Leaderboard

Thanks, very informative 👌

This might be controversial, but I have to say that I really don’t see the point of heavily promoting the “story” for Hyperia. If there was ever a ride where an in-depth backstory was pretty much redundant, I think this is it. The ride has next to no theming, and unlike many Merlin rides, it pretty much doesn’t appear to focus on theming or storytelling at all. If I were Thorpe, I’d be ditching any major focus on the theme or story in marketing and just going all in on the coaster itself. Just hammer home that silhouette of the layout and its giant elements and hammer home the records, with only the very vague “find your fearless” imagery present as an indication of the theme/style. To be fair, I think they’ve done that pretty well up to this point, but the marketing seems to have taken a bit of a weird turn in the last couple of days. Granted, I’m no marketing expert by any means, but the approach of the last couple of days is certainly not how I’d approach marketing Hyperia. The coaster itself is the key strength of this project, so why not play to your strengths? I fear that this sudden focus on the theme and “story” of Hyperia will only invite criticism regarding the very minimalistic nature of the actual ride theming. I’ve never objected to Hyperia being minimally themed. I think it’s par for the course for a coaster of this size; rides of this size speak for themselves, they’re very hard to theme heavily, and even parks known for heavy theming (e.g. Europa Park, PortAventura) have themed their hyper coasters very minimally. However, I think that if Thorpe want Hyperia to be a minimally themed ride that focuses solely on the coaster itself, I think they need to stick to that in the marketing. I think this “backstory” marketing sets people up for a heavily themed ride that doesn’t exist, and I fear that it will draw attention to the ride’s minimal theming and away from the massive coaster itself, the main strength of the project.