coasterverse

Yeah I'm like 99.9% sure that's what they mean

Thorpe have just announced that 'The next train to depart Platform 13 at Thorpe Junction will be announced tomorrow 👀" - some news, finally!

And I can't really see actors starting if there's no place for them to rehearse properly. Yeah, sure, there's probably rehearsal rooms tucked away in the Thorpe Park Backrooms, but I'd imagine the park will be wanting to rehearse everything fully with places to hide for optimal scares and they'll want everything as streamlined and optimal as possible. Therefore I've got a feeling that at least the very basic sets are in place and are just finetuning things at this point. Feels like opening is not too far away now, but also very likely that something goes wrong and ends up getting delayed again. I saw on Twitter too that it looks like the actors have been told a date - I saw somebody asking when it's due to open and they responded saying it's top secret or something along those lines. So I feel like there's definitely an internal target, but they're waiting for a couple of things to fall in place before they actually announce anything.

Would be very, very interesting to find out the budget for this refurb! I'd imagine after the millions they pumped into it only 7 years ago it's probably not going to be too much... which I hope doesn't hinder the quality of the finished product.

Is this confirmed? I’ve not heard this, but also I’m pretty sure he’s spoken about/teased ghost train when it was first announced? Unless I’m remembering incorrectly…

Providing that they have been working on this for over a year like they've been saying, hopefully it's just been a case of stripping everything out and installing everything without having to think too hard about it, as I'd imagine most of it had already been figured out long in advance. The Duel/TCaAM refurbishment does give me tremendous hope. I've not experienced it (yet) and I'm staying away from spoilers as much as I can as I want to experience it first hand, but the general consensus is that it's very good - which really does fill me with hope! Don't let me down, Merlin! For the first time in a long time, you've got my full support.

Exciting! Hopefully that means they’ve built everything (or most of it) and are trialing it with the audio now 🤔 Probably not, but a man can wish!

I reckon you're bang on the money with that one. Might have to start calling you Theme Park Fanatic at this rate!

Either way, I can't wait for this attraction to open. Whether it's amazing, good, mediocre or absolutely dreadful - I'm sure we can all agree that having another indoors attraction to either shield from the rain or something else on the park to eat up some queues, it will do wonders for the park.

Let’s just hope it’s been a long time coming for them and not in protest because of how the project is going (although again, highly doubt this would be the reason as there’s likely many MMM projects in the works currently)

Rule 3 - don't not give out time frames because people will get angry that they don't have something to hold you to

Yeah I speculated something like this a while back - mostly as a joke - but after seeing The Curse, I think it is looking more and more like a plausable option.

Nothing says 'spa' quite like office complex ceiling tiles

The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure this retrack did start pretty close to the beginning of the winter season! I get that things take time but for it to take 5 months, have the track arrive on site, Thorpe attempt to install and find out it doesn't fit and have to send it back for a replacement... really doesn't look all that good on Taziker. By extension it doesn't necessarily look good on the park either, but I suppose at the end of the day it's totally down to Taziker to ensure the project gets delivered on time.

Come on then lads, what's gonna come first? Colossus or Ghost Train? Thorpe seem to love to give these ambiguous 'opening spring' estimations this season!

I really don't think the 'shade' was intentional, but I get what they were trying to say. I think they're basically saying that Towers are doing an entire marketing campaign around the retrack to keep things interesting, whereas Thorpe just wanted the project to be undertaken and completed as quickly as possible to ensure people can keep riding it throughhout the year, therefore they have no interest in doing any special marketing projects to coincide it. I feel like once they've got another coaster at the park to eat up some of the queues that having Colossus closed for a prolonged period of time would be the most beneficial time for a complete retrack - whether that happens or not is another question entirely.

Anyone else concerned that with Taziker taking the track back to, what I would imagine, grind it down a little or solder a little extra on so it actually fits might actually... make the ride experience worse? The trouble with not retracking the entire thing (and now essentially having two different tracks from two different manufacturers) is that it runs the risk of the different bit of track being substantially different. I know it clearly wasn't viable for the park to do an entire refit of the attraction at the moment - but I feel like if the new track rides horribly it will ruin the experience further, but also if it rides smooth as butter it will stick out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the attraction? Hopefully Taziker do a stellar job, but I suppose this is always a worrying prospect with a project like this.

