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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Matt.GC said:
Since they're about to build a hyper coaster in place of younger age attractions, I'd say no.

Interesting Thorpe are getting a playground. With Thorpe's clientel I'm imagining it now to be full of teenage louts throwing the swing over the top of the bar, smoking, drinking Lambrini and drawing pictures of penis's and writing "for sex call....." with felt tip pen on the side of the slide.
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I guess they could be choosing to solidify the family market in smaller years instead of major years. I think they went for Exodus because thrills will likely remain their core audience regardless, as it’s a way they can differentiate themselves from Lego and Chessington, but they might be trying to offer a wider range for younger audiences who aren’t necessarily their core market.
 
Matt N said:
I guess they could be choosing to solidify the family market in smaller years instead of major years. I think they went for Exodus because thrills will likely remain their core audience regardless, as it’s a way they can differentiate themselves from Lego and Chessington, but they might be trying to offer a wider range for younger audiences who aren’t necessarily their core market.
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A playground won't do that though. The reason the kiddie attractions were always deserted is that there wasn't much reason to go to Thorpe for that age group. Thorpe needs to fix their rapids and have a decent enough selection of core 0.9 - 1.2mtr height restriction attractions to at least make it viable to bring a family with you.

I guess a playground is cheap. Low maintenance and low labour requirements so is fairly low risk
 
I never went to the farm but there was definitely a playground on the exact spot of the new one about 10 years ago
 
Is Rocky Express still standing or being sold? The next time one of you visits Thorp,could you please ask about the fate of Rocky Expres? Now that Wet Wet Wet has gone gone gone Rocky could go in this location location locatio.
 
Prof Burp said:
A definite answer would shut me up with regards to the Rocky Express topic.
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Or maybe a mod can? It's like conversing with a spam bot.

Prof Burp said:
Is Rocky Express still standing or being sold? The next time one of you visits Thorp,could you please ask about the fate of Rocky Expres? Now that Wet Wet Wet has gone gone gone Rocky could go in this location location locatio.
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The staff won't know. If a staff member does know they won't tell you, as it has nothing to do with you.

It's not open, it's not expected to reopen. That's all your going to know however many thousand times you ask.
 
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Prof Burp said:
Is Rocky Express still standing or being sold? The next time one of you visits Thorp,could you please ask about the fate of Rocky Expres? Now that Wet Wet Wet has gone gone gone Rocky could go in this location location locatio.
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Prof Burp said:
A definite answer would shut me up with regards to the Rocky Express topic.
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A definite post from me, a team member on this. If anyone has new information on what's happening with Rocky Express, then feel free to post. Spamming this topic constantly with the same request for information which no one clearly has is not helpful, productive and it's just spamming a topic which is intended to be about Thorpe Park in general.

As others have said, Rocky Express is closed, it's part of the park's past as far as we're concerned. Further posts asking about what has happened to it will simply be removed, as it's just getting silly now.
 
Matt.GC said:
A playground won't do that though. The reason the kiddie attractions were always deserted is that there wasn't much reason to go to Thorpe for that age group. Thorpe needs to fix their rapids and have a decent enough selection of core 0.9 - 1.2mtr height restriction attractions to at least make it viable to bring a family with you.

I guess a playground is cheap. Low maintenance and low labour requirements so is fairly low risk
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I agree. Not many people are bringing their kids to Thorpe Park for the sake of High Striker, maybe Depth Charge, Storm Surge, Dodgems, Teacups, Banana Ride, Rumba Rapids, Flying Fish and the 4D cinema. Even on a pretty busy day that's a few hours at most before you run out of things the kids can do.

Personally I think they should just embrace being a thrill park. Chessington and Legoland aren't far away for the younger audience.
 
ThemeParkAddict said:
I agree. Not many people are bringing their kids to Thorpe Park for the sake of High Striker, maybe Depth Charge, Storm Surge, Dodgems, Teacups, Banana Ride, Rumba Rapids, Flying Fish and the 4D cinema. Even on a pretty busy day that's a few hours at most before you run out of things the kids can do.

Personally I think they should just embrace being a thrill park. Chessington and Legoland aren't far away for the younger audience.
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You are absolutely right in that not many people are specifically bringing their kids to Thorpe Park for the kids rides and that Legoland and Chessington are better choices. However those rides at Thorpe do have a valuable role though, they are great for families where parents have brought older kids that want to go off and do the thrill rides and the parents can go and take the younger ones on the more sedate family rides. It’s just about giving people options really on how families can spend the day and having a little bit of something for everyone. The ironic thing though of course is that back in the 90’s Chessington was seen as the park for thrillseekers and Thorpe was very much the family orientated park but of course that totally shifted with the opening of Colossus, Inferno, and Stealth.
 
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I personally think rides such as Rocky Expres, Timber Tug Boat and Lumber Jump should have been kept. I understand that Thorpe is a thrill Park but it also needs Family rides. For instance Chessington is a Family Park,but is installing an inverting Rollercoaster as the centre piece of Project Amazon. Theme Parks should have an array of rides for everyone. Thorpe seriously needs to take a leaf out of Chessington World Of Adventures and Alton Tower’s books.
 
The problem they got is now with most kids been 10+ been at the 1.4m tall mark there is hardly any attractions worth visiting for to u hit that height. My son is just over .9 now and he be lucky if his able to go on 5 rides in the park even my daughter 1.35 and all the big coasters she can’t go on.
 
Rob F said:
You can have thrill rides that cater with families, and they would really work at thorpe for the emerging thrill seekers
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That's true, but unless you are going to vastly increase your capital spending, you'd have to build them instead of a significant thrill ride which it appears Merlin feel wouldn't be a win.

Disney's approach has often been to take what from a statistics perspective is a not a particularly interesting ride and then spend $100m or more making it look cool and really fill out the experience with theming or fluff. Something like Expedition Everest or Tron are good examples of that.

Merlin have form for going to the extreme on this topic and insisting on height restrictions of 1.4m for rides that require only 1.2m, or less. DC Rivals has a height restriction of 1.3m but if history repeats, I imagine Exodus will be 1.4m, if only for consistency.
 
At Thorpe today. Been decent as not too busy at all.

The VIBES bar is quite nice but closes at 4pm and reopens at 5. The lunch menu on offer until then is awful though. Can’t even get a burger, have to wait until dinner menu at 5pm if you are a hotel guest. Pretty much everywhere else that sells food is closed too.

Thorpe needs to do some massive TLC so much rot and disrepair around the park it felt like I was doing an Urbex around SF New Orleans when I first entered.😱

In terms of rides. Everything is running full capacity except Colossus which is on one train with a 50 minute queue and running at a blistering hourly throughput of 336 persons, a staggering 12 trains per hour. 🤔
Inferno ops we’re going full pelt earlier but have since returned to standard operations 😂 but the queue is only 5 mins so no big issue.
 
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