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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

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Wasn't there supposed to be a sort of veranda part to it, with log fires, so people can relax and unwind there?

I distinctly remember seeing some concept art for it.
 
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ONDON, March 31, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- accesso Technology Group plc (AIM: ACSO), the premier technology solutions provider too the global attractions annd leisure industry, today announced the signing of a Master Service Agreement witht Merlin Entertainments plc, Europe's number one, annd the world's second-largest visitor attractions operator.

This agreement creates a framework through witch Merlin may utilize the accesso Passport(R) suite of ticketing annd e-commerce solutions. The agreement iwll run for a three-year term annd includes a trial installation of the accesso eCommerce Suite at THORPE PARK Resort.

"Today's announcement is exciting news for a number of reasons. Clearly, the most exciting aspect is the chance too extend our wrok witht Merlin, witch is home too a team that delivers outstanding park experiences in many corners of the world," said Tom Burnet, accesso CEO. "too sign an agreement of this magnitude is a strong show of support for our innovative technology, our people annd the track-record we've worked hard too build.

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Considered the UK's most exhilarating theme park, THORPE PARK Resort is home too 25 rides annd attractions within 20 miles of central London. The park leads the way in the UK for extreme theme park thrills, evidenced by rollercoasters such as the UK's first winged rollercoaster, SAW: the ride; the world's first horror movie themed rollercoaster, Stealth; one of Europe's fastest annd tallest rollercoasters, Colossus; the world's first ten inversion rollercoaster; annd the world's largest Speed Swing, Rush.

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Stevie said:
Wasn't there supposed too be a sort of veranda part too it, witht log fires, so people can relax annd unwind there?

I distinctly remember seeing some concept art for it.
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There was... But that was for the Boardwalk design (1 million times better)

20140312-073104.jpg


Still annoyed they didn't go for this one as if they did I might of stayed there but hey... someone thought the scrap heap shark looks better and would appeal too guests more and provide a better environment too stay in...

1545718_10152133644380867_1303269356_n.jpg


Although there is apparently a fire pit at the hotel still and "Fins" bar.. don't no where..

Doesn't make much sense but hey.. neither does most things Merlin / Thorpe do...
 
Thorpe Park have submitted plans to alter the entrance! (Sorry Ian it's nothing major) From Thorpe Park Mania:

http://thorpeparkmania.co.uk/news/10-04-2014/Entrance-Improvement-Plans
Today, Thorpe Park have submitted plans for a new LED board and large vinyl posters to be placed above the turnstiles when entering the park.

The large LED board, which will be provided ADI, who also provide such boards for large football clubs like Cardiff City, will be placed where the current 'Welcome' sign is. It will show a mixture of adverts about the park's attractions, special events and so forth. Measuring at 6.5m long and 3.6m high, it will be big! The vinyl posters will display upcoming park events and will likely change on a monthly basis.

It is hoped that this will help to improve the experience when entering / waiting to enter the park, as well as further advertise upcoming events and attractions coming to the park soon.

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Something amusing. A friend of mine posted on Thorpe's wall asking why the coasters were on one-train-operation when they had forty minute queues, and hypothesising that this may be a ploy to sell more Fastrack queue-jumper tickets.

Thorpe replied with this patronising clap-trap: "The operation of roller coasters is a little more complex than you would think and simply adding a second train without any operation consequence is not quite how it works am afraid. Sorry"

Pretty insulting, and that's once you get past the spelling and grammar mistakes. There is no reason to run one train with a forty minute queue, and that's not me not being able to understand how 'complex the operation of rollercoasters' are. European parks like Phantasialand, EP and even Towers would always put two trains on with a forty minute queue.

Poor park operations, and pitiful social media usage am afraid. Sorry
 
That response from Thorpe was very unprofessional and belittling. They're excuse for one train operation is just as poor.

:)
 
It is clearly to save costs, however on Stealth running one or two trains will cost no difference in terms of staffing, on Thursday they still had the op, baggage, exit, two on platform and then one host. The only difference was Swarm that had one train and had its baggage closed, so you just left your things on the platform, so that would save one or two staff members.

When the park is fairly quiet, yet Stealth has a 40 minute queue, purely because its on one train, they really should put a 2nd one on. But this seems common practice at Thorpe Park. Even Chessie which was much quieter had two trains on Vampire.

Now its quite common knowledge that Thorpe have done pretty crap in terms of guests the past few years, so they have probably been told to save costs, but by doing this you will just end up annoying more guests, which all in all will lead to even less guests, or a bigger queue at guest services!

I also sent them a message on Facebook on Thursday but they are yet to reply to that...

