coasterverse
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Posts posted by coasterverse
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On 3/26/2024 at 7:53 AM, tactic said:
I know they needed to update the app icon for the new logo, but this is definitely not it…
Come on Thorpe at least get the logo to fit in the icon.
Yeah that's definitely a stylistic choice, I personally don't mind it... well, as much as somebody who still doesn't really like the new logo can 'not mind' something.
The new logo has definitely grown on me though, my opinion of it now is 'it's okay'. I still think the old one suited the tone of the park better and they'd have been better off keeping the infinity rings but just changing the comic sans logo, but alas the new Dafont logo is seemingly here to stay!
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1 hour ago, Inferno said:
I wonder if you’ll still be able to see the splashdown?
if not, it makes you wonder what’s the point of that, since splashdowns really are better for onlookers than for riders.
Would be a different scenario if they were designed to get riders wet, but we know in all likelihood the water won't as much as graze the riders. Can't help but feel like Thorpe have made a lot of questionable decisions throughout this build process - but ultimately, as long as it rides nicely I'm happy enough.
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Don't suppose anybody knows if Rocky Express is coming back, do they?
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On 2/29/2024 at 11:55 AM, ML27 said:
However the park have confirmed that the viewing plaza has now been cut
Really, REALLY silly decision in my opinion. Likely been cut because of time (and possibly budget, considering they weren't originally planning on rebuilding the shop from the ground up - so that must've been a bit of a spanner in the works), but it really would've made the area something special.
People were vocal about a lack of supporting ride in the area, but I always dismissed it as I thought the viewing area would've compensated for it nicely - something extra to do, and something nice for those that aren't wanting to ride but wanting to keep an eye out for their friends/family etc.
The area isn't going to look bare with a massive 236ft rollercoaster in it by any means, but it certainly isn't going to be the majestic, elegant land that was initially proposed in the plans now.
Bitterly disappointed by this decision, I'm not gonna lie.
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19 hours ago, ML27 said:
And the announced their new themed land as Big Easy Boulevard?! Like use land names across the park, not as and when it suits
I was just about to point this out - the park have said they're no longer doing themed lands... yet in the same breath announced angry birds land is changing to big easy boulevard?! breaking away from themed lands is pointless in my opinion anyway, especially if you're going to continue grouping rides together that used to be in said themed lands! why does big easy boulevard get the privillege of being the only official themed land?!
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21 hours ago, CoasterCreditsCymru said:
Personally, I'd hazard a guess that everything planned for March 2024 in the video only includes the work as part of the Sparkle Project. They also mentioned in the video that it is an ambitious timeline which could be affected by unforeseen delays (such as weather), which would make a March opening for Hyperia doubtful.
A Late April / Early May opening for Hyperia is my prediction at the moment!
I dunno, providing that the trackwork is able to be completed by the end of this month as planned, two months of testing & training is entirely doable. The unforeseen weather delays are absolutely still a factor though - so although they mentioned that it's PLANNED for opening, that doesn't necessarily mean it will.
I personally can't see it being ready for opening, but I very much feel like the park want it to be ready for opening and are doing everything they can in their power to ensure it stays on track.
(It also says everything we are about to reveal is currently planned for March 2024 😉)
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10 hours ago, ML27 said:
Whats peoples thoughts on an opening date?
Just like to remind everyone that this was mentioned in the Project Sparkle video on Christmas Day... 👀
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New logo reveal at 7:30 on Thursday!
The park have announced that there will be a new YouTube video talking about the past, present and future of Thorpe Park branding at 7:30pm every night for the next three nights.Predictions?
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1 hour ago, ML27 said:
I have a feeling they are gonna remove reference to it being a resort. I’ve noticed it’s used a lot less…
I hope so - they need to decide what they want to do one way or another. Removing themselves as a resort now doesn't mean they can't go back to it in the future, but being a resort right now clearly doesn't align with their vision.
