HermanTheGerman
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Posts posted by HermanTheGerman
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It feels like I’ve had loads 🙃
Shut down on Fury on one of the mid courses for ages, ride eventually reset and continued (slowly)
Shutdown on Vampire just after dispatch and got evac’d.
Had the classic L1 on Rameses when it stops mid cycle a few times.
Got stuck on and then evac’d on The Smilers break run in torrential rain once. Took ages. Was there for at least an hour. Awful. Got given priority passes but by the time we were off the park had closed so that was useless.
Had a few on stealth. None very interesting + all short.
Had a “rollback” on Fish once. That one was cool.
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On 7/27/2020 at 8:01 PM, JoshC. said:
Was Swarm badly marketed though? Personally, I think they did a solid job with it. Anyone who visited the park in 2011 heard about it as they had a good on-park marketing campaign. They played on the popular 'end of the world' gimmick for 2012. The online stuff was good. The last minute You Me at Six song drew a lot of attention to tbf.
I think Swarm's major issues were that the brand was weak, and that the ride experience wasn't the intense thrill ride people expected. But they were both post-opening issues.
You're confusing marketing and promotion. The promotion was good, as you said in the first paragraph. The overall marketing of the attraction (e.g. its brand, who it was aimed at vs the nature of the experience) was what killed it.
The ride was positioned by marketing as a high-intensity thrill ride comparable to Saw, when in reality its super floaty
and hella boringand probably the 'tamest' of the big 5. It should've had a lighter-tone theme and been pushed as a less intimidating ride, something to introduce new riders to the bigger thrills of the other coasters, giving it the approachability it warrants. This would've been especially useful as the park seems to lack from an outside perspective an 'in-between' coaster. More thrilling than X and Fish, but not as intense as Saw, Inferno and Stealth. -
Next year was meant to be it’s last season before the contract was up for renewal (which it obviously won’t be).
Can very likely sit it just sitting SBNO if the park re-opens this year, and all of next season too.
Would be no great loss either, turd throughput and has little draw for new visitors.
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12 hours ago, Mark9 said:
My head immediately jumped straight to the Hollywood tour ride, The Chinese omnimover and Temple of the night hawk.
That’s funny because both Hollywood Tour and the Geister ride have much better lighting and overall presentation than Vampire does currently (Hollywood Tour especially).
The best rides at Chessington are worse than the worst rides at Phantasialand.
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1 hour ago, ChessingtonSam said:
Hi, person who posted the "previous post" here. I was strictly talking about the Organist who, in my opinion, looks amazing at the moment. I haven't even seen the rest of the station. Never said anything was phenomenal other than the job they've done on the animatronic.
I mean, they fixed something that was broken. I wouldn't have said that was "phenomenal" but whatever. Definitely nice to see him moving again that's for sure.
Good on the team that got him fixed, but let's be honest, the money to get that done should've been given long ago.
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4 hours ago, Glitch said:
The original team are probably well gone, why can't the new guys have there own go at something thats been sitting collecting dust for years.
I didn't say they couldn't?
I just said people need to stop treating this like its amazing or a great restoration. It needed work and I'm pleased it happened (which I said in my post originally). I was simply pointing out how this definitely isn't anything "phenomenal" as a previous post had said, or that this wasn't a tackier version of Vampire as you were arguing.
I'm pleased the animatronic is fixed. It looks better than last year. It's different to the original look.
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10 hours ago, MarsLlama said:
I'm sure many posters will already know most of these facts, but I had an interesting Thursday researching Colossus's history for an article:
http://themeparkaddict.co.uk/ride-history-Colossus
Err this article is a mess.
Colossus has never (and could never) run with three trains as it suggests.
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2 hours ago, MattyMoo said:
Will the drop tower that replaces RR still be classed as Forbidden Kingdom do we think?
Its planned to be called Sobek (the name of an ancient Egyptian figure with a crocodile head), so I would imagine it's still part of Forbidden Kingdom.
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On 1/5/2020 at 12:04 AM, Ivsetti said:
Following on from the subject of appalling rule-enforcement we go on to one a bit more serious:
This (luckily empty) seat clearly has an unbuckled seat belt as the ride goes up. This again (like the Stealth video I posted earlier) is an extremely shocking breach of basic Health and Safety regulations from the park. Sourced from a video of the ride. Whilst one can argue the seat belt does nothing the implications of this are clear - the park's H&S standards are slipping even though The Smiler accident was a short few years ago.
One wonders what other H&S rules are being breached - Nemesis Inferno's supports for example show clear signs of rust as well as areas of peeled paint which haven't been repainted which is a major major major potential structural hazard.
Stop being so extra -
I think proper work to make the park more presentable would be nice. If they’re not getting anything new for the next few years, at least they can take some proper steps toward improving what already stands. Hence the next few points are just suggestions on which bits need cleaning up the most.
- The area around Amity Cove and Tidal Wave is a big ol’ mess right now, and could do with cleaning up. So many games and garish temporary buildings blocking the view. You basically have to go round the back of the coke freestyle thing to even find the entrance to TW.
- Remove ABL. Obviously don’t remove the rides. But the theme of the area as it stands is a big ‘wtf’ moment for every guests no doubt. And I feel the park would benefit no end by cleaning up and getting rid of this garish area. Theme it back to Amity Cove.
- Removal of Saw Alive building. Just imagine if you were a first-time guest and saw that dilapidated, literally abandoned shed suck to the side of the park in plain view as you were coming in. It looks awful and needs to go.
- Continue the painting work done begun on Stealth and Rumba Rapids.
- Complete overhaul of the food offering at Fins. This should be the park’s proper restaurant. Not whatever tf it is right now.