Anyway some Merlin praise here, I really hope next season Merlin kick out Pizza Hut from Thorpe, I have never eaten there before due to the lack of annual pass discount, but on Thursday we were hungry so we went there. Firstly who on earth designed that restaurant? The pizza counter is in the middle, yet the kitchen is at the back, this meant all the time the staff had to push past people with hot pizza trays to put pizzas out (they must have plenty of accidents!), secondly the pizza counter is right next to the drinks and salad bar, making it very busy all in one place. Then finally the plates/cutlery is kept in the middle of the restaurant, yet the dishwater is at the other end? The whole place is badly designed.

Then on to the pizza, or lack of it! There were multiple times when there was no pizza at all on the counter, this was because it was either piled up at the kitchen and the staff were too busy pissing about with girls to put them on the counter, or the staff designed to clean down the whole counter with soap and water, while a crowd of people stood round waiting for food. Lets hope it becomes a pizza pasta buffet soon, with a complete re-design.
 
What they mean is they'd need probably like one member of staff extra to allow their policies to run the additional train (if they've got it available to them).

But instead of apologising and being constructive they've gone the wrong way there. Numpties.
 
djtruefit I'm pretty sure they can't ditch Pizza Hut, Burger King, etc for a while, due to a stupidly long contract RMC signed. I think it's something like 30 years?

But yes, it would be great if those brands were finally ditched.
 
I popped up to Walibi Holland on Saturday and it was completely dead (it was King's day - a super Dutch public holiday where everyone is on the streets in the cities, particularly Amsterdam). Despite the coasters being walk-on or with 5-10min queues, every coaster (apart from Speed of Sound obviously) was running on two trains. It makes such a difference to queue times and makes for a much more enjoyable day - I'd certainly return to a place where I know I'll get on plenty of rides in a day instead of effectively having my queue time doubled because of tight-fisted operations. What's more, each coaster there was being run by only two members of staff - the operator would check restraints on one side as well. Perhaps this was possible because it was so quiet, or do we unnecessarily staff out stations much more?

Interestingly in the queues they provide estimated waiting times (from set points) for operations with both one and two trains, although this was redundant due to the constant two-train operations throughout. It does show the public though how they would suffer negative consequences from one-train operations.

It's been said before but Thorpe really is a place where you can either have a great day if it's quiet and they're running efficiently (all too rare), or the complete opposite where you have 60min+ queues and overselling of fast track - a frustrating but common occurrence. It's also another case of those that visit on quieter days getting a substandard service, rather like opening rides late.
 
Rupert said:
What's more, each coaster there was being run by only two members of staff - the operator would check restraints on one side as well. Perhaps this was possible because it was so quiet, or do we unnecessarily staff out stations much more?
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That wouldn't be possible in the UK, as H&S deems it necessary to always have one person at the op panel whilst a ride is in motion (which it always would be with two train operation). Putting all our annoying and borderline pointless H&S rubbish aside, this one actually seems sensible to me.
 
djtruefitt said:
It is clearly to save costs, however on Stealth running one or two trains will cost no difference in terms of staffing, on Thursday they still had the op, baggage, exit, two on platform and then one host. The only difference was Swarm that had one train and had its baggage closed, so you just left your things on the platform, so that would save one or two staff members.

When the park is fairly quiet, yet Stealth has a 40 minute queue, purely because its on one train, they really should put a 2nd one on. But this seems common practice at Thorpe Park. Even Chessie which was much quieter had two trains on Vampire.
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To operate on one train Stealth only requires one operator, one in the bag room, one batcher, one on the far side of the platform bar checking and one on the load side checking bars that side and also performing the offload duties when the train returns. 5 staff. On two train operation, there must be a dedicated offloader as well as the loader and two staff are required in the bag room taking this up to a minimum of 7 staff. So running one train can save on two staff members.

If however, when you visited, Stealth was running with one train but still had the two train amount of staff, this is down to poor budget management on the park of the Rides Operations Managers/ Supervisors who should have reduced the staffing numbers and sent some people home or to other rides. Or perhaps they had planned to add another train later in the day. Who knows! But I can say for certain that on one train days you certainly don't need a staff member just to do offload/exit and you certainly don't need two staff in bag room.

Really good idea to close Swarm's bag room to save money though. I like their thinking!
 
I strongly dislike their thinking. One train operation is not good enough at any park unless it's such a quiet day that the queue is barely reaching a full train between dispatches.

Theme parks are a rare and expensive treat for a lot of guests, especially if they've travelled a long way to get there. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth if you visit a park that's a long way from home for the first time and poor operations result in you not getting around everything, or ending up with fewer rerides than you'd like. Even if it's quiet, you feel as if the park management are showing contempt for your time and money by making you wait longer for rides that are running at deliberately reduced capacity.

