TPJames

I am visiting on saturday and fear for RNR. If the system is executed well, it has a potential to work and move the queues to other attractions, alas it doesn't get rid of them. However, remember that the mazes are an added extra meaning that queues will be much less busy than they were in the summer months when RNR was active on the coasters. My main worry is ratios. Firstly, I hope it's like in summer where no one actually knew about RNR, meaning that it was like a free fastracking tool. However, thorpe need to get their ratios right to allow main queuers to actually be able to get in. A stated 60minute wait time for main queue with RNR active could easily be up to 180mins. Thorpe need to sort out their ratios and have about 12RNR and fastracks per 5minutes to the main queue ratio, meaning that the queue moves up equally. However, this then means thorpe need it implemented on their system so a 12people queue is a 5minute wait for RNR etc. I will be using RNR but for the first maze of the day I will be main queueing and don't want to have to be waiting hours because of hoards of queue cutters infront of me. Thorpe need the ratios right if this ever wants to work which they have not been in the past. On a side note the website has changed! www.reservenride.com

Oh please. I forgot about RNR but just book an early time slot at around 2pm for your favourite maze then do the same for Blair witch. You will be able to do some extra rides while waiting for mazes as well so theoretically you should be able to get everything done if the system is running well.

Get there early and do all your chosen rides in the morning. Then at around 2:30 go and queue up for the maze you want to do most, meaning you will be one of the first in(apart from hoards of fastrackers ahead, I experienced this on saw alive last year). Then you have a bit of time to do one or two mazes before about 6:30-6:45 when I suggest going to Blair witch(find out beforehand whether it will open at 6pm or 7pm on the night and arrive there 15-30mins earlier). If you do this well you will be able to get on at least 3/4 mazes and might have time for a couple of night rides. Don't worry, there is time if you plan you day well!

Oh Furius baco It's an experience I can tell you that. You will either love it or hate it, and most people are haters(except the Spanish who love everything!). I am a fan myself, despite it being very very rough, the speed and intensity of the ride is amazing. However, no amount of bracing will prepare you for what is to come. It's 30seconds of madness, the only time you aren't bumping around is on the inline twist, but you are too busy screaming you head off anyway to have a break from the intensity. Loved it so much, definately worth doing multiple times. PS, if you're worried about the intensity try to go front row, on the inside seat as that's much less rough than the other seats. Back row outside seat is the worst but if you really want to experience baco I reccomend sitting there

How much are the mazes on the day, as they are £7-8 each online and was wondering if they would be more expensive if I buy a ticket on the day as unsure whether I am going to do them yet?

Wednesday isn't a fright night... It's an off peak day so I'd expect it to be fairly empty however expect reduced operations.

I'm not saying a wild mouse coaster wouldn't be good to make a theme park more family friendly, but I don't think that it would be a good coaster to add into thorpe park for several reasons: 1. It's got a very short ridetime. 2. It's painful. 3. Low throughput. 4. Uninteresting ride layout and design. 5. Has exactly the same to design to other wild mouse coasters in different parks. 6. It's just meh overall. If thorpe are going to adopt a new ride, they need something which is well-themed and is an interesting ride experience. A dark ride suits both of these criteria if executed well, however of course I wouldn't mind a new thrill ride or coaster being added into the park. Thorpe may have many spinny rides, but most of them perform awfully. The only one running well this year has been detonator as all the others have been dodgy; -Rush is getting no where near as high as it used to and swing A really outperforms swing B. -Slammer has been performing well when it has been open, have to say the ride is amazing but had way too much downtime at the beginning of the year. Would love for it to stay and keep running for a few more years. -Zodiac is dreadful in every way possible; short ride time, boring, slow and takes ages to load and for one cycle to happen. -Vortex is completely 50/50 it's fun but not thrilling when you get the top side when it's running well but getting the bottom side is so boring and a waste of time. -Quantum is usually good but has been facing a lot of technical difficulties and is taking ages to load this year. The amount of times I've waited ages with a really short queue to get a cycle which doesn't perform as it's meant to and goes really slowly over the top. -Samurai is really unreliable and it's pot luck, you either get a good or a bad seat. Half the time it's on a dreadful cycle aswell. So pretty much all of thorpe's flat rides are getting to their days of them being useless, particularly as most of them were designed for funfairs. They need improving and I would much rather new and improved spinny rides being added to replace these rides instead of these unreliable, under performing rides staying.(with the exception of slammer because I love it). That's just my opinion anyway.