In my opinion, until a purpose-built hotel is made with various pieces of out of hours entertainment, the park will never be a resort and should not be advertised as such. It's borderline misleading to be honest.
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The new Hyperia teaser photos have something a little unusual on them... notice how the logo on the bottom right is blurred, but only partially. The word 'Thorpe' is still (for the most part) intact, whilst the 'Park' is totally obscured. Could this be a hint towards Thorpe Park dropping the 'Park' from its branding?
I'm in two minds about this.
Firstly, I know that the park and lots of enthusiasts have referred to it simply as just 'Thorpe' for many years, so can totally see them rebranding as just that.
On the other hand, being a park called 'Thorpe Park' but branding themselves as 'An Island Like No Other' is a bit contradictory. I wonder if 'Thorpe Island' is on the cards for the rebrand? Would make the brand a lot more coherent, but on the other side the park may move away from 'The Park Like No Other' branding entirely next year too.
Either way, if I wasn't excited about this rebrand before, I most definitely am now.
EDIT: Just looked at the previous Hyperia update from the 28th October and the same thing is apparent here too... albeit less of the logo is obscured. So, perhaps this is simply the park 'erasing' the logo as the updates go on, before finally being revealed bit by bit the opposite way after the logo is entirely obscured. Who knows!
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Definitely not. Not only because that is just absolutely abhorrent graphic design, but the park have also already confirmed that they're keeping the golden colour scheme to Hyperia only and won't be reflected in their new branding.
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It's a post in the passholder group - which is weird because the park have confirmed that it's not passholder exclusive, but I suppose your average Thorpe Park consumer wouldn't be interested so wouldn't make sense to post on the main social channels.
This is the link to book: https://www.thorpepark.com/tickets-passes/?promocode=IMAScore23
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I'm also intrigued as to what the 'souvenir' entails... hopefully it's not something tacky like an Imascore keyring 💀
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Yeah, something nice and simple will be their best bet here. Anything they do with the retheme next year will just be overshadowed by Hyperia anyway, so doesn't make much sense to try to open new rides and such within the area (well, not for next season anyway).
I just hope the retheme is a little more than just getting rid of the bird theming pieces and a coat of paint on the buildings - that area of Amity has been ripped from our hands over the last 10 years, it's time for the park to return it to what it should rightfully be - a coherent Amity.
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2 hours ago, StevenVig said:
The more you say it, the more it might come true
It's almost as if design is subjective or something 🤯
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It's definitely growing on me, I thought it'd look hideous but I think it kinda works. Still not massively keen on the shade of 'gold', but I'm sure that'll grow on me too. I think it'll look really decent once it's all put together.
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I said on Twitter a couple days ago that I really do think over Fright Nights especially (as none of their other events seem to get anywhere near as many people as Fright Nights does) the park should further limit their capacity (and fairly drastically at that), and then just chuck a few more days onto the end of the season to compensate. That way those customers you'd potentially lose by limiting capcity could rebook on a different day.
There's no ride or attraction in this country that warrants a 3+ hour queue time - that's pure and simple. 3+ hour queues are for the likes of Universal and Disney - beautifully themed, long duration attractions that would make the 3 hour wait worthwhile. It was absolute craziness to me to see 3+ hour queues for Stealth last week. A RIDE THAT LASTS 20 SECONDS!! The RAP entrance for Stealth was also snaking all the way back to essentially the main entrance which is also disgusting.
So in short - my opinion is to further limit capacity, extend the season by a few days to compensate, and put a cap on how many fastracks are available on the day.
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5 hours ago, StevenVig said:
Calling Ghost Train a 'staple attraction' is pretty brave 😂
As in a staple permanent attraction, not a staple attraction that draws crowds 😂
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6 hours ago, tactic said:
but either way in my opinnion it's not the right decision.
