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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

I went to Thorpe today, and we had a nice day! If you want a longer trip report, I’ve written one: https://towersstreet.com/talk/threads/thorpe-park-11th-july-2021.5834/

But in summary, a few interesting things from the day would be:
  • This isn’t a criticism per se, as I’m sure Thorpe has a very valid reason for doing it, but I thought it was interesting how Thorpe’s way of dealing with pre-opening crowds differed a fair bit from Alton Towers’. While Alton Towers opens the turnstiles a fair bit before 10am and lets you go and get in your first ride queue before the rides open, Thorpe holds you all at the top area by the Dome and doesn’t release you into the main park until 10am, which did cause a substantial build-up of crowds when opening time began to roll around, as well as a bit of a “stampede” of sorts when we were finally released into the main park. As I say, this is by no means a criticism, but with COVID on the rise, I certainly felt more comfortable keeping my face covering on.
  • Don’t walk under Storm Surge while there’s a boat going around it; we did and got unwittingly drenched!
  • I can tell that Thorpe has put a lot of effort into the ParkVibes stuff; there’s a fair bit of decor around, as well as the temporary ride announcements & music, and even though there wasn’t a particularly stark difference in experience from my end, I can tell Thorpe has put a lot of thought into it!
  • Having listened to it in person, I’m still not entirely sure on Swarm’s new plaza soundtrack with the radio station-type thing going on, but I’ve got to say I rather like the new station soundtrack; it’s kind of a blend of a church organ and an electric guitar, and it sounds very cool, in my opinion! The ride itself was running phenomenally well and was easily the standout ride of the day for me; Swarm’s still easily my favourite coaster in the park and one of my favourite UK coasters, and I honestly had some of my favourite ever rides on it today!
  • Inferno was running very well today; fairly smooth, with a great sense of speed throughout and just the right level of force for my liking! On a thematic note, the mist levels on the ride were also fantastic, with both the volcanoes in the upper half of the queue line and the pre-lift tunnel emitting copious amounts of mist; great job, Thorpe!
  • Quite a few queue times were underestimated, to varying degrees. Saw was advertised 5, we waited 35-40. Colossus was advertised 25, we waited 50. Stealth was advertised 30, we waited around 50.
  • Our ride count was pretty good; given that we started riding at opening time and left the park at 3:30pm, I was very pleased with our ride count of 6!
  • All of Thorpe’s non-B&M thrill coasters seemed to be varying degrees of rattly/rough today, for some reason. I did Colossus for the first time in a while today, and I’m afraid it’s still among my least favourite coasters, unfortunately. I sat in row 9, and it was very rough, with tighter, more uncomfortable restraints than I’d remembered. I also don’t especially like the ending sequence of heartline rolls, personally; they made me feel quite strange. Saw in the front row was also absolutely brutal, and not one I’m personally too keen on, but its more comfortable cars/restraints, fun dark ride section and strong layout sweeten the deal compared to Colossus. Even Stealth, which I usually find fairly smooth (well, smooth for an 80mph hydraulic launch coaster), seemed somewhat bumpy compared to usual when ascending and descending the top hat, which did detract from it slightly for me, although I wouldn’t have called Stealth rough per se, and I still enjoyed it. My ride today (row 6, for clarity) just didn’t seem quite as enjoyable as my last one. I apologise if I sound a bit moany, but I’ll admit that I don’t have the highest roughness tolerance, and I’m very much someone who values smoothness/comfort in a ride.
  • On a more positive note regarding Colossus & Saw, Colossus is a really aesthetically pleasing coaster, in my opinion; I love the new soundtrack, and the area’s looking really nice! With regard to Saw; the thematic elements were mostly in tip top condition and all working with the exception of the body that squirts water as you roll over it; phenomenal stuff, Thorpe! They’ve also added new, rather dramatic dispatch audio to it since my last visit, which I think is great! I’ll admit I actually think that as much as I’m not really a fan of the coaster itself, I think Saw is an incredibly well-themed coaster, and quite an overlooked coaster within the sphere of themed attractions!
That’s just about everything I can think of.

On the whole, we had a really nice day; thanks, Thorpe!
 
I did also do some throughput timings for Thorpe’s big 5 coasters, if any of you are interested. In order of highest to lowest, my attained throughputs for Thorpe’s big 5 go something like:
  • Swarm: 954pph
  • Inferno: 875pph
  • Stealth: 825pph
  • Saw: 725pph
  • Colossus: 553pph
Rather oddly, the ordering of those throughputs from highest to lowest is the exact ordering of my coaster preferences at Thorpe, with Swarm being on top for me, Inferno being 2nd, Stealth being 3rd, Saw being 4th and Colossus being last…
For anyone more knowledgeable about Thorpe’s throughputs than myself, are these typical of a regular day for each ride, or did I do something wrong in my timings?

