Those figures come from reliable sources through Thorpe Park Mania iirc.
I think it's also fairly possible to be true since each headset costs over a grand each at the time, and there was 174 required for the ride to run (because of the way the ride works, there is no "reduced capacity", and the vast majority of these headsets needed replacing at regular intervals because they either burnt out or were broken by Joe public - it was how the ride was worked out, by counting the broken headsets in each carriage gave away there were three carriages), throw on top of that another 174 dedicated, air cooled PC's running each headset that regularly broke (literally daily in some cases), the needed installation of air conditioning after a few months operation, the re-rendering of the second VR scene, a mirror needing replacing etc. etc. Just pull out a calculator and work out the hardware cost alone, it's staggering for a "ride". Then you have staffing costs, I'm not a hundred percent but wasn't it 14 staff members required to run it originally, 14 x minimum wage x each day open = quickly adds even more to the cost.
As the age old saying goes, everything adds up, I would not be suprised if this ride will cost them £60Million by the end of its life, 2019 is the last year of Merlin funding for it, so expect it to go the same way IAC has gone this year at the end of 2019, i.e. Bulldozed.
