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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

PhalanaxOperativeA1127 said:
It has the highest wind threshold of any ride in the park, amazingly. It did not close because of wind.
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Citation needed...

I could put up the fact that I'm a male model with stunning looks and athletic build.
Doesn't mean it is true sadly.
Bad weather, huge new coaster, stall risk evident even on calm days...
I have done many new coaster openings over the years.
Air, thirteen, big one, bloody skytrack, avalanche, space invader, jeez...t'Ultimate took forever and a day to open...all early cockups.
My plan was always to go in September.
Even then there are no expectations of guaranteed service...I have read terms and conditions for many decades.
 
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rob666 said:
Why would independence make any difference whatsoever?
Blackpool is independent.
Not a great record for incidents over the years, couple of coaster deaths, the odd broken back, many minor shunt accidents...always completely avoidable if procedures are followed competently.
Likewise Lightwater.
Not a good safety record despite independance.

And I too would have challenged your final comment.

When any accident happens in the future...you can always scream..."See I was right all along."
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If it were just independents with issues fair play merlin have more incidents to think about other than the smiler, Legoland crash, thirteen i recall had an incident in its early years , Disney have had major issues at times,
 
There's plenty of incidents that people don't hear about for various reasons as well. Occurring at parks both independent and chain owned.

To claim corner cutting though requires more evidence than "new ride keeps breaking down".

From sounds of if there's issues with the trains coming into the station from the excessively long brake run, causing the ride TO DO AS DESIGNED and stop on the top of the lift hill.

It's like no one ever played RCT.
 
Benzin said:
To claim corner cutting though requires more evidence than "new ride keeps breaking down".
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I feel like a lot of coaster enthusiasts think a bit like this and think this is only a recent issue with new rides closing often, but I can think of quite a few rides where the opening was pushed back or had bad reliability when it was new. A few that come to mind are Air, The smiler, 13, and most of all Hagrids (hagrids suffered issues into the pandemic where universal were able to keep tweaking the programming until it was running reliably), I also recall hearing rides like maverick, and top thrill dragster had quite large issues when opening as well.
 
BarryZola said:
Imagine if you already pretty much needed the toilet when you got on the ride, then got stuck on it for an hour. You could genuinely soil your pants pretty bad. Not the kind of headlines you want really.
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I generally try and make sure i'm well relieved before all rides specifically for this reason, especially when the angle you are stuck at could add to the.... unpleasantness 😳
 
Mykeprime said:
That's the one where you try to launch people as far as possible, right?
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You can recreate the Merlin experience by charging a fortune for food and making the queue lines miles long only to close the rides randomly too

Aside from all that I hope Hyperia reopens today just to shut up all the braying donkeys
 
rob666 said:
Why would independence make any difference whatsoever?
Blackpool is independent.
Not a great record for incidents over the years, couple of coaster deaths, the odd broken back, many minor shunt accidents...always completely avoidable if procedures are followed competently.
Likewise Lightwater.
Not a good safety record despite independance.

And I too would have challenged your final comment.

When any accident happens in the future...you can always scream..."See I was right all along."
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Cutting corners can easily refer to the amount of time they spent testing the ride. Which in my opinion was rushed compared to Nemesis for example. I would also argue that the ride closing for two weeks is something bad that happened.

The bloke at Blackpool with the broken back already had previous back/neck issues. Anyway AT have had issues in recent years besides the Smiler. Thirteen allegedly rolled back into the station, the RMT allegedly broke into two pieces.
 
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Benzin said:
There's plenty of incidents that people don't hear about for various reasons as well. Occurring at parks both independent and chain owned.

To claim corner cutting though requires more evidence than "new ride keeps breaking down".

From sounds of if there's issues with the trains coming into the station from the excessively long brake run, causing the ride TO DO AS DESIGNED and stop on the top of the lift hill.

It's like no one ever played RCT.
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What I saw yesterday could back this up. A Thorpe engineer was filming and from where I was stood it looked like he was concentrating on the interaction between the time it took for the train to enter the station and how long the other train was stopped on the lift hill.
They seemed to be adjusting something either technical or procedural as when I started timing the stoppages they reduced from around 8 seconds to 2.
I am not an engineer but a project manager for large complex projects. Stuff will always happen. Sometimes it’s a quick fix, sometimes it’s more complicated- doesn’t necessarily mean things are unsafe or proper procedure wasn’t followed.
 
RIPCorky said:
Cutting corners can easily refer to the amount of time they spent testing the ride. Which in my opinion was rushed compared to Nemesis for example. I would also argue that the ride closing for two weeks is something bad that happened.

The bloke at Blackpool with the broken back already had previous back/neck issues. Anyway AT have had issues in recent years besides the Smiler. Thirteen allegedly rolled back into the station, the RMT allegedly broke into two pieces.
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The two dead people at BPB weren't dead before going on the coasters though...
 
Right, at the point the Hyperia topic appears to be discussing Blackpool Pleasure Beach more than Hyperia, I think we can safely say we've gone off-topic. At this point, we've probably milked the "what is or is corner cutting" storyline.

Back to discussing Hyperia now, please.
 
BenTechy66 said:
was hoping to ride this today, but my train in has been delayed to 10:30... not standing in a queue longer than 2h. Maybe if it's operating this afternoon? wishful thinking, perhaps.
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It might drop to below 2 hours later in the day, but for what it’s worth, the ride was on 210 minutes for the entire time it was open yesterday.

I should think that it probably will open today seeing as they got the train off the lift hill and supposedly tested it yesterday afternoon.

On a side note, I think the recent saga with Hyperia has shown how much worse social media makes these sorts of things. These sorts of things have happened with new rides since the beginning of time, even back in “the good old days”, but they simply weren’t proliferated all over social media. As much as I can absolutely imagine it can’t have been pleasant to be stuck at the top of that lift hill, and I sympathise with people who were in that situation, it’s an unfortunate reality that general teething problems very much come with the territory on new rides, which much of the frenzy on social media would have you forget.

Air had problems. Nemesis Inferno had problems. Spinball Whizzer had problems. Saw had problems. Thirteen had problems. Smiler had problems. Wicker Man had problems. The list probably goes on. This type of situation is not uncommon with new rides, despite what social media might have you believe.

Heck, as much as people are lauding Nemesis Reborn as a masterclass in pre-opening testing, we should remember that even that had its problems, operating with only half a train for much of its first week.

My point is that these things happen, and they’re a lot more common with new rides than social media would have you believe, no matter how much testing is done.
 
B&M Hypers are more expensive but far superior to anything Intamin and Mack have produced in my opinion.

Capacity, reliability, build quality, smoothness.....all in B&M's favour. The only thing the others have is a few more unique elements but for me that's not enough of a selling point.

Haven't ridden Hyperia yet but I already know going in that it's not going to be the best hyper in Europe.
 
Managed to get on just now, advertised 90mn queue ended up taking about 55. Definitely a good coaster with some great ejector - those restraints are working overtime! I don't want to curse it, but it seems to have been running like a champ today. Ops are pumping out the trains like there's no tomorrow.
 
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