JoshC.

Wonderful news. I know they've been talking about it behind the scenes for a while, so good to see it's come to fruition. I know some people will say the park should be open that later regardless over summer, but it has always been the case that the demand isn't there. Trialling it / doing it on select days helps test the waters. Hopefully this can be a step to later summer closing, and maybe even the park testing 10pm Fright Nights closes again.

I can give insight here. A few years ago (well, more than a few years now...8 years ago...I'm old), I had a job at Thorpe which was focusing primarily on 'looking after queue times', if you will. I had to update queue times that would appear on the boards, along with some other things. At the time when I joined, it was simply a glance and estimate. It was a two-way operation: the ride operator was required to contact the 'queue person' (ie: me) via phone once an hour (at a minimum), saying what they thought the queue time was. The queue person would also walk around the park, visually looking at all queues and updating the queue times. How is it physically done? All updates were done via a secure webpage. The queue person walked around with an iPad and could update directly all queue times from said webpage. Other people (park managers, etc) had access and ability to as well (will get onto this later). How would ride operators know what the queue time is? This was done by looking at the length of the queue, which for many rides, they could only see through via the ride's security cameras. The security cameras ride operators have access to focus primarily on ride areas (making sure no one is entering them), meaning coverage was mixed. Ride operators would sometimes not see much of the queue. Note: Queue lines are still covered by CCTV cameras, but ride operators won't have access to them all necessarily. The ride operator job is to run the ride safely. And that's a key point, the ride operator is there to run the ride safely, look after the ride hosts, etc. Updating queue times can go quite low on the list of priorities. Also, ride operators generally didn't have much knowledge of queue times. It would all be based on own experiences, either from when they might have visited the park and queued themselves, other operators, what guests say, etc. Generally they would get good ballpark figures, but when you hit busy periods, that experiential data is less helpful. How would the Queue Person know what the queue time is? Same idea. They would walk around, see the queue time, and update it. The advantage they had is they could see the whole queue, and have knowledge of what else is going on around the park. Eg: Colossus operator might not be aware that Saw closed down recently, meaning more people might flock there if they're nearby and want to ride a coaster. Queue Person would know this, and could keep a closer eye as a result. So it was all guesswork? Going onto my experience of working in this position as the queue man. I noted straight away there was very minimal written down information about how the physical length of a queue translates to a queue time. Of course, everyone was aware that this is a very muddled science: it depends on operations, number of trains, number of Fastrack / RAP users, delays, etc etc. Many of those things ride operators will not be aware of explicitly. Some of those things are out of a singular person's control. However, there is a way of turning it into a science. "Queueing theory" is a very rich area of maths, for example, which gives us many lessons we can learn. There's a lot of social science studies into how people will fill up a given space with strangers. There is access to lots of data about the rides; their uptime, their throughput/utilisation, so on and so on. You can combine all of those factors together to give a better estimate for queue times, one which relies on data, rather than just guesswork. Taking the Guessing out of the Guesswork I'll chuck in a bit of the numbers and theory here. Feel free to skip over. When thrown into a barriered queue, you'll find people spread out in similar ways. Except in extreme scenarios (very wide or very narrow queue lines), about 11 people will fill up 3m of space. This is to do with how groups of people will huddle together, groups will leave a space, etc. That data comes from a published research paper back in 2014/15 I believe and focused on UK audiences. Would be interesting to see if that's changed post-Covid, or is different in other countries. Anyways. If we know that, we can work out how many people a physical queue line holds. For example, if the Colossus queue line was 300m long, it would hold roughly 1100 people. And you can split that up; if the queue line from the airgates to the tunnel of Colossus' queue was 90m