JoshC.

It's true that this and Colossus will be similar, in that they are coasters which will have 'standard' trains and a 'standard' lift hill (assuming, of course, there's no surprises like spinning cars or whatever) I wouldn't be surprised if this is being geared up mid-to-long term as a "like-for-like" Colossus replacement. When Old Town and the island behind Swarm are eventually taken up, you're not left with much room for expansion, so do have to consider removals and replacements, and Colossus would be the first choice in terms of major coasters. Project Exodus would be a similarly iconic coaster for the park, and similar in terms of maintenance. (If anything, probably easier to maintain, given the problems the park have had with Colossus' supports around the lake) At the same time, it's not hard to imagine Colossus staying for a good while yet. It is *the* coaster which put Thorpe 'on the map'. It's still pretty popular. And who knows, with a retrack, it may become smoother (and be a cheaper alternative than completely ripping it out and building something new). So yeah, it's very 50/50 - I genuinely would not be surprised either way if we see it here or not by the end of the decade.

For all my sins, Thorpe Park. Though even then, there's plenty of people who love it more than me. I have a big soft spot for Walibi Holland, even with their brash, in-your-face marketing. I just can't help but smile every time I even think about one of my visits. In terms of small parks I have a big liking for, I'll sing the praises of Plopsa Coo and Parc du Bocasse till the cows come home.

Part of it was down to the fact that's where the space was, and that's where investment was going. The Canada Creek Railway was introduced when they introduced the Canada Creek area (including Loggers Leap). It wasn't just a means of transportation, it was also an attraction in its own right, and looping round Canada Creek and giving that - albeit minimal - interaction with Loggers Leap helped too. The area by Rumba and what's now Inferno had other attractions, and didn't really have the space for a train station, train storage shed and a turnaround. It should be remember that the farm was just that - a farm! It had animals and restaurant. It wasn't noisy or disruptive in any way. If Thorpe Park didn't exist, no one would bat an eyelid at that area being used as a farm. It should also be remember that when Thorpe Park opened, it wasn't really a theme park. It was a leisure park, which slowly developed into a theme park, with rides added in at certain periods. A farm in that location made perfect sense in the context of what Thorpe Park originally was. At the same time, having it far away from everything else made sense. It was a place for animals and for quiet, away from some of the louder and busier leisure activities at the park. I don't think the plane exhibits were in any different parts of the park than what exists now. They were located in various parts of the park, including what is now The Jungle, where Vortex/Zodiac are, and parts of where Loggers Leap are. When Loggers Leap an Canada Creek were introduced, some parts of the lake were infilled to create the area. This might be the separate lake that was spoken about. It was separate. Treasure Island opened in 1983, so pre-dates CCR. Before CCR opened, one could take the waterbus to the Farm, or you could walk there. To walk there, you would go alongside the lake, from what is now roughly between Rumba Rapids and Inferno to the Farm. About a third of the way along was the station / entrance for Treasure Island. You can see a pathway in the video @Mattgwise posted. When CCR opened, you could still walk to the Farm, and I believe walking was the only way still to get to Treasure Island. Yes, the park own them. Treasure Island could function as a ride site, Thorpe Farm almost definitely not. Here's a very crude picture: Roughly speaking, everything within the yellow region is - in some loose definition - Thorpe's, or of Thorpe's responsible. Everywhere within the red region (up to the yellow line) is pretty much where the park are allowed to develop rides currently. That's not to say that the park couldn't develop outside that region, but it would require a lot of extra work and changes with the council. As you can see, Treasure Island lies within this region. Back when Treasure Island was an attraction, The Swarm island didn't exist, nor did the straight patch of land above it. In the mid 2000s, the park decided to build an engineering facility building (which is one of the buildings directly above where "The Swarm" is written, just under one my crude yellow lines). The new land helped create a service road to connect it towards the back of the park in an easy way. The Farm is outside of this development region. The park currently use it as storage and work space for some teams (such as Landscaping and Waste Management). At least one of the buildings there is listed too, so can't be demolished. There is some stuff that's also just kind of chucked there (if you've seen the Big Top documentary from Jack Silkstone, you'll see that the clown entrance feature has pretty much been dumped there). Again, it's not impossible for it to be used for something low key or quiet, but highly unlikely. The park certainly has gone through several transformations over the decades. Especially in enthusiast circles, there's more and more people who weren't born when Colossus opened, and that was truly the turning point for the park becoming a thrill park. So there's lots of people like yourself who will never know Thorpe as anything other than a thrill park, and it's really strange. If you're interested in learning more, there's a fair few sources out there, albeit less stuff pre-Tussauds Thorpe Park Mania: We have an okay selection of history / archive bits, albeit a bit more recent stuff... https://thorpeparkmania.co.uk/ Memories of Thorpe Park: Memories of Thorpe Park have a good range of stuff too... https://memoriesofthorpepark.co.uk/ / https://www.facebook.com/MoTP.uk/ Thorpe Park Nostalgia: If you're on Instagram, this is a great account to follow from someone who worked at the park and shares lots of stuff from the later 90s/early 00s... https://www.instagram.com/thorpeparknostalgia/ And obviously, feel free to ask on here too!

