Hello Everyone,
Myself and a friend visited Thorpe on Friday 4th, which was the first day of fright nights. This was my first visit since 2019 and we were heading to the park specifically for Hyperia… Spoiler, we didn’t manage to get on it unfortunately!
Flat rides
Visiting Thorpe always makes me pine for more flat rides at Alton Towers. The selection is really good and varied in terms of thrill level.
Vortex was by far mine and my friend’s favourite flat ride, perhaps one of our favourite rides in the park. So much force on the swing and a really good cycle time. Rush is always great but the cycle time has gotten a lot shorter since my last visit, great to see the second arm is back up and running but I remember it swinging a lot more ‘beyond horizontal’ last time. Quantum is also fun and has some good floaty forces.
We missed out on Zodiac and samurai as we were pretty dizzy after doing this corner of the park. Detonator had amazing views over London, but I fall into that category of enthusiast who loves most rides but gets s**t scared by drop towers. The prolonged hold at the top was pretty horrible!
Coasters
The Swarm
We started the day off on The Swarm, since my last visit I believe they’ve altered the restraints so they do not tighten throughout the layout, this made a world of difference! The first drop, zero g and last inline roll are so fun but the mid part of the layout for me is quite intense and a little rattly (I was on the outside seat). Very fun ride with a drop that you can’t find anywhere else in the UK and great theming!
Stealth
I'd forgotten how outrageous the launch is, the ride as a whole is such an assault on the senses. The first ride I absolutely loved but for our second ride, both my friend and I found it to be very rattly. I’m not sure if this is due to the seat position or a different train to the first ride but the incline after the launch felt very shaky. 2 rides was my limit for this one, it’s such an intense experience. The operations were also fantastic on 2 trains which they were getting out so quickly.
The Walking dead the ride
The indoor queue and sound around the queue is really immersive but the ride itself, while fun, has a lot of lighting issues where you can visibly see the warehouse. I actually liked the uplifting vibe of ‘X’ but Thorpe rethemed it in favour of yet another dark theme. The zombie props inside are also a bit cheap looking and the preshow videos of the walkers chasing people around the park is a little bit school media project!
Nemesis Inferno
Having not done Hyperia yet, Inferno still solidly remains the best ride at the park for me. It’s smooth, it has a great combination of elements, the setting is cool with the volcano, and I love the pre lift hill section and smoke effects. I am biased as B&M inverts are my favourite coaster type alongside Hypers.
One of my favourite elements on any coaster is a zero G roll on an invert.. WOW! This is the closest feeling I've had to your whole body floating while upside down, it’s a great sensation and this ride takes it so smoothly. The layout is fast and disorientating but so fun.
I really do wish they had made this a standalone brand / name for the ride though. Linking it to Nemesis at Alton Towers inevitably puts both in competition and this one always seems to be considered the lesser of the two. If they’d just called it ‘Inferno’ this would allow the ride to stand out so much more prominently. If it was more landscaped into a pit in the ground and had more volcano style fire effects / steam effects from craters as you fly by, I think it would have rivalled the original Nemesis much more as for me their layouts, while different, are comparably enjoyable.
Saw the ride
My lord, this ride has become unbearable. This gave me such a headache. I honestly think I've had my last ever ride on Saw, my brain was being bounced around inside by skull. If they can’t improve this with retracking or train maintenance, I wouldn’t care if the park got rid of this ride.
It’s a shame because the theme, queue and first section of the coaster is genuinely brilliant but after the first drop it's just so painful. It's actually quite shocking that this is only 15 years into it's life, worst ride of the day for me.
Colossus
I found this ride horrible in 2019 and it’s even worse now. Having ridden Sik at Flamingoland, these two rides are a night and day difference in terms of smoothness. Colossus’ setting and theme is so much better but it’s really showing its age now and is not unique to the UK anymore. Unless they could do a full retrack with lap bar trains I'd tear this one down too.
Hyperia
This was the main reason we visited the park. I like Thorpe Park but usually save my money to visit theme parks in Europe and quite honestly find the TP ride lineup generally doesn’t incentivise me to make return visits often (i’ll get onto this).
With the introduction of Hyperia, I just had to visit this year to experience it.
Unfortunately this was days after a rollback had closed the ride, and it was plagued with maintenance issues all day. We did join the queue but it broke down for the whole afternoon and when we tried again in the evening it was on 3hr wait, 1 train and we had to leave the park by 7pm.
Off ride it’s a great spectacle, especially as you’re coming into the car park and across the bridge. The lighting and music package in the area is also so atmospheric. I just wish they had themed it to have more of the mythology motifs that you see with Colossus. If the station and queue was set amongst some Greek style ruins it would look a lot better. The theming pieces are super flat and quite honestly boring, and the building render for the toilets and Burger King look like they belong to a service station Costa coffee! Very uninspiring. I do love that they’ve opted for a ‘hero’ not ‘villain’ theme though.
I’ll be returning in 2025 to ride this as it really seems like my kind of coaster. My top 3 out of close to 150 creds are Shambala, Hyperion and Zadra. All big first drop coasters so I think Hyperia may slot pretty high on my list.
