Wheezy

I did a Hyperia coaster climb this evening.
 
There was some chatter when it was made live about the cost being expensive (£120). It is, no beating around the bush. But it is worth it. My experience was about 3hrs all in, and included lots of time spent scaling the ride, time spent in the console and time spent around the turnaround outside the station, with lots of opportunities for photos, fabulous hosts and a great vibe. 
 
Find attached a variety of photos (of me). I'll write a proper TPM article later.

Last weekend (April 12th), I finally got to meet industry legend John Wardley.
 
It’s pretty clear 2025 is not the year to be visiting Chessington. With Project Play under construction and Wild Asia mothballed, under the guise of early construction for the Minecraft area. 
 
Operations were mixed, with mandrills being decent, despite a breakdown and Vampire doing a decent 2 train op, with just two platformers (one of which was batching). Rattlesnake’s operations were atrocious. The less said about the hideous Tiger Rock tunnel changes, the better. It looks more like an industrial estate than a theme park now.
 
Now onto the event. At first there was a Vampire themed buffet in the temple restaurant. Buffets are known for either quality and quantity, unfortunately this one was neither. Burgers were the main event and as expected tasted vile. Salt, pepper and ketchup couldn’t polish this monstrosity. The curry was at least was just about edible. The desserts were comparatively bette. Black died soft serve, sundaes, sweets and jellies comprised the selection. 
 
Thankfully the event improved from here, the VIP team were generally attentive and chatted to everyone and we got a Vampire themed welcome drink.
 
After making our way to the event suite, the main event kicked off. In the first segment John Talked about the different projects he’d worked on. Things mentioned included how the park almost became a housing estate, due to it being a failing attraction, his work with the McNamaras at the (sadly now closed) Oakwood and early ideas for the Vampire. Wardley reckons the ride still has much life left and the trains have less impact on the track than say Nemesis. 
 
On the second segment, John answered attendees questions. He said Universal GB wouldn’t impact the U.K. parks as much as people think and it’s not a David and Goliath battle. He also mentioned as far as developments go at the park. We would be in for a treat. 
 
At the end, one of the park’s long serving ride engineers Martin went through a lot of the ride’s mechanical statistics and gave away a few random ride bits to some who answered the most correct/accurate answers. There was then an opportunity to meet John, have things signed and have pictures with him. 

And now the 12 million pound question, was it worth it? 
 
At £125, even after discount it was perhaps an eye watering amount to spend, regardless of circumstances. On hindsight the food was mostly disappointing and other features were interesting, but I guess the important thing was this. I finally got to meet John Wardley. The man and legend who brought many of the countries most exciting attractions to life and such an inspiration to many. Without Wardley, Chessington may have well become a large housing estate.

Yeah, track replacing seems to have been pushed aside for now. Whether it was the issues with the previous new piece of track, a shift in strategy or something else that is the reason for that, we'll never know.
 
I'm not a fan of Colossus - I can tolerate it on the front row (which is the only place I've ridden it in the last 8 or 9 years, and even then, I can count the number of rides I've had on it on one hand). But it does still seem to attract a reasonable crowd and runs reliably enough for now.
 
But yes, it doesn't quite have the draw of a Nemesis or a Vampire. On the other hand, the park still have plenty of other development spots before they'd have to consider ripping rides out, so Colossus may hang on for a good while yet.
 
My biggest concern with losing Colossus would be that we would no doubt lose the fun pathway that goes through the ride. Merlin just don't build rides which interact with walkways these days, and I'd be surprised if a potential Colossus replacement has anything beyond a straight pathway running alongside the ride, as opposed to a nice hill or similar.

I'll just give a boatload of info here...
 
-The park's maximum capacity is around 15,000. They can officially hold more, but there's internal H&S/operational considerations they go with. A "sold out" day will probably have around 14,000-15,000 people, as a buffer and also as some pre-booked guests don't turn up.
--There's some caveats to this. A "sold out" day may have less people if they have ride closures, expecting certain types of guests, etc. Buy out days are obviously capped at less.
 
-The quietest days I've known of have been less than 1,000. Very rare, but has happened. Last time I think that happened was like 8-10 years ago, when the park was open for a full week after FN. Those weekdays were dead.
 
-These days, September weekdays are probably the quietest. You're probably looking at around a couple of thousand people. Even then, that will vary quite a lot day to day. The park can still feel quiet if there's 2,000 people on park or 4,000 people on park.
 
-A standard weekend day will again vary significantly, likely around the 5,000-10,000 mark.
 
-A "busy" day, in terms of how the park feels and copes, will likely be anything above 9,000 I'd say.
 
It's an interesting situation that the park are in. 10-15 years ago, their weekends / "peak" days were heaving, and their off-peak days were dead. Like 10,000 might he standard on a weekend, and 1,000 on a weekday. The park wanted to increase attendance by increasing attendance on those quieter days.
 
