Simon

Having made that trip before, I used the 71 bus (runs about every 1/2 hour, 15-20mins trip) straight from T5 to Staines, then the shuttle out to the park, easy enough trip. Though you're looking at around £8 each for the bus so if there's a group then certainly check taxi fare.

Went to Thorpe yesterday, arrived at the park fairly early so we were near the front of the queue for Swarm, Enjoyed the ride, and love the wing-rider concept in having nothing above or below you (from front seat, right side), just think there could've been more to it. Couple of my group commented that it was short and not very fast. Maybe single-train operation and having a staff member stood at the queue entrance flogging fastracks biased my view. Queue was about 90mins when we went back in the afternoon. In comparison, Colossus queue wasn't even at the front row split. Other than that we had a very good day. Rain shower about 4ish contributed to the park being very quiet for the last hour so managed to fit quite a few rides in,

I think you need to look at the context when judging the theming for Swarm. UK parks are never going to have the budget that Disney did for Expedition Everest (wikipedia gives a cost of $100million) or Universial for Harry Potter ($200 million).Will withhold commenting on the Swarm until I've seen it for myself tomorrow. I enjoy Saw (apart from the bottom of drop bump, is that still as bad?) and if the Swarm matches Saw's scenery I'll be happy.

I'll be on park tomorrow so may head over and say hello as a newbie to this forum, before the SP meet. Only been to a park once with other enthusiasts so looking forward to it (SP Saw opening day meet, where I think I met a couple of you).

Hey, I'm Simon, been interested in theme parks for a few years now. Was a member of the old Southparks site for a while, combination of that closing down and awful visits to Thorpe last year (Saw opening day anyone?) took that away for a while. Much better trip yesterday restarted that so here I am

First post Made a trip to Thorpe yesterday. Arrived about 9.45 (couldn't of been more than 10 people on the 950 which surprised me).Ride queues were minimal for most of the day, with the longest I noticed around 30 minutes for Saw. Once the mazes opened around 4 there was a rush to them, to quote a member of staff at the Asylum queue entrance "would you be interested in fastrack, 1hr 30 queue" (queue was just out the covered area), cynical part of me thinks she was just saying that to sell fastrack, seeing as we queued from a similar point later on and it took under half that. Went through all the mazes, Asylum was the best for me, Hellgate the worst, though that wasn't helped by someone in our group pointing out where all the actors would jump out from.Didn't see when Stealth broke down (busy with mazes), was well summed up by a woman in front of us in the Saw queue "Stealth breaks when it's sunny, raining, when it stops raining, when it's hot, when it's cold..."Good points-> Decent ride count due to minimal queues-> Nice to see Thorpe operating 2 trains on Colossus, NI & Stealth despite it being a quiet day.Bad-> Slammer unavailable all day, Stealth for much of the evening.