There is a distinct difference between a dark ride and coaster which has been placed inside in the dark... If thorpe get a dark ride, I want it to be a well-themed experience, no gimmicks etc. I would love something which immerses you in some way and isn't an interactive dark ride like tomb blasters. Something like mystic manor/phantom manor at Disneyland would be perfect but on a smaller scale.

Everyone is being TOO unrealistic. What thorpe really needs is this in the MHFS site...

Preview night was pretty brilliant, not many annual pass holders actually turned up as expected. All rides were walk on and mazes were less than 15mins most of the time(with the exception of studio 13 which was 80most of the night but went down to 45 in the last hour). However, the maze queues still moved up slowly due to a large amount of press and celebrities fastracking the queues. Luckily, the actual numbers on park were pretty small meaning you didn't have to wait a long time, this was probably due to the fact it was on a Thursday and the weather was bad. Saturdays are generally one of the worst day to do fright nights, one of the early Fridays or Sundays are good days to go as people clear off early and queues are short towards the end of the night. Saturdays are the busiest days of the event up until half term week.

Actually glad on this. After thorpe received complaints earlier yesterday because JUST fastrackers were getting let in, I am glad they decided to fix their ratios. The problem is due to the overselling of fastrack, the ratios are completely fine. Thorpe need to start selling less fastracks, however if they want to be as greedy and as money grabbing as they currently are there's only two ways it is going to work:1. Main queue will have to wait ages, with endless fastracks being let through. 2. Fastracks have to wait ages due to proper ratios being dealt with. I'm sure many of us would much rather the second one as the affect fastrack has on the main queue is totally unfair. This is completely down to the overselling of them and needs to be fixed. Also Josh, priority passes CANNOT be used on the mazes, so the overselling of fastrack is the issue for this problem.

Bear in mind I'm only going off the facebook page. However, on Thursday, the BWP wait was painfully slow despite a short queue because of about a hundred celebrities who were just going straight through. Studio 13 was also moving up slowly due to press, so I can only imagine how bad it is today. Saying that though, last year I was in the saw alive queue, and being one of the first we thought it was going to be a short wait. But the staff decided it would be better to keep putting fastracks through until they were all gone. My wait was at least 60mins when should have been 15mins maximum. Quote from facebook member: It is not! The dispatching at Studio 13 for the main queue line is 2 people to 6/8 fastpasses. And when the dispatcher was trying to make the queue number up, they asked only fastpass and disabled...not the main queueline where they were lots of pairs waiting. Totally annoying!

Thorpe parks facebook team are pathetic: THORPE PARK Official Hi Roanne, Thank you for your feedback. Our Fastrack system is an optional facility in which guests can purchase tickets to help minimise the wait time for our mazes. These Fastrack have allocated time slots in which certain allocations are sold. Therefore there is only a limited number of Fastrack for each maze. Guests with these tickets do not automatically get instant access to these maze, and are advised that a wait is involved. Our mazes team dispatch the maze in proportion for Fastrack and non Fastrack holders and so that the Fastrack queue does not extend the main queue line. I apologise that you do not feel that this was effective and that the queue lines was extended as a result of Fastrack ticket holders. Please be assured that I have passed your comments on to ensure that the dispatching of both queues is being carried out fairly. Read that. 'Apparently' fastracks do not extend the main queue waiting time. Utterly pathetic, especially as thorpe are doing a 2:8 main queue to fastrack ratio at this current time.

But remember back in 2012, samurai DID reopen, but on the worst possible cycle ever. It was so dull, and even though they decided to have the mist, it looked boring, and was so boring to ride. Was going so slowly it was unbelievable. If samurai is closed for a couple of weeks, then does reopen. I reckon it will be on a bad cycle to try and keep it running. I would rather it just got replaced, it's been down so much lately and slammer appears to have a better reliability than it now...

Happens every year SCB, samurai tries to outperform itself for fright nights and dies straight after the preview. Was on a longer setting than usual and felt slightly faster although had a bad seat. Also it received an absolute knackering from the rain while it was operating so that may have caused it to shut down. Unsure though as it seemed to be fine the whole of preview night and just didn't open up the next day...

