Coaster

I can't for the life of me work out why someone would want to pay £400 to skip the queues for a year at a single theme park? Like, if you have a season pass you can visit as many times as you like anyway? Fastrack is already oversold and under catered for (not even bothering to open the dedicated queuelines because it requires an extra member of staff etc), this will only make things worse. Does anyone remember the days when the rides all had a member of staff stood outside them? Now they won't even run Fastrack properly despite being all too happy to upsell it to guests. Obscene.

After finally experiencing this yesterday... can we have X back? Like, a few of the features were fun, the zombies lighting up as you fly past for example, but it just feels like such an unnecessary change to a family coaster and the exterior is a horrible mish-mash of a brightly coloured pyramid, barbed wire and mouldy speakers. It's robbed Thorpe of a fun ride suitable for everyone in favour of yet another dark, dull, drab theme.

That is vile.

A MAP makes financial sense for me as it allows me to visit the Blackpool Tower, Circus, Dungeons, London attractions and a few visits to the theme parks. That said, guest experience has really hit an all-time low this year (since purchasing the pass) which may be a factor towards my decision to renew in 2019 (or not!). It will depend if the Merlin attractions I anticipate visiting next year have a higher or lower cost implication if paying for each one seperately as opposed to having the pass. Visiting the attractions "for the sake of it" isn't an option anymore with the current levels of service, Wicker Man may be enough of a draw to justify a return visit to Towers and we may try one of the late night events at Thorpe depending on reports from the earliest ones.

I can't imagine it being much longer until people stop visiting, guest experience seems to have plummeted even further this season based on my few visits. The issue is probably the cheap (£49) season passes, as people will pay upfront and are then locked in for a year regardless of how good/bad the service is. That said, it's almost as if the park is "artificially busy" in that I'd guess that a very small percentage of guests pay on the day nowadays.

I disagree about Speed, it has a much more fun layout than Saw IMO. Operations are terrible though I agree, 1 car on their summer events is ludicrous.

So they're selling a lot (and I mean, a lot) of Fastrack in the full knowledge that ride operations are slow and there aren't enough staff to cope? Guest experience = gone.

I disagree. Filtering Fastrack into the main queue is much fairer on people in the main queue, much more pleasant for RAP holders and doesn't slow the operations down as much. Operations are the worst I've ever seen at Thorpe today in terms of throughput, staff literally standing around doing nothing when they should be sending the trains, strolling up and down the platform... oh dear.

Yeah that is exactly what was happening, operations across the park have been painfully slow all day so far.

Having not really visited much lately, what the hell has happened to operations this year?! 7 minute dispatch times on Colossus and four rows closed for Fastrack.

What the...?! https://twitter.com/AutoRideCount/status/1015642467859877888?s=19

The bad news is he'll probably be replaced with an emoji for the summer...

Horrific. Nothing else to say really, I'm speechless.

Thorpe has lost its identity with this obsession for tacked-on IPs.

Good grief...

Well Nemesis Sub Terra and Derren Brown's Ghost Train both had equal levels of success, the only difference being Alton only threw away £4 million instead of £30!

Visited LWV again recently and it reminded me how much I love The Ultimate. It's so brilliantly flawed in its design; the way it uses three lift chains to get round the corner after lift 2 is hilarious, as is using camelbacks as a brake run, and whoever thought up the idea to send those huge trains around ground-level turns directly after an 100 foot drop is a mad genius. A ride of two halves, the pops of airtime in the front half of the train are fantastic during the first half, and the sheer insanity of the second half is one of my favourite moments of any coaster. It's brutal and my knees are still recovering, but that's why I rate it so highly. Fantastic coaster, and a prime example of something we'll never see built again.

Any luck? It looked like this at the weekend;

My thoughts? Towers doesn't need a dungeons, it needs operations sorting out, more support rides, more water rides and appealing opening hours.

Valhalla is dead

Operations were dismal on my one visit of the year so far, which leaves me reluctant to return. Rides going down 24/7, poor throughputs, it's like they've skimped out on their core operational team in favour of cheap baseless IPs. It amazes me that Thorpe seem so complacent in their marketing yet their offering is beyond abysmal. I will try one of their evenings (late night rides on Inferno has to be a win win surely!) but the level of service experienced on my last visit means I can't justify visiting more than a couple of times this season.

Good old Arrow, built to last! Well, PMBO's track might be stapled to the supports but you know what I mean!

Seems to be the norm for Thorpe!

Just spotted this; Anyone know if it's free for Premium MAPs? I've no interest in "love island" but was hoping to get some evening rides on Inferno in!

You mean they've finally sorted the 90 second dispatch times?