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worst theme park experience


kinnaird

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1) Parc Asterix existing.

2) Thorpe 2006, first week or so of the season (possibly even Stealth opening day, can't quite remember) about 80% of the park closed from about 11.00hrs because of a power cut in a massive never ending storm. They gave us all free return tickets on exit though, unheard of in those days when park tickets weren't thrown around like confetti.

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I have seriously been so lucky with breakdowns etc.

What would have been a catastrophic day for me, going to Alton Towers and having Nemesis break down about 11 before I got to it, and having it closed right til the end of the day... fortunately they opened it about 5pm and got an extra 20mins extra ride time on it!

Legoland in 2010 october half term, about midday the whole park had a power cut, didn't realise at the time there was a powercut but was quite funny watching the cars / buses in miniland losing signal and going off track and crashing into each other and into the water haha - in all seriousness though most of the rides were closed for the majority of the day with a few opening in the afternoon, obviously due to the length of time re testing and opening the rides, had such big queues, and worst of all the fireworks got cancelled :(

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Worst themepark experiences for me are,

3/ Legoland during very busy days. The park feels almost unbearable when all the rides have long queues. Visited days like that in 2005 and 2012 and ended up leaving the park at like 3/4pm because the queues were too bad.

2/ Nearly vomming on Samurai after eating too many chocolates and drinking too much cocacola before going on.

1/ Losing a brand new camera I received as an 18th birthday present at Tivoli World. The camera was more than a few weeks old and disappeared without trace in the last couple of hours I was at the park. The most depressing thing was, I only realised I lost it he next day, because I thought someone else in the group was looking after it.

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1) Parc Asterix existing.

2) Thorpe 2006, first week or so of the season (possibly even Stealth opening day, can't quite remember) about 80% of the park closed from about 11.00hrs because of a power cut in a massive never ending storm. They gave us all free return tickets on exit though, unheard of in those days when park tickets weren't thrown around like confetti.

I'll add to mine

3) The moment, while watching the end of season laser and firework show at Chessington, when they announced as part of the show that Terror Tomb was replacing the Fifth Dimension next season and it dawned on me I had just been on my absolute favorite ride at the time ever for the very last time. A little bit of the 13 year old me died inside.

what's so bad about Parc Asterix ?

To save ma having to think about the horror of it again it is on this old trip report.

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My worst experience has good to be Chessington in 2012. Although I was with someone with an exit que pass, we got an awful ride count due to the ques for the exit pass(As it was packed), and basically everything breaking down throughout the day. On top of the breakdown, there was thunder and lightening a lot of the after noon closing all the rides, apart from Tomb Blaster and Bubble Works.

After the day, it was on there website saying that you could use the tickets again to go back, but that was no use to me as I'm a merlin annual passholder.

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1) Parc Asterix existing.

*Insert relevant defence of Asterix here, though as with any park, it can be complete HELL admission*

I would say queueing 2.5 hours for X at SFMM was near the top of my worst list... I dunno really, I'm trying to avoid the atypical "Any visit to Thorpe between 2005-2012" answer that would essentially fill out anyone's list of awful park experiences...

Erm, yeah, sorry Thorpe, but your Half Term days win out, what with having no rides open, over an hour wait for food because staff forgot my order, and worst of all no salt (and this wasn't even the fabled day a couple years back)...

Even BAKKEN was better than that day, and Bakken was so bad we forced ourselves to spend 2 hours there to feel like having value for money!

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my worst experience was when I went to alton towers in 2010. Staff were rude and had terrible attitude. I didn't know where the disabled entrance for thirteen was so I asked this person and they were rude and just said "oh over there". Even though thorpes staff can be slow the times ive been they show an intrest in your day and are usually chatty and nice.

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First ever trip to Thorpe, hot summer day, school holidays, my expectation to get on all the rides, three pieces of KFC chicken followed by Slammer, and my sheer naivety.

I will say no more as to why the day didn't go as well as I had originally anticipated.

