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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Not sure about others but I personally find it awful. Very uncomfortable and just an all-round unpleasant experience.
 
Slammer is an excellent reminder that unusual rides are not always good and are often rare for a reason. Being pushed over the top isn't too bad, but when you're pulled down it becomes a miserable headrush-fest. I do occasionally ride it, but I won't miss it when they do decide enough is enough.
 
Slammer is a great ride IMO, it will be very disappointing if they remove it without giving it a send-off or at least letting people know so they can get their last rides on it.
 
Cheese said:
Slammer is an excellent reminder that unusual rides are not always good and are often rare for a reason. Being pushed over the top isn't too bad, but when you're pulled down it becomes a miserable headrush-fest. I do occasionally ride it, but I won't miss it when they do decide enough is enough.
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Yep Slammer was never that great.

Yet Rush is easily my favourite ride at Thorpe.
 
Rush is/should a brilliant ride. It's just a real pity that it has lost some of its power and you rarely get a cycle of decent length. They have a mini version of Rush at Fun Spot in Orlando which is really fun!

:)
 
Slammer is one of them unusual but fun rides - would be a shame for it to go but I think with its reliability issues its time for removal should be soon. Going for my annual trip down south to Thorpe next week to do Fright Nights and Chessington so will get my Thorpe dose for the year! :p
 
Slammer is an absolute top ride, but the reliability problem doesn't seem to be going away. A shame, really.
 
So I was at Thorpe last weekend, Saturday night we didn't get there till about 7pm as we were having a full day at Sunday. The park was very busy with most rides having massive queues, except swarm which was walk on. We then queues for the big top. Didn't have much of a queue but it kept going down all the time. At one point it was down for a good 30 mins. No idea what the issue was but audio and lights kept cutting out. In the end we queued for an hour and a half. The main issue was fastrack! They were sending in three or four fastrack groups for everyone one group from the main queue. And all night the fastrack queue didn't go down either.

As for the maze it was crap. The outside looks nice and I'm glad they got circus tents, but inside it's blank walls, and blank spaces everywhere. The first tent is pointless and offers no scares, the second tent is long but nothing happens, and the final tent was so dark it was only my third go that I noticed bits of the themeing.

The next day we did big top again with the same length queue and no fastrack and it was 30 mins, by 8pm it was pretty much walk on and so was the rest of the park.

As for the other mazes, my bloody valentine was alright but certainly no experiment 10, cabin in the woods was very good on our second go and lasted ages as we kept going round in circles. Saw alive was same as always and blair witch was just a dark path in the woods.


Ride availability was usual for Thorpe, I'm a celeb, vortex, slammer, samurai and tidal wave were closed all day. Various other rides had reduced openings and colossus died early Saturday night on the lift hill. It never moved (until after park close!). And then the same on Sunday night when saw died early evening, it tested for ages but didn't see it open again.

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As for the new ride, I really can't see this will be ready for March, most of it is just frame work at the moment with not much else. One side of the building does have a tunnel style structure around it. As seen on the right of this photo, taken from the X queue line (the fire door was open!)
ImageUploadedByTapatalk1444940561.868343.jpg
 
djtruefitt said:
As for the new ride, I really can't see this will be ready for March, most of it is just frame work at the moment with not much else
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It's quite possible that they will do a lot of the building work on the internal structures and the add the skin of the building later. six months is plenty of time to add the exterior skin (it will only be steel sheeting on a lot of it like X). Getting the ride hardware in and tested is the next issue.
 
Slammer is one of few rides that make me fearfull for my safety - a completely irrational fear I know. I remember once going on it and pulling the harness down so far that it was causing excruciating pain in my back - had to shout for the ride op to release it so I could ride and also walk for the remainder of the day. ;)
 
Sooooo... Thorpe Park!

Visited the park on Sunday to check out Fright Nights. I had my first visit to the scare event in 2006, and I was keen to see the new maze for this year as well as the older offerings.

Arriving at around 12:30pm, we immediately regretted our decision to visit :(. As to be expected when the park is even remotely busy, it was absolutely unbearable.
Saw - 120 minutes
Swarm - 80 minutes
Nemesis Inferno - 75 minutes
Colossus - closed
... etc., etc.

Ride count:
Flying Fish
Teacups
Quantum
Mr Monkeys Banana Boat Ride
Swarm (waited 35/40 later on)

Mazes
Queues became mind-blowing in length before the queuelines themselves even opened. We chose Big Top as our priority and waited from 2:30pm (queue opened at 3pm) - we waited from Rush. We then waited a further hour inside the beach queueline... with two evacs.

