Re: Mini Meet: THORPE PARK - Friday 31st August 2012
Thorpe Park: 31st August 2012
Having visited Thorpe Park on three occasions earlier in the 2012 season, and having enjoyed each and everyone - I was keen to visit once more this season. Thus, myself and a few others drove down from the Midlands.
The park quickly returned to the Thorpe Park that used to be mocked and ridiculed back in 2006/7/8/9, and the day really became more of a chore than anything else, at least in terms of getting on rides.
Perhaps it is because Thorpe Park target themselves to young people, that they think they can get away with things that would not be possible at some of the other Merlin parks. Here are examples:
- Colossus opened on 1 train. There was instantly a queue, and the 2nd train was brought out later. Why not just start on 2? The ride commanded a 70-90 minute queue all day.
- Storm Surge queue was advertised ‘99’ minutes, with fastrack bulging out of the entrance. This ride is an absolute, abhorrent joke and a mess to boot. It squeaked and leaked its way through yet another day of operation:
- The queue for Swarm was 90-100 minutes all day. Fastrack was massively oversold. You can possibly just make out the ‘99’ for Swarm and Storm Surge on here:
- Flat rides should be the supporting attractions in a theme park. Samurai, however managed a wait of over 1 hour for most of the day, with Vortex and Zodiac both 30-50 minutes.
- Rush went down to 1 swing from mid afternoon. The queue line was ¾ full - we didn’t even wish to find out how long the queue was, especially as there were a fair few people in the fastrack line. Our guess was 90 minutes.
- Slammer was closed all day due to technical problems. This wasn’t particularly frustrating and I understand that the ride is a technical nightmare - however, regardless - it was closed.
- Saw: The Ride commanded a queue time of 90 minutes + all day long. With a massive number of fastrack guests, the poor souls in the main queue were left with a long, long wait.
- The park extended the closing time of some of the rollercoasters by 30 minutes. However, this was not communicated well at all. Also, given that most major rides still had queues of 45 to 90 minutes at 6pm (Swarm said 100 minutes at its entrance), 6:30pm was still completely inadequate.
- Fastrack was massively oversold. Look at this farcical queue line to buy it near Nemesis Inferno:
YouTube clip of queue
- Throughputs, whilst satisfactory on some rides, was wholly inadequate on others. Samurai was taking forever, and was probably the worst example.
It was, by far and away, my worst visit to Thorpe Park since the Annual Pass day in 2011. The sheer volume of fastrack sales, and completely inadequate opening hours for such crowds, left a bitter taste in the mouth after a 3 hour drive from the midlands. A busy Thorpe Park is not necessarily the problem - after all, it is/was the summer holidays, and queues are to be expected. But when every single major rollercoaster and major thrill ride has a queue of over 50 minutes, with the majority upwards of 80 minutes - you begin wondering where to turn, where to escape to. With Saw Alive, Time Voyagers and the railway all sitting motionless, extra capacity on rides would have slightly helped at least. There was simply nowhere to go. No dark rides with minimal queues, no garden areas, no zoo area, no aquarium and no show. Nothing but massive queues in every corner.
The park need to reassess how they sell fastrack because, on anything other than quiet days, it seems to be that a fastrack ticket is now essential to enjoy the rides at the park within the times permitted. The park has by far the worst queues in the country, and arguably Europe. It was awful and a shame after some good trips earlier in the year. Fastrack was being sold at many ride entrances, thus making the problem worse.
BAH!
