PLEASE NOTE. THE VIEWS BELOW ARE NOT THE VIEWS OF TPM BUT MY OWN PERSONAL VIEWS. THIS ISN'T INTENDED TO UPSET THORPE BUT TO HELP THEM FIX THIS KIND OF EVENT FOR THE FUTURE.
Well I am so glad that the We (Stretchy wears his Towers Nerd hat for that We) didn't do a live yesterday. I think it would have turned into something that would have got us blacklisted from Thorpe forever for being painfully honest on how poorly it was all run. Brief trip report/rant. No spoilers ahead that aren't marked spoilers unless you don't want to know about bad running of events. All was going well till lunch time. (Well apart from the shambles at tickets where some of us waited for nearly 2 hours to pick up a pre booked ticket) We bumped into Paige & Toofy and rode Inferno. We did rumba the worlds unwettest water ride, We did XWTF which was lacking in sound. But apart from minor things like no audio all was ok. We Went for Pizza & Pasta and that was also good. It was at this point that the day started going DOWN hill. Firstly we noticed that we had tickets for Containment BUT they looked different. Some of us had home printed tickets, others had actual tickets. So we nipped over to Inferno Fasttrack office and stood around there whilst 2 groups kicked off and tried to get each other evicted (that was quite fun actually). Anyway once we eventually got served after about 20 minute wait, They then faffed around for 15-20 minutes unsure what to do and eventually told us that we needed to go to the Depth Charge fast track to get this sorted. NOTE THIS WASN'T THE FIRST NIGHT OF OPERATION IT WAS THE THIRD - THORPE - THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THIS INEPTITUDE. So we went to Depth Charge. There was a queue of probably 70 people waiting to but tickets and a pre-booked queue with 6 people in.... oh and only 1 person serving. THORPE!! HOW CAN YOU BE THIS UNPROFESSIONAL? 1 person serving?? are you serious?? OK after another 30 minutes another person arrives and the 1 person who was serving moves over to our side to serve the pre-booked queue (yes they had been only serving the normal queue). We have now spent over an hour trying to get tickets that we pre-booked just to save ourselves the agro. (added onto the 2 hours that had been spent waiting for tickets means 3 hours of waiting by 13:00 and none of that for rides. So the person then says that because there are more than 10 of us (admittedly over 2 bookings) that they couldn't book us in. The website had let us all book for 16:30 with no complaining. unfortunately Containment has a max of 10 people per slot, so already there were 13. So we had to wait for a manager to come over to sort it. Whilst waiting in the queue we looked at availability for the 16:30 slot. We could still book for that time slot on the website. This is the year 2015. Computers talk to each other. I think I could personally write a better ticketing system in a couple of hours. Come on Thorpe... So after another 15 minutes the manager arrives. He says that the earliest he can get us into the maze is 18:45. Can we just say, at this point, I wasn't best pleased and leave it at that. The expletives used aren't really family friendly. Anyway they managed to find 16:40 and 16:50 timeslots. For us. So it was now around 2pm so we thought we would go and queue for big top. We were first in the queue. YAY. A new maze, and what looked like a new and improved version of Carnival of Screams. I had heard rumors of the towers designs being used and improved on and the split design looked really good. So we queued and gradually a large queue appeared behind us. At around 2:45 they opened up the gate and let us into the actual queue. (for 45 minutes the queue had been clogging up the area around the beach which seemed a bit daft to me, but I assume that if the queue is inside the area then they have to staff it. If its outside the area then its not a problem staff need to think about (btw it was a problem as I saw at least 2 arguments/cross words where someone tried to walk through the queue and didn't use manors but just barged through the people in the queue didn't wasn't impressed. THORPE - GUEST EXPERIENCE IS NOT ONLY HOW STAFF AND GUESTS INTERACT ITS HOW GUESTS AND GUESTS INTERACT. IF YOU PUT GUESTS IN A SITUATION WHERE THEY ARE ANNOYING OTHER GUESTS THEN YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE OUTCOME). You should have opened the queue once a queue started forming. That would have stopped queue jumping (there were some people quite a bit behind us getting annoyed at one group who were just growing continuously and also stopped the queue clogging up the paths, come on, common sense would dictate both outcomes. 15:05 A lady announces that the maze is going to open a bit late. Amazingly it was only 14 minutes past when they announced that it had actually opened. we were the first and second groups. I am not going to go into a review of the maze apart from saying it felt like we were rushed through it and we only saw 3 actors in entirety. I would rate it a 0/10 for scares - there weren't any at all or any point where a scare could happen. 5/10 for the tents. 1/10 for acting ability
So we walked out really really not impressed with that. Actors make a maze or break it. A lack of actors really means no maze, unless you have really good effects or scenery. At different times it could have been better, but consistency SHOULD BE part of the mantra of any haunt maze. the scare at opening needs to be as good as the scare at close (unless you market it as low fear before 5 or something. At this point one of our guys had put how generally dissapointed we were at the whole affair on social media and Thorpe had socially communicated back to us asking us to pop over to Guest Services. We showed the communication to the poor girl and she handed us fast track passes for 2 of the mazes. I genuinly had the impression that she had had a string of the exact same complaints. It did actually placate us, and we left there still a bit miffed, but knowing that the hours of queuing we had already done had basically been offset from later in the day (or so we thought). It was coming onto 16:00 when we exited Guest Services. So we headed over to do some proper rides. Flying Fish and Tea cups. Both were genuinely fun and BOTH OF THEM were running smoothly with no problems. It was then time for containment. There was no queue at all for