JoshC.

I'm not really defending it, I agree it's a very mehly done Photoshop, but I just don't think it matters that much. It's not meant to be something that's remembered, and it'll be forgotten about by 99% of people by tomorrow (if they even remember it today).

*Once again, a long time between entries into this trip - sorry to anyone who is still reading this! Reports will probably be shorter from now on so I can finish this thing before Christmas...* After a nice sleep in Dusseldorf, we said out goodbyes to Germany and ventured into The Netherlands. Out first stop was Toverland, which, despite being a relatively small park, was one I was looking forward to a lot. The 10-6 opening time would surely give plenty of time to give everything a couple of rides, before heading off to try and get a sneaky ride in on Baron at Efteling for its opening day (yes, this report is all the way back from July 1st). We arrived to a very empty-looking car park at opening, and got in. We were told that the ropes course was closed for the day and that the park's signature coaster, Troy, would only be open 12-5. With half of the park basically being indoors, we decided to start off in there and do the big rides that there were. We started the day off with Boomerang, a Vekoma junior coaster. A neat little coaster which feels surprisingly high when at the top. After a quick ride on the Teacups - where my bag flew out of mine and Adam's cup despite minimal spinning! - we did the nearby waterslides, which were good fun. We then ventured outside and did the random hedge maze, before heading to the second half of the indoor part of the park. We had planned to get the bobsleigh ride done, but it has suffered a technical fault, so we instead did the adjacent funhouse and the nearby logflume, Backstroke. It was a nice flume, with it being partially indoors and outdoors, and has a nice bit of theming. It doesn't get you very wet, but has a nice backwards drop and a weird turntable mid lift to turn you forwards... Blitz Bahn, the redone bobsleigh ride, has opened by the time we were done with this. It had a nicely themed queue, which was good as this had the longest queue of the day at a staggering 15 minutes. The ride itself was fun, can't really add much more to it than that really! I was rather happy to see some maths on a 'chalkboard' in the queue... With the noteworthy things inside done, we ventured outside and headed over to the Magic Valley to ride the park's newest coaster, Dwervelwind, a Mack spinning coaster. Rather unsurprisingly, it was practically a walk on, so we made our way through the nicely themed queue and into the station building. I really loved the station; nicely styled and there's a neat little dispatch sequence with some lights when a train leaves. The ride itself was pretty fun with a nice layout that even could be enjoyed on a non-spinning coaster. We got some decent spinning on our first ride too. Temperatures we soaring, so we went and did Djengu River, the park's rapids. Again, not a particularly wet ride, but they were a fun set of rapids with some good spinning in the boats. Certainly a much more welcome rapids ride than River Quest to me! The queue line was themed beautifully as well, which was a bonus. We went back on ourselves to Booster Bike, a motorbike coaster, which was now open following a small closure. I've wanted to try one of these out for a while, for the obvious novelty factor of them, so was a bit excited. I was surprised at how comfortable the seating arrangement was, which was a bonus. The ride's layout was fun, but I just can't help but feel the ride would be much better if it just had a normal seating arrangement with lapbars. The novelty is alright, but I think I'd have enjoyed the ride so much more with just lap bars. 12 o'clock was approaching, so we headed over to the Troy Area to get ready for Troy's opening. Before that, we did Scorpios, a pirate ship with some cool water effects. I wear I read somewhere a couple of years back that this was the tallest or the