I dunno man, looking at the dire state of the Stealth and Tidal Wave support fades I think this could work better in their favour. You can quite literally see the paint roller marks on Stealth's supports where they could clearly just about reach and were like "okay that's good enough" (see below)
Imagine how cheap and tacky Thorpe's brand new coaster would look if this was how it was done. Obviously you'd expect a bit more care and attention to go into it if it's a brand new coaster (and probably significantly easier to get the fade right if the supports are in pieces prior to installation), but I'm glad they didn't risk it - at least not on the opening years.
Maybe if it still looks odd in a few years (it won't, we'll all be used to it by then) they can look into fading, but I'd rather it have a stark contrast for now than look like how Stealth does currently in its opening year. That wouldn't be a good look for the park whatsoever.
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Alright, visited on Tuesday (for my first proper Fright Nights experience outside of the passholder preview day 2 years ago), here's my maze reviews and some thoughts:
Trailers
This is a maze that a lot of you will be aware that I have been extremely vocal about since my first runthrough on opening year. I thought it was dreadful the first time I did it - predictable scares across the board and the rooms are too small. I still think this is the case for the most part, however my runthrough this year was significantly better as for some reason or another, me and my friend ended up losing the ENTIRE group that we went in with after just the first dentist scene - so we basically had a SLKSTN EXCLUSIVE runthrough with all the actors' attention in all of the rooms fixated on us. It was our first maze of the evening too (as we both hated it when we did it last and wanted to just get it out of the way), but both came out very, very impressed. I even ended up running out of the maze, which isn't something I often end up doing in scare attractions.
There's definitely a few rooms here and there that are pretty weak - Hell Cell and Vulcan Voodoo stand out immediately to me, I'm sure there was others too. Room highlights though were definitely 'Nightmare on Staines Street' and the finale room. In the nightmare scene, I was so fixated by the person coming out of the bed that I totally forgot that there's also somebody behind the window and it made me jump out of my skin - not something I expected to be doing in Trailers after my last experience where I didn't jump at all. The finale was also great because we had the spark machines working for a change, which (again) wasn't something we experienced on our first runthrough in 2021.
Trailers was my second favourite maze of the evening.
Stitches
We then moved on to Stitches, which surprisingly didn't have the ridiculous queue that I expected considering it's the nEw FoR 2023 maze. I quite liked it. I agree with what @JoshC. said that it's definitely more eerie than scary - I didn't get jumpscared very often, but was definitely uncomfortable whilst walking through. Some of the strobe and LED lighting in there really did blind you which totally throws you off and puts you even more on edge for potential jumpscares (which didn't really happen for the most part unfortunately).
The finale room was very very creepy and the strobe lighting makes it virtually impossible to distinguish the difference between real actors and the mannequins - unfortunately, however, there didn't appear to be any real actors in there in our runthrough... or at the very least we just got unlucky and wasn't targeted which did put a bit of a dampener on what was for the most part a terrific maze.
Overall though, it's a great maze - and I'd be very surprised if it didn't return for '24. I just hope that if it does, they focus more on scares. The atmosphere is there, but there's no real payoff. I somewhat hope that if this maze is expected to be on the horizon for a while that this replaces Trailers and utilises the permanent exterior to model a good looking toy shop from it. I feel like Stitches could really benefit from this, and would make more sense to do this than it does with Trailers. However, the current setup does work - so if the park are looking to replace Trailers, I'd rather they replace it with something new entirely instead.
Survival Games
My oh my was this intense. Being separated from your group right the start sets the tone for the rest of the attraction and it's great. My favourite element of this attraction is the focus on physical touch. I wish this was something that happened across the board for the Thorpe mazes (you know, being the 'thrill' park of the UK, I think they could get away with only super intense mazes but I understand they probably don't want to open that can of worms and possibly limit their clientele). Being grabbed and dragged by the actors inside of that building really adds a whole other layer to the experience, and like someone mentioned above you do find yourself trying to evade the actors rather than actively seek them out.
I found myself purposefully going around in circles just to avoid actors in the hopes that they wouldn't still be there by the time I come back around. The total free-flow element of the maze is great too, because it means you essentially get to decide for yourself just how long you spend in there. Obviously you could get lucky (or unlucky in this instance) and make a beeline straight for the exit, but it's definitely part of the fun to just get yourself lost in there.