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- Clear and regenerate the area around Megastore, Derren, Walking Dead, Slammer and Storm Surge. Create a proper central feature and plaza.
- Retheme and regenerate Rumba Rapids. New turntable building, new theme, new tunnels.
- Clear the Saw Alive walkway, return to water.
- Replace Vortex, Zodiac and Samurai with newer flats.
- GCI mid-level family thrill coaster akin to Joris/Wicker Man around the loggers lake. Big drop visible through trees behind Saw for a nice vista from the bridge.
- Clean up and revamp Colossus. Consider Intamin Mega Coaster trains as replacements. Properly resolve ground work issues. Rebuilding lakes if possible.
- Theme Angry Birds buildings back to Amity. Theme dodgems to speedway derby. Detonator back to tropical fortress theme. Additional theming around the base of the tower.
- consider building more attractions on the lakes, family boating etc.
- Intamin Blitz coaster on the back island behind Stealth and Swarm. Station on island. Ride over lakes. -
They’re currently playing the old end of day music after close. The one from 2002(?)-2011 I believe. A great shame really, the music from the Shark Hotel they were playing last year was much nicer. Definitely one of the better imascore tracks, and it fit really nicely as a “winding down” sort of piece.
The 2002-2011 one is just far too lively and in your face.
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Quantum is still a fair way off being rebuilt for the season. It’s partly in bits, scattered around the platform.
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On 3/23/2019 at 10:01 PM, Coaster said:
Could anyone perhaps shed some light on why they were letting the same two people re-ride Stealth from the exit again and again filling empty seats? It seemed to be running as a single rider queue but only for the same two people, nobody else was using it and I didn't think they would use what is essentially the staff gate to allow riders on.
If they are genuinely using it as a single rider queue then brilliant, but it seems odd to me that it was only being used repeatedly by two people, and not very functional in terms of the location - you would essentially have to walk up the exit and hang around in the offload/baggage reclaim area, as there was nowhere specific set up to queue.
I'm all for re-rides but at this point the ride had a 20/30 minute queue, so it wasn't a case of allowing anyone who asked back through to fill otherwise empty trains.
Pretty sure they would've been VIP passholders. I've seen them doing it before. They sort of sit there and make their own SR queue.
Bit of a mickey-take really, given they already get unlimited fastrack, guess that's not enough for some people.
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1 hour ago, Ivsetti said:
It was more like 3/4/5 pm which is why it caused such a big problem. Also, if these weather rules were set out by the manufacturer like Thorpe Park are claiming why do you describe them as "new"?
All the coasters bar The Swarm were open much later than 5pm.
Downtime during such temperatures was never as bad as it was this year. I believe they've either risen the minimum operating temperatures, or have just started to stick more closely to them. They've always had some sort of restriction, its just never been as much of a problem as it was this October.
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Thorpe Park typically caps daily visitor capacity between 17k and 18k, fluctuating on a number of factors, such as ride availability, opening hours and such. The physical maximum they can safely fit on the island is actually more like 24k, but this has only happened once or twice (I think the last time was Fright Nights 2014?). They tend to stop far before this now, as it gets so unbelievably crowded, with all hell breaking loose the second a ride goes down and the queue line is evacuated.
The busiest day this season was the last Saturday of FN (as is typically), with around 17/18k guests. This was also the day all the coasters closed at 9:30pm because of the new temperature rules.
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Thank goodness the original music is back in the station. It was so embarrassing it was ever replaced with that YouTube download that didn't even loop properly.
Now all they need to do* is produce a proper ambient track for the queue line, playing the station music out there ruins the effect so badly.
*Besides bringing back the chandeliers, coffin bays, cloth dressing, lightning crashes, crypt queue area, and relighting the station.
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The reason Dieway closed is messy, but I’d think twice about sharing it on here @Bourriquet.
Something like that shouldn’t be disclosed, especially not online where the park can read it and might know who you are (they may still have the record of your name as operating the ride that day). They’ve gone to efforts to keep it hushed up like always, so I’d be careful...
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28 minutes ago, P J said:
I'm not saying it needs to be a world first but generally I've got accustomed to a secret weapon being something that brings something new.
Its a decent attraction but if it's a 'normal' addition in that sense then I personally found it a little bit misleading with the tag etc...but that's just me
Wicker Man was the first time they actually used the idea of a “Secret Wepon” in the advertising though? It only started out as a code name for projects internally. It’s a bit of a shame really that it’s become some sort ‘series’ in the park.
The rides are just meant to be fun; and ironically, wicker man being the first big addition to the park since Rita without some sort of gimmick, is actually the most fun of all since then!
Just enjoy the ride
no need for it to have any silly advertising feature
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1 hour ago, StevenVig said:
Apart from The Big Top, all the new music for this year is 100x better than all of the IMASnore music.
You know, I’m sensing a BIT of a vested interest with this one ?
- L7123456, ProudToServe, Ringo and 3 others
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59 minutes ago, Ringo said:
Over at TowersStreet it’s been confirmed that Ian Crabbe (Towers divisional director) is currently acting as interim at Thorpe and the marketing director is also believed to be gone, which isn’t surprising at all.
Ahh I didn’t know they’d chucked the marketing direc. too? Well hopefully the shakeup continues, and they get a whole new direction for the park. It’s desperately needed.
2021 Season
in The Past
Posted
Both Thirteen and The Smiler’s throughputs have tumbled though since they lost their bag rooms
Stealth is the ride that would be least affected by this loss though, given that bags would still be given in before going to the boarding gates (unlike at Thirteen, The Smiler, Colossus etc. where you have to climb over the train) so dispatch times shouldn’t be affected. The placement of it is still awful though and will cause bottlenecks for sure.