They have of course managed to increase attendance on quieter days, but it seems to be that people are choosing to visit on those days over busier days, as opposed to attracting more guests. That helps on an operational standpoint in that the park can plan more consistent staff levels. But it now means that the park, and staff, are less used to busier days. 
 
As I say, back in 2012, for example, 10,000 on a Saturday was normal and the park coped fine. These days, 10,000 on a Saturday is abnormal, in that it is more than usual. So that means the park doesn't operate as well, and it feels worse.
 
It also means that when we hit those capacity days, it can hit even harder. 
 
 
I guess the big takeaway is that Thorpe, and indeed basically every theme park in the UK aside from Towers, hit small arena / stadium numbers. For a football example, we're looking at like League One/Two football matxh attendances (which are weekly things) on a daily basis.

I got some interesting throughput readings and operational insights from my recent visit to Thorpe Park, if anyone’s interested.
Colossus (Theoretical: 1,300pph on 2 trains): 594pph (2 trains, 10th June 2024, average of 3) Nemesis Inferno (Theoretical: 1,150pph on 2 trains): 1,067pph (2 trains, 10th June 2024, average of 8 ) Saw: The Ride (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 8 cars): 788pph (unknown number of cars, 10th June 2024, average of 8 ) Stealth (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 2 trains): 782pph (2 trains, 10th June 2024, average of 4) Note: There was an instance of guest faff on 1 or 2 of these readings, so a consistent figure may have been above 800pph without this. The dispatch time seemed to be 90s or a bit below when the ride was running smoothly. The Swarm (Theoretical: 1,100pph on 2 trains): 1,063pph (2 trains, 10th June 2024, average of 6) In terms of some more general operational insights:
Operations on Inferno were awesome. It was very rarely stacking, and stacking for only a short period when it did. It didn't stack on any of my 3 rides, anyway. Great job! Operations on The Swarm were also fantastic. The ride was frequently not stacking or stacking for only a very short period; on all 3 of my rides, it either didn’t stack or only stacked for a matter of around 10 seconds! I think Stealth could really do with a single rider queue or some means of filling empty seats. It seemed to really slow things down when the operators had to push down the restraint of an empty seat, what with how bulky those old Intamin OTSRs are. I noticed that operations on Saw were sometimes slowed down somewhat by holdups at the baggage hold, with the airgates occasionally being empty when a duo of cars turned up ready to load guests. Baggage holds normally improve throughputs substantially, but here, it oddly almost seemed to be taking away from the throughput (?). The pre-loading screens that the park have invested in currently seem a bit redundant, with nothing actually being shown on them. Overall, then, I’d say that operations at Thorpe Park were pretty good. The main weak link was Colossus, which returned a pretty weak figure, but I’ve long come to expect that from Colossus, and it’s understandable given the cramped and bulky nature of the ride vehicles and restraints. Inferno and Swarm had absolutely stellar operations, with little to no stacking being frequent, and Saw was also doing about as well as can be expected from a ride of that nature. I’ll be interested to see how Hyperia compares operationally whenever I eventually get on that!

Nice little lighting package syncing up to the FN soundtrack.
 
VID20231017195009.mp4
 
On a side note It does appear that Detonator is the only ride to have it's own FN audio this year that I've noticed, apart from a couple that play the repetitive park wide audio.

The Book of Exodus in the Bible is where the Israelites leave Egypt - how closely are coasters' working titles usually tied to their final themes?

Spoiler thoughts from me:
 
 
Some non-spoiler bits, found out during the Press Night:
-Kieron Smith, Global Artistic Director for The Dungeons, was described as the "writer and director" of Ghost Train. What they means exactly I'm not sure, but in any case, it means that this has had significant input from someone who is in charge The Dungeons, which are very successful, and what this attraction should aim to be like.
 
-The park acknowledge this will take some time to perfect. As with things like this, there will be a need to be responsive to guest and actor feedback, and things like timings, scripts, etc may need to be tweaked. The park will do this.
 
-Not having the restriction of an IP means it is easier to change / update the story too.
 
-A general consensus from everyone I spoke to who rode it was that it was perhaps the best they could have done given the constraints they had. There's a "ride system" in place, but it is minimal and restrictive, and was designed for a very specific purpose. The building was designed for that ride system. Replacing the ride system is pipe dream worthy at this stage. But what they've with it, and what they've turned Ghost Train into, is (as I've already said), on the higher end of what they could have done. They could have done more, but they've done a good job.

Alright, here we go. My written review of Ghost Train, as it was opening day 2023.
 
Spoiler-free review:
Wow, okay. I'm going to throw it out there and say: it's incredible. Honestly, it's incredible. From the outset I was extremely dubious (as you can see from my earlier posts) that enough would have been changed inside the attraction to warrant this rebrand. To be perfectly honest, I thought it was going to just be a reskinned version of Derren Brown's Ghost Train - but that's exactly what it isn't.
 