Food
I’ve never been a fan of theme park food. Paying extortionate prices for burger and chips or a hot dog has always led me to take my own lunch. One thing I'm so glad parks are starting to offer is street food. We had Gyros from the vendor next to Tidal Wave and it was really great! We also spotted some Indian street food near Ghost Train which smelled amazing. Great to see they are investing in more varied food options.
Park Layout and theme
The setting for Thorpe Park is really nice. Being surrounded by water is tranquil and the view of London from the bigger coasters is impressive.
We loved the atmosphere in the park compared to our last visit, there was more music throughout the park with no dead spaces. We loved the rockabilly vibe in amity cove and the foliage/landscaping in the lost city area. Big easy Boulevard is a nice edition but in some ways doesn’t go far enough to bridge all the clashing themes. The lighting at night was also really stunning.
The coaster line up for me is weighted too heavily towards intense thrill or ‘scary/dark’ themes unfortunately. I like a theme park with variety, I don’t want to do intense thrill after intense thrill all day. I can't do lots of re-rides at TP as I find a lot of the coasters pretty headache inducing. I’d like to see some immersive dark rides at the park that have a ‘magical’ theme that steps away from horror/scares. I’d also love to see a reimagined log flume similar to Chiapas at Phantasialand. A family coaster similar to gold rush at Drayton or would also be good to have in the park or a straddle coaster, although I'm aware this isn’t the target market they're trying to appeal to.
A lot of adults love the nostalgia and storytelling aspects to a theme park and sadly I feel the ‘no frills fun’ culture that Thorpe is going for is against a lot of what I believe makes a great theme park. The rebrand leaves a lot to be desired and the entrance / dome area isn’t a particularly inspiring first impression of the park and looks overly commercial.
I think the park is a good size, easy to get around and has plenty of sites for future development and expansion.
If I had the park on sandbox mode with all the $ cheat codes:
We thoroughly enjoyed the park but if it wasn’t for missing Hyperia and wanting to come back to ride it, I'd probably leave it a while before I made a return visit. The park staff were in good spirits all day and the operations (apart from Hyperia) were pretty quick despite large crowd numbers.
Thorpe isn’t up there with my favourite theme parks, but all in all it was a fun day out and great to see the results of the sparkle project. Hyperia is an exciting glimpse at what the future trajectory may bring to the park. I hope it drives the attendance they need to keep investing in more projects.
Myself and a friend visited Thorpe on Friday 4th, which was the first day of fright nights. This was my first visit since 2019 and we were heading to the park specifically for Hyperia… Spoiler, we didn’t manage to get on it unfortunately!
Flat rides
Visiting Thorpe always makes me pine for more flat rides at Alton Towers. The selection is really good and varied in terms of thrill level.
Vortex was by far mine and my friend’s favourite flat ride, perhaps one of our favourite rides in the park. So much force on the swing and a really good cycle time. Rush is always great but the cycle time has gotten a lot shorter since my last visit, great to see the second arm is back up and running but I remember it swinging a lot more ‘beyond horizontal’ last time. Quantum is also fun and has some good floaty forces.
We missed out on Zodiac and samurai as we were pretty dizzy after doing this corner of the park. Detonator had amazing views over London, but I fall into that category of enthusiast who loves most rides but gets s**t scared by drop towers. The prolonged hold at the top was pretty horrible!
Coasters
The Swarm
We started the day off on The Swarm, since my last visit I believe they’ve altered the restraints so they do not tighten throughout the layout, this made a world of difference! The first drop, zero g and last inline roll are so fun but the mid part of the layout for me is quite intense and a little rattly (I was on the outside seat). Very fun ride with a drop that you can’t find anywhere else in the UK and great theming!
Stealth
I'd forgotten how outrageous the launch is, the ride as a whole is such an assault on the senses. The first ride I absolutely loved but for our second ride, both my friend and I found it to be very rattly. I’m not sure if this is due to the seat position or a different train to the first ride but the incline after the launch felt very shaky. 2 rides was my limit for this one, it’s such an intense experience. The operations were also fantastic on 2 trains which they were getting out so quickly.
The Walking dead the ride
The indoor queue and sound around the queue is really immersive but the ride itself, while fun, has a lot of lighting issues where you can visibly see the warehouse. I actually liked the uplifting vibe of ‘X’ but Thorpe rethemed it in favour of yet another dark theme. The zombie props inside are also a bit cheap looking and the preshow videos of the walkers chasing people around the park is a little bit school media project!
Nemesis Inferno
Having not done Hyperia yet, Inferno still solidly remains the best ride at the park for me. It’s smooth, it has a great combination of elements, the setting is cool with the volcano, and I love the pre lift hill section and smoke effects. I am biased as B&M inverts are my favourite coaster type alongside Hypers.
One of my favourite elements on any coaster is a zero G roll on an invert.. WOW! This is the closest feeling I've had to your whole body floating while upside down, it’s a great sensation and this ride takes it so smoothly. The layout is fast and disorientating but so fun.
