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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

RustyRider said:
visited Thorpe park yesterday for the first time since 2015. Had an absolutely fantastic day, half expected huge queues due to summer holidays but the only coaster that reached 70 mins was Swarm, and that was only for around an hour or so.

There were 8 of us in our group and they all purchased the adrenaline fasttrack, I reluctantly joined them on this, however we didn’t even need to start using them until around 2pm. Weirdly enough though, the adrenaline ticket gives you 5 uses in all the big thrill coasters yet our ticket was only scanned digitally on Saw. Upon leaving we all still had 4 uses each.

First ride of the day was stealth, I was with my partner who had NEVER been on any coaster before, this would be her first cred and we did front row. Not sure wether it was the fact that I’d not ridden stealth in nearly a decade, my facial skin has become looser in my old age or they’ve made her launch legitimately faster but it felt incredible.

On to saw. Wether it’s my new found old age (now 33) or the ageing of the coaster but for me, Saw for me was FAR worse than I ever remember it, even to the point where I thought to myself “I will never go on that again”. The roughness encountered throughout the ride was borderline unbearable. Even before entering the queue I was stood watching cars enter into the first drop and couldn’t help but noticed the violent head shaking happening. riding this left me with a pounding head and a sore back for the rest of the day and really put a dampener on the rest of my visit.

I’m not going to dive into paragraphs of what we already know but my final thoughts are this: I was apprehensive about revisiting Thorpe park as I know how it can be on a bad day, but honestly?
Operations were slick.
wait times were low.
pizza/pasta buffet was actually still really good value for money at £15.50pp.
Carnival was POOR for how it was advertised but didn’t really detract from the day.
Park was very clean & tidy
Collosus was rough but I’d still take that over another ride on saw any day of the week!

Cheers,
RustyRider
Long time member, very part time poster 😂
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Glad you had a fantastic day there mate 👍

It's always good to have Fastfack when going to Thorpe Park during the summer, it gets very bust there from what I've heard from others.

Yep, Stealth launch has been modified to have a much quicker acceleration. It used to be 0-80mph in 2.3 seconds, now it's 0-80mph in a whopping 1.9 SECONDS!!
Stealth now holds the 3rd Quickest acceleration on any roller coaster in the world!!! Easily one of my Favourites in the country as well, just behind my favourite, Nemesis.

Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy saw, I'm in the same boat :/

It has some good theming, the indoor section is really good. But apart from that, it all goes downhill from there...

I'm not a fan of the new events either apart from Oktoberfest they've introduced to to the Parks. It just feels poor and shoehorned in. And it kind of ruins the park atmosphere as well I think.

You never go wrong with a Buffet mate :), especially one with such good value.

You'd be surprised that Colossus is far smoother than what it was quite a few years back pre Covid. Its still a little rough, but an enjoyable experience nevertheless.
 
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I haven't been near that hunk of junk for years so might be wrong, but I don't think it has spun like that for since nit long after opening when the pads wore out, so presumably a very old video?

Lots of people have 'fallen' in on Storm Surge.
 
It would appear that Thorpe Park may be having ride availability issues at present; a man has gone to LadBible and complained about how he got on “no rides” on his birthday trip to Thorpe Park: https://www.ladbible.com/news/man-furious-thorpe-park-birthday-party-20220728

He says that he queued for Nemesis Inferno, Detonator and Walking Dead and they all broke down, thus meaning that he left furious at 2pm as he feels he is “too old to be queueing for that time”.

The park says that they had 94% ride availability and 80% guest satisfaction (guests who said they were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied”) on the day he visited.
 
Matt N said:
It would appear that Thorpe Park may be having ride availability issues at present; a man has gone to LadBible and complained about how he got on “no rides” on his birthday trip to Thorpe Park: https://www.ladbible.com/news/man-furious-thorpe-park-birthday-party-20220728

He says that he queued for Nemesis Inferno, Detonator and Walking Dead and they all broke down, thus meaning that he left furious at 2pm as he feels he is “too old to be queueing for that time”.

The park says that they had 94% ride availability and 80% guest satisfaction (guests who said they were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied”) on the day he visited.
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Very unlikely he went to LadBible. Like so-called local newspapers (mainly those owned by Reach who unfortunately seem to own almost all local newspapers now) where all they do is scan social media looking for "stories" for their websites, LB probably did that and then contacted him for more information.

You see it everyday on Twitter when a member of the public posts something newsworthy and all the media companies are falling over themselves messaging them asking if they can use their tweet/pics. And almost always with no financial reward to the person who posted it.

Sadly, it's how journalism seems to be these days - if you can trawl social media, you're a journalist.
 
