JoshC.

Rode Tomb Blaster today. It remains bloody dreadful. -Every train had at least one car not in use. One train had two cars not in use. -The 'story' is beyond dull, with the voiceover being one of the worst-sounding, boring and grating things I've ever heard on a theme park -The guns are rubbish -Pacing of the ride feels so off. Partially because of the story they shoehorned in, but also just because the ride system feels like it's on its last legs -Audio is either too quiet or too loud. -Most of the screens in the on ride photo viewpoint were broken (not necessarily turned off, but physically broken). Honestly, of everything that the park are doing, adding and changing, sorting out Tomb Blaster should really have been number 1 priority.

The way SFA is running I don't think half the rides will make it till then even... Stealth's repeated downtime is very different. It had its issue at the start of the season, which was a big unexpected hiccup from winter maintenance. Since then, it's had two, pre-planned, periods of downtime. One of them was for a launch cable replacement, which happens yearly. The other I do not know, but since it was short, pre-planned and stayed on schedule, I don't think is a major concern. Rita has suffered longer, not-planned closures, with no known opening date advertised during those closures. That indicates that those issues are actual problems with the ride which needed fixing / parts replacing. I don't think the two are linked, and it's more coincidence that there's two rides of the same time that have experienced downtime in the same year.

I must be one of the few people who actually really likes Heide Park. Desert Race has get in the bin and be harvested for Stealth parts though.

Poor Desert Race and Heide Park, both so forgotten about they don't even get considered for a Merlin plague...

It's even weirder given they're currently a whole area down (which you would expect has knock on effects to queue times, so cutting hours would lead to people getting less rides), and that Chessington are getting the most investment out of the Merlin parks currently. You'd expect them to be the crown jewel all round right now. Unless the fact that a third of the park is basically a construction site has reduced visitor numbers drastically, I don't get it.

It's certainly a fair concern. Given that Towers have already outsourced their Ents department, it will be interesting to see how Scarefest goes down this year and what changes are noticeable. Though Scarefest and Fright Nights are obviously very different events, it will at least give us some indication as to what the situation could be. It will be interesting how much creative control the park will retain for the event. They might still be able to design attractions, and just give operational outlines. They might be able to outline briefs and then leave things with the third party. Regardless, I don't just see it being handed over with Thorpe have next-to-no input and not being able to share that knowledge or passion, nor do I expect we'll return to lower quality outdoor mazes (not to say that outdoor mazes should be completely disregarded). I have heard murmurings at the very least that the park are seeing next year's Fright Nights as a 'big' one, due to it being the 25th edition. It's possible that's why there's no new maze this year (and so, less money spent on the event), so that they can go all out a bit more next year. Obviously take it with a pitch of salt, but I think for now, we're okay.

Thorpe comes out on top for me. Speaking across the board, availability is decent and throughputs are good. Towers do well with throughputs, but their availability feels a lot worse. Legoland comes next for me. They cope well with what they have. Chessington isn't awful, but they have a lot of low throughput rides and they struggle to operate them well.

The Easter Egg culture for Merlin has become a lot. Realistically, sticking in an Easter Egg takes very little effort. Taking Toxicator as an example, it wouldn't have taken any real energy and time away from the creative team to throw in references to 1997, seeing that "Ripsaw" spelt backwards was "Waspir", and that could be used to spell something that sounded vaguely acidic in "Waspirium", a poster with "Can you cut it?", etc. It's a fun little nod. Designers putting their name on an attraction is also a trend which has been around a long time too. But there's now an innate expectation for Easter Eggs which has come from influencers and enthusiasts seeking them out and really pushing them. It erred too far. My favourite example of how far it went was how Survival Games at Thorpe Park features a prop of a severed penis (behind a fence, in a box, not in an obvious place, I believe), with a tag labelled "JS" on it, which stood for Jack Silkstone, an 'Easter Egg' to how Jack was involved in the marketing for it. Again, not something that takes up time, money or energy to create really, but extremely convoluted, and by bringing it to people's attention and encouraging them to look out for it, actively takes away from the experience. And that's the issue now. People fixate more on Easter Eggs and finding these nods and feeling clever than actually taking in the bigger picture. Going back to Toxicator, whilst all the references make sense and that, does Toxicator really fit and work with Forbidden Valley? Well, it's certainly changed the area more and continued to turn of it into X Sector 2.0.

Not a baker, but I did notice similar when I (rather unusually) had some at Towers a couple of months ago. I also noticed they weren't the same size, with us being given many more than 5 actual doughnuts to compensate for the fact many were small. I'd hazard a guess that they've changed the recipe to include less flour, using a different kind of flour or substituting flour with something else (and still using some flour). Flour would be where the gluten comes from that binds the dough together, and in turn gives the doughnut its structural integrity to not fall apart. The falling apart - and irregular sizing - would suggest less gluten at the very least.

