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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

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imanautie said:
Has anyone else noticed that staff all across the island seem to be having a strong pro LGBTQ+ approach to things recently, heck there's even a progress pride flag pin with the standard THORPE logo on (looks realllly good) and a LOT of staff with pronoun pins (more then just the few who's pronouns aren't obvious)

Reason I mention it is the scale seems more then what happens when it's just a few staff, so is this a project arranged by management or something else?

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I really hope it’s going to be across all Merlin properties, we really need to get comfortable with pronouns and it’s something I’m campaigning to be added to name badges at my own job too. Theme parks typically seem to have a higher than average number of LGBTQ+ employees so it’s fab to see - not to mention AMAZING to see inclusion initiatives normalised for family environments
 
tayspru said:
I really hope it’s going to be across all Merlin properties, we really need to get comfortable with pronouns and it’s something I’m campaigning to be added to name badges at my own job too. Theme parks typically seem to have a higher than average number of LGBTQ+ employees so it’s fab to see - not to mention AMAZING to see inclusion initiatives normalised for family environments
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I've noticed historically with THORPE it seems to have a fair few openly non binary hosts (certain pronoun pins make it kinda obvious), so perhaps internal pressure made Merlin decide to try out some things at THORPE first?

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imanautie said:
Has anyone else noticed that staff all across the island seem to be having a strong pro LGBTQ+ approach to things recently, heck there's even a progress pride flag pin with the standard THORPE logo on (looks realllly good) and a LOT of staff with pronoun pins (more then just the few who's pronouns aren't obvious)

Reason I mention it is the scale seems more then what happens when it's just a few staff, so is this a project arranged by management or something else?

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Pride pin with a thorpe logo and a lot of staff using them sounds like a management thing.
Very positive

Could you imagine the embarrassment if you didn’t accept one from your employer. Straight to HR


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It’s possible this may be being driven at a group level as I’ve seen a couple of hosts at Towers also wearing badges highlighting their preferred pronoun.

Nice and progressive to see.
 
Ian said:
It’s possible this may be being driven at a group level as I’ve seen a couple of hosts at Towers also wearing badges highlighting their preferred pronoun.

Nice and progressive to see.
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Maybe? I'm guessing merlin are at least ok with pronoun pins across the board (as they would violate the no unofficial pins rule) which is fantastic to see, I'm also going to hazard a guess that THORPEs age range for staff is playing a part here

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AstroDan said:
Genuine Question:

I never believe a word from any reviewers/influencers/whatever from press night posts as they haven't queued and haven't paid whilst the park will have ensured it was abolutely overkill on actors etc. for them.

Is FN good this year? People seem to be all over it.

Last time I went (2018) it was absolutely rubbish, as was the time before (2011). Cheaply done mazes, horrific waits, nasty.

Advice.
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I'm someone who went on Press Night and Passholder Preview Night. I paid for the mazes on Passholder rate (albeit at the reduced rate). Feel free to take the following opinions however you want, but keep in mind the following things:
-I've attended Press Nights at Fright Nights since 2015. I try to avoid making full opinions on the mazes until I've tried them in "normal" settings, for the reasons you note. But I do have a rough gauge on how an attraction compares between Press and Regular Nights.
-I always use the Press Night to give an honest opinion to management, etc. They may not be able to act on anything, but I'll say what I like, what I dislike, what I think will do well, what I think will struggle, etc.
-The following things I say are from the opinion of me, as a guest, and not as someone writing a review for a website who was invited to the Press Preview.

Fright Nights this year is one of the most varied and complete line ups as a whole. There's a strong mix of different themes and styles throughout each attraction. The mazes and scare zones have good levels of theming (mostly). The acting is strong. And in general it feels like a proper Halloween event, and not a 'here's a couple of mazes thrown into a theme park' event.

Trailers is a great maze imo. It's not the scariest, it doesn't do anything new or groundbreaking. But it's a maze which takes the basics of a scare maze and does them all brilliantly. The ending could be stronger, but all in it's great. If you've done a large number of mazes, you'll see it as it is: nothing special, but strong.

Creek Freak Massacre is something which isn't for me. The scares and layout and concept just isn't something that interests or scares me. But it is very well themed and the masses enjoy it.
Platform 15 is in one of its strongest incarnations yet. The maze starts off very slow, but does a good job and building up the atmosphere and scares throughout.

The scare zones look great. I think they may struggle when there's a large number of people on park. But the heart and concept of them is good.

