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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Plastic Person said:
This took three episodes? Good to know that they're still not short of exciting material.
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I know that this was a tongue in cheek comment and a very funny one!

For our serious members, I can tell you that TOWIE do a very quick turnaround from filming to TV airing. Jess and I bumped into them filming a few years ago. It was a matter of a couple of days when it went out on TV.

They failed their fist record attempt due to technical reasons. Hence first programme.
They went back a few weeks later to retry the record attempt. Hence the second programme.
The Judicator wasn't sure on the day if they broke the record, and needed extra time to review the footage. The Judicator revealed the results the following week. Hence the third programme.
Like I said, they air the programme within days of filming. Anything filmed after that, gets aired the following week
 
A friend of mine visited Thorpe yesterday (so admittedly I’ve not seen this first hand) and reported most coasters running on one train with queue times ranging from 80-120 mins for most of the day, and 5pm park close remained in place without extension.

Words fail me.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
A friend of mine visited Thorpe yesterday (so admittedly I’ve not seen this first hand) and reported most coasters running on one train with queue times ranging from 80-120 mins for most of the day, and 5pm park close remained in place without extension.

Words fail me.
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Considering it’s prebook only and therefore they would have known exactly how many guests would be visiting there is no excuse whatsoever.

It’s no surprise guest numbers continue to slide year after year at this park.
 
Is this meant to be Thorpe’s answer to Mardi Gras, by any chance?

Still, should be a fun event, and glad to see Thorpe expanding their events lineup!
 
Enter Valhalla said:
A friend of mine visited Thorpe yesterday (so admittedly I’ve not seen this first hand) and reported most coasters running on one train with queue times ranging from 80-120 mins for most of the day, and 5pm park close remained in place without extension.

Words fail me.
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This makes my grateful that Alton extended their times today and all coasters were on their max capacity as far as I could tell. There’s not really any excuse for Thorpe not to add trains/extend hours/do both, especially if those queue times are true!
 
So after visiting the past on Friday (and then a bit on Saturday afternoon after we left the hell that was Legoland).

The park was very busy on both days, one thing I did notice between the days was the amount of F&B closed on Friday compared to Saturday. I would say both days were fairly equal in guest numbers and some of the closures are odd. For example the old Nitrogine was closed on Friday (when it was boiling hot). It seems to be the merlin logic just to class a day as small or quiet and not adjust things with the weather or demand.

Ride availability generally was fine, except Saturday when tidal wave was down all day and flying fish for most of the day. There was also a power cut across half the park Saturday afternoon (but that’s not there fault).

The least we say about DBGT the better, yea it’s got new uniform and another new bit of story, but if anything it makes the ride even more confusing, as you’ve got the same pre show, and same ride. But now a new bit of speech before the ride, as for the weird scare maze thing in the middle, that just needs binning off.

Also I hear the costume for the finale is damaged, therefore you just get some bloke jumping out in the fake shop.

Finally on to the shop, my god that’s a sad place now, it’s got barely any DBGT merch now, so it’s got a few bits of random ride stuff in there like Stealth, swarm, etc. And a few coke fridges but it’s so bare and empty in there, everything is very spread out across the very large shop and old photo area. It really wouldn’t surprise me if it’s just gone soon like the Galactica shop.
 
djtruefitt said:
The park was very busy on both days, one thing I did notice between the days was the amount of F&B closed on Friday compared to Saturday. I would say both days were fairly equal in guest numbers and some of the closures are odd. For example the old Nitrogine was closed on Friday (when it was boiling hot). It seems to be the merlin logic just to class a day as small or quiet and not adjust things with the weather or demand.
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Although this is definitely a problem I imagine it is quite hard just to change the staffing levels at a weeks notice, the weekend will have extra part time staff already. but with a week to go if your full time staff are already doing five days a week where are they going to get more people from?
Also at the moment the Covid/Brexit combination is causing big staff shortages in hospitality.
 
Danscott22 said:
This makes my grateful that Alton extended their times today and all coasters were on their max capacity as far as I could tell. There’s not really any excuse for Thorpe not to add trains/extend hours/do both, especially if those queue times are true!
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I think that the whole one train vs two trains decision should be based on gate figures, as opposed to whatever logic they’re using at the moment.

Surely when the attendance hits a certain number, two trains need to be added on everything, not just certain coasters.