long, the number of people between the queue line and boarding is 330. (NB: Lengths made up). Now, we know what Colossus' theoretical throughput is. Internally, there is also a target throughput. But even better, parks track their throughputs for each ride. So you can see what they're actually achieving. If, over the course of last week, Colossus got a throughput of 550pph, and it had a full, 300m long queue line, you could see that it should be a 2 hour queue. Obviously that ignores Fastrack and RAP users. But again, you know the number of RAP and Fastrack users each day. You can take those into account, in some way. You don't know when they're going to use, but you can take it into account. For example, if there were 700 Colossus Fastrack tickets sold for an 8 hour park day, and 500 RAP users expected, you can account for that. If Colossus was getting a throughput of 550ph, over 8 hours it would get 4400 riders. But 1200/4400 of those riders came from Fastrack or RAP. So that means only 73% of riders are coming through the main queue, or rather the throughput of the main queue is 73% of 550, which is 400pph. Now if that 300m long queue of Colossus is filled with 1100 people, and you know 400pph are going through that queue, you can advertise the queue at 2h45min, rather than 4 hours. (Again, all numbers are fake here) On top of that, you can also take into account the chance of a shutdown. If Colossus has an uptime of 95%, then that means its closed 5% of the time. Of course, this is unlikely to spread evenly across the day, and usually occurs in a chunk, but if you add on that extra, you create a buffer which allows for a 'chance of shutdown', or just anything going wrong (slower operations, etc). I'll take this chance here to say: ride staff do not artificially inflate queue times to sell Fastrack tickets. I've no doubt it happens whereby a queue is advertised much longer than it is, and people have ended up buying Fastrack. But the queue time is not inflated to drive Fastrack sales. In saying that, I think it's better to advertise a queue time which might be 5-10 minutes longer since it will: 1) Create a buffer in case of issues and 2) Create happy guests - "Oh, the queue was advertised as 50 minutes, but we actually queued 40...result!" So, the way that I planned to calculate (note the word calculate, not estimate/guess) queue times would be: (N*(1+D))/(T*(1-(F/R))), where: N is number of people in queue D is percentage downtime T is throughput F is number of Fastrack and RAP users expected R is total ridership expected for the day Those 4 last variables would be based off numbers from how the ride has run over a period of several days / weeks prior, giving it a good outlook at how it should operate in practice. It wouldn't be perfect, but it does the job. And of course, number of people in a queue is again estimated, but can be done reasonably well. Of course, this isn't something that can be done in your head or anything, but can all be programmed to be done automatically, so long as you say the number of people in the queue roughly. When I trialled this system, it worked well, with overall accuracy of queue times improved, and less complaints about inaccurate queue times, which also saw a reduction in complaints about queue times altogether for a short period of time. (Those two might not be linked, but I'm gonna claim it's because of me). I'm a Celebrity was one which hugely benefitted, in part down to the huge buy in from the Entertainments Team running it. The issue here is, simply put, getting buy in from others. I required a bit more help setting up the automation and implementing it on a broader scale. Some people are opposed to change, some people are opposed to change where they don't understand every detail, some are just happy with the way things are. Some of Matt's analysis here is exactly the sort of thing which would be excellent for the operations teams at Merlin theme parks to see, so they can have more detailed data to help them determine how they're performing and the reflection on advertised queue times. But from my past experience within the parks, you would find yourself encountering people who: -Don't understand the analysis behind this, so immediately disregard it, -Would love the bottom line, but wouldn't use the data to help improve it, -Disregard everything and say everything is fine, -Agree with everything, but don't have the time/resources to action upon anything that would help. Obviously, with shifts in Merlin, this may be different now. But it's such a difficult thing to achieve. There are (naturally) some excellent data-driven minds who work in Merlin, who would love this stuff too, but they are used in other roles, usually outside of day-to-day operation / outside of attractions entirely. So Merlin know the importance