Ghost Train manages to fuse eeriness, a little bit of comedy to get you to let your guard down, and then slaps you with more eeriness. What it does, it does very bloody well - especially given the fact that this attraction was not designed to be what it is now.
 
Ghost Train now has a cohesive story from start to finish (something that DBGT was always heavily lacking, and the park trying to shoehorn plothole solutions always just make the storyline even more confusing), and the set design is immense.
 
It's a shame that I live so far away from the park these days as I definitely already want to go back to give it another few more rides before I give a final review, but after already queuing for about 2-2 and a half hours for Ghost Train today... I think I'm alright until the hype dies down a little 😂
 
Alright, here comes the spoilers. DO NOT READ PAST THIS SECTION IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE STORYLINE. I have also included my criticisms in this section as I didn't want to spoil the story:
 
 
Overall, it's an incredible attraction and they've finally nailed what they were trying to do all along. Hopefully it sees some longevity, but it really is even more actor-heavy than Derren Brown ever was which is worrying. It seems we were fully staffed today, but will it have the same impact on an off-peak Tuesday? Only time will tell.
 
As I said the other day, do not compare it with The Curse. They are two very different attractions - but as far as this attraction is concerned as it's own standalone thing... it's fantastic.

The Book of Exodus in the Bible is where the Israelites leave Egypt - how closely are coasters' working titles usually tied to their final themes?

I just think it's great that Thorpe have bought back rollbacks on Stealth. 

I can't believe the ride that everyone hates is being adjusted and everyone hates its even more.

I understand your fascinating with the ride, and your want for it to return in some way. But your question has already been answered...
 
 
Rocky Express will not be returning to the Thorpe Park ride line up. It will not open anywhere else. It is time to accept that you will not be able to ride it again.

Big Bob Jones must receive sufficient levels of sacrifice.

PLANS HAVE BEEN SUBMITTED.
 
Some highlights:
-The ride will feature trains of 20; 10 rows of 2. The trains will have lapbars.
*Not too surprising, but nice to know.

-No manufacturer is confirmed; this is not of interest for planning permission, but it is acknowledged it is of interest to roller coaster enthusiasts. Equally, the application just mentions ride comparison are done to a 'similar ride in Europe'

-The ride will reach a maximum speed of around 130km/h (though this is not definite)

-The ride will have a light track colour high up, similar to Stealth
*This was mentioned in the consultation period. I haven't found confirmation of *what* the colour is for the high points, or the low points. This is usually contained within there somewhere.

-The ride's highest points are: 72m, 50m, 48m and 43m
*This puts to bed an initial thought I had that the park might try to go for the world's tallest inversion record.

-Lots of trees will be planted around the station building

-During construction, the lake will be infilled partially. Originally, the supports were meant to go into the lake, but it looks like they will go into a small part of land within the lake. I guess this is a compromise between having a nice looking lake and ease of maintenance.

-The expanded construction area appears to just be for the *full* demolition of Loggers Leap, as opposed to just the bits in the way. So no extended layout.

-Construction should start late this year, and the whole process should last 16 months. So Spring 2024 opening

Now some more photos:


An interesting look at an alternative layout


Trees





In past applications, we have gotten a look at the design of buildings, etc. But I can't find any of that. Usually we'd even get fencing plans, saying the style, height, material of every fence in an application. Again, doesn't seem to be here. Interesting, in a geeky sorta way. All I can say about the station is it has walls and a metal roof (a roof shouldn't be taken for granted). So there's no clarity on theming, style, colours or anything.

Random note: the transfer track is after the station and at the start of the ride, as opposed to at the end of the ride / before the station. Somewhat different.

This is something I've seen suggested a few times, and it's certainly possible. There are two things that make me think it won't (just) be demolishing the entirety of Loggers:
 
1. Merlin don't demolish stuff unless they need to. They keep things for as long as physically possible. If something can be left SBNO they will. Look at Thorpe and Loggers and Slammer as examples. Towers only removed the likes of Submission and Ripsaw because they would be too obvious if left standing. 
They won't decide to just remove bits of Loggers they don't need to. They will remove what needs to be removed and nothing else.
 
2. Usually, you don't need permission to remove a ride. You just...remove it. There's exceptions and caveats of course, but generally speaking, parks are free to simply take something down if they want to. It's another reason why UK parks like to keep rides SBNO until they're replaced: when it comes to planning applications, they can say "look, we have something here, we're just replacing it with something else".
 
If this is just for the removal of Loggers and nothing else, it's possible they're including this addition because it covers themselves in case someone moans about work happening outside of the permitted zone. Would be a grey area I guess.
 