Danny said:
Have to say I agree on the Colossus being a really aesthetic coaster point. The grime and general uncleanliness, particularly at the exit of the barrel rolls, really captures the essence of the park.
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I was referring to the sight lines from the queue and the lovely Lost City theming & landscaping, as well as the fact that I think the coaster itself has some very aesthetically satisfying elements, but fair enough if you agree with me for different reasons!
 
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Matt N said:
I did also do some throughput timings for Thorpe’s big 5 coasters, if any of you are interested. In order of highest to lowest, my attained throughputs for Thorpe’s big 5 go something like:
  • Swarm: 954pph
  • Inferno: 875pph
  • Stealth: 825pph
  • Saw: 725pph
  • Colossus: 553pph
For anyone more knowledgeable about Thorpe’s throughputs than myself, are these typical of a regular day for each ride, or did I do something wrong in my timings?
Click to expand...
Well Coaster Bot released a Thorpe Park operations video last night
 
In terms of how aesthetically pleasing Colossus is, the other thing is it was designed to run along the edge of the lake. When they filled in the lake to make Saw Island, Colossus lost something. Colossus and Inferno both looked pretty good when they were new. Although I did read that they've fixed the mist in Inferno's tunnel, which is a positive step.
 
Thameslink Rail said:
Well Coaster Bot released a Thorpe Park operations video last night
Click to expand...

Having now watched it, I’ll admit I’m surprised at how low he managed to get the throughputs for some of the rides as. The rides don’t feel any lower throughput than Alton Towers’, for the most part, so I was also surprised at how low some of my readings were.

For instance, I was anticipating Swarm and Inferno to be getting 1,000pph or over, particularly Swarm; I was under the impression that Swarm was like the Thorpe Park equivalent of Nemesis, where it consistently got over 1,000pph with little issue? At least, I always thought Swarm had a pretty high throughput, and Swarm’s relative queue times compared with Thorpe’s others are seemingly much lower; is it just a very unpopular ride compared with Thorpe’s others?
Funcone said:
Although I did read that they've fixed the mist in Inferno's tunnel, which is a positive step.
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They definitely have; there was tons of mist in there yesterday!
 
Swarm isn't that popular and has a decent throughput compared to the likes of Saw, Stealth and Colossus.

No accounting for taste unfortunately.
 
I’ll admit it always surprises me that Swarm isn’t more popular. It’s Thorpe’s newest coaster, and if Towers is anything to go by, new usually means most popular (Smiler & Wicker Man are Towers’ most popular coasters, from my experience). It’s also a fairly big, dominating ride compared to Thorpe’s others, and looks quite scary/thrilling from off-ride.

It also surprises me that Stealth isn’t more popular, what with it being Thorpe’s tallest coaster and everything. It strikes me as a very “landmark” attraction for Thorpe. However, its queue didn’t exceed 30 minutes while I was there yesterday.

If anything, if I were to take into account both throughput and queue times, I’d actually say that surprisingly, Nemesis Inferno seems like Thorpe’s most popular coaster, because it has one of the park’s highest throughputs, yet often has queues of well over an hour (it hit 70-75 minutes numerous times yesterday, and I’ve even been with it being on 80-90 on some days). I’d closely follow that up with Saw; it often has huge queues (I once waited close to 2 hours for Saw), albeit the capacity isn’t the highest.

Colossus, in spite of its fairly low capacity, doesn’t seem to get huge queues, though; I often see it on an hour or so, but not reliably over like some.

Unlike Alton Towers or Blackpool, though, Thorpe doesn’t seem to have one individual ride that everyone rushes to at the start of the day. While Alton Towers has the consistently popular Smiler and Blackpool has the consistently popular Big One, Thorpe seems to lack such a headline attraction.

Out of interest, are Thorpe’s operations/throughputs somewhat inconsistent, because I gained some quite different values from Harry when I timed the throughputs yesterday?
 
Matt N said:
.

For instance, I was anticipating Swarm and Inferno to be getting 1,000pph or over, particularly Swarm; I was under the impression that Swarm was like the Thorpe Park equivalent of Nemesis, where it consistently got over 1,000pph with little issue? At least, I always thought Swarm had a pretty high throughput, and Swarm’s relative queue times compared with Thorpe’s others are seemingly much lower; is it just a very unpopular ride compared with Thorpe’s others?
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Swarm suffers from plenty of station faff; with riders getting off having to clear not only their seat but the length of the train before incoming riders have clear access to their seats. Wing riders must be able to achieve significant throughput improvements with separate offload and onload.
 
On another popularity-related point; is it just me, or does Walking Dead seem quite unpopular in comparison to Thorpe’s other coasters?