Ultimately the park are keeping the line up the same and adding a free scare zone (and a lack of free stuff was something people complained about last year). So that's good. I can't lie, I'm a bit concerned about how they'll effectively staff all that, but we'll see. I wonder whether we'll see much in the way of changes to the existing mazes. At the very least, the posters that appeared outside Trailers don't match up with the description of the new scare zone.

I think it's worth pointing out that Survival Games ended up costing more than Trailers. And Creek Freak Massacre was, at the time, the park's single highest investment for a maze and lasted 3 seasons. So high cost doesn't mean it has to be around for a long time, although I understand the point and broadly don't disagree. I've seen people on social media talking about how Trailers in particular is "old". It's a very interesting discussion point. It's had 4 seasons now, and last year was the first year we saw substantial changes to it (though arguably, those changes weren't really substantial, just a redress), and is the oldest in the line up. But in the past, the park had mazes last for several seasons... Asylum - 9 seasons Saw Alive - 9 seasons Se7en - 6 seasons Hellgate - 6 seasons And there's even more recent examples of mazes lasting a few years... Platform 15 - 6 seasons Blair Witch - 6 seasons (with a brief gap) The Curse - 5 seasons Containment - 5 seasons Obviously the glaring difference right now is the fact the mazes are upcharge. But then, plenty of places keep mazes for a long time. Towers is a fine example. Lots of international parks (some of which have better Halloween events than Thorpe) do. And scream parks, some of which have mazes set up in situ all year round, have kept mazes for a long time (Tulleys has 5 mazes which are at least a decade old, have just retired one which was 15 years old, and have a couple which have been rethemed but are otherwise the same). My point is, keeping attractions the same for a long time isn't uncommon at other places either. Thorpe certainly gets held to a high expectation with Fright Nights. And recently that's at least partially their own doing thanks to the high maze costs, and their own marketing hype. But at the same time, I don't think a maze potentially having a run of 5 seasons is that long or necessarily a bad thing. It will be interesting to see what happens this year. The park have introduced a new maze every year since 2010 (if you include Saw Alive). Okay, there's a couple of loose definitions of new in that list but still. It's the expectation that there will be a new maze every year. In the same way in the past there was an expectation of a new ride every year. But with changing budgets and a complete behind the scenes overhaul, plus this being the last year that Thorpe run Ents themselves, who knows what this means. But if they don't introduce a new maze, I'll be very interested to see how they market the event and where they place their focuses.

Parm Pap is referencing the current repaint of Trailers' entrance, which was looking rather tired... https://x.com/ThorpeParkMania/status/1947946070564368440?t=sTe6cAWh7v_3yI8gFwd9Mg&s=19

Actors are in there in the afternoons most days this year in my experience. They always place a sign outside the entrance when there are actors, and there almost always won't be actors in there if that sign isn't out. If you want to experience it without actors, I'd try to ride it before noon.

Certainly a shame that Russ left. We'll never know exactly what he was responsible for, but he obviously served as a face for the park for a long period of time via Jack's videos, having a reasonable open Instagram page and being quite visible on park. He joined as a director at the park at a time when there were several directors coming and going at the park, before the current long-running stability we've seen. Regardless of what's happened at the high Merlin level, and the issues this is causing Thorpe and the other parks, I do think Thorpe's current success was built on stability at their leadership level. I'd expect that the role description is sort of all-encapsulating. In other words, it's not saying "Rethemes and lands are coming", but rather "If a retheme or a land was to come to light, it would be in the remit of the Creative Manager". I imagine that part of the reason the role was created is because the Entertainments Department is set to be outsourced, like Towers and Legoland. So the person's previous role, which was related to Ents, would change significantly, so it makes sense for that role to develop and make use of the creative skills they have. The big thing here is that there's now someone looking after the "creative maintenance" of the park. Hopefully that means ride effects. So hopefully there's some positive changes there (looking at Swarm and Inferno), and also moving forward, there's someone at Thorpe who can liaise with MMM to say "This is not a worthwhile effect we can realistically maintain, do not include this" (looking at the Hyperia splashdown)

It is a weird one and I don't think we really know the answer to the question of "Why now?" Obviously having an SBNO ride doesn't look nice. But it had been SBNO for ages, and stood right by a year-round attraction for a while. So it's not like now was the hot time to do it. One point which people might not be aware of is that the park made use of the ride for staff training (work at height in particular) after it closed, which was in many ways more convenient than using another ride. They didn't need planning permission to remove it (even if they did submit an application). I reckon there is some legs to the school of thought of a ride going there at some point. I wonder how much it actually cost to remove? I wonder if that extra cost proved to be a hurdle to adding a ride there in the past, so they ultimately decided to remove it now so when they choose again to add a new ride, it's slightly less expensive. A new ride could still go there next year in theory, but I'd be surprised.

