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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

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AstroDan said:
Thorpe Park has no identity.

The entire place is totally confused, a mish-mash of ideas.
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For my sins, I was on their website earlier, and noticed this too. What is the park these days? An escapist fantasy playground? A lighthearted, lightly themed jaunt? A gritty, challenging and dark adventure? A fun place for families and kids, or exclusive to teenage snapchatters? One thing they have done well is engage with social media and establish a fanbase who see their rides as iconic. It's the reason they can now sell a CD of largely drab IMAScore themes to even casual fans. But the park spend a lot of money on this kind of thing, only to insist on putting out out awful X-Factor style marketing and presentation that's utterly tabloid in tone.

As for X:TWD; sure, their are only so many IPs to go round, but this is particularly poor. The show is still popular on paper, but it's in a tailspin ratings wise, and has largely thought to have passed it's creative peak years ago. Peppa Pig or The Gruffalo are timeless, and CBeebies is adaptable. Still, maybe a niche, horror-led IP will work for Thorpe next season, just like it didn't particularly all of less than two years ago.

Sorry if this post seems unusually impassioned, but I really thought Thorpe had so much potential in the last decade, and a very clear, positive feel and identity. Whereas these days, the park is probably the biggest victim of Merlin's short-term approach. I like the rides, too! But as it stands, the park's something of a disaster.
 
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Not sure if this will work but it's the image posted on Facebook.

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Has there been a change in management there this year? It's about the only thing that would explain why they ship in a load of kids rides one year, then rebrand the entire park to a horror theme the next....

Guess the image isn't working, I'll try fix it later.
 
As everyone is referring to this development as X:TWD and as that was put in the planning application, then I will just say... please Merlin, for the love of God PLEASE don't rename X "X: The Walking Dead". But I have a horrible feeling that that might be the name. Think about it. They put X:TWD in the planning application. So it works.
 
I have no knowledge of the TWD, but I don't think it can make the ride any less appealing to the park's core audience and its something to market as new. The franchise seemed to be fairly well received at halloween.

If it is a hit, I'll be interested to see how the capacity works out for them given X's recent operational history.
 
TWD aside, I genuinely think this good be quite good. I've never watched TWD, but I'm a sucker for a dark ride, especially a Haunted House, so a zombie themed coaster could be great.

Merlin have proved with the Gruffalo that they can actually make a half decent dark ride, so fingers crossed they follow on from that rather than DBGT....
 
Capacity wise, the quick fix would be to get it back on 3 trains and add an SRQ so they don't have to worry about waiting for an additional odd-numbered group to turn up. Presumably any SRQ would have to use the exit path, though as the disabled entrance already does this it probably wouldn't be any worse than the current situation - I can't imaging getting a wheelchair along that corridor against the main flow of people is much fun.
 
They will probably batch at the entrance and turn the long walkway into a maze and you 'escape' through the coaster with the now customary "Don't Dead Open Inside*" message everywhere (*TWD joke, walkers will get it) then go through another maze to the exit, how long these mazes remain fully staffed is anybody's guess, they'd be better off investing in animatronics, it'll probably save money in the long term.

As long as there isn't a chocolate pudding eating kid wearing a cowboy hat anywhere, it should be a hit.
 
Thorpe Park have revealed a very flexible opening schedule for 2018 with 10pm closes confirmed on Thursday. Friday and Saturdays from 26th July to 1st September!

That makes 37 days of the year when the park is open 12 hours.

Impressive.
 
It'll be interesting to see how this works out for them. I wonder if there is something yet to be announced that will be taking place on those evenings, if not - it feels like quite a big gamble, I'm interested to see how it pans out.
 
Rick said:
It'll be interesting to see how this works out for them. I wonder if there is something yet to be announced that will be taking place on those evenings, if not - it feels like quite a big gamble, I'm interested to see how it pans out.
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Didn't Thorpe announce that annual passes were invalid on Saturdays during August? Might suggest a special event. Bear in mind, they have announced this sort of schedule before, then quietly nixed in the months prior, although this was nearly a deacade ago.

Thorpe should definitely be doing late-night summer openings. It attracts a young crowd, has good public transport access, and is much better located than Alton.
 
All they’ve done is streamlined the season, a few more days closed have appeared and every Sunday apart from Fright Nights is now a 5pm close and then reused those “lost” hours on to the 10pm close. Makes great sense really.

But as others have said there must be something unannounced waiting in the shadows.
 
Awesome, the return of Summer Nights. Best time to visit, or it was.
Now time to get Alton to do the same.
 
Even I can't argue with 10pm closures!

Good on them, I hope it works and that there are benefits to be had from caring about guest experience and that this spreads to Staffordshire!

Of course being a cynic, I'm smelling a rat in there somewhere.....
 
ringo said:
All they’ve done is streamlined the season, a few more days closed have appeared and every Sunday apart from Fright Nights is now a 5pm close and then reused those “lost” hours on to the 10pm close. Makes great sense really.

But as others have said there must be something unannounced waiting in the shadows.
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This in general makes sense, although maybe summer Sundays should be a later close as well, at least 6pm Sundays in August, but I guess that could be extended on the day as needed.
Also being closed on some weekdays, particularly in September when most people already visited in the summer or are waiting for Fright Nights makes a lot of sense. Much better to close on a September Tuesday and have a 10pm Friday in August.
 
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