The opening times for the 2026 season have appeared (subject to change). They're very similar to 2025: https://www.thorpepark.com/plan-your-visit/before-you-visit/opening-times/

Season starts on 27th March and finishing on 1st November, with 13 closed days during this time (mostly in September, with a couple of Wednesdays in April/May).

The park closes at 5pm on weekdays, 6pm on weekends and school holidays and 7pm in August.

Fright Nights starts on 2nd October and runs for 24 days up until 1st November, closing again at 9pm nightly.

They're not bad opening hours for what we have on offer in the UK. I'll forever stay in the camp of saying I'd want later closing times for Fright Nights still, and it would be nice to see them experiment again with later closes over summer. But for now, it feels positive that there's no reduction on the decent times that we currently have, especially given some of the wider uncertainty that Merlin feels like it gives off.

Have all their weekend RAP allocation been booked up yet? Obviously only GOOD parks have that nonsense happen.

Merlin have announced that they have contracted out the maintenance and operations side of the park to OCS. They must have looked at the roaring customer satisfaction success of the food and beverage side of the buisness and decided lets have more of that.

A theme park lives and dies by the customers experience. If you contract out every aspect that the customer deals with you have no control over your business.

On 12/18/2025 at 9:22 AM, Benin said:

Have all their weekend RAP allocation been booked up yet? Obviously only GOOD parks have that nonsense happen.

If Annual Passes still exist then you can bet all the RAP will be gone.

Just saw a monks walk update on TikTok and I know you can’t see everything from there but I find it frustrating that we are already back in the 2018-2022 period in terms of new things and investment.

There is just nothing going on when a lot could be going on. No Colossus repaint, no flat ride for the old slammer site, no replacement for ghost train, No amity beach update.

I miss when Merlin pretty much advertised ‘new for 20xx’ every year, no matter how minor. I appreciate that their thinking is that Hyperia is a big draw but it is pretty stagnant park now for returning visitors.

Arguably it is in the worst period in terms of investment and new things. 2019 onwards you had multiple new events each year, so you could look forward to each part of the season.

In comparison to 2022/23 when they had the Facebook group, now they litterally have nothing to say and if it was still running you’d get quite depressing and boring responses.

What is next for Thorpe Park?

I agree it is a huge shame that there is quite literally nothing going on.

Although to be fair over the last decade there has been a lot of rubbish advertised as “new” - the various year-round mazes and some of the events for example. The absence of those sort of things isn’t that bad in my opinion, and realistically something new isn’t needed every year. Not many parks do that do they.

In recent years they have also made a lot of improvements to the areas other than the rides - the toilets to name one example.

Thorpe is probably one of the (if not THE) best Merlin park in terms of general upkeep.

I agree though that it is a shame there doesn’t appear to be anything at all happening again. It’s been a few years now since they’ve been able to boast anything notably new.

I wonder if Colossus will finally be finished in the next couple of months at least? Despite all the cuts to spending at Merlin I’d at least expect that to be done before opening, as well as Zodoac getting sorted.

I wonder if the beach project will ever happen now? I can’t help but think the money would be better put towards a larger project.