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Thorpe Park's Old Days


Frankie

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Was this long enough ago that I can jest about the Phantom of Liam White's ear haunting Thorpe without being a monster?

Also:

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Wow progress. 

Behind the 2 ticket booths you can see that canopy building is the same structure that's there now, but roofed and with the 3 turrets added. The electronic display is funny.

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There are lots of water effects on Rumba that have been removed fairly recently or that just don't work.

There was the waterfall and leaking pipes just before you go into the tunnel, the waterfall on the side of the trough on the straight section heading towards the tunnel, water sprayers in the tunnel (not the waterfall, there used to be small sprayers which got you as you went through), three water jets just before the lifthill and I'm sure the shower actually used to work!

Rumba is so dull these days, literally nothing happens.

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I've always thought that the roads were designed to be theming, since the old areas ('Central Park' was one, the names of others escape me) leant themselves to having 'roads'.

Could of course be wildly wrong and it might have been due to a more boring / practical reason, but that's the logical explanation I've always thought of.

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Yeh I think you're right, they are supposed to be roads with pavements as part of the park's original design. Not to suit any particular theme as such, it's just another remnant of the rather plain or dated way the park was originally planned/built. This was well before the idea that even the paths and buildings are part of a total experience came about properly in the UK, at a time when most UK parks were very geometrically planned and quaint looking.

 

I'm thinking mostly of the old 80s 'central' area which kind of 80% still exists under the surface.

 

Of course they all function as real roads most the time when visitors aren't on park.

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Sorry, I was born 20 years after the 80's so I don't know where the old Central Park area was. Can anyone tell me which current area used to be known as Central Park?

 

Everything from Tidal Wave to Rumba Rapids basically... Whilst it fits thematically into Amity Cove, it's always been a tad questionable around Calypso, though it doesn't really matter...

 

I don't get the book reference thing...

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I was born 15 years after the 80s so not totally clued up, but doing some digging the blocks of buildings in the centre of the park was the imaginatively named 'central' area. It's actually more interesting than you think as all of those buildings once housed a lot of different things, and the facades once very eclectically decorated and diverse.

 

Can anyone shed some more light on these old buildings...?

 

KFC/arcade ("Amity Hotel") building was Space Station Zero & Carousel Kingdom once upon a time. There was also a fountain square out the back, where the path up behind Detonator is today, which is now gone.

 

The building was about twice the length, going right across over the Detonator area and ending near the Nemesis Inferno entrance. This second half of the building housed Wicked Witches Haunt, it's kind of difficult to picture the exact footprint compared to today, unless you look at old aerial photos from before the 2000 fire.

 

Then on the opposite side of the 'road' was the more European styled buildings, now the Pizza Hut, Burger King, toilets and 4D cinema. These were originally a theatre (now Angry Birds), the Thorpe Radio station, a set of restaurants and I'm not sure what's on the upper level. Obviously the facades on this building have been drastically altered from the old Central design, becoming 'calypso', 'pirates', 'Angry Birds' and 'Amity Cove' at one time or another. Most the exterior detail is gone, painted over multiple times and just all rather difficult to work out how it used to be.

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Am I going mad, but sure until a few years ago, there was an iron age hut on the western side of the park - almost behind the VIP hospitality tent. Looking at Google earth its long gone, possibly as part of Swarm construction. Used to be able to see it from Tidal Wave before Stealth boxed it in.

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