containment. The staff on this were good. The acting was good. The initial narrative, good. The puzzles were a bit non logical in places. It needed a maze manager though for this kind of operation. One that has screens of all the rooms and controls it. The first room we did in well less than a minute, the 2nd we struggled at, ministering a couple of times. But sorted out in a few minutes. the third room we solved really quickly and then bumped into the group in front. We were then subjected to some acting whilst we waited for them to be evicted. We only actually got about 2 minutes in the final room before we were told that we had run out of time in that room and therefore failed. To be honest I think we had how to crack the code sussed but just weren't given the allotted time. I think the problem we had was solving the first couple so quickly. I think a single room with a number of segmented clues might work better for this kind of attraction rather than a series of rooms. BUT it did have a story and the story was well executed. 0/10 for scares 9/10 for story and acting. From this point onward NOTHING Worked. All of the mazes had queues of over 120 minutes, We decided to do MBV using our first fast track. we stood in the fast track queue for 10 minutes and the maze E stopped. We then waited round for 15 minutes whilst they extract the idiot and got into the batching area after only a further 20 minutes or so. All was good, we go into the first room and the lights once again go on. The maze was E stopped again. so we were evacuated into the loading area, with 2 other groups of people. We stood here for 15-20 minutes whilst the next idiot was extracted and then were launched into the maze. I say launched because once again it felt like we were really rushed through it, but this is a problem I have always had with MBV, it always seems a short maze. So that fast track allowed us to do a maze in only 1 hour. I felt for the people who were in the queue that was labeled 120 minutes. scare rating 3/10 (only because Rob went boo at me at one point) story 0/10 (they had removed ALL of the story from the maze for some reason, but that might have been because we were rushed through.) We then headed over to Cabin to use our second fast track. After 15 minutes in the queue we were told that the maze had E stopped. Whilst waiting we notice that Colossus had broken down big time. One car was e stopped/parked half way up lift hill. It stayed there for the rest of the night. 45 minutes later it resumed operation and once again we were rushed through. THIS MAZE HAD ACTORS THOUGH AND THEY WERE ACTUALLY TRYING. It was never a scary maze though. 10/10 for quantity of actors. It also had all of the story it had originally. It just hadn't grown or been improved on. Best maze of the day (not including Containment which isn't really a scare maze). Queues on all mazes were 120 minutes minimum still so we thought that we would go and ride Swarm in the dark. So we enter the queue and guess what. We get an E stop. This is a B&M, B&M's are reliable beasts. Swarm eventually gets made to work again and after only 50 minutes we are swooping round backwards. So it is now 9pm and we have done 2 fast tracks and 1 ride since 6. Every maze is still at 120 minutes apart from MBV which is walk on ans Saw live which is about 40 minutes. So some of our guys do and do saw live. They return around 9:45 with tails of more E stops and then go and do saw the ride, as their last ride of the day. I am by this time so dejected by the whole day that I choose not to join them. Low and behold , shortly after 10 Saw the ride E stops. So basically 100% of the attractions and rides that we went on after containment at 17:00 had e stopped. To their credit, they did re-open the ride after 40 minutes or so and put everyone who was in the queue onto the ride. That was a good move. 10/10 for the staff involved who must have really wanted to go home at that point. So was it all rubbish. No despite everything we had a laugh. There were some staff who really tried. Around 4ish I went to refill drinks capsule at the pulled pork/beef butty place (near the event tent on the way to swarm island) who was asked me if I was having a good day and seemed genuinely interested when I said not really, and had me explain (allowed me to rant at him) about ticketing fiasco etc. There were other staff who were trying their hearts out. The problem is once the dominos start falling stopping them isn't easy. It felt like the whole of Thorpe Park was collapsing, or, as one of our guys said, run by school kids. I don't like ranting without working out how it could have been done better.,
The entrance plaza REALLY needs sorting out. Waiting 1.5-2 hours for a pre booked ticket is just unacceptable. No other park has this problem that I know of, but Thorpe have always had it. Ticketing needs sorting.
The number of E stops throughout the park not only on mazes was unacceptable. Something is seriously going wrong if rides cant run for more than 30 minutes without an emergency happening.
It felt like the whole park wasn't prepared to deal with fright night specific issues. Simple communication would solve that. Our ticketing problem could have been solved at the first point and easily with just the staff that Thorpe expecting to deal with things having the knowledge to deal with them.
By day 3, EVERYONE should be professionals at their roles. They should be prepared for idiots doing moronic things in mazes since, by now, it should have happened numerous times. A guest caused E stop should be dealt with in a few minutes. OK if someone has been hurt I can understand, but every maze, every 15 minutes being down for 15-20 minutes???
A maze needs a story. It needs a reason. It needs something more than pretty lights and some set pieces.
Containment, even though was good, was still slightly overpriced for what you got. It didn't have a lot of theming. It didn't seem to have a lot of tech. It was fun. But ALL ATTRACTIONS SHOULD BE FUN.
"That will do" is never enough to provide a world class attraction, and "That will do" is how the whole event felt.
Merlin have had so much bad press this year due to the Smiler. They NEED to show the public not only are the parks SAFE, but they are FUN and GOOD VALUE and worth coming back to. They totally failed at Fright nights, I can only hope that they do better next weekend at Towers.