steepest pirate ship in Europe, so the whole group was really excited for this, but was understandably underwhelmed when we were greeted by a quaint little ride. Don't trust everything you read on the internet guys... It was now time for pretty much the main reason why we visited the park - Troy. The coaster really does dominate the park and the immediate surrounding area, and it really does look impressive. Again, the ride was basically a walk on, which was fab. Back row awaited us, and off we went. And wow. The ride is truly relentless, with a great first drop, awesome speedy moments, nice pops of airtime, and the out-of-control feeling woodies are known for it. The ride really is fab, and shot straight up to my favourite ride of the trip so far. *ORP to come here soon..* With no queue and everyone loving Troy, we went straight back on for another go, and all loved it again (I think I got front row this time and it was still fab). We then decided to retreat indoors and have some lunch; I had some form of spaghetti and it was nice and reasonably priced. It was just coming up to 1 o'clock now, and we'd done everything major already. We stayed inside for a bit and did a couple of the smaller rides in there that we missed out on, before doing some rerides. According to my ride count I wrote up in the car to Efteling, we'd done all the coasters multiple more times, and the water rides again (including the surprisingly wet indoor water slide which was so much fun!). I remember riding Dwervelwind one time and smacking the back of my head against the seat quite hard mid-way through the ride, and the rest of the ride being quite uncomfortable. The rest of the group did another ride on it straight away whilst I sat out. Troy was the most ridden ride on the day, and despite the temperatures soaring (34-35 degrees; possibly the hottest I've experienced in my life..), I was happy to keep on riding it during the day. We also watched the Fountain show, and in general had some fun by the fountains, which was nice. Pictures don't really do the show justice... I continued doing all the rides till about half 4, before the constant high temperature had finally gotten to me and I had to stay inside. It was a shame to miss out on a couple more rides on Troy, but despite staying well hydrated during the day, the heat had really just gotten to me. We left the park not long after 5, so that we could set off to Efteling to try and get the ride on Baron... Final Toverland thoughts: Toverland is a fantastic little park with some really good attractions. Their coasters are all good fun, and having pretty much half the park indoors is great too. One or two more attractions would be nice to help give the park just that little bit more ride-wise, but still is a great little park as it is! Not a park I'm dying to visit again any time soon, but that's not a bad thing I suppose. --- Now, I don't want to steal the thunder from Toverland, but since I'm doing these blogs in days, I can't not put a bit about Baron here. With Efteling a little over an hour away from Toverland, we made our way to the park, hoping that we'd be able to get to the park before the 8pm close and sneak a quick ride in on Baron, on it's opening day. We made good time on the road, and checked into our room in the Efteling Bosrijk Village (which was lovely!). By the time that was all done, we got into the park just after 7 and headed straight to Baron. I won't go into it too much, since my ride review is here, but the hour-or-so queue for front row in the heat made it quite a long and gruelling experience, but oh so worth it! We then went to the nearby town to try and find dinner, and almost had no luck before finding a kebab shop which did nice and cheap-ish food. A short walk back to our room and I quite happily collapsed into bed at some point around 1am I think (goodness knows where all the time had gone...). And that's where I'll leave it for now. The next report will combine our 2 days at Efteling, and hopefully shouldn't be too long before I post it!

