Jack29

I visited at the weekend and I am very impressed with the efforts over the closed season. Finally, we are seeing the park move in the right direction after a decade of decline. (Excluding the DBGT 'investment') The Stealth area is looking great. Big Easy Boulevard is a huge improvement on Angry Birds. Personally I love seeing IP's replaced for an original concept. Rush, Vortex and Colossus have also been refreshed among others. There is a way to go, however, the great news is for the first time in over a decade the pros outweigh the cons. It looks like Thorpe's Management/Merlin have smelt the coffee. They have realised presentation is vitally important to running a theme park. Hopefully over the next few years their attention will move to Rumba/NI, The Beach/DC and the park entrance.

Is there any news on the Princess Diana memorial? It would probably make sense to move it elsewhere in the park as it has no affiliation to the new area. Loggers boat 3 was part of the memorial all planted up however, it's now in a sorry state in the access road behind Rumba. I am no Royal, far from it but it's an important part of the parks history. When I worked at the park in 2010 there were some US tourists who visited just to see it!

Do Thorpe still run a preview night for pass holders? It used to be held on a Friday evening and maze entry was free back then.

No. I would have been more critical if that was the case. There's nothing wrong in hoping for originality. Icarus would have been a much better choice. In a post IP era it would have been great to see the creative team come up with something more imaginative. However I do think that the gold track looks great & I'm looking forward to riding next season.

I'm amazed that people are paid good money to come up with this 😂. Hmm what is it? A hyper coaster. What already exists in Europe? Hyperion. We better not use the same name so let's just change a letter or two.

Does Vampire only operate 2x trains as the norm these days? I visited for the first time in years the other day and couldn't work out why with such a long queue. Years ago the spare train(s) would be parked up in the tunnel however the third was nowhere to be seen.

Operations were really struggling today with only 5 cars. Winter maintenance must have over run on the remaining 3 cars, hope this is sorted asap as throughput isn't great at the best of times.

Surely the train should be travelling in the opposite direction towards the 'splashdown plaza' instead of away from it.

I visited today and on the whole it was a positive experience. Entering the park was seamless and well organised with a temperature check taken before entering the bag drop area. It was fairly quiet being midweek & term time. Two staff members were situated at the entrance of the dome reminding guests to wear their face covering before entering. In the queue lines the vast majority of people were abiding by the social distancing floor markers and frequent Covid related announcements were made on most rides. As for park operations they were a bit hit and miss as expected although all rides were open except TWD, DBGT, & Angry Birds 4D (Loads of people all dressed in black entered half way through the day, potentially fright night actors for a meeting...). Stealth, Swarm, Detonator & Inferno had excellent operations throughout with hardly any train stacking. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Vortex & Saw. I understand the nature of the rides effects through put more than others but I felt the operations could have been much faster. The Octoberfest area was fairly quiet today although I feel the area could be very congested on very busy days so it will be interesting to see if the park try and enforce social distancing or some sort of crowd control in the area. On the whole it's a nice idea although hard to take too seriously with their beer selection, they should definitely have gone for something that's not on tap in my local Wetherspoons 😄 To some up the park in general sadly it's in the worst state in my 15+ years of visiting and is crying out for investment. I feel the current state of Old Town sums everything up, directionless and tired. Hopefully we get some competition in the UK theme park market over the coming years to persuade Merlin to either invest in Thorpe or sell up. I think the best we can hope for (and even this is wishful thinking) is a medium sized investment in 2022/2023. Maybe a Vekoma Bermuda Blitz with a well thought out layout, marketing campaign, and crucially lighter theme (1.2m height restriction, thrilling but fun family attraction). This could then increase visitor numbers and most vitally revenue/profit to remove SBNO attractions, freshen up the park similar to a Thorpe TLC programme similar to Alton. It's well known that the thrill seeker market spends less and demands more in regards to ride hardware, therefore it's not a sustainable business model and Merlin have started to realise this with knee jerk reactions like the additions of the two Old Town rides found in the lost property box.

You might be right Josh. I thought by lowering the rate Thorpe could offer a reduced ticket price at no extra cost to them and sell more tickets as a result. From doing some research it looks like a mixed bag, some companies have passed the saving on and others won't be or are yet to decide.

Now the VAT rate for UK theme parks has been cut from 20% to 5% I would have thought the £39 day price should have been reduced to reflect the change. It can only be assumed that this is a profiteering technique by Merlin.

Rode this three times on Sunday, front, middle, and second to last row. Didn't find it as thrilling as it was at the end of last season. Is it possible to not have as much zip around the track early on in the season maybe...

Station and outside queue, one is 'Welcome to X a journey of light and sound' and the other is a more lengthy safety related announcment.

That does makes sense, don't really see why Stealth has a spare and the other coasters don't but then again I'm not an engineer.

Stealth was having big problems with the traction wheels as someone has already mentioned, the train kept getting stuck coming into the unload platform. One train operation using train one then this was taken off and replaced with the re painted train two but the same problem persisted. I think I saw train three out as well in the morning so they all got a run out today!

Oh okay thanks for that, a couple of new voice announments been put in for 2016 see how long they last!

Guru Josh Project - Infinity (2008) I think that's the one mate! Noticed this ride was just using trains 1 and 4 today. Am I right in thinking this still has/can operate with five trains at once?

Okay thank you, the records that they have of me working their, will they be that I just worked during the 2010 season or that I only worked a couple of months? I ask this because there is a question that says why I left. Sorry I know its a more detailed question but I need to get It right for when the 2013 season application comes out.

Okay thank you, so when they see my application for 2013 theres know way they can tell if I have worked at or applied for Thorpe before?