of these things, it just hasn't trickled down to operational success. My time within the queue person job ended back in 2017, and this isn't the place to discuss that. But ultimately, the system devolved into operators phoning a central figure in an office to update queue times, with managers also chipping it. Likely with zero consistency. I don't know how things are this season admittedly, and I've been impressed with the accuracy being better than it has in the past. So maybe they've got something a bit better now. FAQ Do all parks do this guesswork? Within Merlin, I believe so yes. I think Towers have staff at rides update queue times, and Chessington was similar. Why did Thorpe need a central figure to update queue times? Couldn't it just be done by each ride through the website? The issue with the website and multiple users would be the constant need to refresh. If, say, there were 2 people on the website, and Person A updates Colossus' queue time from 10 minutes to 50 minutes, the site according to Person B would still have Colossus' queue time listed as 10 minutes, even though it was displaying on boards as 50. Then, if Person B updated Swarm's queue time from 30min to 20min, without refreshing the website, they would also update Colossus' queue time back to 10 minutes. So yeah, clunky system. I don't know if they've updated this. *This park* advertises queue times super accurately, how do they do it? I don't know. I would love to know how parks like Efteling, Europa, etc do it. Why can't parks just count the number of people going into a queue and going on a ride, using barriers, infrared, whatever? These work nicely in theory, but are open to abuse (people spinning barriers) and prone to error. The Alton Towers app had some Bluetooth tracking tech a while back, where it could see where guests were spending more of their time, etc. I don't know if they still do that, but I believe attractions.io (the company that does the Merlin apps and more) have loads of cool backend features. With Saw though, they had a very cool (rather complicated) piece of software they trialled. The name escapes me, but I'm sure I'll find it sooner or later. Basically though, it would track people in all queue lines, to see how long people were spending in the queues, and use it to give accurate queue times. It would update regularly, and give to the minute readings (eg, 47 minutes). This software was just installed to work with existing CCTV cameras. And, it worked well. Very well. Queue times were accurate. The system wasn't prone to error or breaking. It just worked, so you could leave it. In saying that, there were operational issues: -If you ever needed to over-ride it, you had to reset all the cameras to get the system back -It would never display a queue time lower than 10 minutes -It didn't work when the queue became external (ie out of the main queue) -People were weirded out by the exact numbers The middle two are the bigger issues here, but again, not huge in the grand scheme of things. There were bigger, more damning issues: -It was expensive. I don't know how much, but given every other queue time system is free pretty much, spending money on one is an issue. Spending lots of money is a bigger issue. -It required static CCTV cameras on the entire queue line. Whilst the entirety of Thorpe Park is covered by CCTV, many of these have the ability to change angle, which can help in a security situation. If you needed static CCTV cameras for the queue lines, it meant having to buy, set up, operate and maintain more new ones. And for some queue lines, this would require an awful lot (Colossus would be nightmare, with its sprawling queue line, going through tunnels, foliage, etc). Ultimately, whilst it gave accurate queue times, the initial outlay cost, and ongoing maintenance costs, weren't justifiable. Do accurate queue time really matter? Just to round off on this very long, tangential post (sorry Matt!). How important are accurate queue times? At the low level, yes, it's handy to know if a queue is 5 minutes or 10-15 minutes. At an extreme level, it's good to know if a queue is 1 hour or 2 hours. But beyond that? Does it matter if a queue is 30 minutes or 35 minutes? 110 minutes or 130 minutes? I think sometimes there's an overpush on queue time accuracy: if a queue is advertised at 110mins and I queue 130mins, I've still queued about 2 hours for a ride, with added annoyance that I've queued an extra 20 minutes than I was told. It might be better if there's ranges that are advertised (0-10, 10-20, etc, 90-120, 120-150, etc). It buckles you up for the length of the queue, tempers expectations, but gives leeway for a park too. You can have the most accurate queue times in the world, but if they're long and / or slow, that's all people will care or remember about.

