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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

jon81uk said:
Pleasure Beach have replaced many sections of the Big One with little fanfare. Why would you expect Thorpe to make more of this?
Also they didn’t even keep it quiet, it’s gone out as an official TikTok.
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🤷‍♀️ Often there are rumblings that something is going to happen to a ride before it happens. Duel being an example.

I admit I probably got a bit over excited in my initial post though. Still hoping for new trains and feel they are very much needed.
 
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QTXAdsy said:
If Colossus is getting a partial retrack which no one expected, who's to doubt that Vampire at Chessie might be next? With retracking going on at both Towers and now Thorpe, who's to say that Vamps will join the club? :p
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I'd love to see S&S retrack segments of Vampiren!! Heck, even bring back the old trains as they have the blueprints to all of Arrows coasters. They even brought back the steeplechase model, and its still on their website.
 
The bits of retracted sections of the big one are awful 😂 then again I’m not sure you can make colossus any worse. But let’s see how Taziker get on..
 
djtruefitt said:
The bits of retracted sections of the big one are awful 😂 then again I’m not sure you can make colossus any worse. But let’s see how Taziker get on..
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I think it's the rough riding trains that are the problem. Honestly I couldn't even tell the difference what section was retracted or not as the trains themselves were just rough as anything.
 
I'd imagine this is only a partial re-track and if it is indeed being done by Taziker then there won't be new trains. The sections being done must be in pretty urgent need of attention. At 20 years, Colossus is not even that old.
 
I believe it's Taziker, so presumably it'll be more akin to the PMBO work of the past few years than the upcoming Nemesis retrack. They'll probably want it open at the start of next season.
 
If this is Taziker doing Colossus, then it confirms my suspicious that Merlin are still wanting to go down the cheap road with ride installations in this country such as using a British based Garmendale for GG instead of an overseas manufacturer as it saves a lot on shipping costs which such things have only gone up thanks to inflation so this might be a thing for not just Merlin other UK parks.

Yes, there is B&M doing Nemesis but that is an exception and Mack for Project Exodus had been planned a good while back, but honestly having Taziker doing this retrack instead of bringing in Intamin does save a lot on costs if the sections can all be manufactured in the UK, not to say Intamin won't be forgotten about as there still would be a place for them if they are to bring out new trains.

So yeah, if this is a success then I'm 70% sure Merlin will ask Taziker to give the same treatment for Vampire rather than go for Vekoma because, as mentioned above, same on cost and frankly by this point Taziker have pretty much entered the coaster building industry and if they were to start make legit coasters then expect to see more of them being built in the country...damn, SW9 might be a Taziker coaster, world's first purely British built steal coaster! 😅
 
Presumably, this will be a multi-year process, which will not solve a single problem until the trains are replaced. Great.
QTXAdsy said:
If this is Taziker doing Colossus, then it confirms my suspicious that Merlin are still wanting to go down the cheap road with ride installations in this country such as using a British based Garmendale for GG instead of an overseas manufacturer as it saves a lot on shipping costs which such things have only gone up thanks to inflation so this might be a thing for not just Merlin other UK parks.
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In all fairness, GG was initially destined to be shipped overseas to the US. It made financial sense to allocate it to Towers when that fell through rather than building something from scratch when they already had a ride system created.

In terms of Colossus, it's not only more cost-effective to have Taziker do it, but it's also more time efficient. They've not had to rely on the track being pre-made months in advance and then consider the shipping logistics from overseas. Having Taziker do the re-track makes no difference to Intamin other than cost and timeframes. It's the trains that are the outlying problem here.
 
They may have gone to Taziker because it was cheaper, but equally they may have asked Intamin about doing it and Intamin may have said no for whatever reason (manufacturing capacity, not seen as a viable project for Intamin to get involved with etc.).

I'd personally rather them have left it as it is (unless there were severe problems) and looked at a replacement coaster in a few years time.
 
Wonder what the legality is for an outside company to retrack a ride where the original manufacturer still exists?

I thought track designs were patented etc.
 
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