Inferno

I wonder what’s going on with inferno? On my last visit it was similar - there seemed to be a long pause between everyone sitting down and the restraints being checked. The staff didn’t seem to be doing anything as such, just sort of waiting 🤷‍♂️ Felt a bit like the long awkward waits there used to be for Slammer to sort itself out before anyone was let out of the air gates 🙄 It’s a shame this is happening with Inferno, because it’s normally quite a good one for capacity.

Is it even worth the “savings” to open those rides 30 - 60 mins later, given all the disappointment and confusion it will cause? Also why on earth is Hex of all things opening at 11? I thought that would be quite popular given it’s been closed for all this time. I wonder if this is all down to working time for engineers? I can only assume there simply aren’t enough of them to properly spread across the whole day - so some would be on early to open the rides up, and others on later in the day/evening, leaving not enough to get everything open without having them start ridiculously early?? Cebeebies land closing so early is also surprising. I wonder if this is again out of desperation for staff? They have been advertising for staff surprisingly recently, so perhaps they’re having to re-assign staff from here to elsewhere to run the event? 🤷‍♂️ All very odd, and disappointing given how much money they charge for Scarefest now. I do wonder if an event like this is just requiring more staff than they can recruit these days? All guesswork - but I’m just trying to think why this could all be (other than corporate greed)

It must be an absolute nightmare for the staff to have to haul all those dummies around every time it needs to test .

Well end up with the people mover at this rate… Trains for everyone!

I deeply regret this throw away comment 😂 For what it’s worth, as someone who can barely run a bath, let alone a theme park, I think Thorpe are handling this really well and they’ve been smashing it this season, and nothing I would do would be any better. However, why they can’t just dust off that spare XNWO train and get it on Hyperia as train 3 is beyond me

Good to hear different points of view Hopefully they can sort these operations issues out, as this seems to be an issue year in year out. The lighting across the entire park looks to be absolutely incredible this year.

There are plenty of similar scale rides around the world with MCBRs running 3 trains, and even some without which have 3 trains - one of which is about 200 meters away from Hyperia. In fact when the plans were released there was some small degree of disappointment for some that it didn't have an MCBR. There's no denying that building an expensive flagship ride of this scale with built-in resilience for unforeseen things like this (and regular planned maintenance) would be a good thing - 2 trains running on a layout that can support 3 is better than 1 on a layout that can support 2. I do agree, 2 is fair enough for Hyperia, and there's little point paying so much more for an extra one - but given the height of Hyperia, support for a 3 train operation through a slightly longer layout and a MCBR would have been fantastic, and would almost completely eliminate the impact of things like this, not to mention the drastically reduced queue times ("queueing ruined my day" KPI anyone?)

Is it? I've seen a few similar 'reviews'. I've just looked at prices for me and my wife for Saturday (Not going, but just out of interest) - it's £160 for both of us - for those prices people expect something special to be honest, and I think anything less than "very good" is not going to get a good reaction out of many people. Have the maze prices dropped a little? They are coming up for me at £8 a maze - I thought they were £10? It's interesting to see in that video that the queues for the mazes were fairly short. I wonder if they have backpedaled on price a bit? I'm interested to hear the views of others on here who have been to FN this year so far.

To be fair I can understand why they would go with 2 trains - as good as 3 would have been, I can’t think of many companies that would spend more money on something than they absolutely have to. This situation is also totally out of their control really, so one train for a short period of time isn’t too bad realistically. it sucks, but it’s understandable. What annoys me is that Fastrack is still being sold during this time… on the busiest days of the season, with one train on the new coaster….. come on. There should be a total stop to fastrack sales for Hyperia until it’s back on 2 trains. When things happen outside of your control, fine. but they can control Fastrack sales, and have chosen not to bother. That’s poor.

Oh interesting.... I wonder how things will develop during the event.

That’s incredible - well done Thorpe 👏

Agreed - if they can get it open and can limp through tonight on one train, there’s no reason they can’t do the same tomorrow - all the staff etc will be there anyway I assume, there’s no reason not to run it, until the time comes to cycle the other train round to test. I do feel for everyone working at Thorpe though. There’s nothing they could have done about this, and clearly they’re working bloody hard to try to keep things going. I'm seeing ads for “Hyperia in the dark” on instagram today - it sucks for everyone involved that this is happening. With surprise things like this, I imagine it involves people working overtime etc? I can’t imagine there’s a lot of time for things like this as part of the BAU! I’m sure they’ll have it back up very quickly.