Yesterday, its queue was mostly close to non-existent compared to the other rides (I don’t think I saw it on more than 5-10 minutes all day), and while it apparently has a relatively high theoretical throughput of 1,000pph according to RCDB, Swarm & Inferno weren’t achieving much lower than that yesterday and had considerably longer queues, which would suggest that throughput alone might not be the cause of Walking Dead’s short queues… was the Walking Dead change not as popular as hoped?

Flying Fish also maintains a consistently non-existent queue (haven’t ever seen it on longer than 5-10 minutes), but given Thorpe’s heavy targeting towards teens & adults and Flying Fish’s targeting towards families, there’s not a huge amount of overlap between the target audience of Fish and the target audience of the park, so that’s understandable.
 
It's a family coaster in a thrill coaster lineup. No matter the theme or IP that has been slapped onto it (I suspect the Walking Dead will be one that sticks around for a much longer time), the ride has only ever been popular when it's a) raining or b) at the very start of the new well-known IP.

Why would the majority of guests visiting a thrill-driven park opt to queue for two family coasters compared to any of the thrill coasters?

The Walking Dead change was certainly popular when it happened, but now most people know it's an ageing family coaster draped in zombies. Thorpe needs to invest in actual hardware now and stop relying on IPs as if the future of the park depends on what the next one is.
 
Danny said:
It's a family coaster in a thrill coaster lineup. No matter the theme or IP that has been slapped onto it (I suspect the Walking Dead will be one that sticks around for a much longer time), the ride has only ever been popular when it's a) raining or b) at the very start of the new well-known IP.

Why would the majority of guests visiting a thrill-driven park opt to queue for two family coasters compared to any of the thrill coasters?

The Walking Dead change was certainly popular when it happened, but now most people know it's an ageing family coaster draped in zombies. Thorpe needs to invest in actual hardware now and stop relying on IPs as if the future of the park depends on what the next one is.
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In fairness, the year they built Walking Dead was a low investment year, and I think the experience looks to be incredibly well put together from what I’ve seen, but I do get where you’re coming from, in a sense.

I do think that the conversion of X into Walking Dead, although it looks to have improved the ride from an immersion standpoint, made the same mistake as Thirteen when it opened, but to an even greater extent. Ultimately, X was a coaster comparable in stats to Rhino Coaster at WMSP (which having ridden last year, is far from an intense thrill ride), and while this was to be expected by most while the ride was aimed at families and had a 1m height restriction, I think most people would go in expecting something more thrilling from a coaster with a 1.4m height restriction and a minimum age restriction of 13 if they knew nothing else about the ride, so in that regard, some might argue that in a similar vein to Thirteen’s original marketing, they were kind of setting people up for disappointment with the whole “11/10 on the scare scale” and “world’s scariest ride” stuff, as well as the aforementioned high height & age restrictions.

I think horror themes on family coasters can work and be very successful; for instance, Van Helsing’s Factory, a family-orientated Gerstlauer bobsled coaster at Movie Park Germany, has been unanimously well received, and Van Helsing isn’t exactly a bright, cheery theme. For some reason, though, TWD doesn’t seem to have gone down as successfully; I’m not sure why, as from what I can tell, the two are quite similar in terms of being horror-themed family coasters. Maybe TWD is more upfront with the horror or something? I don’t really know, having done neither TWD post-retheme nor Van Helsing.

Through a certain lens, however, I guess you could consider TWD a psychological thrill ride that tests the mind as opposed to the body, and plays on horror themes & people’s fears with heavy, immersive theming, as opposed to a ride that thrills using high g-forces and speeds. I don’t think that’s really what many people would expect from a coaster with such requirements as TWD has, though; I think most would go in expecting a physical thrill like the park’s other coasters provide.

Granted, I think the refurb looked to be quite stunningly done when finished, so I think it was ultimately a good thing, and a job well done by the park, but when it was announced, I’ll admit my initial reaction was “Ooh, this is an… interesting decision” as opposed to “this is great news!”.

I guess I was just kind of surprised that Walking Dead doesn’t leap off the page to people in the same way that Saw, the park’s other horror-themed coaster, does.

On a different note, I’ll be intrigued to see what the future holds for that area. Will TWD remain for much longer?
 
Those throughputs are awful.

Swarm and Nemesis (Inferno) used to comfortably get 1,000- 1,100 per hour and could get more if they were pushing it.

The throughput you listed for Colossus is a one train throughput. The ride is designed to achieve at least 1,000 per hour. Was it on one train? Sadly, I highly doubt it was, in which case that’s very, very low indeed.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
Those throughputs are awful.

Swarm and Nemesis (Inferno) used to comfortably get 1,000- 1,100 per hour and could get more if they were pushing it.