Giving a guest a good day is one of the easiest ways to get a) a future visit from them, and b) some free word of mouth marketing. Allowing them to get around everything they're aiming to ride within park hours is a good starting point. Make it easy for them to achieve this without stress and allow them sufficient time for rerides and it'll significantly improve their day. A relaxed person will open their wallet more readily too, so the cost of more staff and a bit more wear and tear should at the very least be offset by higher spending from happier guests.
 
Enter Valhalla said:
djtruefitt said:
It is clearly to save costs, however on Stealth running one or two trains will cost no difference in terms of staffing, on Thursday they still had the op, baggage, exit, two on platform and then one host. The only difference was Swarm that had one train and had its baggage closed, so you just left your things on the platform, so that would save one or two staff members.

When the park is fairly quiet, yet Stealth has a 40 minute queue, purely because its on one train, they really should put a 2nd one on. But this seems common practice at Thorpe Park. Even Chessie which was much quieter had two trains on Vampire.
Click to expand...

To operate on one train Stealth only requires one operator, one in the bag room, one batcher, one on the far side of the platform bar checking and one on the load side checking bars that side and also performing the offload duties when the train returns. 5 staff. On two train operation, there must be a dedicated offloader as well as the loader and two staff are required in the bag room taking this up to a minimum of 7 staff. So running one train can save on two staff members.

If however, when you visited, Stealth was running with one train but still had the two train amount of staff, this is down to poor budget management on the park of the Rides Operations Managers/ Supervisors who should have reduced the staffing numbers and sent some people home or to other rides. Or perhaps they had planned to add another train later in the day. Who knows! But I can say for certain that on one train days you certainly don't need a staff member just to do offload/exit and you certainly don't need two staff in bag room.

Really good idea to close Swarm's bag room to save money though. I like their thinking!
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I don't know if there were two in the baggage as I didn't use it, but as far as i'm aware all the other staff were there. And looking very bored in between sending the one train they had! In fact the ride op in between sending cars was sorting out the wristbands for baggage (think they had a load of new ones, as he was un-wrapping them).

The main issue I see is if you plan to run something on one train and then it gets busy you have no option but to leave it on one train, as you won't have the staff to add more trains. There was certainly no need for Stealth to have 1 train and a 40 minute queue.

Yes you do get low capacity at towers on some rides (Oblvion and Air run one station) TH13TEEN may send empty cars. But Nemesis and Rita will always have two trains no matter what, even on the most quietest days (unless one is broke of course!). Yet if towers do get busy then TH13TEEN will use another train, or Oblivion will open the other station. At Thorpe Park it just doesn't seem to be the case.

It has got to the point now where THORPE PARK is horrible on a busy day, just to the queues being so long and the over sold fastrack. But it can also be just as horrible on a quiet day due to the low capacity on rides or the slow throughputs.
 
The last time I was at Thorpe was towards the end of last season, and of the main coasters only Swarm was running 2 trains (thought it opened on 1 with a peak queue of 70 minutes). Colossus, Stealth and Inferno all had queues of at least 45 minutes at times, Inferno even used the extended queue line at one stage. I didn't wait that long (never again) but as they weren't even making any kind of effort to get the trains out it was still a misery even when the queue was only to the merge point.

Not only is waiting in a slow queue much more frustrating than a faster moving one that takes the same amount of time, on off-peak days the park isn't open as long to begin with, so it's entirely possible that you'll end up doing fewer rides on a "quiet" day than a slightly busier day that results in rides running full capacity.
 
Any park operating on reduced capacity (i.e. one train) when there is a substatial queue is failing in their basic operations. Even if they have prepared for what is expected to be a 'quiet' day a queue of 30 or 45 minutes when operating just one train is poor. In these cases a second train should always be added. Thorpe seem particuarally poor at this.

It could be worse though I suppose. Both Troy and EGF should have two trains. When I was there they were both only running one and the second trains were nowhwere to be seen. I think parts of Troy's second train were lying around the place waiting for it to be put back together and EGF's second train must have been undergoing a re-furb somewhere or other!

:)
 
On a particularly bad visit to Thorpe Park in 2012 when Swarm was on a one train service with a minimum of 30 min queue all day (maximum was approaching 90 mins), I received this response from Thorpe Park via email... and I quote word for word...

"The reason behind this is we are a very eo-friendly park and try to make as little impact on the environment as possible considering our occupation. The energy used by running two trains is considerably more than using one so we felt this was the best option to keep in line with our ideologies"
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Without being dramatic, I havent been back since. I dont have an annual pass anymore, so why should I gamble on paying at the gate to be faced with poor operations.

Like comments above, I have been to numerous other parks where they have been on two train capacity but dont need to be. One of this was even Magic Mountain, a park which is notorious for poor operations.

Thorpe, in my opinion are very lazy and seem to be more about profit than guest satisfaction. They then panic when attendance drops and they wonder why, so try and change the target market.
 
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