Time to give a few thoughts on this after mulling over it for a day:
Overall, I'm positive. I think Thorpe is finally beating the big drum with this investment, building a very large coaster. It will be more than 70 meters tall, that's big by every standard. It will be visible from far away with a very distinct silhouette, and certainly stay a headline attraction at the park for many years.
Initially I thought it was rather on the short side. Perhaps that's still technically correct. But that's if you see it as a traditional Hyper coaster, which usually have very long track lengths. I realized that coasters can be quite tall and still quite short without anybody batting an eye over it. It helps to think of this coaster not as a lengthy Hyper, but as a Dive Machine. This is not a coaster like Shambhala or DC Rivals, it's more akin to Griffon or Valkyria. High up, tall drop, invert a bit, splashdown, brakes. It's not unusually short for its size if viewed from that perspective. Still, one could also argue that Dive Machines actually are quite short.
It is interesting to see the long perspective here too. I think we can say for fairly certain that this is not a coaster Thorpe will try to surpass for the foreseeable future - nor do I see any other park in the UK try to do so either. We established before the announcement that Thorpe is the only park in the country with the means to build something like this, and once they have one I don't think they will be in a hurry to outdo it. They don't have the room, the coaster is filling a relatively narrow niche, and there are no competitors to steal the title. Going out on a limb, I'd say it's fairly likely that Exodus will remain the tallest coaster in the UK in 2040 or even 2050. It will be "the big coaster" at Thorpe for a long time. The park's next coaster - whenever that may be - probably won't try to compete with it in that respect.
In other words: expect no traditional hyper for the UK for the foreseeable future. Unless BPB gives The Big One an RMC treatment of sorts, I guess, but heaven knows where they'd get that sort of money from.
Exodus will be an addition worth celebrating, and one that will be a staple of the park's lineup for several decades, but I hope Thorpe won't be resting on its laurels after building it. It does address the issue that the park hasn't received a significant new attraction in many years, but Thorpe still faces other challenges. Continuous renewal is necessary to keep the park up to shape in the long run, and the addition of one big coaster won't address the state of the rest of the park. As I've said numerous times before, Thorpe has a few issues with its park layout, and the bulk of the attraction lineup stems from a short but intense construction boom around the turn of the millennium. Replacing those rides is a big wave of costs looming in the future. By 2024 all of them will have been running for 20 years or more, and if they want to replace them all before the last one kicks the bucket, while spacing out the investments somewhat, they better begin with the first one soon-ish. For instance, the Slammer site could probably still hold a decent flat, whose addition will soften the blow of the loss of another flat elsewhere in the park. In that context, I find it interesting that Slammer remains on the schematics. There are still no immediate plans to clear the site, in other words?
Or put another way, a new big attraction at Thorpe is a good thing, but "maintaining" the existing attraction lineup by periodic refurbishments and replacements is equally as important. They shouldn't let the old attractions become too old or let parts of the park become stagnant and uninteresting for return customers over a long period of time.
So all in all, I think Exodus is a boost for the park, and a worthy addition, but in itself it won't fix Thorpe and I hope the investment will be followed up. If they blow the next five years' investment budgets on Exodus, then in five years the park will have one new coaster and five additional years of wear and tear to everything else, and that will become more and more noticeable and expensive to fix the longer they wait before doing so.
Overall, I'm positive. I think Thorpe is finally beating the big drum with this investment, building a very large coaster. It will be more than 70 meters tall, that's big by every standard. It will be visible from far away with a very distinct silhouette, and certainly stay a headline attraction at the park for many years.
Initially I thought it was rather on the short side. Perhaps that's still technically correct. But that's if you see it as a traditional Hyper coaster, which usually have very long track lengths. I realized that coasters can be quite tall and still quite short without anybody batting an eye over it. It helps to think of this coaster not as a lengthy Hyper, but as a Dive Machine. This is not a coaster like Shambhala or DC Rivals, it's more akin to Griffon or Valkyria. High up, tall drop, invert a bit, splashdown, brakes. It's not unusually short for its size if viewed from that perspective. Still, one could also argue that Dive Machines actually are quite short.
It is interesting to see the long perspective here too. I think we can say for fairly certain that this is not a coaster Thorpe will try to surpass for the foreseeable future - nor do I see any other park in the UK try to do so either. We established before the announcement that Thorpe is the only park in the country with the means to build something like this, and once they have one I don't think they will be in a hurry to outdo it. They don't have the room, the coaster is filling a relatively narrow niche, and there are no competitors to steal the title. Going out on a limb, I'd say it's fairly likely that Exodus will remain the tallest coaster in the UK in 2040 or even 2050. It will be "the big coaster" at Thorpe for a long time. The park's next coaster - whenever that may be - probably won't try to compete with it in that respect.
In other words: expect no traditional hyper for the UK for the foreseeable future. Unless BPB gives The Big One an RMC treatment of sorts, I guess, but heaven knows where they'd get that sort of money from.
Exodus will be an addition worth celebrating, and one that will be a staple of the park's lineup for several decades, but I hope Thorpe won't be resting on its laurels after building it. It does address the issue that the park hasn't received a significant new attraction in many years, but Thorpe still faces other challenges. Continuous renewal is necessary to keep the park up to shape in the long run, and the addition of one big coaster won't address the state of the rest of the park. As I've said numerous times before, Thorpe has a few issues with its park layout, and the bulk of the attraction lineup stems from a short but intense construction boom around the turn of the millennium. Replacing those rides is a big wave of costs looming in the future. By 2024 all of them will have been running for 20 years or more, and if they want to replace them all before the last one kicks the bucket, while spacing out the investments somewhat, they better begin with the first one soon-ish. For instance, the Slammer site could probably still hold a decent flat, whose addition will soften the blow of the loss of another flat elsewhere in the park. In that context, I find it interesting that Slammer remains on the schematics. There are still no immediate plans to clear the site, in other words?
Or put another way, a new big attraction at Thorpe is a good thing, but "maintaining" the existing attraction lineup by periodic refurbishments and replacements is equally as important. They shouldn't let the old attractions become too old or let parts of the park become stagnant and uninteresting for return customers over a long period of time.
So all in all, I think Exodus is a boost for the park, and a worthy addition, but in itself it won't fix Thorpe and I hope the investment will be followed up. If they blow the next five years' investment budgets on Exodus, then in five years the park will have one new coaster and five additional years of wear and tear to everything else, and that will become more and more noticeable and expensive to fix the longer they wait before doing so.
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