The throughput you listed for Colossus is a one train throughput. The ride is designed to achieve at least 1,000 per hour. Was it on one train? Sadly, I highly doubt it was, in which case that’s very, very low indeed.
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In terms of Swarm & Inferno; the fastest dispatch for each (or at least, the first dispatch I did) would have equated to a throughput of 1,046pph in Swarm’s case and 971pph in Inferno’s case, but I did a couple of dispatches for each (I think 4 for Swarm and 7 for Inferno), and there were some slower ones that bought the average down (the average at times went into the 800s for Swarm and 700s for Inferno) to the eventual 954pph for Swarm and 875pph for Inferno. After I stopped timing, there were some even slower ones on Swarm, but the ride did seem to be having a few issues, as I noticed a couple of times that it didn’t seem to be parking properly, stopping in one spot and then having to edge forward slightly a few seconds later.

As for Colossus; it was on 2 trains, as I distinctly remember waiting on the brake run. The fastest dispatch I had would have equated to 627pph, but yet again, there were slower ones that bought it down (the average got down to 450pph at one point in my timing…) to the average of 553pph. The queue did move quite slowly, but I’ve got to give it to them, the staff seemed to be working very hard to keep it moving! I must admit I’m at a loss as to how the ride would attain even 1,000pph, let alone its theoretical of 1,300pph… the ride’s trains and restraint system make it seem like that would be very difficult to attain, and as I said, the staff were all working really hard to keep the queue moving.

I don’t blame the throughputs on operations, as all of the staff were working really hard to keep the queues moving, from my experience! Every ride was also on at least 2 trains, from what I can remember, and Saw seemed to be having cars going round at fairly quick intervals, so I can only assume it was on a high number of cars!

To be honest; I don’t know if you guys agree, but something I think Thorpe could really benefit from is a coaster that can consistently get over 1,000pph with little effort, in the vein of something like Nemesis at Alton Towers, which never has an issue with getting 1,000pph. Also, I think they could do with something with open trains that are easy to get into, alongside more simplistic (for lack of a better word) restraints, so that you could ensure a fairly consistent throughput. I know I’ve mentioned this a lot, but I’m thinking that something like a B&M hyper would work wonders and be able to attain a very high throughput of well over 1,000pph (3 trains, with each train containing a fair number of riders, alongside fairly quick dispatches), especially when paired with the baggage hold that Merlin usually integrates into their new coasters. The B&M hyper train design is very open and easy to get into, and the restraints are also very simple, with you only needing to pull down a lap bar for the train to be able to dispatch. The trains are open enough that dispatches wouldn’t be affected too profoundly even if the baggage hold was eventually removed. I also feel like a GCI wooden coaster in the style of Wicker Man would also fit the bill, although the trains aren’t as open as those of a B&M hyper; Wicker Man has been hitting a phenomenal dispatch rate of around 1,050pph on both of my 2021 Towers visits (1,059pph on my first and 1,048pph on my second)!

At the moment, Thorpe doesn’t really have any big thrill coasters with both simple restraints and large trains, to really be able to nail a consistent throughput. They have some high throughput rides, but I’d say each is currently inhibited by the following:
  • Inferno: Relatively simple, but seatbelts slow it down a little.
  • Colossus: Bulky, heavy restraints, cramped trains and seatbelts slow this down.
  • Stealth: Same as Colossus, but not to quite the same extent.
  • Saw: Relatively simple, but the use of smaller cars as opposed to larger trains inhibits this one from being really easy and nailing a really consistent throughput.
  • Swarm: There’s a delay while waiting for the previous train of riders to clear the station, and the vest restraints are also somewhat bulky. Seatbelts also delay this slightly.
 
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When I went a few weeks ago, exactly the same experience for Colossus. No reason I can think of as to why it was so slow. Sitting there on the break run being pinned down by those abominable restraints for ages. Man I hate those restraints
 
Thorpe does have a coaster which can comfortably get 1,000 pph - Swarm.
It runs with four attendants on platform and can easily send out enough trains to achieve more than 1,000. It used to get numbers of around 1,200 pph pretty consistently, and as far as I can see there’s nothing in procedure which has changed, so I’m slightly puzzled why it’s getting the numbers it did when you visited.

To a lesser extent than Swarm, but arguably still, Nemesis Inferno should be getting 1,000+ each hour. It always used to, although admittedly in this ride, the loading and bar checking process does look to have changed, so understandable that it’s throughputs have reduced.
 
It is important to remember the impact of enforcing face mask and exemption rules on ride throughputs currently.

Anytime someone has their bar checked and isn’t wearing a mask, restrains have to be released, the rider either fetching their mask or move to the back, and the whole ride re-checked again.

Ive noticed The Swarm is stacking on 2 trains regularly this season, when that never used to be the case. Mask enforcement is clearly the cause
 
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