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Thorpe Park: General Discussion

Thorpe Park was pretty good on Sunday, helped by nice weather and the park not being too busy at all. Colossus clearly isn't opening any time soon, and Tidal Wave is still not open (it was testing first thing) but other than that all rides were open and downtime was at a minimum (Stealth opened late, but nothing else problematic).

However, I have to say that the food being served up at the Wilderness Kitchen is pretty dire. You can build you own burger, or your own loaded fries, yet about half of the topping options were out. The advertised waffle fries were actually just normal fries, as not nice ones at that. The burgers, well, the less said about them the better. Dry, bland and clearly just heated in a microwave. Not somewhere I ever wish to eat again.
 
Thorpe was absolutely rammed today, and didn’t help that operations were pretty dire across the board. Ended up queuing just under 2 hours for Inferno at an advertised 40 minutes and our friends who were there ended up queuing pretty much 3 hours for Swarm (which was on 1 train) at an advertised 75. I really don't know how the Merlin parks are consistently SO out with their estimated wait times.

Rumba Rapids also closed three times for “high winds” whilst we were in the queue, which of course is absolutely understandable if it’s needed for safety, but confusingly every single major rollercoaster kept operating the whole time!

We still had a good day mainly doing some of the smaller rides, flats, TWD etc. but I think it’s really clear the park is struggling being one major coaster down, plus obviously Tidal Wave & Ghost Train. Hopefully they can get all 3 open soon to disperse the crowds a bit more.
 
It does seem like the Merlin parks are struggling more than usual this year... I wonder why? Alton and Chessington in particular seem to be struggling somewhat, and by the sounds of that review, it sounds as though Thorpe has hardly gone problem-free either.
 
Matt N said:
It does seem like the Merlin parks are struggling more than usual this year... I wonder why? Alton and Chessington in particular seem to be struggling somewhat, and by the sounds of that review, it sounds as though Thorpe has hardly gone problem-free either.
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Lack of staff / budget I would guess. All these shiny new rides / refurbs need playing for somehow
 
Galaxy said:
Rumba Rapids also closed three times for “high winds”
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Im Sorry What GIF by Saturday Night Live
 
Surely that depends on where you measure the wind speed though? Rumba is reasonably well sheltered compared with a coaster - they might have an anemometer on the top of Stealth but that wouldn't be a sensible place to take a reading for Rumba.

Re: queue times - I noticed on Sunday that the Inferno queue now seems to update automatically, it changed twice in quick succession as we were walking towards it (15-10-5 minutes). It seems they've recently installed a new system to track queue times automatically on some rides but it seems it's not the smartest. I'd be interested to know how full the multi-hour queues were though. I wouldn't expect to wait 2hrs for Inferno unless they'd pretty much filled the first extension
 
Honestly not sure what was going on over at Rumba, as Stealth carried on running the entire time (which contradicts what it says on the website posted above). Understandably everyone seemed baffled when they announced it was closed due to high winds, whilst watching Stealth go round fully loaded...
John said:
Surely that depends on where you measure the wind speed though? Rumba is reasonably well sheltered compared with a coaster - they might have an anemometer on the top of Stealth but that wouldn't be a sensible place to take a reading for Rumba.

Re: queue times - I noticed on Sunday that the Inferno queue now seems to update automatically, it changed twice in quick succession as we were walking towards it (15-10-5 minutes). It seems they've recently installed a new system to track queue times automatically on some rides but it seems it's not the smartest. I'd be interested to know how full the multi-hour queues were though. I wouldn't expect to wait 2hrs for Inferno unless they'd pretty much filled the first extension
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The automatic updates would make sense I guess, a *lot* of people headed for Inferno when it dropped down to 40 minutes because all other coasters were 90+, so I'm guessing the system took a while to catch up. It started a little way back from the second cattle-pen bit (the one that starts around in line with the vertical loop). The main issue though was that the queue barely moved for a good while when we neared the front as the host was pretty much only letting RAP/Fastrack guests through.
 
Didn’t Saw have some automatic queue update a few years back? As there was a period where the queue time could be random times like 7 minutes, 42 minutes, etc. but no idea if that’s still a thing.

I did notice when I was at Thorpe the other week that the inferno queue time board updated about 4 times within a few minutes of being being near by.
 
When the wind speed is high, every board on park flashes a wind speed warning regardless if the ride is open or closed
 
Jb85 said:
Lack of staff / budget I would guess. All these shiny new rides / refurbs need playing for somehow
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Speaking of this, it does all lead me to think that for all the money Merlin and monopoly they have, they are living in a glass house that could shatter at anytime.

I'd argue this goes back to when Tussauds acquired Thorpe Park which was both a win and a loss for them in hindsight as while they put to rest any competition, it has clearly shown that Tussauds/Merlin over the years cannot handle running three UK parks (LLW doesn't count as it is it's own thing) and that them running three parks has really stretched them over the years. Yes, you can point that Thorpe did excellently during the early years of Tussauds yet this all came at a price for the likes of Chessie and Towers during the final years of Tussauds in which thr former was done really done dirty being cast aside that an old toy in favour of the new one.

Suppose now as mentioned in which while Merlin and now throwing out some serious money it seems to come at the cost of staff, F&B, park upkeep which is sadly present at all the UK parks and other resort amenities in which I have to wonder if we'd still have these problems if Merlin had casted off Chessie as they almost did in the buyout and simply focused on Thorpe and Towers? Not sure how Chessie would have coped but without have to spend money on Chessie Merlin could have put more investment into Thorpe and Towers and maybe this could have led to better staff levels with more money to go about, certainly avoiding the problems the parks are having now.

I might be off topic a little bit but in truth it quite clearly shows that Merlin are over stretched at all three parks and that perhaps dumping one of them (unlikely at this point) might help free up more cash though I have to wonder that some higher ups at Merlin look back with hindsight and wonder if keeping Chessington on was a mistake, Thorpe would have looked very different today I have no doubt about that.
 
I don't subscribe to Thorpe and Chessie dragging eachother down because Merlin can't afford them.

Drop AT and LLW from the equation, ones in a different catchment and the other is a different beast in a way. The direction CWOA and TP have been dragged in is the issue. The cash dried up to both in public Merlin times as they aren't the most profitable due to poor leadership.

CWOA getting Mandrill is a step in the right direction. A younger family park still needs to entertain older members. Thorpe on the other hand need to get a grip, bin Angry Birds and return some family rides to a reunited Amity Cove. Yes it can aim to have bigger rides, but any families coming will probably have smaller members who need something to do. The potential is there, just not realised.
 
Despite a total washout for half of the day it wasn't a bad day for us at the park.

Oddly stealth was on 2 trains until the afternoon when they ran every other one which did result in a fair enough que despite the park being quiet ( mainly due to weather ).

Could hear ghost train testing from the cafe !
 
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