JoshC.

Just resurrecting this thread to wish y'all a happy Closed Season. How long till we succumb to the annual 'Thorpe Park Ride Game' this year? 😞

Pffft, I double post all the time. #BadMod This year did see them have the most sell out dates. And if Wastelands has improved capacity (which it should have really), then that's very impressive. On a Wastelands note, I believe it had a super high budget, something in the region of about 3.5x the budget of Creek Freak Massacre at Thorpe, which was one of the park's most expensive maze investments. Mental really!

To a lesser extent, it's what Thorpe have done with their past 4 major investments, but it happens the year after.. -Stealth was marketed as "upgraded" in 2007, saying its max speed was reached quicker (nothing had changed). -Saw had the introduction of Saw Alive as a spin off to further market it. -Swarm had brave it backwards -Derren had Rise of the Demon The idea has always been a double strike of sorts: you get people come in for for the big new thing, word of mouth spreads, people go the next year but do a better version, meaning the same people who went its first year want to return. You get a good 2-3 years of interest for one big investment and something tacked on. But yeah, it's a surprise more parks don't upgrade major investments. And in recent years where theming, story and special effects have been important and prevalent for coasters, you don't even need to do something as crazy as a retrack. Chuck some new effects and theming there (99% of rides can always do with more), make a big deal out of it, boom, renewed interest.

The above rumour of a Vekoma junior Boomerang and Vekoma STC turned out to be true, as confirmed by the park... https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2789030221130977&id=149268661773826

Legally, there's nothing the police can do. The guys in the video visited the park legitimately (they had valid tickets). At no point did they 'trespass' or 'intrude'. At no point did any member of staff ask the guys to leave. They didn't refuse to leave. They've bent the park's own rules, and that's all there is to it. The police cannot do anything, so all they can say is 'not our problem let them go'.

Tbf Taiga Vs Junker is already a coaster-war; just a slow moving one. Linnanmäki has always been number 1 in Finland so it's up to the other parks really to provide the competition. Powerpark has done that. Särkänniemi regularly invest, but none of it is particularly unique or interesting to a foreign audience. Could see them going for a Vekoma at some point though...

Not sure if this has been posted here before (I don't think I've seen it before), but a BTS video from Figment - the company who did the VR - of Ghost Train... At about 50 seconds there's a particularly insightful look at how the ride looks when running.

And some official communication from the park, which appeared in a Finnish paper today...

Time for potentially the craziest story / rumour of the year... Powerpark, Finland, are rumoured to be extending their Gerstlauer Infinity launch coaster, Junker. Junker opened in 2015 and was by far the best-looking coaster in Finland, as well as the highest, fastest and longest, until Taiga at Linnanmäki this year. So, to get the crown back, and to keep some of the spotlight on Powerpark (which is second to Linnanmäki in Finland), they are rumoured to be making changes to Junker to get those records back. Track and supports have been photographed at the park: And there are reports of groundwork taking place next to the coaster at the moment. So, despite not being confirmed, there's a lot to suggest this could be happening. Take this with a pinch of salt until we get something more concrete in terms of confirmation (after all, coaster extensions are rare). However, if this does happen, this is super exciting (and also hilariously petty from Powerpark, but I won't complain!),

The park are doing a special send off event for Annual Passholders, in the form of a 2 hour ERT session on Sunday: All 220 tickets they had available have gone in an hour.

So, a little while back, staff at the park went on a week-long strike, claiming that hadn't been paid in 4 months.. https://www.birgun.net/haber/ankapark-ta-oyuncaklari-korumalar-calistiriyor-273360 Some alarm bells from the article... Police were called during the strike to make sure nothing bad happened. It's not clear what's happened as a result, but the park appears to be back open now. But these claims won't do anything to silence rumours of this park effectively being a huge money laundering scheme...

Another minor update, courtesy of @RuudSchutten_ on Twitter... Mess of track Hotel aesthetic coming along

I'm a big fan of the concept - looks hilarious and has potential. It looks like an evolution of the the S&S Free Fly concept which never really took off (don't know if anyone on here has ridden it? @Benin or @BenC maybe?). I do hope it does take off and, importantly, is a reliable ride. S&S don't exactly have a great track record for reliable rides these days..

It was testing when I was near it on Saturday. Can't confirm if it opened though.

So an update from the park's fan day... There will be no new stuff next year, wit the entrance area encountering some 'technical delays'. However, the park will celebrate their 45th anniversary and have promised lots of events and such. It's a bit of a shame that there's a delay in their mega-rejuvenation, as a new entrance area would be nice, and parts of the park (especially the Wild West area) need attention. But equally, if feels silly complaining after the past couple of years of investment, and the Intamin goodness coming in 2021..