I've heard through the grapevine that Intamin would've only done the retracking if the park agreed to an entire coaster rebuild - much like the Nemesis retrack - and not just small portions of the track over time. With Exodus over the horizon, finance at the park is obviously very closely observed right now and the park likely won't want to make any big purchases until Exodus and the surrounding area (flat rides would be nice!) are complete. So I suppose from a financial point of view, Taziker were the only real option and their proven success with The Big One's retrack probably also helped finalise that decision. Definitely agree that an Intamin rebuild, complete with new trains, would be the much better option. Sik looks to have gone down a treat at Flamingo Land and apparently rides amazingly - so a like-for-like Intamin rebuild of Colossus (maybe even with the cable lift! 😍) with Sik-style lap restraints would've given the coaster a whole new lease of life. Perhaps it's because Colossus, being the park's oldest coaster, is probably looking to retire some time in the distant future - and therefore pumping loads of money into a coaster retrack that (in all probability) wouldn't bring any more custom to the park and therefore would'nt make financial sense to do, when building a brand spanking new coaster in its place in a good few years time would drive swarms of customers to the park.

I'm very, very sceptical for a Spring opening to be perfectly honest with you (and until we get another Silkstone or official Thorpe Park video showing the progress inside I will remain sceptical). We all know how over-ambitious parks usually are with their attraction deadlines, and if this Ghost Train retheme is even half as ambitious as they're leading on (removing the hanging carriage scene etc) then I would be massively surprised if deconstruction and reconstruction managed to only take up the winter season and a portion of opening season - I would probably say that a summer opening is much, much more likely... but I'd love to eat my hat on that one.

I hope it does, but I don't think it will. I've got a feeling they're going to be gutting the attraction out pretty much entirely and refitting with completely new scenes across the board - which is disappointing because I really did love the fake shop ending - it was so unique! As for images of the demon costume, I don't think there are any online (or at least if there are, they are extremely scarse), so THIS is probably your best preview of it: (taken from Jack Silkstone's POV when the attraction closed) The low light really doesn't do it any justice as the costume was essentially in total disrepair as far as I'm aware in the later years of the attraction, hence why they hardly (if ever!) used it in the years leading up to its closure.

I know for certain at least one of them sold at auction last year (not sure if it was a job lot, I remember seeing it and posting about it in the DBGT thread)

Wouldn't really class those as antiques per se, but about as close as you would get to one in a theme park I suppose... but the point still stands that the majority of the general public are not going to see that sign and thing "Oooh! I'll grab a nice new antique dining table whilst I'm here!"

Nobody - I repeat, nobody - is entering a shop in a theme park expecting antiques.

Yeah I mean it is the same situation every year for the most part, but this year's passholder event was by far the biggest disappointment in a long time (probably not helped by the weather either to be honest, but that's at least one thing I can't pin the blame on Thorpe for 😂). Having zero real indoor attractions open for a start other than Black Mirror (eugh) and Angry Birds 4D (double eugh) was dire. Thorpe is a UK theme park, opening fairly early in the year, rainfall is to be expected. I understand that maintenance overruns sometimes, but the state of the lineup this year was dire. The Walking Dead is always a great attraction to break up the day and makes for great shelter in the rain, so it's a real shame it wasn't ready for passholder day. Ghost Train is another one that was tremendous for that and annoyingly I think construction work started on that right at the last minute again, in typical Thorpe fashion, so I think it'll probably open late spring if it actually does open on target - but Thorpe don't seem to be overly enthusiastic about it even opening in April, so think we're still a fair way off seeing that open to be honest. Wouldn't surprise me if it got pushed to an early summer opening either. As cool as it was to see Stealth rollback three times, having it shut for the rest of the day after that when the coaster lineup was already barely limping was a major blow. That literally then just left SAW and The Swarm operating (occasionally, breakdowns were extremely frequent) which, as expected, caused colossal queues. Was it just me or were the queuetime boards horrendously wrong all day too? Every time I looked at SAW the queue time was advertised at 30 minutes, but ended up waiting 45-60+ minutes every time. The Swarm was advertised at 25 minutes and again actually ended up being closer to an hour. I think having the single rider queue for SAW is a great idea, but imo very poorly executed (although I have no idea how else Thorpe could implement it, so I suppose I can't really complain). Last year they cut the queue at the entrance to the building, only filtering people inside once they had let the single riders and fast track riders through, which I think worked much better. This year, they were filtering people into the building and stopping them at the bottom of the stairs - which meant you were stood in the entrance corridor, with the shotguns going off every few minutes, for 20+ minutes at a time... which is just as jarring as you'd expect. In hindsight it's all little nitpicks on my part and I feel bad for picking on Thorpe a lot of the time, but after travelling for an hour and a half to get there (excluding the extra hour and a half it would've taken if I was travelling from my actual home and not my parents' place) I can't help but feel like the whole day was a bit of a bust.

Suppose it could be, but this was in the actual gated off queue line for Ghost Train next to the curtain to get into the preshow 👀