Fixed for you

Going back to the name, I hope we see a simple, crude name that milks the height. There's the likes of Fury 325 and Intimidator 305, for example, which have their height included in the name. This exists in part to take the UK height record, something which is very hard to envision being broken any time soon (after all, Big One's record will have stood for 30 years by the time this opens). Something along the lines of Rampage 236, Bolt 236 or whatever. Just a simple noun followed by the height to get it across. It's not something that lends itself to a heavily themed ride, but then, this isn't the type of ride that needs that. It's funny, because in the past, I've never liked the ideas of names like that. But I dunno, it just feels like it fits for this.

There's also a handy bit of info here: https://memoriesofthorpepark.co.uk/treasureisland.html I'll follow this post up with more later, but again, Memories of Thorpe Park can give a nice bit of info about Thorpe Farm and CCR: https://memoriesofthorpepark.co.uk/thorpefarm.html https://memoriesofthorpepark.co.uk/ccr.html

One which came to mind is the grabber machines round by Ghost Train, which has loads of 'Easter Eggs', including the forward reference to Exodus: All listed here: https://justanotherthemeparkblog.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/every-easter-egg-on-thorpes-graffiti-machines/ (courtesy of yours truly ) A fun one from the link @Inferno posted: Stealth's sign being 'wrong'. Yep, in 2006 it was advertised as going from 0-80mph in 2.3 seconds, and then in 2007 it was "upgraded" to go 0-80mph in 1.9 seconds. I don't think anything happened, so was just either marketing spiel, or a change in the way they measure it. As another plug, every year on social media, TPM do an advent calendar, which usually mentions loads of these fun Easter eggs too! Now I'll rattle off some I can remember which haven't been mentioned... Swarm -The helicopter had its last flight approx 2 weeks before arriving at the park -On the toilet block, there's Roman numerals written above the entrance: LCXII. As Roman numerals, that's nonsense, but it's actually saying LC12, which was the codename Black Mirror -In the section after the bright tunnel (with the screens where your avatar is being drained), there are codes above each screen, such as JB1, KH2, etc. These are initials of people who were involved in the project. -The screen before the mirror maze has letters "BML X:\NWO" written on it; a nod to X:\No Way Out Walking Dead: The Ride -There's a 'workforce board' in the pre-show room (on the left as you go in). This has names of everyone involved in the project, in one way or another -There's lots of replica props dotted between the pre show room and load room. Trailers The whole maze is an Easter egg to old stuff Derren Brown -When you exit the train the first time (onto the tube platform), the information boards are set to the time 06:05:16. That was the original advertised open date for the ride. -On the exterior of the building, the year 1871 is written. This is 100 years before Derren Brown's birthday, to reference the supposed Victorian-era theme.. -Also in the tube platforms, along with the fracking posters, is a poster resembling Derren Brown's trick or treat cards from one of his old TV shows -I believe that the old second VR scene (where you were stopped on a bridge above a street) was designed to mimic a road in Action, though I'm not certain of this. -The station building is modelled off a Victorian-era built, train depot near Willesden Junction -The floating carriage is modelled off a real carriage: Consulting my notes, it's a North Eastern railway clerestory bogie composite coach no.3071, first built in 1903. To be continued...

Fun little thing that hadn't twigged for me: the final airtime hill and brake run run exactly where Loggers Leap's lift and drop are:

In part, I expect they are saying this to appease locals who are concerned about traffic levels. They want to go "we're investing in something new, it's to stop us losing guests, not to get us more guests". The logic being that people are coming but not coming back, and a new ride is needed to get them to come back. Another reason to say this is simply because it's not realistic. In 2019 (the last year we can accurately compare with), the park were over 500,000 visitors short of that number. There's very little chance that any ride would bring that extra number of people in. I mean, the park was very busy every peak day. There were no significant problems, but I think it should be remembered that operating at that level continuously then requires more staff, more maintenance, etc. I'm not saying the park were struggling to cope then, but I think given the current set up of the park, they would struggle if they did get half a million extra visitors in one year. Any park at a similar scale to Thorpe would too.

In fairness, I'd say it had the mid term hit at Fright Nights when they introduced the Lionsgate mazes, but they didn't capitalise on it enough. However, I do agree - they've been trying to get lightning to strike twice after the success of Saw, and it simply hasn't worked.

