each maze.

There do appear to be new Scarezone experiences around the park included in admission.

https://www.thorpepark.com/explore/theme-park/fright-nights/
 
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Just watched the new promo video for Fright Nights on the Thorpe Facebook page. The difference in quality and marketing standard to the video Alton put out is mind-blowing.

Thorpe seem to be doing marketing/digital media content to a far higher standard than Alton this year, particularly where Oktoberfest and their respective Halloween offerings are concerned.

Only thing that concerns me with the Thorpe line-up is, they're taking on a fair few more experiences in a similar way they did in 2018. I hope this doesn't compromise on quality like 2018 too. But on the flip-side, I'm glad they're focusing on the atmosphere side of things this year.
 
kydog1299 said:
Just watched the new promo video for Fright Nights on the Thorpe Facebook page. The difference in quality and marketing standard to the video Alton put out is mind-blowing.
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It seemed perhaps their best promo video for anything in the past few years, and in my opinion by some margin.

Biggest thing for me, is that everything is thankfully outside. Essentially they're a giant scare zone this year, with a couple of presumably very low capacity attractions. If it wasn't for the COVID keeping me away, I'd probably have enjoyed this particular line up quite a bit.

I can see them having problems with the costing. Jungle Escape sat predominantly empty at its initial £10 last year, and frequently empty at the lower £6 (I think).

Notably, there's no IPs at all this year.
 
Also, a heads up; apparently they've changed it so there are no pass holder tickets. General admission only.
 
There's an option for passholder tickets on the FN page - £1 for premium MAP holders, £10 otherwise. You can't book tickets for FN days through the normal passholder pre-book system.

EDIT: turns out the price for standard pass holders is variable, from £10 on the first couple of Fridays up to an eye-watering £25 on the super-peak days. Surely they're not expecting anyone to actually pay that?
 
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AstroDan said:
Thorpe is £42.
Alton is £34.

Wow.
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John said:
There's an option for passholder tickets on the FN page - £1 for premium MAP holders, £10 otherwise. You can't book tickets for FN days through the normal passholder pre-book system.

EDIT: turns out the price for standard pass holders is variable, from £10 on the first couple of Fridays up to an eye-watering £25 on the super-peak days. Surely they're not expecting anyone to actually pay that?
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higher pricing might help with the overcrowding complaints. If fewer people are willing to pay to get in the the queues should be shorter!
 
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