Am I the only who doesn't really care about the mehness of the photoshop? Presumably, it's not a signature image for the attraction and just a little teaser to tide people over before they revealed the more important bit advertising for the maze, which coincidentally happens to be this neat little video...

Quote from the park's website, confirming this will be on / by the Beach...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-34086555 Warwick Castle might not be Legoland (or Chessington), but they still want glamping.

They are still using the dark secret idea on the Minds Wanted website, and they'll hopefully keep with it. Original advertising boards are more there to just tease fans more than anything else. Look at Smiler's original advert boards - they just had DNA spirals on them, which doesn't really got in with its current theme. I don't think it's anything to worry about to be honest.

Decided to not be lazy and check English Heritage website on my laptop. Here's the map... Sorry for the poor quality, but it shows the Dome is definitely not listed, but some of buildings at the Farm are. Silly Wikipedia / mobile English Heritage site not saying that..

A quick look on the English Heritage website (which is very mobile-unfriendly) suggests that no buildings at Thorpe are listed. The only farmhouse that you mention toofy is for a 'Thorpe Park' in Essex apparently. A much friendly mobile source, Wikipedia, suggests also that there's no Grade II listed buildings at Thorpe: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Grade_II_listed_buildings_in_Surrey

Conversation about the Dome and what people would like to see done with it in the future always seems to crop up now and again in loads of threads, so thought I'd set up all for itself.. It's quite obvious that the Dome itself is quite dated these days (not surprising given it was built almost 40 years ago!), and the décor inside feels quite old and worn itself. So what do you think the park should do with the Dome now? Should they knock down the upper half and just replace it with a welcoming plaza area? Completely rework the indoors and bring it up to speed with the modern Thorpe Park? Replace it with a new building entirely? What should be in the Dome too - shops and restaurants? A Sealife centre? Discuss away! --- For me personally, I'd love to see it given a 21st century update on the inside. Things like Fin's and the stage are good pieces by themselves, and tie in nicely with the Shark Hotel of course, but they feel a bit out of place with the ageing surroundings. It'd be great if they could just do up the whole inside, continue with the Shark / island theme they've got going in there and just make everything work. Keep using it for the MoS nights, keep it with just having shops and restaurants, but just give it a more welcoming and modern feel! (PS: This thread is set up in a purely speculative sense; I know of no plans for anything to happen to the Dome any time soon! )

So as anyone who has me on social media might be aware, I did a Coaster Climb on Inferno this Monday. Weather was rather rainy, but thought I'd share a few more photos from it... Mr Monkey looking all small and cute. TREES AT THORPE PARK? UNHEARD OF. Overview-y. A longing gaze into the distance, showing the terrible rain clouds </3 The view you'll get on Onferni - opening in 2018. Nemesis Inferno Coaster Climb is JoshC. approved. Whilst Inferno doesn't quite offer the same marvellous views as Swarm, or give as good an experience as climbing up Colossus, it gives some nice views of the park as a whole. The freedom of not having a harness on you is pretty nice too. Bit of a shame that the heavens opened and the wind blew strong more or less as soon as we started to climb; would've been nice to spend a bit more time up there without getting tormented by the elements. But hey, I was by a tropical volcano, harsh weather has to be expected! Would definitely recommend it, or indeed any Coaster Climb experience, to anyone who has tried one out yet!

I doubt we're in for more till next week at the earliest. I'm guessing that they will drag out a reveal for the second new experience next week at some point, then post weekly videos as a countdown to Fright Nights. Also, it's been mentioned on Thorpe's Facebook that Fastrack will be priced like last year: £5 per maze and £25 for all five. Good to see no discount on the bundle again, and it does suggest that whatever the second experience is, it's not a maze.

The clearance between the track and theming on that last photo is absolutely ridiculous! That surely rules out rumours of Skyrush style trains then? (Unless I've just gotten that rumour from thin air / that was said to be false ages ago)

Let's evacuate the animals to a safe place, put 6 people in a boat, explode the park and start over again then, shall we? Any volunteers?

I first visited Thorpe when I was 6 weeks old, and have been making regular visits all my life. I'd visited a few other parks when I was younger, namely Chessington, Legoland and DLRP, but it was visiting Thorpe that got me interested in rides, before discovering online forums and eventually finding out about other parks. So yeah, Thorpe.

Two years ago was different though - they were really pushing to Lionsgate sponsorship for its first year and didn't have a major summer event going on at the time (Sun Scream was going on, but it wasn't anywhere near as big as Island Beats should be). Last year it started to pick up in September time. It's just me being purely speculative and it's probably coincidence, but it just seems a bit...odd. On a different note, Scruffy Dog tweeted this earlier. It feels very circus-y to me.. EDIT: Another video has been released. Loving these little teaser videos to be honest (but then again, I'm easily pleased with this sort of stuff ): https://video-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hvideo-xpf1/v/t42.1790-2/11914476_10153485417460867_609170704_n.mp4?efg=eyJybHIiOjMwMCwicmxhIjo1MTJ9&rl=300&vabr=86&oh=0428c919b4ab680bb21ce9aebf6eddbf&oe=55DE3749 Also worth pointing out that these videos were recording on-park (I think), so any sets / theming seen in the video are likely indications as to what we could expect from the maze!

