MattL28

I am looking forward to this years Fright Nights and I think this year is going to be a great event. They have got it to a place where the event is consistent and has a range of indoor mazes and hopefully a few good scare zones and entertainment building on previous years. Smaller queues and more consistent experiences have been the trend over the past 4 years. I am worried however about next year in which RWS are going to take control of the event and experience. How much input does the park have into the event anymore creatively…. Thorpe Park is an outlier in which you can see this event is someone’s/ a group of people’s baby. The themes have been created by the same people which a consistent aim. Now it moves to another company which doesn’t have the same passion or knowledge about the event. I just hope we don’t go back to outdoor lower quality mazes again. It’s worrying as Thorpe doesn’t need an external entertainment provider as they basically only do fright nights.

I think there’s a discussion to be had around permanent maze spaces. Theres a higher cost to create the mazes in permanent spaces. For stitches and survival games this is even more apparent. The quality of mazes has gone up and it saves them setting mazes up every year. However because of the high cost and its that it’s a permanent feature. It has to operate for quite a few years and you start getting bored of mazes. Trailers for example, I see everyone complaining that it’s still here and it’s defintely one of the weaker mazes too. However it has to come back to make it worth it

According to a LinkedIn, A new role at Thorpe Park has been created: Creative Manager - overseeing creative maintenance across the park, while continuing to support the conceptualisation of future Fright Nights, as well as new projects, land developments, and ride rethemes. The person is quite well known, but I’ll leave that to linked in. It’s interesting to see a role as such created in the current climate and will be interesting to see how much impact they have on implementing changes and maintaining theming. That’s is something key to all Merlin parks as MMM can create something really good and the parks let it go downhill. Also very interesting in this current climate is the mention of lands and ride rethemes. I mean there’s not much at Thorpe which could be rethemed other than the walking dead which is long rumoured to be next. The rest have been rethemed in the past couple of years.

There was a post on LinkedIn from an BALPA event hosted at Thorpe Park. This graph shows the direction they want Thorpe Park to take. It’s quite simple and fairly obvious but also I’m glad they are taking that direction in becoming the thrill park, nothing else. The graph also shows the way they want to improve revenue and the way they’ve done it. A few things: 2021-2023 it says “event led strategy” and in 2025+ it says “event development” to me it suggest Thorpe management want to and the plan is to bring back events. It was never the plan to drop them from Thorpe’s side. Also they state multiple times how they are keen to remove IP. I hope the management outlasts the cuts as when funding does come back, we need them to push forward with these goals as ultimately this is the correct way forward.

Currently Thorpe has no SBNO attractions and they did well to make it that way over the past couple of years. Hopefully sbno attractions don’t happen again!

Just a general observation/thought. I find my enthusiasm & excitement for Thorpe Park/ Merlin parks muted this year. It’s just simply “open”, no new things to do, no events to change things up every few months, no dramas or issues. No 2025 TV advert, no real advertisement. No communication from parks e.g passholder page. Simply there’s nothing going on and nothing going to happen in the near future (excluding fright nights). There’s no evolving, it’s a difficult one as we had a period of investment and events. To simply going back to basics and providing what they have already. This is my first season since becoming a passholder which there has been no events or new attraction to keep it entertaining. I suppose what I’m asking, is this normal? Down periods in years gone by, with not much happening.

The recovery procedure needs to be changed in addition to more permanent changes to ensure it doesn’t happen as much as possible A platform around the track which it valleys in. It also needs to be able to pulled through the track somehow. I know they are pretty good at removing the train quickly but once it’s on one train. It’s so slow and takes them a while to put it back together and test. Of course it would be better if theres a more permanent solution to prevent stalling. Which either lies in increasing lift hill speed even more or adding weight to the train on the front. The videos I’ve seen shows it was incredibly close to making it through the outer bank.

Lack of sculptures is annoying, and possibly less theming/ landscaping. I get it on the planning application front, just really don’t want it to be a flat tarmac area. Hopefully it’s all worth it!

The fenced side looks really nice and really good! Definitely what they needed. I just find it strange the area where the stage was hasn’t been touched and looks ugly. Also the F+B side to fearless valley still has wood chips, everyone was using that to cut through to Hyperia. Ideally that all needed fencing and turfing too

It is 20%

According to the app- Rumba Rapids will not return until May 2025 🎉😂 I love the 3 months of operating it gets every year. It’s an Opex saving clearly which makes sense queue times wise. However the amount of winter maintenance to operate for 3 month, is it even worth it? They can get away with it because it’s location, I bet they’d love to do the same with tidal wave but that’s in the middle of the park. Poor decision, the beach is open longer.

In some sense it was going to be hard to beat last closed season. However, it’s clear to me that budgets from Merlin have affected most of it. The management at Thorpe have still tried their best with it. For Example - Landscaping looks really good - They’ve built a fence around slammer and painted it to fit in with the existing fencing - Jetwashing all the areas of the park With existing equipment these are very easy upgrades but not always done before. Realistically need more money to be unlocked to: - refurb entrance - new ride for slammer site - removal of rumba rapids

I assume it will be similar to 2018/2019 with a few roamers if not needed for rides.

If anything, I don’t think these plans will continue to go ahead with the cuts to entertainments and current financial enviroment

Jack has posted a video covering the removal of Slammer. The first thing which comes to my mind is that I highly doubt 2025 Merlin would have committed to this project. I assume they already had gone too far with plans to back out and realistically they’d have to pay for it one day. Another thing to note is that Jack states the site won’t be used for quite a while, I predict it won’t before 2030. You can see that Colossus has had its repaint, hopefully they’ve done the rest of it. Hyperia has grass planted around the plaza area (but looks like weeds and still needs fencing. I am sure there are other minor updates around the park but definitely nothing major. The discussion of Thorpe Parks future is a long discussion with the Merlin group as a whole cutting entertainment. This time last year it was clear, however I believe no more than ever the future is unclear. They admit to knowing they must invest via management and planning applications but will finance allow?