Yeah, I think this is the main thing. The park said they were going to do an announcement about the group after Hyperia's opening day, but then the issues started with Hyperia and it took a backseat. The group was primarily focused on sharing updates that the wider audience wouldn't be interested in with those who would be. It works during the winter. It worked during Hyperia's construction. But now, there's nothing to share really. The group also was a way to get feedback from Passholders, which was also a mixed bag. I imagine the issue is that now the park post operational updates (ie when Victory Plaza opened) or asking for speculation (eg about Fright Nights), and these invariably lead to complaints. I imagine it gets tiresome to hear the same complaints a lot, especially when they didn't plan for it to be like that...even if those complaints are fair. People also became a bit rude at times. When the people running the group were literally running it at any and all hours, it probably was a bit much The group has served its purpose for now. They're not deleting it, it just won't be active any more. It's a shame as there's a loss of direct contact to the marketing team, who are actually in a position to action certain issues that guest services can't, but it's time to stop it. Would be good to see it return each winter though

My concern with the use of the Black Mirror spot is that it's not overly large. One of the key positives about Survival Games and Stitches is that they do have good lengths to them, which help justify the upcharge. All mazes which have gone in the BML spot have utilised the space well, but have never been particularly long. As such, I hope we get a more "special" / "gimmick" maze in that location.

As Stealth has 3 trains, the park rotate which one of them goes under annual maintenance. This means at any given time, one train is always in the maintenance area, deconstructed, having its parts checked, cleaned, inspected, serviced, replaced and whatever else is required. This takes the pressure off having to do it all over winter (when such things would normally happen). The maintenance area has room for all three trains to be stored. It will be up to the engineers on the day which train(s) they want to being in there after park close.

I'm less hopeful. Perhaps I've been naive with Thorpe's logic. Or possibly just stupid. But I've realised what their thinking is with maze tickets. The park are offering a Fearsome Four bundle, which costs £34 for the early slot (3-7pm), or £38 for the late slot (5-9pm). One shot maze tickets remain at £8 for the early slot (choosing a 1 hour time slot of either 3-4pm, 4-5pm or 5-6pm) or £10 for the later slot (choosing a 1 hour time slot of either 6-7pm, 7-8pm or 8-9pm). So that means the Fearsome Four early slot bundle is effectively more expensive than buying four early one shot maze tickets. I clarified this with Thorpe (via their Facebook Passholder group), and they said it is correct because "Based on giving a four hour window, it would be 3 Afternoon slots and 1 evening, hence the price". So, that means if you (say) book a One Shot for 3-4pm, the park aren't saying you can choose any time between 3-4pm to visit that maze, they are saying that you should be dedicating the whole 3-4pm slot for that one maze (in both queueing for and experiencing it). That is how they are organising it, and that is how their numbers work. But this is not clear at all, in my opinion. At the very least, I have only just realised this from Thorpe directly saying this, despite the fact it has always been like this since they introduced the ticketing procedure: "Since introducing ticketing it has always been hourly timeslots for one shots, and then an hour per maze in a package, so this has not changed." So herein lies in the issue. People think they can rock up at any time in their time slot for a maze. So if, say, more than half the people for the 3-4pm slot rock up after half 3 (which is a natural reaction as people will think "Everyone will go at 3pm"), then it spills into the 4-5pm slot. Same thing happens for the 4-5pm slot, and that further spills into the 5-6pm slot. Rinse and repeat, and then you've got a horrible overflow of people in the later slots. Bluntly put, too, there have been too many instants I've seen - and experienced - where the queue line for mazes exceeds 1 hour since the paid-for tickets were introduced. Reasons for that will be varied and complicated, and in some cases, unavoidable. But it's been a consistent issue, and one I don't think they will have put any real effort into solving (although please prove me wrong Thorpe). I don't want to come across as harsh or dismissive. But simply put, it does not seem like Thorpe know or understand how they are advertising or selling the timed ticket system of their mazes, and how the public view and use them. Operationally, the park have shown themselves to be incapable of running the mazes in a way which matches the timed ticket system, and I don't think this will change this year. I fully expect that whatever the new maze is will be to a good quality. Stitches will return and be a hit again. Survival Games will remain well-received thanks to its split up technique (but be less impactful due to focuses being elsewhere). And Trailers will again be fine, but show both its age, and how it was the first maze to be built under this new, budget-heavy, Fright Nights direction. Again, perhaps I've been naive / stupid and this has been glaringly obvious to everyone else. But if this is how Thorpe have operated, and continue to operate, the paid-for / timed-ticket mazes, it will have the same issues it has every year.

