Marc

It had it for the preview weekend but I think it was all very temporary. Shame really it looked good!

The rides closing at 5 will make next to no difference to queues on park, they are so quiet the effects will be minimal. And regarding being a maze down I can't see making a difference, the Passing was such low throughout anyway replacing that with a higher throughout attraction it's self will only help, along with a scare zone which again should be a reasonable throughput. By select rides closing between 8 and 9 they don't mean the whole park.. I assume it will be the rides sat their empty.. I expect the majority of the thrill rides will close at 10.

From what I understand is between 8 and 9 select rides will close, I expect the major ones will stay open till 10 although I maybe wrong!

Rumba had new lighting installed over the winter and I understand loggers has CCTV which can see at night too. I can understand Loggers if Blair Witch goes past it... It would massively distract from the experience but no idea why Rumba is closing, would of expected Tidal to close before rumba.. unless theres somthing we dont know!

3pm - My Bloody Valentine, Cabin, Asylum and SAW Alive - all open. 5pm - Logger's Leap, Rocky Express, Carousel, Mr Monkey’s Banana Boat and Rumba Rapids all close. 6pm - Blair Witch Opens 8-9pm – select rides close depending on demand 10pm - The 4 mazes close for guests and re-open for 'Brave It Alone' half hour. (16 years + Only) 10.30pm - The 4 mazes close. 11.00pm - Start of Blair Witch Camping. Early hours - Blair Witch Camping finishes. Fright Night open hours.

I very much doubt there has only been one shutdown on Speed this year.. My friends visited a few weeks ago and Speed was down all day, so thats atleast another day which you wasnt aware of... Although these rides are operated very differently to Saw / Smiler. Speed will easily go around all day with its single car with little issue, Saw / Smiler are sending out a car every few seconds with the ride having to do a hell of a lot more work!

The amount of effort people put in moaning on here is much more than a quick text would be.. I don't think Thorpe are asking anyone to do their jobs for them, it's quite simply another method of communication between the guest and the park that somthing is wrong and then a member of staff can head over and check the board / queue and make sure they are correct.

The problem was it made to many people sick so the ride would be down for hours a day whilst they cleaned it all up! Also I'm not so sure if the height limit could be as low as it is now if it was still going backwards!

Map has been updated - I Guess the new map due for Fright Nights may not be happening this year now!

I'm sure there will be some people will get great joy in texting thorpe park with updated queue times throughout their day to be fair

Was working couple weeks ago.. Wasn't on Saturday though.

Moan queue times are wrong Moan when they actually try and do something about it. Thorpe are hardly the only park with the issue, would you rather they just ignore the problem like the others?

It seems ill also have space in my car. Am considering driving up the Friday evening to avoid an early start Saturday.

Thorpe don't over sell it more than any other park I've been to to be fair and it's managed better than some of them too. If it was a massive problem causing masses of complaints then they would need to do somthing. Anyway as has been said the park are trying things to improve it such as reserve n ride. Will be very interested to see how this works when it's on more than the swarm.

IMO if fastrack was actually a Problem and by that I dont mean somthing enthusiasts just complain about, something would have most certainly changed.

Thing is its a way of life and not just in theme parks, you can pay a few quid and get to the front of the queue at Airport Security and of course for a few quid more the front of the line to get on board the planes! If it wasnt for fastrack there will have been trips I would have wasted my time queueing instead of enjoying the rides so I do have to disagree with that, whilst they may not be demand in Europa I guess its clear in the UK theres plenty of demand here.

Apart from those who would like the option to pay more and queue for less time which there clearly is a large demand for

After visiting Port Aventura Thorpe / Merlin fastrack really isn't run that badly at all. Each ride has a vending machine to purchase fastrack outside its entrance, with some rides having their own little booths to purchase. Ride staff don't seem to fussed atall about the normal queue and fastrack are more often that not let straight on... Good for us but I wouldnt like to stand in their normal queues! Along with that, on the busiest day Bacco had a constant full fastrack queue, which cant have been any less than 40 min which I can only assume its either unlimited or its limits are set way higher!

I *think* it used to have 5 trains, it has 4 now but only runs 3. If it runs 4 it will stop on the 3rd animation each time, on 3 it can go straight though so the throughput shouldnt be affected!

^This. Retail / Sales staff have no influence atall over the times displayed on the queue boards. Its a crazy theory made up of someone putting 2 and 2 together and making 5.

Surely a system which is both easier to update and syncs up with their new app to keep guests informed of queue times is better than the old system which both didnt always update and didnt sync with the app is a improvement? I'm interested to see where this reserve n ride goes, it seemed to work well during the trail last weekend and if implemented correctly could solve alot of issues in one shot.

Heh I saw Port Aventura had fastrack vending machines outside all of their fastrack rides, I'm sure people will be delighted if these replace the people at the front in the UK

As far as I'm aware at the moment its updated by rides staff, people who will naturally have a much better knowledge of both the rides throughputs / queue lengths and are better informed to guess the queue time. Stealth has some counter counting people in and out of its queue which I can only assume is a trial, whilst that works well in theory if the rides running at 100% capacity all the time, only the smallest thing could go wrong and suddenly you have a queue advertised at 20 mins when its really 40 mins, I can assure you 99% of people will be more unhappy at the queue being longer than advertised than if its shorter than advertised. Personally I dont think its a new problem, whilst every effort is made to keep them updated and systems have improved over the years (particularly this years new boards) they are still only an approximate number and from visiting towers / CWOA not exactly a Thorpe issue. I personally dont think its possible to make the advertised queue length correct 100% of the time, there are to many factors constantly changing to make this possible. And dont forget this is the park trailing a new system to eliminate queues on its major rides completely all in the aim of improving guest experience..

I don't see what the park can do unless they employ a member of staff to stand out side each ride to constantly monitor the queues. Because queues change so quick it's impossible to have them right 100% of the time but know for a fact they are not shown to be longer to boost fastrack sales.

Hi all It's come to our attention that members from the forum are going into off limits areas of the park to photo updates of the new maze construction. Whist we understand your all excited about what the park have in store for us it's important members DO NOT enter areas off limits to the park or take cameras onto rides to get images. Doing so is against both park and H&S rules and any members found doing so may not be permitted to attend special exclusive TPM events. On that note we have some exciting news to release soon Thanks for your understanding and if you have any questions please contact me. Marc