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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Re: Thorpe Park

Sorry to sort of merge two threads, but with the 2015 coaster topic - is a coaster definitely planned for then? Are the new attractions planned for 2014?

While trying to become more 'premium' is undoubtedly a good move, I just can't help but feel a bit torn. I used to hate Thorpe for it's image-change but in recent years have come to love it for what it is...coasters and not a lot else. I've even accepted Saw (hate the franchise) because it just summed up the whole thing for me....thrilling but trashy.

Sort of like the sweets they sell. Sugar, citric acid, and E-numbers.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

If there isn't a new attraction for 2014 either, whoever is in-charge at Thorpe needs getting rid of. Two years of nothing new when Thorpe's gate figures are falling quite a bit is no good at all.

It'd help if Thorpe Park installed a dark ride; something with a bit of length, atmosphere, effects, story and variation in regards to the way in which it may scare, shock, entertain or wow guests. Modern dark attractions usually plump for unimaginative jumpy moments rather than building tension or letting guests experience a range of moods throughout the ride, and they are always either far too serious or far too ridiculous. There's never a balance, and an effective attraction can flip the switch between a more humorous moment with a more fearsome one.

There's no use in them presenting Thorpe Park as a premium attraction; giving it a premium entry price, and not then making sure this promise is followed-up to ensure that guests will want to return sooner (or just return in Thorpe's case :p ). There's some great attractions at Thorpe, but they can't live off the back of what's there forever and that's why people aren't returning as much. People want more for their money, not less, and going for a few years without doing anything and only ever installing a short, bland roller coaster with an overused theme (well, not totally, though the biblical references could have been a little more subtle instead of them just basing the ride on a church that has appeared from nowhere, even though the Swarm is supposed to be attack Thorpe Park), no real atmosphere and yet more cheap theming attempts (bar the plane wing, trains and the station) hasn't helped them at all.

No doubt I'll probably get grief for that, but the gate figures speak for themselves (both Thorpe's and the other Merlin attractions).
 
Re: Thorpe Park

Thorpe have plenty of places for new or even re-themed attractions, including the arena, beach, 4D Cinema, Saw Alive, Dome, Jungle Safari, etc, etc.

I think next year will see a new marketing approach and general relaunch of the park, probably with the return of the railway and hopefully one or two smaller rides and attractions, maybe the 4D cinema with some kind of family film similar to Ice Age.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

Obviously, the main issue here is that putting your eggs in one basket and marketing your park at a segment that has no money is financial suicide. However, something that has always jarred for me is that in my view, despite what they might say, Thorpe never have been the UK thrill capital. The rides there aren't actually that thrilling.

They have some of the world's best ride hardware in the form of a Mondial Top Scan and a KMG Afterburner but they're both run on ridiculously wimpy settings. I don't even mean in comparison to their fair counterparts, Lightwater Valley's versions of the same rides completely destroy Thorpe's offerings and they're at a quaint family theme park.

The coaster offering at Thorpe is overall solid but unspectacular. It's good by UK standards but Alton has the better lineup in my view and there are arguably more thrilling coasters at other UK parks as well. If you head into mainland Europe, the idea that Thorpe's coasters are worthy of a park that calls itself a thrill capital gets a bit ridiculous.

It's just always annoyed me that they have been pushing the whole "thrill capital" angle for so long and yet most of the rides there are so tepid.

I'm glad to know that they're re-positioning the park but there's a lot of work to do to fix the damage. When I visited last year, the park just felt soulless and empty. It's a place that's impossible to make an emotional attachment to and is currently completely unsuitable for families. The park had so much potential to be a great theme park in the days of Colossus and Ninferno, I hope that Merlin can find a way to realise it.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

It does make me wonder what they will do next year, if they plan to install family attractions as their headline (though its been many years since Thorpe installed a ride that wasn't a coaster or a 2nd hand/ returned attraction) then they will be going head-to-head with Alton Towers who are having a reasonably sized family based area next year.

Towers and Thorpe rarely go head-to-head.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

I was there on Thursday, and the bobble head posters were still all over the place. Queue times weren't too bad, though there were a few school trips, they all sodded off by 4pm.

Had one of the smoothest Colossus rides I can remember... though it could just be that Baco changes your whole concept of pain. ;)

X is pretty good now they have removed the stopping on the blocks. There was no smoke though, so the lighting looked crap. :(

Swarm backwards is still lame. No fire effects either. Saw was running well, getting good throughputs, but Stealth started the day on one train with shockingly slow dispatch times. By the end of the day, with two trains and the majority of the kids gone, it was walk on, and we went on about four times in a row.

Loggers was down all day.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

Apart from the school kids and the 2nd train appearing on Stealth, your day sounds like it panned out almost exactly the same way ours did yesterday.

I had assumed there must have been a major technical problem with Stealth given that we knew in advance that it would be on 1 train, that it remained as such even with an advertised 70min queue and having heard it was also on 1 train on Thursday. The fact that it ran 2 later on when you were there suggests that's not the case though, which makes me even more interested as to why it was on 1 yesterday.

As for X, I prefer it without the pointless stopping on all the brake runs, but someone needs to tell them to take a train off as the ride now stacks badly. We had a short wait on the 3rd brake run and a long wait on the final one.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

Well on Thursday, X seemed to be short a train, with a considerable wait between trains in the station. (it was still walk on though).

