2025 Season

[Parm Pap]

sparkle might not be afforded, so names are new and cheap, and what is old is new again, half of 10 is fresh, half of 10 is hello, delivering the food, one day

 

 

bombombombombombombombombombombombombombom where's the bom bom?

[MattyMoo]

Going once, twice, 10 times and SOLD, auction has finished and there's money in the (paint) pot.

That track is a right bobby dazzler. Orange? No, just rust.

[Cal]

Passholder day has been announced for Sunday 16th March.

 

Park is open 11am - 7pm which is nice, interesting as don’t think I’ve ever seen them open after 10am.
 

Would love to see some more of this, opening later and staying open later. 11am - 10pm would be great for fright nights. 

[JoshC.]

21 minutes ago, Cal said:

Passholder day has been announced for Sunday 16th March.

 

Park is open 11am - 7pm which is nice, interesting as don’t think I’ve ever seen them open after 10am.
 

Would love to see some more of this, opening later and staying open later. 11am - 10pm would be great for fright nights. 

 

The last time I can recall the park opening after 10am was for Fright Nites 2003, when they did 11am-11pm. Still, a long time ago!

 

In any case, it's been a long time since the park did a passholder day, so it's lovely to see them do one again. The thing with these sort of days (ie ones at the start of season) is that the money they don't earn from standard entrance tickets is sort of recouped by the fact passholders tend to spend more than average on their first visit of the year due to new merchandise. Plus, it helps bring value to the annual pass (despite it already being great value) and added satisfaction. So it is win win.

 

A 7pm close giving the opportunity for a dusk ride or two is a lovely bonus too, and it's good to see the park continuing their experiment of offering later closing times. Hopefully that can continue. 

 

I also agree about Fright Nights: it would be interesting to see the park explore 11am-10pm at the very least. I don't know how realistic it is to happen, since one of the things that ties the park's hands is the number of under 18s working at the park. Equally, the park simply seem to have veered away from running rides till 10pm: they don't even do it for buy outs or their VIP/Press events. But it would be interesting to see.

[Benin]

Haven't the Passholder Days historically been terrible though?

 

For all the parks.

[Mark9]

On 2/25/2025 at 8:45 AM, Benin said:

Haven't the Passholder Days historically been terrible though?

 

For all the parks.

 

 

Yep, parks normally pretty quiet as they restrict numbers but the RAP queues are about there hours long now. 

[JoshC.]

Yeah tbf Thorpe have historically had mediocre Passholder days at the start of the season. Their Fright Nights Passholder events in the past were usually well run, but the start of season ones were a cocktail of some or all of the following: first day teething issues, being too busy, having too many RAPs, not everything being ready, expectations being too high.

 

Hopefully the park are aware of past mistakes and have better luck this time round.

[Cal]

I’ve had some good days at the Thorpe ones back in the day, and the Fright Nights passholder events I did were good too. 
 

Seen some terrible reviews from Chessington ones but Chessington is always terrible. 
 

I’ll probably go to this one with it being a 7pm close, depending on the ride availability they post nearer the time. 

[JoshC.]

Attraction Source visited Thorpe this week and have some updates: https://www.attractionsource.com/2025/02/18/thorpe-park-2025-closed-season-update/

 

-Beach work paused, with small side potentially opening this summer

-A small area by the Marquee has been designated as a rest area for Guide Dogs

-Ghost Train cafe is having more seats installed where the shop was

-Colossus repaint: airtime hill, corkscrews and turnaround to the quad twist

 

Definitely a quieter close season compared to last year, but not all that surprising

[MattL28]

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

[Inferno]

A shame to see the Hyperia’s area is still a mess, even now.  Yes it’s better with the turf, but really fences are needed all the way around the plaza…  and there are still swathes of dirt shrouding the queue on the video there.

Interesting to hear that they’re deciding on the future of the splashdown shortly. 
Progress is progress though I suppose.
 

Overall though the park looks good! Pleased to see Colossus all painted (well mostly!)

 

Thorpe seem to be a long way ahead of the other Merlin parks when it comes to presentation and upkeep at the moment.

[Mark9]

Just so I understand, Colossus repaint is now a three year project whilst Six Flags have repainted multiple larger rollercoasters over the last two months (2 Goliaths, Panthera and Dominator just off the top of my head). Meanwhile at Thorpe, Inferno still looks like ass and they are deciding if a water feature that worked for about three weeks has any future. And this is the best of the Merlin trio?

 

We really are desperate for any good news at all at this point aren't we. 

[JoshC.]

5 hours ago, Mark9 said:

We really are desperate for any good news at all at this point aren't we. 

 

 

 

The Hyperia water feature scenario is pretty rubbish. 

 

-It's a Creative vs Operations debacle. Creative / MMM seemingly put in a water feature, with little consultation with the park on whether it will be sustainably manageable with their budget / restraints

-Of course, why something as relatively simple as a set of water fountains isn't sustainably manageable (it's the same with Swarm) is something which needs asking

-The jets haven't worked since...June/July? Why are the park still making a decision of its future?

 

I fully understand how we've got here, but it doesn't make it particularly excusable. 

[Inferno]

It’s not great is it…

 

However Merlin strikes me as the sort of place that employs just about enough people to keep the wheels turning on a day to day basis… it could be the staff are simply saying “no more” if they physically don’t have the time or budget to deal with this sort of thing.

 

I get the impression that this sort of stuff relies on good will to get it sorted - with the redundancies and general shocking management at Merlin of late, good will is probably in short supply.

 

If I put myself in their shoes for a moment - think about how Hyperia was handed over from the project team - it was shambolic. Late, unreliable, and a huge burden in its first year, not to mention the fact that the area was completely unfinished. It looked to me like a bit of a ‘dump and run’.  I would be very annoyed if I was in operations and expected to take it on, on top of running the rest of the park.  It seemed a battle to just get and keep Hyperia running each day, so this poorly thought-out and unreliable water effect that only worked for five minutes could be the cherry on top I suppose.

 

Either way - what a load of rubbish…

[MattyMoo]

I fear for the HyperiaTurf if a fence isn't installed before park opening - but one would imagine a fence isn't coming because you probably wouldn't put the turf in first (although there is a gap where I guess one could be put in before start of the season. Hope so...)

 

I will not allow any complaints about a lack of splashdown effect on Hyperia until the new fire effect on Tidal Wave is operational, as this should be Merlin's - as a whole company - number one priority at this moment in time. The 2025 season depends on it.