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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Josh555 said:
Given the above, how would you suggest that they do it differently, unless you’re of the opinion that they knew about this earlier and deliberately left it until now to make the announcement?
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Public are waiting outside the park from 7am so perhaps they should start testing to identify any problems as early as possible. Starting testing at 9am when it’s a new ride and likely to experience problems is poor. You start testing at 7, realise there’s an issue 2 hours earlier than they have done and get the announcement out with plenty of time so it doesn’t seem as chaotic as it does making this announcement 30 mins before the ride was supposed to open
 
Josh555 said:
but they have communicated it! They’ve made a post on their socials and stated that it won’t open again today, what more communication is needed?

I get the frustration I really do but the only way they’ve done something wrong here is if they knew about the issue previously and decided to wait until everyone had arrived to make it known.
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I'd have liked a park wide announcement at 9:30 rather than a member of the public being the first person to tell me.

Not everyone was online at the time of posting.

Stealth broken now too. Thorpe hasn't changed has it?
 
Josh555 said:
Working on the assumption that they made a decision at 9-30, what difference does it make whether they verbally tell people in the queue line or announce it on Twitter which virtually everyone in the queue will have been on at the time anyway?
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Because it’s not a particularly good look on their park finding out from other guests in the queue line who happen to find out from social media over just announcing it over the tannoy there and then
 
Ethan said:
Public are waiting outside the park from 7am so perhaps they should start testing to identify any problems as early as possible. Starting testing at 9am when it’s a new ride and likely to experience problems is poor. You start testing at 7, realise there’s an issue 2 hours earlier than they have done and get the announcement out with plenty of time so it doesn’t seem as chaotic as it does making this announcement 30 mins before the ride was supposed to open
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How do you know when they started testing it?

and by testing I don’t necessarily mean cycling the trains, they will presumably do checks on it etc prior to that point.

Again, if I’m wrong and it’s due to their own poor planning or they’ve deliberately withheld the information to make sure they still get a busy park then I take back everything I’ve said but we’ve got no evidence of that so I’d rather give the benefit of the doubt.
 
Ethan said:
Public are waiting outside the park from 7am so perhaps they should start testing to identify any problems as early as possible. Starting testing at 9am when it’s a new ride and likely to experience problems is poor. You start testing at 7, realise there’s an issue 2 hours earlier than they have done and get the announcement out with plenty of time so it doesn’t seem as chaotic as making this announcement 30 mins before the ride was supposed to open
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So if they start testing at 7, identify a problem, and start making efforts to rectify it, what would the communication be?

"Hyperia might not open"?

How will that help people travelling long distances? How will that help people already there? If the ride then opens as normal, and no "free return" or fastracks for passholders are therefore offered, how will all the people who, in your universe, turned back at 7am feel when they see socials full of posts about an open Hyperia?
 
Josh555 said:
How do you know when they started testing it?

and by testing I don’t necessarily mean cycling the trains, they will presumably do checks on it etc prior to that point.

Again, if I’m wrong and it’s due to their own poor planning or they’ve deliberately withheld the information to make sure they still get a busy park then I take back everything I’ve said but we’ve got no evidence of that so I’d rather give the benefit of the doubt.
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Well let’s put it this way it’s either poor planning or deliberate no in between. If it’s started testing at 9 then that’s poor planning as that’s way too close to the park opening time. If they have started testing as early as 7, then they’ve had plenty of time to make this announcement earlier than they have done
 
Ethan said:
Public are waiting outside the park from 7am so perhaps they should start testing to identify any problems as early as possible. Starting testing at 9am when it’s a new ride and likely to experience problems is poor. You start testing at 7, realise there’s an issue 2 hours earlier than they have done and get the announcement out with plenty of time so it doesn’t seem as chaotic as making this announcement 30 mins before the ride was supposed to open
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It's completely unfair and unrealistic to expect the maintenance team to start testing 3 hours before the ride opens.

Appreciate it's frustrating for those who arrived early but that's a big risk with a brand new ride.
 
RicketyCricket said:
It's completely unfair and unrealistic to expect the maintenance team to start testing 3 hours before the ride opens.
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Are you joking? It is absolutely NOT unrealistic. Thorpe should be paying the maintenance team whatever bonus necessary to have them on that damn ride as soon as the sun rises. This is the opening weekend of their brand new ride, they should be working round the clock to ensure that everything runs smoothly
 
Ethan said:
Well let’s put it this way it’s either poor planning or deliberate no in between. If it’s started testing at 9 then that’s poor planning as that’s way too close to the park opening time. If they have started testing as early as 7, then they’ve had plenty of time to make this announcement earlier than they have done
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Surely the most likely scenario is that they’ve decided at 9-30 that it can’t open and just made an announcement having given the ride every chance to open?
 
The tweet does say "Unforseen circumstances". Looking at some of the replies there seems to be a lot of people that don't know what unforseen means. People are frustrated, which I do get. But it's not the parks fault.
 
Ethan said:
Are you joking? It is absolutely NOT unrealistic. Thorpe should be paying the maintenance team whatever bonus necessary to have them on that damn ride as soon as the sun rises. This is the opening weekend of their brand new ride, they should be working round the clock to ensure that everything runs smoothly
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You could spend an additional £18 million in staff bonuses for this weekend alone, have engineers in site 24/7, and problems will still occur.

The park don't want this ride to be down. The engineers don't want this ride to be down. Don't you think that they'll have tried everything possible, that they can, within their power, to ensure that it's operating today? Or do you think, for poo and puns, that they've just decided to pee off and troll every single person who's decided to visit today?

This is pretty much the worst case scenario for the park. They will very much be at panic stations.

Also, let's not kid ourselves. If this happened at Towers there wouldn't be an announcement, public or in the park, you'd just get to the ride to see a staff member standing outside and saying "not open mate".
 
I imagine the engineers are on site very early this weekend, if they aren’t that that is poor planning from Thorpe Park. This is the launch weekend of their first new rollercoaster for 12 years, they have extended the opening hours for it and plastered it all over national TV. They should be getting that ride signed off as early as possible to give them the max time to fix it before the scheduled open time.

In terms of comms, the divisional director should have been over the park wide tannoy (which I believe they do have at Thorpe) to introduce themselves, explain it wouldn’t be opening and personally apologise. Then the info should be on social media.

Yes people will still be disappointed, but it’s the way you deal with these things that people remember. Treat your guests who have travelled hours and stood in queues since 7am with a bit of respect, it’s not much to ask.
 
It’s very difficult to project a message across a theme park. Especially as the queue would likely be from the ride up to the dome. Bar walking down the line or announcing on the app/social media there isn’t much they can do really.

We don’t know the full story, perhaps the issue manifested itself during testing this morning? For all we know it could have happened 5 minutes before they announced it.
 
It's more interesting, I think, that they're in a position to announce that it won't open at all today, which suggests they have a pretty good idea that it'll take longer than a working day to fix.

Though of course they could just have announced total closure to encourage guests to go and ride on other attractions, rather than hovering around the entrance on the off chance, or creating a faux-queue.
 
What I would say is I think they should be offering people the opportunity of a refund (and to leave the park) or to stay in the park and get another ticket for free to come back.

I always find a ‘return for free’ offer a bit disingenuous as it just means that the park get even more money out of repeat custom with guests spending money on food etc
 
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