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Samurai


Phill

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Only managed to open for about an hour today. They tried to reopen it a few times after several test cycles but each time after around 1 or 2 cycles with people it stopped again. It spent most of the day slowly rotating in the loading position, and engineers were clearly trying to sort it most of the day.

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Year I would say buy a new one too.

Everyone says they aren't designed to run constantly in theme park environments, but thinking about it. It was opened originally in 1999 and its only been the last 4 or 5 years its started to bugger about, so they could buy a new one and have it last at least another ten years, maybe longer as after all in 1999 topscans were relatively new meaning they are probably built better now.

It is a very popular ride at Thorpe Park and I always here people talk about it.

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Only managed to open for about an hour today. They tried to reopen it a few times after several test cycles but each time after around 1 or 2 cycles with people it stopped again. It spent most of the day slowly rotating in the loading position, and engineers were clearly trying to sort it most of the day.

Nowa days samurai only opens for a couple of months before it breaks down and they have to close it for a while. Even with the rubbish settings samurai is on, I still enjoy it. I can't really see samurai staying at thorpe for much longer with the issues it has so as everyone says I think the only thing thorpe can and should do is to completely replace it with a newer model.
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I think Samurai should be replaced in 2014 because the ride is getting old and has been at the park nearly ten years now in addition to the five years it had at Chessington which is why next year would be a good time to replace and update Samurai. Who knows, maybe thorpe could market the new model and just say Samurai new and improved for 2014 ;) .

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Year I would say buy a new one too.

Everyone says they aren't designed to run constantly in theme park environments, but thinking about it. It was opened originally in 1999 and its only been the last 4 or 5 years its started to bugger about, so they could buy a new one and have it last at least another ten years, maybe longer as after all in 1999 topscans were relatively new meaning they are probably built better now.

It is a very popular ride at Thorpe Park and I always here people talk about it.

It was 'buggering' about after 4 years of hard operation at Chessington, for example it spent a lot of 2003 closed for maintenance as it was being run into the ground. They thought the refurbishment would extend its life a lot longer then it has proven to. Whilst a new one would make sense, I would hope that Thorpe are slightly more ambitious with a replacement ride.

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Since when are we getting rid of samurai?

If you read the few posts above there is a discussion about how knackered it is and how long it will last. Since then.

I know it is all speculation, but something must be quite seriously wrong the way it has been behaving so far this year. I'd be happy with I direct replacement if they could run it properly, but unless they are now manufactured more robustly I think that would be unlikely.

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I've found that the pods rotate more easily this season, not sure whether that's down to not riding it in a while or whether the pods have had a bit of attention over closed season though..

Samurai is still quite a popular attraction, so it's unlikely it would be outright replaced or removed. What would the cost of a new topscan be though? And would it be worthwhile enough to see a difference in the way it's run and how long the park would want to keep the attraction? To be honest, I think we won't see it replaced by a newer model any time soon, because it will either lead to an increase in cost (which, of course, no business really wants), or replacing it instead of doing something else, which in itself could cause issues.

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Samurai is still quite a popular attraction, so it's unlikely it would be outright replaced or removed. What would the cost of a new topscan be though? And would it be worthwhile enough to see a difference in the way it's run and how long the park would want to keep the attraction? To be honest, I think we won't see it replaced by a newer model any time soon, because it will either lead to an increase in cost (which, of course, no business really wants), or replacing it instead of doing something else, which in itself could cause issues.

I dont think it would be worthwhile in the way that its run (I suspect it would still be run slower than it could be) but in terms of the rides reliability and engineers man hours spent on it it may well be worth it.

We saw them replace Zodiac (All be it with a 2nd hand model) for simular reasons, it wouldnt surprise me to much if they did this with Samurai.

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I dont think it would be worthwhile in the way that its run (I suspect it would still be run slower than it could be) but in terms of the rides reliability and engineers man hours spent on it it may well be worth it.

We saw them replace Zodiac (All be it with a 2nd hand model) for simular reasons, it wouldnt surprise me to much if they did this with Samurai.

Zodiac (the I) was a knackered old funfair ride. Zodiac (the II) was a brand new model from Huss. And lets be frank here, the motions an enterprise goes through are nothing in comparison to a top scan being run on even a low setting. We would literally be seeing history repeat itself if a new top scan was to be introduced.

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Yup, Samurai was closed all day... was watching it for a while, and it really couldn't park in line at the end of the ride before the arm is lowered back down!

When I visited a couple of weeks ago it was having issues with parking(as it always does) but this time it seemed a lot worse. We were riding and we spent about 5 mins trying to park and then the operator decided to try and re-park us by taking us back up to the top. We then spent another few minutes trying to park before we actually lowered. Most people were shouting to be let off but ovbiously no one seems to realise the issues samurai has...
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