Mattgwise

£28 for a family of four! It's £138 now, gone up £110 in around 20 years. If the same pattern follows, in 2030 it will be around £220 a family ticket!

Just came across this collection of old 1990's Thorpe Park adverts on Youtube.

It was a few weeks back I last looked, so I am guessing this is the newly increased price. They have had a price increase mid season the last few years, so I expect it to be the norm now to put up at the start of year and again mid season.

Adult admission is now a Whopping £43.20! £42 last time I looked. But still loads of coupons about, Sun tickets and the £20 offer they've been doing the last few weeks to keep it much cheaper and more affordable.

Just got back from the park, didn't go on that much as I was with a friend who had a 7 year old who was into this Moshi Hunting. A lot of kids seemed to be enjoying the event, hunting around the park for the different Moshi monster things so worked very well. They had to find a symbol at the eight Moshi locations, and convert it into a letter using the code breaker sheet, and then had to unscramble the word to win a prize of a 3 day Moshi membership (exciting!) and be entered into a competition to win a family four day pass and some Moshi stuff. The park was quiet for the first hour but soon got busy. Unusually ride reliability was pretty poor for Chessington today. Upon arrival Jungle Bus and Black Buccannear were advertised as closed all day, Black Buccannear was however open when I went past at about 11:45am. Dragon Falls was down from opening and opened in the afternoon, looked like problems with the conveyor belt at the top of the main drop. Vampire closed for a short time, due to first aiders needing to attend someone coming off the ride and was also seen running a few empty cars quite near that time, so may have also had a problem around the same time. Dragon's Fury went down at around 2:30pm from what I saw and later began testing, reopened and closed again after a few people started queuing. At 4:15pm it was testing again, and I didn't get to see if it reopened. Atmosphere still seemed good around the park and staff as friendly as ever. Vampire advertised a 100 minute queue and I chanced it and waited 80 mins. Very slow at dispatching, train always waited on break run, Although we would all love the third train to return, seeing it's poor loading today makes me wonder how they ever managed to run three trains, without it stopping on the second lift for a long period of time. Tomb Blaster again very slow at loading and dispatching, and queue reached an advertised 90 minutes. Other queue times: Runaway train - 60 mins Safari Skyway - 30 mins Dragon falls - 60 mins Black Buccaneer - 30 mins Toadies Crazy cars and Tiny Truckers - 40 mins (insane) Kobra - 80 mins Bubbleworks - 70 mins (although it was only 25 mins in reality) Tuk Tuk Turmoil- 40 mins Others between 10 - 25 mins Only got on 5 rides due to having a relaxed day, this silly (IMO) Moshi Monster hunt, and long queues but still had a god day.

I thought the fences looked horrendous in the pictures, but just got back from Chessington, and they actually don't look as bad in person. Again as mentioned most if not all effects seem to work now. I can't remember the last time I saw the boulder move on one of my visits.

Did you think it was meant to burn everyone on the ride then? In my opinion it is there to affect the guest experience of people walking around the area more so than those on it. Most people I saw walk by inlcuding my self stopped to look and chatted about it amongst each other.

Seriously can't believe that they have done that because of one accident in the rides very long history. H&S has seriously gone OTT! Just looks awful in the picture.

Talk about ridiculous. It has been operating seven and a half years and only happened once and suddenly you cannot walk under the track during launch. Next they will probably move the now unused level crossing barriers from CCR and close them every time it launches.

I knew how the station worked before and obviously has just played main theme for last few years (better than the 2007 crap they used). But this time even the two entrance speakers played the bird ambience. There was just one speaker in the extension cattlepen and the one in the cattle pen before the stairs playing the theme. I probably only noticed it more as the entrance speakers usually play the theme. Oh well it's not that big a deal, just worth pointing out.

Shouldn't the whole queue area play the Nemesis Inferno Theme? Not bird sound effects. In its first few years, all of last year and earlier this year the whole area played the main theme very loudly including the speakers at the queue entrance. I do remember for a couple of years between I think 2007 and 2010 it played the bird ambience but thought that was a mistake and the correct format was the whole area playing the main theme. So is the bird ambience the correct way then?