Me and my friend even got dragged into a room at one point, forced to kneel down and have a moo-off. 10/10 would do again.
The Crows of Mawkin Meadow
Gonna keep this one short and sweet - it's just as eerie as always. The Crows will forever be one of my favourite Fright Nights characters and concrete proof that loud doesn't always mean scary within scare attractions. They utilised all of that extra space perfectly too and I loved the little tents with concept art and stuff hung up on the walls.
Creature Campus
Gonna keep this one short too - it's much better than I expected. Dance shows aren't really my 'thing', but considering we had just got off Stealth and was like 3 minutes until the show began, I thought I'd give it a watch and was very pleasantly surprised. Good dancing, good music, but slightly awkward ending that left a lot of people standing around in silence wondering what was happening - nobody applauded as I don't think anybody really thought that's where it ended. I suppose it's a bit difficult to establish an 'ending' for a dance show though, so probably just part and parcel of that type of experience.
Lucifer's Lair
This was great too. Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I really liked it. The guy playing Lucifer hollering out and just ripping into everybody walking past was fun to sit and observe too, with security even having to step in a couple of times due to people actually getting triggered and chatting back 💀 How people can't see that it's just a character, and that 'it aint that deep bro'.
Misc
Also agree re the themed audio and parkwide audio this year. With the exception of Detonator, it was very weak across the board this year. I love the Stealth default launch audio - don't get me wrong - but it's definitely one of those attractions that absolutely warrants themed audio for every event considering (at current) it is the park's staple, leading attraction.
Also, if you choose the 6pm-9pm timeslots for mazes, consider your night ride time extremely limited. I went on a Tuesday before kids have broken up from school, which by all accounts was considered a 'quiet' day, and still only ended up with just about an hour's worth of night rides. I can only imagine this will be even worse, if not impossible, once the kids have broken up from school. Next time I'll probably take the discount and go for the 3pm-6pm slots instead and just allow myself to enjoy the rest of the evening riding the coasters - especially if all of the mazes are indoors again like they are this year.
Also, to answer my previous question about whether Ghost Train shuts early on Fright Nights... it doesn't. It was on a 15 minute queuetime at closing time on Tuesday, however it's worth noting that it didn't actually open until 3pm, which I thought was a bit odd. I'd have thought the park would want to have actors in Walking Dead and Ghost Train early before they have to be pulled out and out in mazes, but I guess not!
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Observing the white supports going in yesterday was pretty surreal to be honest. The size already makes the coaster look so foreboding, I was seriously struggling to work out just how much higher it could go before realising that I was looking at the supports for the turnaround inversion, and not even the main drop - so it’s going to be SIGNIFICANTLY taller! She is going to be an absolute monster and I cannot bloody wait.
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15 minutes ago, Glitch said:
Really excited of the new logo launch. This will be the icing on the cake for silkstones crew ownership of thorpe park!
Long, LONG overdue in my opinion. Although the infinity symbol and colourscheme is iconic at this point, it's undeniable that a new, refreshed logo is well overdue at this point. The infinity style logo has been around since 2001, and the 'newest' iteration of said infinity logo has been around since 2008, so the industry (and certainly graphic design) has evolved since then. If the new Hyperia logo is anything to go by, I think we're in safe hands for the rebrand.
Hyperia - New for 2024
in The Future
Posted
this project has turned out to be one questionable decision after the other to be honest - don't get me wrong - I absolutely cannot wait to ride - but everything from the station building, planned landscaping, lack of a viewing platform, queueline etc has been pretty disapponting thus far.
I also personally find thorpe's generous (putting that lightly) overuse of the gold colour super tacky. if it was used as a highlight colour against a black station, it would look so much more elegant. also a little confused by the black and gold colourscheme of the station, queue etc but the actual coaster itself is white and gold? wouldn't a white and gold station have fit the aesthetic better than a black and gold one..?