Time. BOE - Face of Boe Time "xplained"...ex...Exterminate Time. Time. BBC DW...BBC Doctor Who. Cool. We get it. You're trying to say this will be themed around Doctor Who. Maybe either come out and say it or try and actually add to the conversation next time ey? I feel like I've gone in the Tardis because this feels like I've gone back 7 years when people were saying Ghost Train was going to be a Doctor Who IP...

I think people forget that a hyper coaster is literally just "a coaster over 200ft". Obviously when people hear hyper coaster, they think of these long, out and back B&Ms, but it's literally just a word to define a coaster over a certain height. I believe the current shortest "200ft+ high coaster that doesn't feature a launch" is Thunder Dolphin: https://rcdb.com/1845.htm

https://www.facebook.com/thorpeparkmania/posts/10166301025505624 https://www.thorpepark-consultation.com/ TPM will post a more detailed analysis later

Sorry, should have expanded a bit more. The layout shown wasn't "short", a la a Dive Machine. I reckon it could still be the longest ride on park. But, I think it was on the shorter side for a hyper coaster (but that's a personal opinion) Unlikely. They have also shown sight surveys from various views outside the park in the local area. These show how the coaster will impact the skyline and views for locals. Whilst superimposing the layout of a coaster isn't the most difficult to do, they usually only do that with a final (or near-final) layout to give locals (and the council) a concrete idea of what is to come. Hopefully this will all become clearer when the consultation website goes live and shows the same pictures that were shown during the presentation! It's hard to put across everything that was discussed clearly, whilst also trying to set expectations right!

I can assure you it looks nothing like a dive machine.

I think I made it sound worse than what it is. Ultimately everyone seemed understanding of the need for expansion and investment, but found that the noise from tannoys and some screaming can carry over the lake. The concern was that the park didn't fully appreciate or understand what the base level of noise can sometimes be. I think it's easily rectified with some dialogue between both sides, which is the point of this consultation. I don't think it's a particular bump in the road, and don't think people will end up being against the investment. I'm sure a good resolution can come from this. It was to do with traffic. Peak times around the park are congested (not just because of the park of course), and I'm aware in the past construction of rides has highlighted this further. I'll give a summary of everything I can remember, but obviously we'll have actual pictures and stuff tomorrow: The Ride I will give an honest reaction here: when people see the visuals shown today, I think people will be divided. It didn't look that long. Looks can be deceiving and it was hard to get much of a feel from quick looks at the visuals. It's a very densely packed layout. It goes over the central lake a few times, but doesn't sprawl much. It has quite a few high points, again all closely packed together. It gave me a little bit of Steel Curtain (Kennywood, USA) vibes in some sense, where there's a lot of elements packed together. Looking at it, it's hard to tell if there were inversions or not. The visuals are very loose. There's elements which look like they could be inversions, but they could also be non-inverting elements. IF there are inversions, we could be looking at the world's tallest inversion. We could be looking at anywhere up to 6 to 7 inversion or so. There's also a splash zone, which could indicate a splash down too. But it didn't look like it was near any track. Very confusing. So this will be very interesting to see people's reactions when we get a look at the visuals. Other details -Manufacturer: The official line was they are still talking to multiple manufacturers. One member of the team speaking at the consultation said "there's people doing noise tests on a similar ride in Turkey". Would suggest the Flash clone, and hence Mack, but who knows. -Other rides: No other rides were shown in the area. -Existing rides: They said they're looking to retain "at least one of the existing rides". -Height: 72m/236ft -Speed/Length: Nothing said Timeline (if all goes to plan) -Today to January 2022: Consultation period -Spring 2022: Plans submitted to council -Summer 2022: Plans approved -Late 2022: Construction starts -Date TBC: Ride opens. They did mention 2024, seemingly by accident. It also seems likely, given the timescale. It does beg the question why Old Town needs to close now if construction isn't due to start until late 2022. I guess they could do some work during 2022 to prep, with main construction starting in 2022. It also answers a potential question about Creek Freak Massacre. That could certain return next year if work around that building hasn't started by next October. Project Name One of the visuals labelled the roller coaster as Project Exodus. So that answers that. Track Colour Stealth is coloured white on the top to blend in with the skyline, then has blue elsewhere. The park are considering something similar with this, but nothing is confirmed. Visitation The park said that they see the need for investing as a way of stopping declining visiting numbers, and getting people coming back. They don't expect the visitor levels to rise up dramatically. They also acknowledged the potential for competition from London Resort. Personally I found it convenient that Merlin don't think it will happen, but they'll cite it as a need to invest in a new ride. ha Anything Else I can't think of anything else major. There will be lots of trees cut, but these will be carefully chosen and likely lots of ones which are dying. The area isn't of any ecological interest. I'm sure everything else will come tomorrow and I'll remember more. Locals The actual consultation was fine (at least, the one I went to was). Maybe a couple of questions which were more geek-oriented, but it was nice to see people being respectful that this was a process for locals. That said, it's a little disappointing hearing and seeing people online referring to people as "Karens" for bringing up concerns. I don't think that anything raised by anyone was unreasonable. These are people with genuine concerns, some of whom have lived in the local area for many years before the park became filled with thrill rides. As I've said, I don't think anyone is against development particularly (and indeed, even those with pressing concerns acknowledged that it looks and sounds good for the park), but these are people's lives. I think it's worth stressing time and time again, there's a pretty good two way communication between the park and locals, and both sides are keen for that to continue. I just hope that everyone appreciates that, and don't berate people in any way for having concerns. It's not like they're even being Roper-esque (Alton Towers reference), they just want a very happy and respectful compromise.