I find it interesting that Thorpe have gone into full swing with the FN advertising on social media so soon. What with changing their profile pictures to their 'dark' Thorpe logo, and having banners that state the FN dates too. Even though there's only a few days left of Island Beats, I was expecting them to push that as much as possible. Maybe it hasn't been as successful as they liked, and they've decided to just cut their losses and crack on with focusing on the next big event?

To be fair, plenty of kids will want to ride it, and they won't care about the queue length. And it's much easier for parents to put up with a 45 minute queue than a screaming child who's been told they can't go on the ride they want to go on.

One less person in the queue then. Thorpe originally had a the year contract with the Lionsgate mazes; whether they've extended that is unknown. But all the time they have had Lions gate mazes they've also had original maze concepts to go with them.

Rattlesnake isn't a reliability issue, it's still closed because of the Smiler incident. Hard to criticise them for that really.

Let's compare this to Swarm at this stage in 2011 then: (Image from TTP) Or Black Mamba, two months(!) before it opened: (Photo from TPR) Or even Zufari at this stage in 2012: (Image from theme-parks.org) Or Chessington's 2016 development: .... --- It seems silly to compare completely different projects during their construction, especially on details such as theming, which are left till later on in the process in many places. Comparisons would be much fairer when both areas are open at the very least, though even then, it does feel a bit out of place to do so.

An 8 second video was released on Thorpe's FB too, just using old stock footage. Would suggest that it'll be a maze too! Bet it will be in the Marquee.

I've never said Fright Nights was an immersive Halloween event? I've just said it was popular and one of the biggest in the UK. Personally I never got the fuss about Scarefest with its atmosphere in 2012 - other than the mazes, there was the hearse, a few pumpkins and some coloured lights. Not exactly a brilliant atmosphere. Maybe it was a bad year, but it's not exactly much different to what Thorpe did last year. I don't see how you can call Fright Nights half-arsed given how much they offer. Whilst there's not much outside the mazes, the mazes themselves are still of some decent standard theming-wise at the very least. Then again, I don't see how you can call this season's Howl'o'ween half-arsed given we haven't seen what they'll do outside of the Halloween attractions... Thorpe hit capacity on a few days during Fright Nights. For a park to hit capacity, that means it must be very popular in its own right surely? And in those cases, any park would be very busy. The long queues at Fright Nights at least won't be helped by the mazes' low throughputs, which are always going to be the case by the very nature of the attractions.

You see, I think there's still plenty of space large scale rides. There's the unused island behind Swarm at the moment which, along with the old Treasure Island site, is huge. Plenty of space for a coaster and decent non-coaster in my opinion. The Shark Hotel won't be around forever either, and that site was previously marked for a coaster as well. Some rides will likely be reaching the end of their life sooner rather than later, and some are already on borrowed time. So I reckon there's still plenty of space for new future developments - large and small. I'd personally be surprised if another major dark ride comes before a major coaster though - turning into a family park means they still need a major, decent family coaster in my opinion. So I wouldn't worry too much about it being a long time before a new major coaster comes to be honest - even if a few years sounds like a long time, it will fly by! Agree about the rebrand - it kind of feels like the park in 2008/2009, when the thrill seeker brand was being pushed onto the park, but there was still a family feel in the posters and the like. Then in 2010 they finally did the overhaul to get everything together. But now we've got the opposite - there's still a few big heads and SHOUTY WRITING around (especially in Canada Creek), but the park are trying to focus on this nice 'Island Like No Other' thing. Do a nice brand overhaul and push the Island Like No Other thing more - a simple enough thing which would do wonders in my opinion.

I'd be very surprised if they bought Carnival of Screams to Thorpe; just doesn't really make any sense. Any old theming from CoS has likely either been re-used elsewhere, scrapped or sitting in a warehouse as part of history collection (most likely the entrance, if anything).