The issue with the train crash sequence (and why it was removed for the 2018 season) was that it just didn't work. Completely temperamental, had a mind of its own, and they just couldn't get it right. As cool as it was, it was also another effect that made it a "one and done" type ride. And, given its temperamental nature, when it didn't work, anyone who was expecting was more disappointed. I maintain my original standpoint with this version of Ghost Train: the concept is the best they could have done with what they had to work with. There's issues (transition to crypt, the shop exit, etc), but given the hand they were dealt, it's not bad.

Temple is no great loss right now as it has like 10 balls throughout the whole attraction anyway.

The idea is that the crypt is next to a train station. Perhaps could be communicated clearer, but I guess it's not too farfetched an idea. This is something I felt a bit on my most recent ride. Maybe not so much the crypt feeling like tube tunnels. But the transition from train station to crypt is very clunky, and that certainly feels like just a random tunnel (maybe that's what you were more getting at earlier) My memory is hazy on this, but I think that Angelis Mortis is meant to appear on the TV screens at the end of ride. Although I might be confusing that with the fake shop scene; I cannot remember. The delay patterns are effectively just listing off the station stops or just generally being creepy / causing chaos, depending on what point of the story the delay occurs.

Attraction Source had a presentation and Q&A from Mack Rides at their recent event; it has been uploaded to YouTube: I haven't watched it all, but there is a look at the first layout that Mack designed (spoilers: it's very different)

Possibly, but the way they've butchered capacity on it, maybe not. Tbf they've done this a few times with rides, giving an exact date for reopening. Rarely has it been right. Tomb Blaster had about 3 reopening dates advertised before it opened this season, and even then they opened it on a date not advertised. Regardless of the cause, it's a massive hit against the park to have their main water ride (and in practicality, pretty much their only water ride) closed for summer. Highlights the need for another one.

Forums have unfortunately died away a bit. The rise of social media is a big part of that. And then with Discords, Slacks, Twitches and whatever else (I feel like an old man talking about that as I have no clue on these things properly), it just adds. The idea of signing up for one specific website to discuss one specific topic is just foreign now. Thorpe-specific as well, it's no coincidence that here at TPM the forums dropped off during a time when investment in the park was at rock bottom. We went from coasters every 3 years, and new attractions yearly, to bouncy castles and mazes being the 'big new things'. And yeah, theme park enthusiasm has changed dramatically. 10 years ago, it focused a lot on "trying" to find out whatever you could, but deep down knowing you would just get the odd glimpse here and there. You might hear from / know someone who legitimately knows something, and you got a kick out of knowing it. But it was all a lot more 'wait and see'. Now, influencer culture more broadly means people have quite literally been able to turn their hobbies into a career of sorts. It's their job to find out the information, be that camping out for days on end, working alongside the parks or what have you. It feels a lot more stifled. This point really resonated with me @Inferno We're currently experiencing a double-edged sword of information. Getting 'behind the curtain' is so much easier now, be that through press nights, VIP BTSs, park open-ness, etc. But sometimes a bit of ignorance can be bliss too, or that more scattergun approach feels more natural. Seeing behind the curtain is very controlled, parks will naturally sweep the dirt under the rug before they do that (literally, in some cases). There was something much more exciting about just catching glimpses here and there in a more uncontrolled way. At the same time, just reading your Face it Alone review from Studio 13, it made me go "Damn, I wish we had a POV of it. I would love to remember how it looked during that middle third which is such a blur". Even if we know that a press night POV would be over-egged, it would still be good to see (okay, there wasn't a 'press night' in the way we're used to describing that for FN14, but you know what I mean). We're really in a golden age of being able to document and archive stuff, which I think is positive. Going back to a more TPM-focus now, I've literally spent more than half my life as a member on this forum. I've made life-long friendships here. At one point, I house-shared with a couple of people I met through TPM. Whilst that's stuff that could happen on Twitter / Discord / Whatever, it just felt much more natural here. I always feel like these days I could contribute more to the forums, but as Benin says, growing up means forums slowly subside in the priority list. With TPM, we keep the socials active. The forums and the website have suffered. The main website in particular; backend-wise, it's ancient, and those problems have crept into the look of the website (you can't actually read any news article at the moment, lol whoops). We're looking at fixing that over summer though... We intend to keep the forums running. We're probably long removed from the days of running meets. But we never ran paid-for meets/events (even when we got ERTs, BTSs, etc), and don't intend to go down that way. TPM is just a couple of people who like Thorpe and like sharing that enthusiasm with others, through both sharing updates and discussing things. Don't want to make it a career or anything. We've never gone down the Youtube/vlogging route, simply because we don't want to talk in front of a camera. We're not changing who we are, even if that means we're becoming a bit of relic to enthusiasm of yesteryear. Anyway, that was very tangential to this and rambling and hijacking of the topic at hand. The whole theme park enthusiasm has changed, some of it for the better, some for the worse. I guess the good thing is you can still make of it what you want. It's just a shame it's harder to keep it 'as it was', if you will, when the rest of it has changed around you.

