Cal

Glad you got the quiet day you'd hoped for! I agree with your comments about Rush - I love an S&S Screamin Swing but I don't even bother going on Rush anymore. I hope one day it can get replaced with a new version.

I was one of the people who saw how quiet it was, booked a half day at work and spent the afternoon there 🤣 Was one of the best afternoons I’ve had there. Honestly felt like a buyout day it was that quiet. Great atmosphere on Stealth with a big group of us lapping it, the operator encouraging us to fill up the empty seats.

Launch pad looks near complete and a new screen has been installed. I imagine this area will be open before 10am and they'll do some kind of countdown for park opening in the morning? I'm certainly not complaining, but not sure how viable these last minute openings are, as the park was deserted today. First time I've seen Hyperia walk on and able to re-ride on empty seats throughout the day. Spent my afternoon lapping Hyperia and Stealth. Great atmosphere, particularly on Stealth as it was full of enthusiasts re-riding. Someone I spoke to had done over 80 laps 🤣

It’s rare I say much positive about Towers but they’ve just announced Twilight Towers from 22nd - 31st May with extended hours until 8pm, which covers the whole half term. Good to see and I hope it’s successful.

App says it’ll be reopening this Friday 1st May, which is in line with how long it takes them to do a cable change. They regularly do them a little faster than scheduled so wouldn’t surprise me to see it open Thursday afternoon.

Stealth is back open today!

Seems they've gone back to not sending empty trains again. On the last train yesterday we spent what felt like forever on the break run whilst they filled the 3 front rows with water dummies.

No one batching on Inferno today so just queueing as normal inside the station.

Not sure when this was updated, but they’ve scrapped the two closed Wednesdays in May and will now be open 10–5, which is good to see. They’ll still be closed next Wednesday 29th, but after that they’ll be open every day until September.

Operator was clearly just feeling generous, unless they run 5 laps as standard now. But they do usually adjust laps based on queue time.

The only time I've seen that was during Covid times, which I imagine was to prevent too many people being 'indoors' at once. I've seen a few people mention this recently so don't think it was a one off either. Very strange. I'm going tomorrow afternoon so will check out what they're doing.

The operator can control the amount of laps, so it usually runs between 2-5 laps. 3 laps is pretty standard, 2 when its very busy and then 5 when its quiet. I've personally not seen more than 5. Odd they were doing 5 laps if it was busy though 🤣

Colossus getting a higher throughput than Hyperia I do hope they consider throughput for their next big coaster. No matter how hard the staff work you can't really achieve a high throughput on it and when its the most popular ride on park, with a huge RAP and Fasttrack allocation it struggles on the busy days.

Tidal wave is open today for the first time this season!

Yes, I saw that he has now announced his new role as 'VP of Hotel Operations & Global Performance' Does anyone know who has stepped into the VP role at Thorpe, or are they currently recruiting for it?

Paw Patrol announced to be opening on the 3rd May. And the 2027 coaster has started to be delivered... Chessington is going to feel like a new park next year! Looking forward to having a multi dimension coaster in the UK and its great to see Chessington finally get a lot of investment

I was actually wrong about this, there are 3 prices for Fastrack with super off peak being £8. So today Hyperia has a 75 minute queue and Fastrracks are only £8. Very strange decision.

Park close has been extended till 9pm on the May bank holiday weekend, 23rd - 25th. Brilliant to see - hopefully the weather plays ball and its a success which will give them reason to do more of them in the future. I don't think we saw any later closings like this last season outside of Fright Nights? I think the last time we had them was 2024, 8pm close over Hyperia opening and a couple 9pm Saturdays in August.

Thats a shame. Its worth noting he hasn't left Merlin entirely, and is now the VP at Legoland Windsor. Neil has been at Thorpe for a long time. In my opinion, it’s one of the best run Merlin parks. How much of that is down to him is hard to say, but hopefully that standard remains.

I believe it sounds an alarm if the restraint comes down enough to indicate that the person in the test seat would fit. Very annoying I know - would be better to have a green/red light like I've seen at other parks 🤣 At least its working though I guess! SAWs test seat does the same.

Something I've noticed with Zodiac testing is that its actually reaching the full 90 degrees height and staying at full height for a few seconds before it starts to lower again. Haven't seen it reach full height in years! Will be interesting to see if it does that when it opens or if its just engineers running it in manual.

It appears some visible work has happened to the splashdown. Although I remember the same thing happening last year at some point and nothing seemed to happen. Strange.

Zodiac has been doing a lot of testing so far this season so will likely re-open soon. I do agree with your point though. I’d love to see Thorpe add some new flats rather than slowly losing them like we’ve seen at other parks.

My point about the premium pass fast track is that most of the daily allocation will likely go to Hyperia. I don’t see that being as much of an issue at other parks. For example, at Towers I imagine a high percentage would be split on Smiler, Wickerman, and Nemesis. Just my thoughts anyway from what I've observed, no facts.

I think Fasttrack might be a bit of an issue for Hyperia this year. It was overflowing outside the entrance at one point today. 1) Price of one shots have been reduced. £12 for off peak days and £16 for peak days. It has been a flat £20 every day for the last 2 seasons so not sure why its been reduced, certainly going to have more people buying it. 2) As we all know platinum passes get a free shot every visit now. The problem with that at Thorpe is that 90% of people are only going to be using theirs on Hyperia. 3) People that book the shark hotel on one of the closed days get unlimited Fasttrack including Hyperia all day. So everyone that booked for Thursday night had unlimited Fasttrack today. On days like today where there are a lot of enthusiasts, a high percentage of them are just going to be lapping Hyperia. When you combine the above with the high amount of RAP (which has a capacity for the whole park, but again a high percentage that just use it for Hyperia), thats going to take a huge toll on the main queue 😬