Does anyone know what it will be like on the Sunday 2nd, last day of the event? Will it be packed because it is the last day or will it be like the first and second weekends(up to 90mins maxx but around 60mins most of the time). Would be appreciated thanks so know how to plan my day.

Samurai was on an okay setting on Thursday evening and was operating during the rain, receiving a hard battering in a couple of showers(when I was on it, it poured with rain and the ride still operated afterwards). The ride has been shut since Thursday evening, I don't know why but if anyone is on park I would be grateful as going soon and want it to be fixed. I remember last year, when they put samurai on a better setting for preview night, then it was shut for the rest of fright nights due to technical difficulties. I just hope this doesn't happen again, at least slammer is open this year for fright nights though.

The problem about a scare maze is that it can never be consistent. I found all of the mazes great on Thursday evening, however I can see why other do not. An actor can never consistently do the same thing, and the actors change over positions. Some people get good runs, some people get bad runs. I wish the mazes were more consistent, but it's unlikely to happen. I would like to say before people judge, maybe try it more than once. As a first experience can be very different to a second as I know from personal experience.

There weren't many, there was a set which moved around the park and did freeze frames and you could take your picture with them. They would then suddenly scramble and scare everyone in the area before moving on to a different section. Apart from that I just saw a few here and there including a clown on a motor scooter but there weren't many, I would have liked to see more located around the park, hopefully it will improve as the event goes on.

The spinning tunnel in cabin is actually there as I went through it last night. Remember there are different ways to go through the maze and I had a surprisingly long route With cabin you have to do it several times to get the best experience tbh.

This came up yesterday, the park is now for families and considers itself as a resort. It has no restaurants only fast food and no where you can properly sit down, would be nice to see some better food instalments, especially for those staying overnight.

I went over summer when hours were 10-midnight and in one case 10-4am. Khan and baco usually open at 10, so I would reccomend going to them first, however the express lines are always tiny anyway and you are on within 5 mins(bar temple del Fuego which we waited at least an hour for with express). Shambhala usually opens around 11am along with the water rides and then hurakan condor opens at around 12pm so I would reccomend getting there early as the queue builds up extremely quickly and sometimes they only run one of five sides on a busy day... However there is single rider on hurakan condor if needs be. Temple del Fuego was awful, the fire scene was good but no where near worth the wait, it was so slow moving with fastrack(and the fastrack line was big...) so I can't imagine what it was like without fastrack. If you don't have time, really don't bother with it as it's all in Spanish anyway so it's impossible to understand(although the storyline is clear but what the lady is saying really is not). Hope this helps, opening times probably won't be the same on the day but you can check on the many queue boards around the park. Portaventura is my favourite theme park yet and I highly suggest doing Shambhala in the dark as it's brilliant! One final note, some rides may close early, especially including baco which closed at 10:30 on a 4am night. Think it might be to prepare for the fireworks and parade but unsure. Everything can be done easily with express and the park really has a great atmosphere! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did

The scare actors were fantastic making the picture frame and then suddenly scaring everyone. Would have liked to see more though. Swarm was running two trains when it must have been about 8pm. I can also confirm that saw was on 7 cars and stealth was on 2trains at 10pm(last train of day). Inferno was dispatching awfully slowly so I presume it was on one however Colossus seemed to be going around very regularly so I thought it was on 2. Glad to see all rides including slammer open though!

I must have gone in about 9:45pm and I really thought it was brilliant.

I have to disagree here, I feel that the strobe lighting does a great effect and means that the actor can scare you while you can't see anything. There may have been too much of it, but at points it was really great(like in the body bag room we felt like the whole rooming was moving around us while we were going through and really led to confusion). I only experienced it once right at the end of the night though, was less busy at this time so maybe they didn't rush it or something? I have to agree about the length of studio 13, would have been nice if it was a bit longer as it felt shorter than Aslyum however my run was fairly long and I have to say I really did enjoy it. The chainsaw men finale was really good in my opinion and much better than the one on Aslyum last year. The maze overall did have a storyline, however it wasn't particularly clear as to what it actually was but I did understand it. The storyline was much better than the other mazes as on all of the other mazes no story was explained to you in any way watsoever so it didn't feel like the maze had a story at all(especially with MBV).