Marc

Agree with the posts that there’s nothing to worry about as such. As for intamin supporting it I wouldn’t be surprised if the help offered if more limited now but I’d be surprised if they got no help at all. Merlin also have 3 of these coasters so I expect the internal knowledge of them is very strong. It seems they are actively working on it so hopefully will see it back up and running soon.

Back in the day it did used to have 3 trains available, with the idea of there was an issue with a train it would never have to go down to 1 train. To be honest I’m not sure it ever made a huge difference, there would be different issues which sometimes caused it to run one train regardless of the trains available. Now they cycle through the trains with one always being rebuilt, usually it appears mid / late season and they start on the next one, seems to work quite well for them! Im not sure on numbers but I think there are now 2 fully refurbished trains with the 3rd one being done now. Fingers crossed they can get its issues sorted soon!

Id argue it’s virtually impossible to never send empty trains, they were doing their best not to when it was colder a couple of weekends back but you still will have a point where you need to - for example last trains of the day. I really hope Mack really can come up with a proper solution for this, I know it has new wheels but it seems it’s going to need some more drastic changes to ensure it can reliably run in the future.

I wonder if adding weight to the trains would then make them run too fast with the heavier trains + fully loaded with people. Fingers crossed this is less of an issue as it warms up a bit but I’d imagine Merlin / Mack would like a permanent solution to this.

I don’t think they are hiding anything to be fair, Hyperia shows on the app for me, it disappeared on the private buy out night last week for some reason but it was open then so not sure it was to try hide something on purpose!

Considering there are brackets for trims which would end up with the train going even slower through that element it does seem that something was massively miscalculated

The lift hill already has “boost mode” which speeds up as it gets to the top to try give it some extra momentum when it’s running empty / in engineering mode. As mentioned above they could re profile that part of the track, although I suspect that could then mess up the stall? Or I don’t know how practical it may actually be but some sort of lsm, either to boost the train slightly if running slow or to recover a stalled train to save the faff of getting a crane in etc. Not sure if adding weight to the train is possible I know there’s a b&m out there with a weighted zero car which had stalling issues, but not sure how that would then react with a train full of people also!

Its cable hasn’t snapped, it was actually testing yesterday morning when it seemed to have an issue, there was work going on in the winch room yesterday with the big doors open. There were engineers around it today at some points with people working in the console, fingers crossed it can open for next weekend!

I’m very glad to have got on it this year - even 19 years on the speed and height of this thing was still incredible and very grateful to have got on one of the 2 most iconic hydraulic launch coasters. I do think the way they’ve handled this is a complete joke, as mentioned already this is a iconic ride known all across the world, to just close with no warning is pretty shocking, had it been opening next year for a “final year send off” I’d have renewed my pass, made the trip over. In some ways I can almost understand the other rides closing which were less well known to close, but to close a ride of this stature with a little press release a few days after it closed just seems wrong to me.

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!