Marc

I know lighting wasn’t really made a big deal of from the park during the sparkle project but now it’s fright nights it’s the first real chance to see all the lighting installed and it’s really pretty impressive. To start with it simply for the most part looks really good - most of the rides have color coordinated lights, what’s also nice is the new lighting seems to be able to do various effects such as around inferno the lights do some sort of flame effects shining onto the ride. On that point I believe this is one of the first times the parks actually lit up the rides too, of course Stealth and colossus have had lighting before but other than that most of the lighting was more there to light up just the paths, now themed lighting is directing up to the ride structures them selves which look great. Finally not only looks good but there’s been some decent thought into how they work too - Vortex for example the lights are all white to start when loading, then when the ride cycle starts the lights all change to their “themed” status, also noticed when leaving at around 10:30 all the lights around the park lighting up the paths had changed to a standard white light, small things but nice to see some real thought has gone into how it all works, it’s clearly been a big investment and does make a difference!

It is worth noting the time Hyperia had a 1 hour plus fastrack queue (what I’m aware of) was on the Friday where earlier that day the queue was evacuated and priority passes handed out. I checked on the app and you couldn’t buy fastrack when it reopened.

I was half joking - it is a new ride and of course new rides do suffer issues - but I’ve seen people blaming Thorpe for not loading trains full of dummies etc, I would guess empty trains should be able to make it round without many worries - especially when it’s the middle of summer as it was when this first happened. Ive no doubt solutions will be being worked on to try alleviate this.

I find the 3rd train debate quite interesting, I remember back in the day Stealth would indeed have 3 trains serviceable, but it would still have technical issues causing it spend time on one train - I guess it shows that sometimes rides are on one train for a more complex reason than the other one is simply broke. As Benin says now a days they use the 3rd train to have a continuous cycle of “winter” refurbishment on the other, whilst it may result in the odd day where a train has a genuine fault it won’t be able to run full capacity it’s probably very very rare. In my opinion Thorpe / Merlin shouldn’t have to buy more trains than the ride can run to ensure 2 trains are always available, trains shouldn’t frequently be having to be craned off the ride and rebuilt. I have a feeling in an alternate world if Mack hadn’t built Hyperia and it faced similar issues the manufacturer would be taking abit more of the slack here.. As for the fastrack debate I see both sides to it, I’ll admit I bought fastrack for it on Sunday, if fastrack wasn’t available the person I was with wouldn’t have rode Hyperia. The first time we rode it the fastrack queue was empty and the 2nd maybe 20 or so people in front of us, so it don’t seem like it’s being sold excessively. It seemed a bigger issue when the queue had to be evacuated on the Friday and everyone had priority passes for it, again it’s a tough one and I can see why the park do give out priority passes in this instance. It’s worth noting after it shutdown and priority passes were issued you could not buy any fastrack for it.

I’m half surprised it’s not already back on 2 - I suspect the problem with it being fright nights is they don’t really have time to run the rebuilt train for test cycles, when it’s running till 10:30 or later, they probably are not really willing to risk running the train again that late when it’s even cooler so hopefully with a few non fright night days they can get it back up to 2. As for fastrack it did seem to be an issue on the Friday but I think 90% of the people in the fastrack queue were actually priority passes from its evac, today even though fastrack was on sale it never really seemed to have a queue - RAP was probably a hour + though at around 8 being full.

As are the park - the last car was lifted off the track at around 4pm this afternoon - unfortunately not giving enough time to open for the day guests but I’ve no doubt if it had been a 6 or later close it would have opened! The stalled train isn’t in the maintenance shed as of around 10pm tonight, I would guess they would hopefully be able to get it over there tomorrow and work on building it up tomorrow, I guess as you say the issue is when they can test it before the weekend! Im not sure why it would be closed, assuming there’s no issues with it testing tomorrow I’m certain it will be open!

I’d be very surprised if they did this - I can’t think of a time when a ride has opened for press and then they’ve chosen to close it again for normal guests. As frustrating as it is, I’m certain the park are the ones most frustrated about Hyperia being down.

It’s not open yet - sounds like a couple of the cars have been removed, I suspect if they can get them removed they will aim to open it today with the other train. I do find it strange Mack even installed brackets for trim brakes before this element, I can only assumed worried it would be taking it too fast when it seems to be the complete opposite. Im not really sure I think its stalling is weather related as such, it did the same in what June or July? I know it’s colder now but it’s no where near the weather conditions Mack say it can operate in. What is strange is how the ride can be running all day, shutdown and empty trains look like they are close to stalling.

I can see it being back up and running very quickly - last time they had to build a concrete base for the crane to sit on, with that already done plus the experience how to get it off the track I wouldn’t be surprised to see it open tomorrow or Friday. Seems like a crane is already on site too. I do wonder where they go from here though, it was hardly cold today with minimal winds, plus the train had 3 rows of water dummies. I expect in future it will have to test with more rows of these which will make it take longer to get ready each morning. Hopefully Mack have a solution ready to implement over winter.

Looks like they maybe installing some water fountains in the queue maybe? (Not my photo!)

The FAQ’s mention working at 236 ft and heavy machinery maybe affecting Saw / Samurai so I would assume it’s something to do with the lift hill which they want to look at / replace. Be interesting to see if anything noticeable changes!

I don’t think it’s fair to accuse someone of lying, there is a human behind them tweets rather than “Thorpe park”, maybe the tweets should have pointed to the information in the app that states the queues will close early but don’t think it’s fair to be calling them liars. They seem to close the queue so that the ride isn’t operating too long after park close, for what ever reason that is, so I suspect that makes it very hard to actually give a time it will close, when I joined around 8:25 there was lots of people congregating around the entrance / area to try jump In for that last ride so I do see why it’s difficult in that respect to set a time well in advance.

I think if the queue is going to close early it’s not something they will ever announce a time for, for what ever reason they seem to not want it to run that long after closing time, I guess it’s just something we will have to live with this season, I’ve no doubt it will receive lots of work over winter and hopefully they will avoid things like this, as afterall Hyperia is the exception, generally the park never closes rides earlier unless they really have to.

I do think communicating it is a difficult one, they do make it clear at the park entrance, at the ride entrance and on the app / website that Hyperia queue lines will close earlier than advertised park close, it seems when they do choose to close it early they close it so the ride will clear just after park close, the last rides went around about 9:20 this evening. I get why people get upset over it but it is the exception, Thorpe as a rule never really do this so I do trust they have their reasons for not wanting it to have a huge queue at the end of the day - I suspect come next year this won’t be an issue anymore.

To be fair it was reduced to one train on press night also, then after running till 10:30 open day it didn’t open for 2 weeks! I guess maybe the maintenance to the trains is taking longer whilst it’s new, it’s also possible they are using the time to work on the trains to try improve it’s reliability / risk of stalling etc.