JoshC.
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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..
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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
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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! )
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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!
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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.
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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)
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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?
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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.
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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!
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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?
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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.
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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.
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Rattlesnake isn't a reliability issue, it's still closed because of the Smiler incident. Hard to criticise them for that really.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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To be fair, the park was rather quiet yesterday and the rain was rather miserable at some points. In those sorts of situations, it wouldn't be unheard of for any park to cancel any form of show last minute. Given that it was only a set of small acts, I very much doubt many guests would have come specifically to see them. It's a shame such a thing was called off, but it's not exactly the worse thing in the world.
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Jesus Christ, how or why would anyone want to compare a dark ride to an entire new area? They are completely different projects with completely different aims. Not taking anything away from this as I'm sure it'll be fab, but to try and compare this to WC16 is, wrote frankly, ludicrous.
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Bare in mind that it says there's two new experiences, not necessarily attractions. I personally reckon we'll get a new scare zone / maze with a circus theme, and a newly styled overnight experience (again with a circus theme).
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All of the film-themed mazes are returning this season; it's part of the contract they have with Lionsgate.
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From Thorpe's Twitter. Interesting stuff!
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I don't get your vendetta against Fright Nights James. Thorpe experienced some of their highest attendances in the past few years during last season's event. They will be keeping it at least as large as last season's event. With 5 scare attractions, roaming actors and out of hours extras, it is one of the biggest Halloween events in the country. A few days where they got higher attendances than expected isn't going to drive many people away, nor will it stop the park expanding the event.