The updated concept art no longer shows the tower for Aqualantis: I believe the park are still planning on introducing a new tower next year (they do currently have a drop tower). So I guess that will end up in the same place as the Mine Train.

Some further concept art... Also it does seem like the park got another grant from the EU.

Further details about this new investment have been revealed by the park at a press conference. The area will be called Aqualantis (this was previously thought to be the name of the coaster) and will feature... -Abyssus, double launch Vekoma coaster (Latin for The Depth) -Slow boat ride -Mack Twist n Splash (or similar) -Disko coaster -Aquajump, water dive jump show -Large feature restaurant -Ride shop for Abyssus The area continues with what the park have started with the Dragon Zone and going for specific themed areas, and in general lots of theming and themed features. However, it's expected this is going to be a further step up from that area. The theming will be done by Joravision, who do tons of theming projects for parks across Europe. The area is going to be behind the park's current Vekoma launch coaster, to the left of Zadra and the Dragon Zone. On top of this, reliable sources say that the Vekoma mine train is still happening next year, but the park are keeping tight-lipped on that. It's likely that Aqualantis will open when the park opens in the spring, and the mine train will open later. On top of this, the park have said that next year (ie December 2020), the park will be open during winter for a Christmas event. Unclear if/what rides will be open, but it'll feature a Christmas market and such. Their opening hours for next year as such look a little something like this... It's great to see the park expanding across all areas, after starting a Halloween event for the first time this year (even if I've heard lukewarm reviews about it). Seems to be working too. Finally, the park's owner has confirmed that further developments are to be fastracked after they received more grants. Not sure if it's specifically EU money, since that grant has finished, but who knows. This means that the park's next stages of hotel and accomodation offering will all be built at once rather than in stages. It'll be very interesting to see their attendance figures for this year. They hit 1.4m this year, and if Zadra has been a success, I expect that to grow, and this 5 year old park could already be as busy as the likes of Thorpe and Chessington...

So Thorpe have lifted all restrictions on Annual Passes (and staff free tickets) next week during weekdays. This means that Thorpe Park and Standard Merlin Annual Passholders do not have to pay any extra to visit (instead of it is being like £15-20). They still recommend you pre-book (for £1) however, in case capacity is hit: Going to call this now - this will be a disaster. The park has been quieter than expected this week, and the risk of being open all this week (when they're not normally) hasn't paid off in terms of numbers of profits. And they're clearly worried about it being the same next week, so they're trying to give the many annual passholders extra incentive to visit. But here's the issue: this week was never going to be busy. Not enough school kids in the local area are on half term this week. Not enough people are off this week to go. Everyone is planning on going next week, as that's the time when the majority of people are off. It's clearly a knee jerk reaction to them having a bad week. So now, there's going to be the masses of people who were planning on visiting, PLUS the extra of passholders who have now been incentivised to visit. Thorpe never copes well during half term; an extra mass of people is only going to make it worse. Will happily eat my hat along with the egg on my face if I'm wrong. But yeah, I can't see this being anything more than a major disaster for the park, and complaints galore.

Let's face, in terms of "new" things, it'll probably be another year of weird events, an updated version of Jungle Escape and maybe a retheme of a ride if we're lucky. If the park can focus on actually improving the rest of the park, by means of repaints, refreshes and so forth in a meaningful way, then that would be good too. Though that's been said every year for the last 10-15 years I swear.. Ideally we'd see something actually new (I'd take a chairswing at this stage frankly) or a proper ride refurb (Rumba is still crying out for that), but that seems to be alternative universe territory right now.

Didn't Heide Park have two log flumes back in the day? And same with Phantasialand? And Bagatelle still does, in a similar vain to what Chessington will have (one normal one, one mini one). It's not that uncommon...

This week isn't half term for most schools around the south (most schools up north are on half term). They've copied the Towers way of doing things by being open for two full weeks. Towers do this because they get an influx of people from all over the country visiting, especially during Sacrefest. This is the first time Thorpe have done it this way (in the past, they were only open for the half term for schools down south, and then the days up to Halloween if that wasn't included in half term). Whether Thorpe have done this based on demand and actual research or just seen that Towers do and have copied is unclear. But given how quiet it looked yesterday and today, so far the risk doesn't seem to have paid off. Maybe a later opening would have been a better option for this week..

There's also suggestions that this will be called Robo-Spinner Here's a fan made mock up of the layout, with a spinning version and a non-spinning version: That start gave me a headache just watching it.

Surely this is something that should be commended, not ridiculed? With less than a month to go, it would be easier for them to cut their losses and not bother with it than to actually reopen it. Of course, the fact it's taken so long to end up open (bar the couple of hours in summer before it died) is a concern, but the fact they've opened it now is something.