Now that the overwhelming majority of guests in the park will have pre-booked, they’ll have a better idea than ever of what attendance will be and if they know it’s going to be high, these coasters should be on two trains from the get-go, rather than having to wait till the queue gets long and then having to faff with the resulting stoppage of having to shutdown the ride to add a second train- a process which seems to be taking longer and longer these days.

The sad thing is that, like with many other things, ten years ago I never would never have thought we’d even be having this conversation, yet here we are.
 
It was Thorpe’s policy for quite a few years that tech services would open rides on one train and then go round the park once everything was open to add 2nd trains at that point. That way they could save money on engineers as they didn’t need as many working at once. Is this still the case?
 
AT86 said:
It was Thorpe’s policy for quite a few years that tech services would open rides on one train and then go round the park once everything was open to add 2nd trains at that point. That way they could save money on engineers as they didn’t need as many working at once. Is this still the case?
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I remember that this was the case in 2014 and for much of 2015.

The process however for adding second trains takes a lot longer these days (I assume because of additional checks) so I would expect two trains from the point of opening, particularly given the fact that, these days, virtually every operational day has required full capacity on all rides.
 
I know this might seem like a random question, but I was just wondering; what do you think it was that has seemingly made Thorpe’s fortunes turn south in recent years, and roughly when do you think it happened? I’ll admit that this is something I’m struggling to pinpoint…

In terms of my personal guess; controversially, I don’t think it was Thorpe’s move to solely targeting thrill seekers that made the park’s fortunes turn south. The initial Merlin years up until about 2012 were very successful; Saw caused a huge spike in attendance, and attendance even kept growing for a couple of years after that. It’s worth remembering that the park, for all intents and purposes, solely targeted thrill seekers throughout the 2000s, and there were certainly no signs of Thorpe struggling when Tussauds were at the helm! Even when I first started majorly following theme parks in 2013/2014, Thorpe seemed to have a very prosperous future ahead of it.

Interestingly, I’d actually say that the decline in Thorpe’s fortunes seemed to roughly coincide with the Smiler incident, possibly coming a little later. Even though it was far from universally loved, I actually wouldn’t call DBGT the colossal failure that many make it out to be; it did increase guest figures, albeit only marginally, and the ride does have its fans. However, it didn’t seem to reignite Thorpe’s fortunes after the Smiler crash in quite the same way that Wicker Man did Alton Towers’, so in that regard, I’d personally argue that Thorpe could still be reeling from the effects of the Smiler incident, to a degree, even if it was 6 years ago.

Other than that, though, I can’t really pinpoint the problem, or when the park’s fortunes began to take a turn for the worse. Does anyone else have any theories?
 
Thorpe started declining long before The Smiler crash. The Swarm's lack of results that the park hoped for seemed to be a big turning point, and they are still yet to install a major coaster since.

The majority of their investments (DBGT aside) have been cheap to install, cheap to remove fads. That's the problem with so heavily relying on IPs that don't have longevity; it's as if the park know this and insist on going about rinsing and replacing these IPs every few years rather than making a major long-term investment. Whilst they appear to have settled on a commitment with the overall brand now and consistency throughout with the soundtrack, the investments made appear to be coming from a short-term vision without making a large impact.

It's a shame really.
 
I think the Swarm was a bit of a miss in a way. Its a bit like Air I guess, its a good coaster but different to other rides at Thorpe as its not as intense you think it might be?
Then DBGT had long queues, poor reliability and a confusing plot.
Everything else new recently has been short term just to get people in for that season only I think.
Oh except Angry Birds land which was a realisation that families do need a variety of rides for the slightly younger siblings too.
I think Thorpe need to work out what they want to be, sort out operations so everyone has a great day irrespective as to whether you buy fastrack or not and sort out the image that everyone is going to get stabbed.
Its less about the rides at this point and more about the perception of the park.
 
AT86 said:
It was Thorpe’s policy for quite a few years that tech services would open rides on one train and then go round the park once everything was open to add 2nd trains at that point. That way they could save money on engineers as they didn’t need as many working at once. Is this still the case?
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As far as I know now everything does seem to run on full capacity (unless tech problems), certainly on all my visits in the past few years it’s been fine.

Years ago used to be horrible at Thorpe, you could go on a fairly quiet day, but still wait 50 mins for stealth and an hour for swarm cause they were on one train. Doesn’t seem to be the case anymore luckily.
 
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