I've never understood how Stealth can run on one train when they have three. Surely the whole point of that was so there is always a spare train waiting to go?
 
Re: Thorpe Park

Maybe they were on 2? Given how much shorter the ride duration is now compared with last year, I can’t see how they can dispatch quickly enough to smoothly run 4 trains. I think they should run up to 3 on all but the busiest days to minimise the amount of time guests are left waiting to get back to the station. They need to improve the bag store too – the staff in there have struggled to keep up on both of my last 2 visits resulting in trains being sent half empty.

As for Stealth, during construction they made a big deal out of the fact they were buying a spare train. Obviously that didn’t last long and one of the trains seems to have become a parts donor.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

On my last visit to Thorpe the bag store was causing issues for the ride, there was only one staff member in there and we we stuck waiting to hand our bags in, then we got on a train and sent with just three of us on, as the rest of the group was still at baggage, they really need two staff members there, or a better design for it.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

HaydenCR said:
AshleeKel said:
There was only one yesterday, too. She was really slow :(
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I had to wait for her to go back about 4 times before i got mine back. I swear I aged 20 years over that time.
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It might have been understandable if it were the end of a long shift but it was right at the start of her shift!
 
Re: Thorpe Park

DiogoJ42 said:
I've never understood how Stealth can run on one train when they have three. Surely the whole point of that was so there is always a spare train waiting to go?
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The day it opened in 2006, it was on one train all day. That promise of two trains everyday without fail didn't even make it into the open season.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

John said:
As for Stealth, during construction they made a big deal out of the fact they were buying a spare train. Obviously that didn’t last long and one of the trains seems to have become a parts donor.
Click to expand...

I think they way they do it is they are always performing the "closed season maintenance" on one of the trains, for example at this time of the year one is always in bits and will be bought out on the tracks towards the end of summer and then they will take one of the ones on it at the moment and start on that and so on. Of course if needed it can also be used as spare parts for Stealth and Rita too!
 
Re: Thorpe Park

Thorpe have applied, once again, for planning permission for the Waterside Hotel. There's only been a few tiny amendments from the last plans. It's nice to see this project is still very much happening. The cover letter mentions that in order to meet timescales, they would like the application reviewed at the planning meeting next month. No mention of when they would plan to have this open by though. I'd imagine they'd want it finished by the 2016 season at the latest, however, as that is when the Crash Pad is due to be removed.

With this still looming, the new coaster and merlin's apparent realisation the current brand image and model wasn't really working, I imagine the next few years are going to be really pivotal for the parks long term success. If they really want to reposition the park, then the next few years could be interesting.

Planning application can be found here
 
Thorpe Park

Re: Stealth I seem to recall reading once that they're using the one 'rollback-y' train as a donor for the other two, as it was far more prone to them... Might be rubbish though!
 
Re: Thorpe Park

John said:
I had assumed there must have been a major technical problem with Stealth given that we knew in advance that it would be on 1 train, that it remained as such even with an advertised 70min queue and having heard it was also on 1 train on Thursday. The fact that it ran 2 later on when you were there suggests that's not the case though, which makes me even more interested as to why it was on 1 yesterday.
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If they were advertising it as being on 1 train then i guess it could well have been a technical issue which was fixed after park close.
 
Re: Thorpe Park

I returned to Thorpe a couple of weeks ago on the South meet, and was interested to see how much the park had changed since my first visit in 2007.

Stealth - As good as I remember it to be, but on single train operation, which was not good at all.

Saw - I was more impressed than I thought I'd be. The station building's done pretty well, but the baggage hold's in a rather odd place for collection in that the collection point's on the sodding offload platform, and the car/train I was on hadn't even finished collecting bags when the next set came back into the station! A perfectly acceptable ride, although a bit rough in places. And it's definitely nowhere near as bad as Baco. :p

Colossus - Better than I remembered it. Smoother than I expected, and the fact that it was on two-train operation helped a lot.

Rush - Easily Thorpe's best flat ride. Great fun.

X - I prefer having it going forwards, to be honest. Not having the stopping and starting around the track is a big improvement as well. One big problem is baggage. The two members of staff were so slow to deal with the baggage hold that the train I was on left the station with just three people on it! Very disappointing. To be fair, the lights in the main coaster part are pretty good, but no Eurosat. :p

Nemesis Inferno - It's a decent ride, but definitely not worthy of the 'Nemesis' name. If they'd just called it 'Inferno', I think that more people would've been happier with it.

Rumba Rapids - Boring. Nothing much happens on them at all.

The Swarm - I was looking forward to going on this, and it was worth it, IMO. It's a decent addition to the park, although they could've used a more imaginative layout.

Overall, I think Thorpe's improved a bit over the years. Roast & Relish is amazing, and Towers needs to install one somewhere on park. Forbidden Valley would be the best location, IMO. The Crash Pad just looks dire and out of place, as does Storm Surge. The Dome is not pleasant, and needs something doing to it to make it better. Demolishing it would be a start. The beach area at the entrance needs to go - why have it here in a country where it's only likely to be usable for two weeks of the year?
 
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