And breathe. As a local, I attended. I aired a question of concern I had, speaking with a member of the presenting team afterwards. I will give a brief rundown of what we know. I'll try and post in more detail later. 1. 72m / 236ft high. 2. A proposed layout didn't give anything away in terms of manufacturer. 3. Someone did say "There is a team performing noise surveys on a similar ride in Turkey" 4. The current design suggests a station roughly where the old train station is. It is compact round the Loggers lake. 4a. A "splash zone" overlooking the lake 4b. Possible inversions, but maybe not. Hard to say. 4c. If inversions, then maybe world's tallest inversion is possible. The general vibe was that people are frustrated with current noise levels and how the park is operating, but don't seem particularly opposed to a new investment. As I say, I will try and post more later. Please remain calm.

Something big and long, with a focus on airtime. Manufacturer is something I don't care about. B&M, RMC, Mack, Intamin, Vekoma could all offer rides which fit the bill. As long as it's different to the park's other coasters, it's fine.

Timber Tug and Lumber Jump? Possibly. The 11 year old rides from Octopus Garden? No. I can't imagine anything will happen for a while. If the rides are moving elsewhere on park, they need to prep that area first. Winter maintenance on those rides is very short and simple too, so it won't be a priority. If the rides are being sold, they'll be waiting on the buyer. If the rides are being scrapped, they'll scrap it when construction starts for the new roller coaster, which won't be for a while yet. Same for Platform 15 and the rest of Old Town really; there's no need to do anything to it until construction starts.

I would guess we'd see a new theme entirely. It's a perfect time to go out with the old (town) and in with the new. Old Town has always been incoherent as a theme at best. The park's themed areas are sketchy and vague at best too. I see no reason why they would want to retcon a new coaster into it. I'd be surprised if Black Mirror lasts much longer than 2024 too. Samurai has no theme. Saw is - and always was - detached and its own separate identity. So this is a chance to go from the ground up with a new theme. Depending on the plan and everything, the Creek Freak building may have to make way too. Which would result in a complete blank slate too.

There are rumours circulating round that the park will be asking for proof of address to ensure you're local for the in person event. I think it's worth posting here what we included in our recent TPM article:

There's been work going on in CBeebies Land with a couple of attractions closing (or ones that have been closed for a while) seemingly set to be replaced. No clue which ones tbh. So that could quite plausibly be the new attractions (since it could simply be 2 new things). Obviously the Retro Squad was planned as a 1 year thing. Loosing multiple flats in the same year when they're very much needed things is not good, so one would hope that we get some sort of thrill flat ride too.

Timber Tug Boat and Lumber Jump definitely are (and they used to exist at Sea Life Brighton, I think, and were easy to transport to Thorpe). Rocky I imagine is a bit more difficult given it doesn't just exist on a flat base. But I imagine it's not impossible to move it if they wanted. I think the issue with Rocky particularly (over the other two) is the age two. I'm sure it's still in working order, but questions should be raised about the worthwhileness of moving it I guess. I've heard about the OG rides being kept at the farm...I don't know if that's actually true, and I do know some were sold on / sent to other Merlin attractions. I'd wonder what the point of storing a few kids rides for 10+ years would be, and if it's worth actually rebuilding and open them over getting new stuff. It certainly would be nice to see some sort of collection of smaller rides still though. Maybe replacing the Wet Wet Wet slides by the Beach, since they didn't open this year. This is the most curious thing right now for me. Thorpe made a fairly big deal out of Platform closing. Nothing was said about Creek Freak. These plans definitely won't have come from nowhere either of course either. Whilst Platform was longer serving, Creek Freak was definitely more loved, so you'd think they would say something about that too? So does it mean they're keeping it and working round that? If so, how does that work? And if they are getting rid of it, what will the park do next Fright Nights to compensate losing two mazes.

Related to the incoming roller coaster, the park have confirmed that the Old Town area over the train tracks (holding Rocky Express, Timber Tug Boat and Lumber Jump) will not open in 2022. There is nothing said about what will happen to the rides as of yet: *moves thread to The Past for now*

Ooops unnecessary triple post, oh well The park have confirmed they're working on a "world-class rollercoaster":