 
As said, the likely course here is that they're extending the zone for practicality purposes: either for ease of construction for the ride, or for extra engineering / maintenance once the ride is open. That would definitely fall under "design developments". But equally, a change in layout isn't something to completely rule out, and would also fall under design developments.

Merlin can build new parks from scratch without a wince, they don't have a tight budget in the slightest.
They could put a full size coaster in here if they fancied it, they are choosing not too.
 
This change looks insignificant, likely for groundworks, utilities, access.

It could well be for a layout change; I do think it would be nice if they were able to add in a few straight airtime hills, as much as I think the layout is very impressive already given the site and Merlin’s tight budget! And Merlin may well have listened to some of the enthusiasts complaining about the length and lengthened it slightly!
 
However, there’s one thing that puts me off the prospect of a layout change, and that’s the wording and level of detail they’ve chosen to justify this change. If this was for a layout change, surely it would say something like “an alteration to the scope of the ride” that would have been spelled out to the planners in more depth (for instance, I imagine they’d have to outline any new footers being poured or whatever, as well as any new high points in that area), as opposed to “cut and edge landscaping”. That to me suggests some sort of more minor work away from the ride itself; I did notice that the new area encompasses the entirety of Loggers’ former plot whereas the old area didn’t, so perhaps the “design development” is that they’ve decided to demolish the remaining bits of Logger’s that weren’t covered in the initial scope? Also, the original layout doesn’t quite fill the originally outlined area, so surely a layout extension could in theory be done within the current boundary if they wanted one?
 
Don’t get me wrong, it could well be for a layout change (I don’t know much about how planning works for that type of thing), but something tells me that the planners wouldn’t be happy if Thorpe tried to pass off a layout extension as “landscaping”… I’d expect them to have to go into greater detail for something like that, or at very least specify “an extension to the scope of the ride”.
 
It’s worth remembering that the wooded section of The Flume was technically considered part of Wicker Man’s site during the planning process, but this was only due to the removal of the wooded section of The Flume; Wicker Man did not ultimately end up using the wooded area at all.
 
To be honest, I don’t think Exodus really needs a layout change, personally. Yes, it’s not the longest coaster, and it doesn’t look to be a straight airtime machine in the way that many were hoping for, but given the site, the budget and the brief, I think it’s already pretty impressive myself!

Forgive me for continually posting random pictures, but here's an overlay of the two plans, which is probably the clearest look at how the development area has been extended:



Now, time for some speculation:
If this for a layout change, I have an idea for what it could be. And I don't expect it to be anything drastic.

Many people noted that the ride takes a lot of speed into the suspected splash zone area, and that that area could be quite trimmed. And even if not, it does have a lot of speed and doesn't do a lot.
I expect that the short layout is, in part, a creative choice. The ride very much looks designed to be big, fast-paced and hard hitting. Rather than creating a long, drawn out experience, it seems to be a "throw everything at you as quickly as possible" experience, designed so that when you hit the brakes, you're left stunned, and begging for more in a good way. You won't feel short changed, but you'll want to go round again.

So a potential adaptation to the layout would be as follows:



Now forgive the crude drawing, but let me explain what this would achieve:

-A straight section post-splashdown, to include one or two powerful airtime hills.
-A new turnaround, which could be dragged out for some sustained forces, or be quirky / different (like the other turnaround)
-Give more space pre-brake run for another airtime hill, rather than the airtime moment post-turnaround as currently suggested.

My particular thought on the final point is that they could create a 'double down' airtime moment which is similar to Loggers Leap's drop. This would be in the exact same position as Loggers drop, and serve as a reminder/Easter egg/reference/whatever you want to call it to the ride (something that Thorpe and John Burton, the likely Creative Lead of the project, love doing).

This would address the concern which a lot of people had about the ride's ending, whilst keeping in line with the (what I expect to be) feel of the ride. May not be everyone's cup of tea or what people want, but it's what I feel would be most likely. Equally, I think this is a sufficient change to improve the ride.

Obviously, this is all speculation. But I don't see anything more significant than this.

Are changes a-coming?
 
A new document has appeared on a planning application related to Project Exodus, which shows a change in boundary...
 
Before:

After:

 
And to show this more clearly, here's the size of area that's been added, the green line is roughly the old cut off point:

 
The area now includes the Platform 15 route up to the bridge, as well as more parts over water, including the Loggers track over there.
 
 
Now I don't think this necessarily means that the layout could change. However, it's certainly possible.
 
If we look at the original plan, the coaster doesn't hit all the way to the boundary, but does come close. And I believe the boundary plan is just where they will do any sort of work. So it could be just for access during construction, or to create an engineering route.
 
For what it's worth, the document suggests this is due to a development in the design:

 
We won't know exactly what this means until the full plans go in, but for now, there's a slither of evidence to suggest that changes to the layout are possible.