It's the (unfortunate) reality of theme parks. The overwhelming majority of theme parks charge for parking these. And Thorpe Park is probably on the lower-side of average for theme parks in Europe. And cheap compared to America. Not that it should be a race to a bottom, but again, that's the reality. It's a weird one. If you were to go to any car park and park for 6+ hours, you're looking at paying over a tenner anyway. So not exactly different to a theme park. There's an argument for sure about the differences between the need for a theme park car park versus, say, a shopping centre car park, and how that should impact cost, but that's a different point for now. Ultimately the point you're making is a universal one across theme parks. Most parks have high costs for food, parking, etc, on top of an entry fee and have high-cost extras too. It's the way they are. If you're looking at technicalities of whether they can charge for things legally, it's kind of splitting hairs in my opinion

I'm no expert, but... I don't believe they can fine you if you left the car park without paying. The park have not opted to be a part of any regulator for car parks. It is not necessary for them to do this. This means they don't have to follow any rules about displaying T&Cs every so often, don't require clearly marked bays for cars, etc. That comes with the downsides of not being able to fine, not being able to punish drivers who park improperly, etc. The park state on their website, app and signage that there is a charge to park on site. This is clear enough that they can say they have made a reasonable and justifiable attempt to inform the customer if anyone was to kick up a fuss. So if you realllllly wanted, you could try and argue they're not able to force you to pay, meaning you could either: -Forcably drive through and break a barrier (and then be liable for destruction of property) -Exit the car park the way you came in. Again, there's technically nothing they can do even though you're driving the wrong way. But the second you leave the park (ie go underneath the coaster track), you're back under normal laws and made a conscious choice to drive on the wrong side of the road as a result. That's a big whoopsie. Most importantly, the park have been doing this for over a decade. Plenty of other visitor attractions have done the same. If there was a notable legal issue with this, it would have been brought up and resolved by now. Your whole point kinda feels like being awkward for the sake of it to be honest.

It opened late yesterday and the closed early (I think between 2 and 3pm?). Tad odd...hopefully nothing serious. Rode fabulously yesterday mind.

Agreed. I think there were some issues early on but Mack resolved them. I do have to say though that I think Voltron is an aggressive ride, to the point I found some of it uncomfortable. I wonder if that's what people refer to when they call it 'rough'

I wonder if their idea has been to increase price, reduce volume of guests but still bring in similar amounts of money? But that then increases profit by reducing staffing costs / keeping ingredient costs stable. I will always maintain that Aramark has improved Thorpe's recent food offerings. It's a downgrade compared to like 15 years ago, but a recent improvement. Across the other parks it's very patchy though. The prices though are becoming ridiculous. I will however add again that Merlin's food is by no means the worst theme park food I've had, either by quality or price. Plopsaland de Panne and Plopsa Coo are massive offenders and take the crown.

Yeah ORPs are slowly becoming more digital, especially in the UK. It's weird as European parks have them significantly cheaper (Phantasialand has been 5€ per photo for the past 10 years at least). Inferno's list is pretty comprehensive of all the things I can think of though. I think one thing you see significantly less though (and it sounds kind of obvious) is the long lines outside a park. Ticket offices are a thing of the past what with buying online being the norm / default. Some parks don't even sell on the day tickets anymore. Long gone are the days where you turn up to a park with a printed out ticket from home and you can feel a tiny bit smug walking past everyone who's queueing to buy a ticket (and probably paying more than you did!)

Story clearly fake, thread locked.

In a nice, but admittedly very random, addition, Colossus now has a smoke effect! https://x.com/ThorpeParkMania/status/1936799436602065404?t=uY0MNotqAIdP5sGeIsb4tA&s=19

Rode it twice today. Dunno what all this discourse is about it being rough. It's fine. There are vibrations present, and you can notably see the train shift during the stall. But it doesn't negatively affect the ride experience for me. There are significantly worse rides out there, even in the park itself. I will say it is more vibratey than say this time last year though, and it does make me fear for how the ride will age. But yeah, for now, I'd love to ride it with someone who is calling this rough and see what on earth is going on. Because if that's rough, then....

The only thing worse than shops putting Christmas stuff in shops in August is the people who moan about Christmas stuff being in shops in August like it's something new though... 😉