I read that article the other day. The guy was unlucky with a few breakdowns, but then he chose to leave the park at 2pm. Of course you’re not going to get on any rides if you choose to leave the park half way through the day. If that’s not cutting your nose off to spite your face I don’t know what is. Especially after purchasing fast track.
 
BigShadowtinytree said:
I read that article the other day. The guy was unlucky with a few breakdowns, but then he chose to leave the park at 2pm. Of course you’re not going to get on any rides if you choose to leave the park half way through the day. If that’s not cutting your nose off to spite your face I don’t know what is. Especially after purchasing fast track.
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And he had the cheek to go to the media!
 
Skyscraper said:
And he had the cheek to go to the media!
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Possibly, or...

Steve74 said:
You see it everyday on Twitter when a member of the public posts something newsworthy and all the media companies are falling over themselves messaging them asking if they can use their tweet/pics. And almost always with no financial reward to the person who posted it.
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Matt N said:
It would appear that Thorpe Park may be having ride availability issues at present; a man has gone to LadBible and complained about how he got on “no rides” on his birthday trip to Thorpe Park: https://www.ladbible.com/news/man-furious-thorpe-park-birthday-party-20220728

He says that he queued for Nemesis Inferno, Detonator and Walking Dead and they all broke down, thus meaning that he left furious at 2pm as he feels he is “too old to be queueing for that time”.

The park says that they had 94% ride availability and 80% guest satisfaction (guests who said they were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied”) on the day he visited.
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Whenever I read these kind of stories or reviews on Tripadvisor for theme parks where people complain of going somewhere and “not getting on any rides” I always wonder to myself how these people planned their day and what kind of experience they were expecting.

All of us here know how it goes. Get to the place early and be parked up before it opens, get to the entrance for rope drop, think about your route and perhaps head to the back of the park, know when is best to stop for lunch, etc. I’m guessing that in some of these cases people do the exact opposite and end is wasting a good amount of time. And I think that some people just have a problem with the fact that a visit to a theme park on a day will invariably involve a certain amount of queuing and that you also have to accept that unfortunately it’s a reality that some will rides will be unavailable at some points during a day due to technical issues.

The fact that this guy chose to leave the park early, when we all know that the last couple of hours can be the best for getting on more rides, shows that he probably let his frustration get the better of him and probably lost out even more.
 
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He does clearly state in the article that he got there half an hour before opening!
If I had queued up for three different rides (no actual detail for how long), then purchased a jump ticket, only to suffer another breakdown, I would be miffed about it too.
And in such circumstances I would probably sack the day off with a zero score and a gentle complaint, and a bitch on here when I got home.
No social media here in the cave though.
But then again, I would have settled for a nice chat at customer services, and agreed another day out elsewhere with an enhanced package, I've always wanted one of those.
 
rob666 said:
He does clearly state in the article that he got there half an hour before opening!
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It does say that he “rocked up at 9:30am, half an hour before the gates opened” but of course there can be a big difference between actually being at the park turnstiles at 9.30am and turning up to the car park at 9.30am, getting parked and then queuing up for the security search at Thorpe (which could be very lengthy if it were a busy day) and so on. It does seem a bit strange that he was said to be there for opening and didn’t manage to get on a single ride in the four hours that he was on park. I do have some sympathy because I’ve been at Thorpe myself when they’ve had extreme weather and rides have been shutting down left, right, and centre and it is a very frustrating experience to have waited for a while in a queue only for the ride to go down and then move to another where exactly the same thing happens. But the thing you have to do is just stick with it for the day and take them up on their return offer.
 
You don't "have to do" that at all, we are not all dedicated coaster geeks.
After turning up before park opening, there were four ride failures, one after another.
So it isn't just one failure after another, it is another two on top of that!
To give up at that point for a non thoosie is perfectly reasonable.
 
Steve74 said:
Hang on, where's the media attention, why hasn't the Daily Mail and LadBible picked up on this? Oh yea, I forgot. It's not at Alton Towers.
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It says in the video description that it is from June 2013, i'm sure they would be all over it if it was a recent vid though.
As it was a recent upload they may still jump on it and just not mention that it was from almost a decade ago.
 
Shaggy_Dog_ said:
All of us here know how it goes. Get to the place early and be parked up before it opens, get to the entrance for rope drop, think about your route and perhaps head to the back of the park, know when is best to stop for lunch, etc.
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The only reason these tips work for us geeks is because the vast majority of guests are doing the exact opposite. If everyone arrived before park opening, all headed to the back of the park and had an early lunch together - it wouldn’t work any more :)
 
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