I really do wish they had made this a standalone brand / name for the ride though. Linking it to Nemesis at Alton Towers inevitably puts both in competition and this one always seems to be considered the lesser of the two. If they’d just called it ‘Inferno’ this would allow the ride to stand out so much more prominently. If it was more landscaped into a pit in the ground and had more volcano style fire effects / steam effects from craters as you fly by, I think it would have rivalled the original Nemesis much more as for me their layouts, while different, are comparably enjoyable.
Saw the ride
My lord, this ride has become unbearable. This gave me such a headache. I honestly think I've had my last ever ride on Saw, my brain was being bounced around inside by skull. If they can’t improve this with retracking or train maintenance, I wouldn’t care if the park got rid of this ride.
It’s a shame because the theme, queue and first section of the coaster is genuinely brilliant but after the first drop it's just so painful. It's actually quite shocking that this is only 15 years into it's life, worst ride of the day for me.
Colossus
I found this ride horrible in 2019 and it’s even worse now. Having ridden Sik at Flamingoland, these two rides are a night and day difference in terms of smoothness. Colossus’ setting and theme is so much better but it’s really showing its age now and is not unique to the UK anymore. Unless they could do a full retrack with lap bar trains I'd tear this one down too.
Hyperia
This was the main reason we visited the park. I like Thorpe Park but usually save my money to visit theme parks in Europe and quite honestly find the TP ride lineup generally doesn’t incentivise me to make return visits often (i’ll get onto this).
With the introduction of Hyperia, I just had to visit this year to experience it.
Unfortunately this was days after a rollback had closed the ride, and it was plagued with maintenance issues all day. We did join the queue but it broke down for the whole afternoon and when we tried again in the evening it was on 3hr wait, 1 train and we had to leave the park by 7pm.
Off ride it’s a great spectacle, especially as you’re coming into the car park and across the bridge. The lighting and music package in the area is also so atmospheric. I just wish they had themed it to have more of the mythology motifs that you see with Colossus. If the station and queue was set amongst some Greek style ruins it would look a lot better. The theming pieces are super flat and quite honestly boring, and the building render for the toilets and Burger King look like they belong to a service station Costa coffee! Very uninspiring. I do love that they’ve opted for a ‘hero’ not ‘villain’ theme though.
I’ll be returning in 2025 to ride this as it really seems like my kind of coaster. My top 3 out of close to 150 creds are Shambala, Hyperion and Zadra. All big first drop coasters so I think Hyperia may slot pretty high on my list.
Food
I’ve never been a fan of theme park food. Paying extortionate prices for burger and chips or a hot dog has always led me to take my own lunch. One thing I'm so glad parks are starting to offer is street food. We had Gyros from the vendor next to Tidal Wave and it was really great! We also spotted some Indian street food near Ghost Train which smelled amazing. Great to see they are investing in more varied food options.
Park Layout and theme
The setting for Thorpe Park is really nice. Being surrounded by water is tranquil and the view of London from the bigger coasters is impressive.
We loved the atmosphere in the park compared to our last visit, there was more music throughout the park with no dead spaces. We loved the rockabilly vibe in amity cove and the foliage/landscaping in the lost city area. Big easy Boulevard is a nice edition but in some ways doesn’t go far enough to bridge all the clashing themes. The lighting at night was also really stunning.
The coaster line up for me is weighted too heavily towards intense thrill or ‘scary/dark’ themes unfortunately. I like a theme park with variety, I don’t want to do intense thrill after intense thrill all day. I can't do lots of re-rides at TP as I find a lot of the coasters pretty headache inducing. I’d like to see some immersive dark rides at the park that have a ‘magical’ theme that steps away from horror/scares. I’d also love to see a reimagined log flume similar to Chiapas at Phantasialand. A family coaster similar to gold rush at Drayton or would also be good to have in the park or a straddle coaster, although I'm aware this isn’t the target market they're trying to appeal to.
A lot of adults love the nostalgia and storytelling aspects to a theme park and sadly I feel the ‘no frills fun’ culture that Thorpe is going for is against a lot of what I believe makes a great theme park. The rebrand leaves a lot to be desired and the entrance / dome area isn’t a particularly inspiring first impression of the park and looks overly commercial.
I think the park is a good size, easy to get around and has plenty of sites for future development and expansion.
If I had the park on sandbox mode with all the $ cheat codes:
- Get rid of Saw the ride, replace it with an RMC hybrid
- Fully re-track colossus and add lap bar trains
- Add a Family flume with indoor sections
- Remove Rumba Rapids and keep the site for a future project
- Remove Ghost Train
- Remove Storm Surge
- Remove Slammer
- Add a family-thrill coaster
- Add a trackless dark ride
- Remove the ‘paddling pool’ area and reimagine as a well landscaped park / garden or picnic area with a stage for events
We thoroughly enjoyed the park but if it wasn’t for missing Hyperia and wanting to come back to ride it, I'd probably leave it a while before I made a return visit. The park staff were in good spirits all day and the operations (apart from Hyperia) were pretty quick despite large crowd numbers.
Thorpe isn’t up there with my favourite theme parks, but all in all it was a fun day out and great to see the results of the sparkle project. Hyperia is an exciting glimpse at what the future trajectory may bring to the park. I hope it drives the attendance they need to keep investing in more projects.