Had a spontaneous trip to Thorpe Park today as I was in the area dropping some friends off at Heathrow Airport and looked at the queue times from 10:30am and thought to myself "let's make a day out of this". Well I have to say I have never seen the park so quiet. I arrived just before 12pm and in the 5 hours I had 17 rides on the various attractions.
Longest I queued was the first ride of the afternoon being The Swarm at 25 minutes but after that everything was at an average of 10-15 minutes, with the queue times fluctuating up to 25-30 minutes as you could work out where the "clusters" of people were at. All coasters running for most of the day with just The Walking Dead going down for a little bit. Operations on Stealth top notch as always. I had a few walk-ons! The Swarm was running very well as the afternoon progressed and managed to go 3 times on Colossus as it was walk-on each time.
Finishing off with a 35 minute queue and lucking into a front row seat on Hyperia. Hyperia was at 30-40 minute main queue average all day.
I have to say as someone who has never been on my own before, the single rider queue can be a lottery. On Saw, I walked straight on as I was the only person in single rider queue and I just happened to have had a group of 3 in the rows before me so queued longer to get my bag afterwards!
Whereas on the Walking Dead, again hardly any people queuing and I was the only single-rider in the queue but the ride host was being slow and saying "you have to wait until there's an odd number". I then watched as it was just solid groups of 2's all coming through and I watched the queue build and build. Surprised they didn't just let me go on straight away when they were waiting to get the numbers to send a batch through to the pre-show.
What should have been a 5 minute queue turned into a 15 minute wait. I'm not well versed in how these processes work, but if the numbers are that low, surely having 1 empty seat isn't going to make a difference?
I wish more rides had single rider queue, it was sad to see so many empty seats going round on Nemesis because people don't want to split up or they don't know how to batch properly into the rows. There were plenty of times today I would be in a row waiting to go on (not the next train, but the one after) but I would see someone on their own which meant an empty seat next to them. I would then ask the 2 people in front of me, "are you OK if I jump through and take that empty seat as I am on my own?" "Yes, that's fine go ahead"
Overall, a solid day was great to be at Thorpe Park again. Making the most of the 5 hours I had there.
Longest I queued was the first ride of the afternoon being The Swarm at 25 minutes but after that everything was at an average of 10-15 minutes, with the queue times fluctuating up to 25-30 minutes as you could work out where the "clusters" of people were at. All coasters running for most of the day with just The Walking Dead going down for a little bit. Operations on Stealth top notch as always. I had a few walk-ons! The Swarm was running very well as the afternoon progressed and managed to go 3 times on Colossus as it was walk-on each time.
Finishing off with a 35 minute queue and lucking into a front row seat on Hyperia. Hyperia was at 30-40 minute main queue average all day.
I have to say as someone who has never been on my own before, the single rider queue can be a lottery. On Saw, I walked straight on as I was the only person in single rider queue and I just happened to have had a group of 3 in the rows before me so queued longer to get my bag afterwards!
Whereas on the Walking Dead, again hardly any people queuing and I was the only single-rider in the queue but the ride host was being slow and saying "you have to wait until there's an odd number". I then watched as it was just solid groups of 2's all coming through and I watched the queue build and build. Surprised they didn't just let me go on straight away when they were waiting to get the numbers to send a batch through to the pre-show.
What should have been a 5 minute queue turned into a 15 minute wait. I'm not well versed in how these processes work, but if the numbers are that low, surely having 1 empty seat isn't going to make a difference?
I wish more rides had single rider queue, it was sad to see so many empty seats going round on Nemesis because people don't want to split up or they don't know how to batch properly into the rows. There were plenty of times today I would be in a row waiting to go on (not the next train, but the one after) but I would see someone on their own which meant an empty seat next to them. I would then ask the 2 people in front of me, "are you OK if I jump through and take that empty seat as I am on my own?" "Yes, that's fine go ahead"
Overall, a solid day was great to be at Thorpe Park again. Making the most of the 5 hours I had there.
