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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Aparantly the money saved from the death/closure of Slammer (dam that was a good ride!) has been allocated to refurbing Loggers, but I still think they'd be better off closing off the relatively small inlet from the main lake and reclaim the Loggers lake area and dump a coaster on that area long term.
 
They definitely need to go back to building coasters, DBGT can't even open all day and that's their latest flagship investment (no, retheming a 22 year old small indoor coaster doesn't count), and the less said about IAC the better.
 
On a slightly random note, does anyone know if anything has happened with the long-planned Thorpe Hotel?
 
The moral here is don’t build actor led experiences that you cannot afford to staff/run long term. Also don’t use unproven hardware and expert it to work perfectly. For the money Thorpe spent on ghost train they probably could have done a world class 3D dark ride that has a much lower staffing requirement and is proven to actually be reliable
 
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Genuinely do think Thorpe made a terrible mistake building Derren Brown instead of a proper dark ride or another coaster.
 
TedTheHuman said:
Genuinely do think Thorpe made a terrible mistake building Derren Brown instead of a proper dark ride or another coaster.
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Another Coaster wouldn’t of helped them. They cornered that market and it’s been said before that Swarm didn’t really increase visitor numbers. Maybe a smaller coaster for families with a 1.1m or 1.2m restriction would help.
But a decent dark ride, maybe even based on a proper IP could really have helped them. Dark rides are the one thing that all the Florida and European parks have that the UK parks (except Chessington really) don’t offer.
 
For the money thrown at it they could have made a decent effort with Spiderman type ride system which would almost certainly have been more reliable, more re-ridable, and just better.
 
jon81uk said:
Another Coaster wouldn’t of helped them. They cornered that market and it’s been said before that Swarm didn’t really increase visitor numbers.
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If they're making profit, I don't think they need to increase visitor numbers really. New coaster would definitely mean a better chance of retaining visitor numbers. Although I'd expect investors/shareholders would expect "we just threw £10m at the park, we want extra profit as a return"

Would be interesting to see what difference DBGT has made on visitor numbers, seeing how it's spent most its time closed or open with problems.
 
Given last year the park struggled on many occasions to get rides ready for 10am I’m curious how Thorpe are going to deliver all this, we’ve got every ride open from 10am apart from actor attractions.

And Thorpe Mania have confirmed Rumba is not a “seasonal attraction” so open the full season.

It’s a bold thing to go all out like they have to state every ride will open at 10am
 
Rick said:
@Benzin it was interesting some some of the analysts didn’t buy the terrorism line at the Q3 update.
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That's because it was a load of rubbish! It may well have been a valid reason for falling attendance at London or Manchester Midways, but not for their theme parks.

If terrorism was genuinely a reason for guest numbers at theme parks falling across Europe then it would not be a problem specific to Merlin. Yet plenty of other parks have seen their guest numbers increase!

:)
 
jon81uk said:
Another Coaster wouldn’t of helped them. They cornered that market and it’s been said before that Swarm didn’t really increase visitor numbers. Maybe a smaller coaster for families with a 1.1m or 1.2m restriction would help.
But a decent dark ride, maybe even based on a proper IP could really have helped them. Dark rides are the one thing that all the Florida and European parks have that the UK parks (except Chessington really) don’t offer.
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As people have said before, it's most likely that because the Olympics were on in London when Swarm opened, it didn't increase visitor numbers, not so much the ride itself. I agree though if they had built a new pure thrill coaster (i.e 1.4M restriction) instead of a family oriented or a dark ride, it wouldn't have helped much (if at all).
 
I know a few families who didn't go to parks/midways later last year because they were fedup with being treated like terrorists, I know I was severely pissed off with Alton's rent-a-doorman security who ripped my sons bag open because the zip got stuck and we decided not to go back for the fireworks as a result, and Thorpe decided later in the year that everybody must go through a pat down regardless of whether they had a bag or not, perhaps that is what they were talking about when Merlin blamed terrorism?

It also rained for 99% of 2012 too, the only time it didn't was when the Olympics was on lol
 
Apparently 5th March may not be our announcement date for X:TWD... it could actually be 6th February, according to this Facebook post that Thorpe posted today:

Interesting... wonder what 5th March was for?
 
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