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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

CoventryBee said:
Ermā€¦ is this normal?
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I am at the park today with my brother and his friend and Stealth opened from around 1:15pm this afternoon. We got on and operations are flying along, they were getting trains out every minute.

They have been over estimating the queue times on some of the rides today by a good 15-20 minutes and times have been changing so frequently. For example while being in the queue for Saw, it went from 55 minutes to 70 minutes down to 40 minutes. We did the single rider queue strategy and we were all on and off the ride in 30 minutes.

As its the first time I have done Fright Nights I am not sure how the queues will fair later on today. Will they thin out due to mazes soaking up some of the crowds or will it stay consistent.

Either way, so far the day is going great. The app is still showing Stealth as closed, even if it isn't.
 
I would guess maintenance needed to do something so shoved the opening back and updated the app?
 
As this is only happening on isolated days, Iā€™d imagine, as @Poisson suggested, this is most likely to be the engineers needing to do work on the rides on those specific days. Usually the Engineering team work an early shift and a late shift, but with late closing, theyā€™ll have less time to perform maintenance jobs, as this is time theyā€™d normally have in the evening after the park closes. I assume this is the case anyway, canā€™t think it would be a money saving thing otherwise theyā€™d be doing it every day.
 
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So after doing Fright Nights a few times now, I'll share my thoughts.

Dead Beat

I did this for my first time yesterday. After seeing lots of mixed reviews I hadn't bothered with it before but kept it spoiler free for myself. But I was really pleasantly surprised with this, was my favorite maze last night by far.

Its long, themeing is great, great smells, loved the soundtrack, lots of great scares (actors had some really good hiding places.)

The ending with the actor flying above your head was my favorite part by far. That got me good, never seen something like that in a maze before.


Survival Games

Did this on the opening night and last night.

On the opening night it was great, pretty much the same as last year. It was having a lot of issues that night though and saw the area got evaced at least 3 times due to the fire alarm going off.

Yesterday however, it wasn't so great. Absolutely no smoke in the main area which made a huge difference. Potentially due to the fire alarm issues? But they really need to sort that out. What made this maze great was that you couldn't really see where you where going in the main part and it was confusing. With no smoke, you can see everywhere you're going. Actors seemed very hands-off yesterday too.

Stiches

Pretty much the same as last year. I don't know what it is but I feel like I've never had a particularly good run through in this maze. I want to enjoy it but its not for me and has never been one of my favorites unfortunately.

Trailers

Another one where I've never been the biggest fan off. This year does seem consistent though, good amount of actors and its a decent length. Just always felt this has lacked scares though.

Bit cheeky calling them new scenes this year as not a lot has really changed.

Crows

Decent scarezone, pretty much an outdoor maze. Not as strong as last year though unfortunately. Lots of security/staff visible throughout the walk really kills the atmosphere too. On the first couple times I went they were constantly telling us to keep moving which was annoying, less of that yesterday but still does kill the atmosphere having them visible everywhere. Hopefully they can improve on this next year or have a change up as Crows are getting pretty stale now.

Lucifers Lair and Creature Campus

Can't really comment on either of these as I haven't really spent any time in either of them.

Luciers Lair is decent and creates a nice atmosphere at the center of the park.

I think its pretty cheeky calling Creature Campus a scarezone, its a dance show. I don't go to scare events to watch people dance to be honest, so not a bit of me.

Not for me and I'd rather the budget was used for a different scare attraction instead, but I do understand the reasons for keep bringing it back as it does seem to be popular.

Everything else

Fright Nights will never be as good as it was in its old days, but overall its another strong year for Fright Nights. Yesterday in particular was great, got 3 mazes done in less than an hour. Operations across the park were great and didn't see a single breakdown or ride shutdown all day.

Park wide audio I'm really not a fan of this year. Disappointing they haven't bothered with individual ride audio again too. Was always one of my favorite things about Fright Nights.

Lighting looks great though this year, great to see so much permanent lighting. Best the park has ever looked at night. Theres still improvements that could be made though. Detonator for example had programmed lighting not long ago which seems to have disappeared.

Would like to have seen them do more with Hyperia too. Imagine if the lights flashed as it went down the lift hill? Or flashed a different color even?

There used to be a lot more smoke machines around the park as well which was cool, so would be nice to be see them return, especially with the new lighting. Vortex is looking great with a smoke machine, but other rides would benefit from this too. Samurai was always a good one. Stealths hasn't worked the last few times I've been which is a shame.

Oh and lastly, I'll keep saying this every year. But 10pm closes are missed as there isn't enough time in the dark. If they're cutting an hour, would much rather them cut the first hour and do 11am-10pm. Or even keeping just the mazes and coasters open till 10 would be good.
 
The trouble with Thorpe (along with some of it's clientele) is the rather thin ride lineup. They only have 21 rides, almost half are flat rides which by their nature have low throughputs. Since the park has no high capacity dark rides, the coasters are carrying the park and if any are down then the place becomes chaos.
 
Poisson said:
Ninferno and Swarm are the only 2 rides capable of producing a respectable throughput to do the heavy lifting as well which doesn't help.
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This. The stealth team do the very best they can but at the end of the day the vehicles can only hold 20 riders, which holds it back, same with hyperia.

Although assuming operations are quick, Iā€™m sure rides such as vortex, rush and samurai are capable of managing crowds, given the demand for these rides is far lower than the coasters. Would love to see a new flat on the slammer site to disperse crowds more in the future.

I think it just shows that thorpe over sell tickets to events such as these just to get more money, at the expense of guest experience.

Change of topic, does anyone know when Thorpe started charging guests for mazes? Not been to FN since like 2017 or 18, also seems extortionate for Ā£8 a go.
 
Dhev123 said:
Although assuming operations are quick, Iā€™m sure rides such as vortex, rush and samurai are capable of managing crowds, given the demand for these rides is far lower than the coasters. Would love to see a new flat on the slammer site to disperse crowds more in the future.
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Rush has a decent throughput on two largely because the ride sequence is so short but Samurai and Vortex are lucky to get 450pph. Those two in particular are known for faff as they can take a while to park (for Vortex they have to wait for the floor to rise) and boarding takes longer as the seats are further away from the gates.
 
Bowser said:
Not sure if this abbreviation is your invention but I very much enjoyed it :)
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Sadly not but I'm glad regardless!

Dhev123 said:
Change of topic, does anyone know when Thorpe started charging guests for mazes? Not been to FN since like 2017 or 18, also seems extortionate for Ā£8 a go.
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It started in 2020, wish it was not the case, but you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube...
 
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