Big Top
Well. Check out Thorpe's newest maze they said!
  • Scene One - rude and clearly harrassed actor who barked at the guests behind us "you're talking over me" while throwing a plastic 'death' tarot card on the table. The music was too loud, there wasn't enough room around her table to get close, and she was talking too quietly. We left this room utterly bemused as we were shooed away.
  • - An absolutely experience breaking walk between one tent and another, where you can see the rest of the park and the queueline -
  • Scene Two - I can't even remember, it was so poor. Flashing lights? Loud music? I didn't get a single scare, and remember walking around thinking "what on earth". It really felt like we were out of time with the maze.. like the proxy sensors/actors weren't in the right place!
  • - An even worse walk from the second tent under the path across the beach, met by some odd clown wanting us to, I think, play a carnival game? Unmemorable speech tbh -
  • Scene Three - I really don't remember a lot, except an absolutely unnecessary chain saw. Don't put in a chain saw for the sake of it, when the story/experience doesn't merit it! Cheap scare!
We gave up on the rest of the park and the mazes and headed off to Nandos. I don't do 2 hours for pants experiences.

SCAREFEST PLEASE!
 
It's interesting that you describe the outdoor section of Big Top as "experience breaking" because when I went through that was my favourite bit. Having said that, if you went through at 3-4pm in daylight hours I can understand why you weren't so keen. This is why I deliberately waited until it got dark. In the dark this section is far more atmospheric especially with the lights and smoke effect.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
It's interesting that you describe the outdoor section of Big Top as "experience breaking" because when I went through that was my favourite bit. Having said that, if you went through at 3-4pm in daylight hours I can understand why you weren't so keen. This is why I deliberately waited until it got dark. In the dark this section is far more atmospheric especially with the lights and smoke effect.
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Then it seems baffling why the maze would even open in daylight hours if the intended effect only works when it's dark...? I couldn't have stayed in the park any longer!
 
ITV have been doing something about 'the science behind being scared' and have shown a few clips from inside a couple of Thorpe's mazes. The Big Top was definitely one of them, and I think Cabin In The Woods was the other. :)
 
Sazzle said:
Then it seems baffling why the maze would even open in daylight hours if the intended effect only works when it's dark...? I couldn't have stayed in the park any longer!
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I guess just because demand for the new maze is too high to only have it open for a few hours. I get what you're saying and I imagine that in daylight it would be rubbish but in the hours of darkness it really adds to the effect and was the best bit of the maze for me. I went on the second Sunday of the event (Sunday being the quieter weekend day), sadly you do have to pick your days carefully.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
I guess just because demand for the new maze is too high to only have it open for a few hours. I get what you're saying and I imagine that in daylight it would be rubbish but in the hours of darkness it really adds to the effect and was the best bit of the maze for me. I went on the second Sunday of the event (Sunday being the quieter weekend day), sadly you do have to pick your days carefully.
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In which case, if a short outdoor part of the newest maaze at Thorpe Park is your favourite, that really says something about the maze...
 
Enter Valhalla said:
I guess just because demand for the new maze is too high to only have it open for a few hours.
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Incorrect. Demand for the park and all mazes is consistently high across the Fright Nights period. This wouldn't be a problem, except the park physically cannot handle it. Overselling of Fastrack is a MASSIVE contributer to the damningly low throughputs of ALL attractions and had been the case historically.

I find myself swinging violently from loving the park when it's quiet, to loathing being there when it's busy. Shouldn't really be the case for a park of its class, under the umbrella of a company second only to Disney!
 
I'm glad Saz wrote a long post about Sunday as I couldn't be bothered to give Thorpe the time of day to do so! :p

Thorpe Park have a problem. Fright Nights at Thorpe Park has an even bigger problem. For too long now the park has not been able to cope with crowds, it is an unbareable place to be whenever it is busy. It's been like this for as long as I have been going yet they have done nothing about it. They do not learn - the entire time we were there on Sunday all fastrack sales points had long queues.

As for Big Top, it was by far the worst maze I have ever experienced, worse than the awful conga line things at Universal (at least they had quality theming). Big Top had next to no theming, made no sense, had extremely ameteur acting throughout and just did not work. You know you have a major problem with the maze when someone states their favourite bits were the outdoor bits in between the tents, so effectively out of the maze!

My best advice would be to not bother visiting Thorpe Park for Fright Nights because; a) it is crap, and b) it is unbareable.

Thank god for short queues for beer!

:)
 
I think one of the main issue s at Thorpe compared to Alton Towers is that Thorpe has standby queues and Fast-Track for the mazes. At Towers it is payment only for the scare mazes, with booked times, which helps reduce the queue length by a long way. If Thorpe switched to having three mazes as paid booked times only and two mazes (Saw & Blair Witch probably) as standby queue (no fast track) then I think things would flow much better.
 
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