The shows are bare on the theming side, and a little bit on the long side, but they're well designed and enjoyable. They're things you can stop and enjoy for the whole thing, or dip in and out of for a couple of minutes and still enjoy it.

2018 was one of the (if not, the) weakest Fright Nights events. Quantity over quality. It's completely different now. 2011 was one of the better years for the event imo, but there's always bad times I guess.

In terms of the mazes more specifically. Creek Freak and Trailers have had big budgets, and it shows I think. Platform is a cheaper done maze, and outdoors of course. Personally I prefer Platform over Creek Freak, but I'm in a minority there.
Are any of the mazes worth £10? Honestly, no. Are they worthy of being upcharge mazes though? I reckon so. A price point of around £5-7 would be more reasonable in my opinion. Sure, I'd rather them be free like in the past, but I think going forward, a couple of upcharge mazes plus the scare zones is something which is better for the event.

Feel free to take my views as you will. Obviously the event has only had 1 normal day of operation, and things change as the event progresses. But I genuinely think this will be one of the better Fright Nights events and it is worth the visit.
 
Thorpe Park have just announced behind-the-scenes tours of the mazes!



Tickets are £50pp though and there are two tours, one for Trailers and the other for Platform 15 and Creek Freak. However both are the same price and both commence at 10am, plus the tours are only run on staggered dates. This means that unless you do at least 3 days on park, it's impossible to do both tours. They probably don't want people doing both tours so as many people as possible can do one, hence the staggered dates.

https://www.thorpepark.com/tickets-..._campaign=Orlo&utm_content=FRIGHT+NIGHTS+2021
 
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AT86 said:
Once, which was arguably too many.

I hope you have a good supply of painkillers close by.
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Honestly worst pain was sensory due to not having my headphones on for so long.
Have to say it's let another team that are fantastic interacting with me as an AAC user which is always nice to see!

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Impressive Saw tally @imanautie; I don't think I've ever done Saw more than once in a day, and my record on any Thorpe ride is 5 times in one day on Swarm!

What I came in here to post, though, is that I have a little more fuel to add to the fire of future coaster rumours for Thorpe; JoshC over on Thorpe Park Mania has done some interesting speculative work regarding some things appearing around Thorpe Park that, while quite distant from one another, appear somewhat related.

The first is quite simple; on Josh's own blog back in July, he was looking at the many Thorpe-related Easter eggs on a recently redecorated vending machine opposite Derren Brown's Ghost Train: https://justanotherthemeparkblog.wo...very-easter-egg-on-thorpes-graffiti-machines/

Now this might sound fairly innocent, and certainly not something worthy of new coaster speculation. However, one of the very few things on there that wasn't a Thorpe easter egg was the word Exodus. That does not relate to any current or past Thorpe Park attraction, event, or anything really. So that naturally raises the question; why is that random word on there alongside all the other Thorpe-related stuff?

OK, I can hear you saying "One word on a vending machine back in July and you're concluding there's a new project coming? That's a terribly rash conclusion!", and if it were based on that alone, I would be somewhat inclined to agree.

However, something else intriguing related to this recently appeared at Fright Nights.

Within the queue for Trailers, one of the cinema posters up on the wall reads "X:\O-DUS". Now on the face of it, this appears to be paying homage to X:\ No Way Out, but it's not too direct, and I personally thought that choosing the word Exodus once again was a very intriguing choice on the part of Thorpe Park, and given the 2 uses were at least 3 months apart, I'm unsure if it's a coincidence. I'll admit it's not the first word that springs to mind for a random word to use, at least not for me anyway. Another interesting thing Josh noticed was that the poster had pine trees in it, which could potentially be referencing Old Town... where tree clearance is currently taking place. Tree clearance that Thorpe Park themselves are advertising within Platform 15.

So my point is; could they be teasing a coaster project in Old Town with the project name Exodus?

Of course, I'm not saying anything is concrete by any means; I'm literally just speculating. I could be adding 2 and 2 and getting 121 here. But with all the signs we're seeing, however minor some of them might seem, could they be pointing towards something bigger?

Here's Josh's full post if you're interested; he probably did a far better job of explaining it than me: https://forum.maniahub.com/topic/10923-the-next-big-thing/?do=findComment&comment=274619
 
AstroDan said:
How is it possible to ride Saw 50 times in a day?

Was there mo wait at all?

At least someone's a fan of it, mind.

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Chain open and telling nearly every train to just go across into batch for rerides.

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You must have a brain made of steel, I am by no means sensitive to a rough coaster but that jolt twice in a row is way too much even for me.


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