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1. Queuing 3 and a half hours for Stealth during a fright night, and it breaking down in the station and closing for the rest of the day - This was probably 2009/10

2. Portaventura (I went before Shambhala was built so just remember thinking 'Poor reliability and poor rides, except for Dragon Khan')

3. Queuing for Smiler in the heat of summer last year and it breaking down when in the projection room, so hot I could have fainted

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Probably for me was back in 2008 when my family went to DLP one off those days happened to be a peak day and to say the place was rammed was a little bit on an understatement, we where is the studios bit and because pretty much most of the rides has a crap capacity, I got on like 3 rides all day, my worst ride count to date, closely followed by only 4 rides at thorpe when my school went on the day where it seemed that every school in the bloody country came down, didn't help that the staff were terrible and I only managed to 4 because of fasttrack for 2(Swarm, Stealth). It was my first trip since going in 2009 when saw opened and I'm honestly surprised I wasn't put off Thorpe for life, but I went in august again that year in 2012 and it was amazing, got on everything, did all of the coasters 2 or 3 times, it was bliss and that saved thorpe for me and I wouldn't have stayed on this forum as long as I have if it wasn't for that trip so good on you thorpe, well 1 time atleast :P

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1. Thorpe Park, Annual Pass day 2011. Park ran out of food, very very busy and had for some reason queued 2 and a half hours for Storm Surge. Never again.

2. Thorpe Park, Saw open day 2009. Stealth, Saw (open for an hour), Slammer, Rumba and Loggers closed all day. Poor Inferno having to do all the work.

On both occasions left after about an hour.

3. Bakken. Miserable amusement park with terrible rides. Lasted two hours.

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Just remembered some more bad experiences,

4/ Visiting Thorpe Park on a very busy day in 2011. It was mid July, so the place was rammed with school kids and queue ages for the rides and received a low ride count. Something like 6 rides in 8 hours (but can't remember), I know it didn't get to ride stealth, rush or any of the main water rides.

5/ Queung over three hours for Colossus on the same trip. It was raining and lots seats were broken and then some VIP guests made me wait even longer as they got instant ride access and had a couple of rides.

6/ Thorpe Park Annual Pass day 2011. My family had to renew their passes but they weren't sure if I was needed so I had to queue with them for a long 2 hours in the pouring rain. What was just as bad was I didn't get to do any rides when I was there because it was so busy, my family had enough and I had a play rehearsal in the afternoon, so I was very disappointed in everything about the day there.

7/ Inferno being closed most of the day on the 2014 opening weekend and not riding it, making it my first visit in eight years in which I haven't done the ride.

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Actually, John Lewis event at Thorpe Park was a highlight. There for 3hrs, did one ride (an evening event in 08 init).

There's always been some sort of niggle with my thorpe trips whenever I visit, usually because they're too anal to increase ride capacity to ensure people enjoy a good day out. I'm sorry, but one staff member to turn a 40min queue to a 5min queue really doesn't do anything but increase satisfaction. Muppets.

Probably a reason why thorpe is in the situation it is in now, and why I never visit.

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  • 4 months later...

*thread ressurection*

23rd December 2013. Me and my family booked to see 'Santa' at Legoland. Went in the morning and our appointment was at six. It was FREEZING. About three of the rides were open and we spent most of the time in a warm cafe with a muffin and some hot chocolate. Back in the cold, we finally went to our appointment- to find that we could of gone there much, much earlier. My fingers and toes were numb for ages. But hey, I got a free lego set out of it!

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After the fireworks one year, my family decided to stay until the park itself closed to avoid too much traffic geting out. Guess what? Everybody else had the same idea and it took us an hour and a half to get out the car park. Last year, to save time, we parked on a side road in Windsor Great park and watched them from there (behind some trees)

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1. Waiting the best part of 2 hours for Storm Surge back in 2011,

 

2. Waiting a solid 2 hours+ for The Swarm back in 2012, as I let my family convince me to go there first, even though I knew it was a bad idea,

 

3. First time I went on SAW, it broke down (surprise) and then they added cars and it was creeping up to the hour mark, I was still in the outside queue and it decided to POUR DOWN WITH RAIN- not even a little bit I mean like a torrential downpour of tropical proportions (but way more cold)- with one of SAW's resident pigeons perched in one of the holes mocking us,

 

4. Queuing for Inferno during FN last year in the (rather) freezing cold, watching the fastrackers gallivant up the stairs whilst we hadn't moved for a good 20 minutes,

 

5. Titanide at Terra Mitica. Nope. 

 

6. Queuing for The Minotaur's Labrinth at TM for far too long for such an anti-climatical dark ride-  the points system was ridiculous and corrupt and the sensors didn't pick anything up at all!  

 

7. Oh, and Thorpe's KFC; it gets so congested around lunch time especially (obviously) and when Luke and I went back in July the tills decided they'd had enough and only one was working  ^_^

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