Thanks for posting this! Was a great read (and also great to re-read everyone else's experiences!) I wonder what the logic behind the switch in style was between 2013 and 2014 (and then to 2015 and 2016)? It very much seems like 2013 they were given free reign, and 2014 they stuck to a much more rigid set up. But they then went to a more fluid style in 2015. I liked 2013 and 2014 for very different reasons. As you say, 2014 version wasn't that scary, but the experience itself felt a lot more psychological, which I guess makes sense since it was more rigid / scripted. 2013 was a lot more chaotic and left you wondering what would happen next, but also had the psychological aspect. Very much agree that it was the right call to have a pre-selected maze each evening as opposed to them all, given it was a niche product. I would genuinely love for Thorpe to do an alone experience again. So much potential. I will talk about this until the day I die, but Walibi Holland are the perfect model for how to do an alone experience within a normal theme park setting. Yes, it'll be an expensive upcharge, yes it will have a low throughput. But it won't appeal to everyone and that's fine. Create an experience which can be done again and again in a custom space and it will work. I know that towards the end of Face it Alone, there were several bumps in the proverbial road with its running. AMC were, to my understanding, against the idea of having extreme Face it Alone experiences in their mazes. The manager responsible for its organisation left. The actors were expressing concerns about some guest behaviours (I heard stories of some guests basically asking/expecting/demanding certain things be done to them in Face it Alone). Just seemed like a storm perfect for it stop. But again, I'd love to see it brought back. The park clearly have the budget, resources and creative talent to take the gamble on it. It's just whether they actually want to. I should try and share my 2015 and 2016 experiences at some point...

Water feature has been off over the weekend and I believe the last couple of days too. The fact that it's everything, including on the concrete, makes it look rather displeasing. Although I imagine with a damp cloth and some cleaning spray it would look okay... If you look at the middle lake area on ride, you see just how shallow it is; I've seen some people joke it's more akin to a swamp. The furthermost point of the land infill, which is/was meant to be removed, is still present too. A bit flooded, but present. If you're feeling brave enough, you could probably walk across it. I'm hoping they just had a timing issue and couldn't fully sort out the land and water for opening and are either letting nature take its course to sort it, or will do so over close season. But for now, it's another displeasing on the eye feature, and another "Well at least there's no look out on that area" moment.

I guess the flipside of the Crows argument is if you have the entrance the other end, you've got chaos with Stitches and a scare zone entrance bottled together.