Thorpe Park: General Discussion

[Rob]

Well Thorpe are in desperate need of a dark but for me the question is where. Do they have any existing buildings that they could use or would it need to be a complete new build? Space is always a bit of an issue at Thorpe, all recent major new developments (i.e. coasters) have been built on new land specifically for said coaster.

 

[_nemesis_]

Well, the new website is out. A bit too generic for me. Too white, maybe more blue could be used to have more associated with the lakes?

Here it is anyway:
www.thorpepark.com

 

[djtruefitt]

There is plenty of room for a dark ride, The only current buildings I can think of for a dark ride would be the arcade next to KFC, that I believe used to house Flying fish (back in the day!), or the building that the Asylum uses for Frightnights.

However if the built a new building there is plenty of areas that could be developed:
- Arena
- The area around Jungle Safari/Inferno exit
- Saw Alive area
- Canadian Creek area
- And if they really want to develop they could incorporate a dark ride into the dome/beach area.

 

[TheMan]

Well, the new website is out. A bit too generic for me. Too white, maybe more blue could be used to have more associated with the lakes?

Here it is anyway:
www.thorpepark.com

Hmmm no I don't like that at all.

The text background contrasts and navigation are a bit strange, it's a little bit "metro" windows phone sort of thing. For a theme park, I just don't think it's right - they've gone from one extreme to the other.

Not a fan of that AT ALL.

 

[James]

I quite like it, maybe I'm weird.

It's like Thorpe went from the teenager and suddenly became an adult. It's simple, but a good starting point I would say. If the park got branded throughout like this then Thorpe can develop the brand over the coming years a bit like Towers' brand from 2008 onwards.

 

[Rob]

Well it's certainly different. Can't say I'm a massive fan of it though. Requires too much scrolling for my liking. You have to scroll down on pretty much every page to get the information that you are looking for.

 

[Danza91]

God that website is hard work. Way too much scrolling required.

 

[Ian]

Massive improvement on the previous site. It's not quite perfect (P body text for example could do with being bigger and slightly more contrasting from the backgrounds). Loving the current, up to date look though with the nice big hero images, etc. I'm still not quite sure about the navigation bar (It's rather stock Bootstrap theme) or the mahoosive footer, but on the whole I really quite like it. Probably up there with Asterix for a fresh, modern site (Some of the code comments also make for amusing reading, like their row in there about Modernizr )

Also, thank god we've finally seen the back of the dreadful mobile sites! Responsive <3

 

[Benzin]

Pics of the 'detailing' being added to buildings for Mildly Annoyed Birds Land from TPM...

Sigh...

 

[Danny]

So the definition of themed area to Thorpe consists of painting a wall and applying half arsed stickers to it? The future for Merlin and its theming is looking very bright indeed...

 

[_nemesis_]

^ Merlin's theming isn't bad actually, look at how CBeebies is coming along. It's just that Thorpe have picked a stupid area to build Angry Birds. It's hard to theme an area that's meant to look like a town to a video game in the first place, and combine that with Thorpe's effort and you get this. :/

 

[Rob]

It's going to be hard to make such a poorly thought through IP look good. Detonator will be closing for it's extensive one week re-theme soon though...

 

[KingNemesis]

It's going to be hard to make such a poorly thought through IP look good. Detonator will be closing for it's extensive one week re-theme soon though...

Ah yes.. extensive... vinyls round the side of detonator and a bird on the top!

Awesome!

But seriously, I am not expecting much...

P.S I know that comment was tongue in cheek. At least I hope it was

 

[simps100]

So the definition of themed area to Thorpe consists of painting a wall and applying half arsed stickers to it? The future for Merlin and its theming is looking very bright indeed...

To be fair its going to be far from the most amazingly themed area we've seen, but in person with the theming details put up the buildings look pretty decent. If they can manage to put them up around the whole area that part of it should look fine. I guess we won't know how much more there will be in the way of physical props till the area has closed.

 

[Poisson]

Why do they have to break one of the best rides on park?

 

[Sam]

Why do they have to break one of the best rides on park?

Yes, because Detonator is currently a theming masterpiece. :

I like those painted walls. They look bright and fresh. They look better.

 

[Poisson]

Why do they have to break one of the best rides on park?

Yes, because Detonator is currently a theming masterpiece. :

But I never claimed it was, I was simply despairing at slapping a crap theme on a decent ride.

 

[CoasterCrazyChris]

Who cares about Detonator, it was only ever a fairground drop tower plonked down with a very loose pirate theme. There's not much to spoil.

The buildings look horrible in those colours with those stickers though.

 

[simps100]

Who cares about Detonator, it was only ever a fairground drop tower plonked down with a very loose pirate theme. There's not much to spoil.

The buildings look horrible in those colours with those stickers though.

Indeed detonator will ride as good as it always has done which is the main thing.

In person the buildings look quite good, especially the ones with the angry birds on. They are not stickers either so will hopefully be quite durable to guests destroying them.

 

[Dave]

It's a cheap area retheme and doesn't look horrific in the slightest. The issue is still that the IP is old now.