Went to the park today. Had a good day, but felt the park looked a bit of a mess in terms of the plants and trees. It just looked awful in places with plants and trees overgrown and looking more like weeds rather than plants. Also my friends who are not theme park enthusiasts commented on how awful it looked with Saw alive being closed but still there, CCR closed but still there, Fungle Safari closed but still there, time voyagers closed (yeah you get my drift). One said it made the park look like it didn't care about the place. longest queue I queued for was 50 minutes for Swarm (said 75 minutes), the flats really weren't bad at all with the longest for me probably being Vortex or Samurai at 25 - 30 mins. Saw Nemesis Inferno and Saw the ride have a minor breakdown, both were up and running again withing 20 minutes. All rides except for Stealth and Slammer were available. As mentioned in Stealth topic, some work was being done today on the cable, Slammer must still be waiting for parts as nothing happened, just saw some blue covering on the lower central part of the ride and a cherry picker. Also as many have heard the fire was working on the Swarm fire engine, but no timed water effect, just water on the helicopter and one fountain next to it spraying up. Nemesis Inferno had no mist and was playing the annoying bird sound effects in the queue line, except for two speakers softly playing the usual theme. Went on virtually all rides once.

Couldn't believe how awful the queue line is looking to Saw the Ride. All of the plants and trees are overgrown and hiding the themeing. It just looked a mess. On top of that the soundtrack only seems to play on like one of the speakers despite them still working as the announcement of the breaking down could still be heard.

He was pulling the cable in his hand starting at the station end going towards the end of the launch track. I couldn't tell if it was new or old as they had staff in front of the diner stopping access any nearer to the ride. and didn't see anything actually put on, just A cable being pulled.

We all hope for that! We shouldnt have to hope though to be fair! It should just happen.

Its quite large and could possibly be dangerous going off as the car goes behind fire engine if the wind was blowing the wrong way. Timed Water effects not working though.

Currently sat in front of Stealth. Definately something to do with the cable. There are three engineers working on it and one guy is currently pulling the cable along the launch track.

Fair comment, It just comes naturally to compare to Thorpe Park as it is the park we all discuss here, but yeah you are right, they are very different like the carrots.

And there definitely will be a next time.

I was actually on a tight budget so stayed in a nearby village called Grafenhausen and ran out of time to look at the hotels, plus my friends couldn't be assed with looking at the hotel areas. I spent the Tuesday and Wednesday in the park and the park closed at 7:30pm with the longest queue of the day around 40 minutes for Wodan. Most queues were less than 10 minutes - walk on by 7pm. On the Wednesday the park closed at 8pm but it was much busier. At the end of the day walked by Euromir, Bobsleigh run and Eurosat and all still had queues of around 20 mins. If Stealth or swarm were at Europa Park, then I am sure a one hour queue at Thorpe would easily be halved to 30 minutes, with its speedy loading and no fasttrack.

Just got back from a fantastic trip to Europa Park. Seriously makes the UK parks seem poor in terms of the way they are run and themed. The park is just beautiful, flowers everywhere, lovely buildings and very picturesque. It was a bit tricky finding your way around the park but with two monorails and a railway with trains every 5 - 10 minutes you could just jump on and see where it took you. What's also nice is that although very busy the queues move very fast as all rollercoasters have at least 3 cars. Most many more. The trains are dispatched extremely fast too, I counted 25 seconds on Alpenexpress (Runaway train) between lap bars going up from previous ride to the next dispatch. They don't faff about checking every bar is locked, just a quick look and no thumbs up business before dispatching. (Why do they check every bar here anyway, surely the computer won't allow a ride to start without bars locked anyway) The only rides bars were checked on was Wodan and I think Silverstar. Wodan is my favourite wooden rollercoaster, had lots of airtime, and seemed to maintain a good speed throughout. Silver star was amazing, Pepsi max big one is the only other hypercoaster I had ridden and of course being B&M was so much smoother, and got thrown up out of my seat a few times due to the airtime. Blue Fire was brilliant. It looked a lot slower than I had thought but once on it, it was breathtaking. Felt like I was literally going to come out of the seat several times, and again once on it maintained its speed throughout making the inversions quite fun. The use of lapbars (with pulse readers) made the ride better too. Also had onboard audio which played a nice soundtrack. Also really enjoyed Euromir (amazing soundtrack) and Eurosat, both much better than I thought they would be. Eurosat reminded me of an insane Black Hole. All of the water rides were thoroughly enjoyable too, and believe it or not got wettest on Fjord Rafting, (rapids). A million times more fun than Rumba. Sorry I have run out of time so couldn't do a big trip report. I may edit when I have more time. Below is a link to some photos, they're not great but feel free to have a look (they should be accessible to all - let me know if not): http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151093344060342.485432.701145341&type=3

It's already been established in previous comments by Thorpe Park themselves that the ride will reopen once fixed.

Where did you see that? Says 6pm when I look on the official website. http://www.altontowers.com/events/opening-times/#tab-themepark-aug

Noticed that Storm Surge is down and happened to come across an incident with it when reading a trip report on Pleasure Beach Experience just now. It seems that one of the conveyor belts has come off at the top off the ride whilst it was operating. Picture from http://www.pleasurebeachexperience.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2395.

It sure does!