Great news. Realistically I can’t imagine it would take that long to get the stricken train back on track in the maintenance shed - of course I know 0 about the subject, but I would hope it’s just a case of getting it back on and running the necessary tests. A bit of a panic job I imagine given the busiest time of year starts in a minute. I wish it had a third train 🙄

I really hope so. Having to muck about with water dummies every time it tests for years to come wont be good!

Forgive my ignorance, would they need this train to be out of action for long? I can’t imagine there would be much wrong with it as it’s literally just running on the rails, surely? Hopefully it’s all back again very quickly on 2 trains, and they can keep nursing it until the end of the season. I imagine this means Saw will have some downtime again at some point too due to the crane?

Well done Josh 😂 I get the impression that Hyperia is an absolute nightmare to keep running. I know it’s in its first year, but it’s been a lot hasn’t it. For some reason I thought Macks were supposed to be quite reliable? I guess not! This is a huge blow before fright nights, and just after it’s 5 day planned downtime 🙄 I’m sure they’ll get this back on again soon, but It’s going to be a busy closed season while they sort these underlying issues out, and finish off the area and queue

It was quite windy yesterday - that mixed with the cold, I suppose could have had an impact? They kept playing the “we might shut down because of the weather” announcement so it must have been getting close to borderline I assume 🤷‍♂️

I had a similar thought - perhaps if there are plans afoot for a new coaster 3 years from now, a Swarm retheme (or “sort out”) might be coming just before, as it will finally get the passing traffic it needs!

I wonder if they will decide it’s worth spending money on speeding up the train entry? I certainly hope so. it seems to rely on gravity to allow the train to roll down in to the station at the moment, so I assume it would need actual modifications rather than a bit of adjusting. Fingers crossed.

Yes it was the same today. There seemed to be a long pause before any restraints are checked each time. Weird.

Maybe this is a hot take - but is anyone else finding the Swarm to be really dreary lately? The actual coaster itself is still fab - but the area and theme just feels more dull and lifeless than ever. The main offender to me is the gentle organ / guitar chord music in the station - I find it so boring and depressing, and just doesn’t seem to set the tone for the ride at all. I didn’t particularly care for the ‘alien sounds’ that were in there when it opened either, but it was a lot better than this. The whole area is also looking very tired and run down. Since it’s supposed to be an unfolding alien invasion, there’s no reason that everything should look so old. The faded pink fire engine in particular looks terrible. Also not one of the TVs in the queue work at all, and haven’t really for years, making the news audio feel a bit weird. In fact, not one of the effects actually work…. The dispatch audio is dreary and misses the mark for me too. The aliens have supposedly ripped the roof off the church and are taking people away, and the dispatch is a very calm well spoken person saying “this is it. There is no escaping the swarm. Sit back and pray”… come on. Where’s the drama? I think we could either do with the original YMA6-based track back, blasting across the area, or if not that, something else. The music and audio for the Swarm just doesn’t work in my opinion since it was messed about with. I think the Swarm is a great ride, but it’s suffering from neglect out there away from the rest of the park. It feels forgotten about! I think it really does suffer from lack of footfall because of where it is. Hopefully this is on the list for some TLC this winter. The coaster is still standing, but the theme is dead in the water.

A note on operations today, which was quite a busy one. A very poor start to the day with half of the main rides down, but by lunchtime everything was finally open. Operations were generally very good across the park, particularly on Hyperia, Stealth and Colossus, where the staff were really going out of their way to help speed things along. Also, I know this is a bit weird, but I think it’s good to point out things like this that tend to go unsaid - Thorpe has some very good and well maintained toilets! Spotlessly clean and smelling of bubblegum, they really are on top of some of “the little things” that actually make quite an impact on your perception of the park.

I had wondered if a little more work had been done to Hyperia’s area during its maintenance this week, but today it was still very much in its unfinished state, with temporary fences lining the paths, cables and pipes draped across the mud, and a lot of areas overgrown with weeds. The splashdown is also still not working, and a few of the speakers are already blown. The queue isn’t great is it. What a ride Hyperia is though. It’s so different to anything else in the UK. Operations on there are also still outstanding - trains regularly going out long before the other returns.

Hyperia has opened earlier than planned following the maintenance this week

There are definitely enough event days to justify it - also don’t forget the football / Wimbledon things they do as well, all of these things need a space building every time. it’ll also be a good way to enter the park if it’s done nicely - much better than passing over the random beach which is closed for much of the year anyway