Finally got some time to do this.
Anyway, a little over a week ago, I went to Thorpe Park in England, UK. I presume most of you are familiar enough with the park that I don't need to introduce the rides, and in any case others have done that better than me before. I don't think a straight-up list of the rides I rode would be very engaging either, and my pictures are not very good (at any rate, the battery on my phone gave out halfway through the day, so I didn't take many of them). So instead, let me just take you along on a ramble through the park from my perspective. It's an interesting little place, which does some things right and makes some ... confusing choices. I'll try to supplement my own poor photos with pictures found elsewhere, such as Google Maps. Anyway, let's Thorpe.
Transport to the park was pleasantly convenient: Find the right platform at Waterloo station, hop on a train, and wait until you arrive at the village with the unfortunate name Staines. From there, a bus will take you to the park. Interestingly, the bus crosses the Thames on the way, and there's actually only 200 meters of dry land between Fleet Lake (where Thorpe Park is situated) and the waters of the Thames. If you can wiggle through the right drainage pipes, it should theoretically be possible to swim from Thorpe Park into central London. The other way 'round would be considerably more difficult, I imagine.
I had last been at the park in 2009, during Easter break when the place was absolutely crammed. A friend and I queued for more than an hour to ride each of Stealth and Nemesis Inferno once, Saw had just opened and had a three-hour line, Colossus was broken down, and we queued for ages for the major flats. That wasn't a very productive day, so this time I was determined to make more out of it. I came on a Thursday as soon as the park opened, and practically every ride was practically walk-on. I decided to head for Stealth first, figuring it would be the most likely to break down so I better get to it before it did.
On the way to Stealth, there will be some musings. You see, the entrance to this park is rather fascinating in its badness.
Thorpe Park has such a lovely outer entrance, with a bridge across the water, here captured by Google Street View. The bridge leads to the park's entrance dome, which I think is supposed to combine a souvenir shop, a restaurant and an arcade. It is crammed with coin-op machines including those terrible claw machines that are designed not to be able to grab prizes until a certain amount of money has been poured into them. Most of the time, buying the price directly on some Chinese website would probably cost less money than the machine asks for in the first place. Anyway, we'll come back to the claw machines later.
The machines weren't there the day Google went in early 2017, but you get the idea. Anyway, the dome is not a very interesting place. It's dark, the music is loud, and there is nothing to do there except spending money on faff or visiting the bathroom. So I went for the latter, since it had already been more than an hour since I left the hotel, and it was a few minutes left before the park properly opened. There was another claw machine placed outside the bathrooms. Sigh. Either way, I like the way each urinal and bathroom stall down there was branded with a ride. It lets you choose which ride to take a leak or a dump on. With Derren Brown's Ghost Train sufficiently watered, I went back up and headed for the bright light of those doors beckoning me into the park proper...
...umm ... what? I seem to have missed the entrance somehow. Why am I on a balcony? Where's the way into the park? Why am I behind the waterslides? This is the park entrance, right? I walked straight through the dome out of the main doors, I can see the rides off in the distance, but I'm behind the waterslides!
Yeah, Thorpe Park has a very confusing entrance area. Beyond the dome, it feels like you're suddenly dumped into the park's most remote backlot corner and tasked to figure out the way to the attractions yourself. Forget Disney's classic concept with a straight path leading you to the park's centrepiece, with sightlines to each of the main lands and obvious paths leading you there. Thorpe lets you see the attractions, but it doesn't exactly lead you into the park. Apparently, the right way to go after exiting the dome is to the left, following the balcony until you pass the restaurant's outdoor seating area(?!?), where this side path along the bushes will lead you to the central area:
Makes perfect sense. Thorpe Park's version of Main Street. It looks like you're headed down a maintenance road for another waterslide, but it's the fastest way to the center of the park. Where the waterslide is. Yeah, this place is confusingly laid out. Alternately, you can go to the right and follow a narrow path winding between two kiddy pools, that way will also take you to the main attractions.
As you can see, Thorpe has this big waterpark right between the entrance and the rest of the park, with various minor paths radiating out from the dome and winding behind a lot of stuff before they go anywhere. As seen in the pictures above, it's like everything is in the far distance when you enter the park, with no obvious way to get there. You just follow one of the paths that go behind a water attraction and hope there's some interesting stuff on the other side. Also note how no path seems to go for more than fifty meters in a straight line before you hit an intersection and have to jut out at another random angle.
Anyway, on to Stealth now. I just had to pass Amity Beach, walk between the two slidy-splashy water rides, up where a main street starts to form, it turns into Angry Birds Land halfway up the street for no conceivable reason, and then back into Amity Speedway when you enter Stealth's area.
Yay, Stealth! Second for second, it's clearly the best ride in the park. But those seconds are so, so few. You go "Launch - wheee!" to "Over the tophat - wheee!" to "Flying into the brakes - wheee!" and then the ride is over. Very fun all the way, but also very short. However, so was the queue, and operations were efficient. I got a front seat without queueing, and when I got off the ride on the offload platform, I could go straight onto the onload platform and sit down in the other train before it could dispatch. I got four or five rides in a row this way before remembering that other rides might build up a bit of a queue. So I decided to head to what would probably be the busiest coaster in the park, Swarm. As seen on the Google Maps photo above, it lies so close to Stealth they're practically touching, so there should only be a brief walk between them. Hang on a second, where does the path between them go?
As the park map helpfully showed me, I had to exit Amity Speedway, go through Angry Birds Land, back into Amity, around Tidal Wave, past Flying Fish, behind the waterslides (why is everything in this park behind a waterslide?) and up a small side path to get to Swarm. Half a kilometer to walk between rides that lie thirty meters apart. Not that I mind walking, but I find the planning pretty poor here. It seems like Thorpe Park was built without an overall layout idea in mind. Or the layout they went for was ridiculously poorly future-proofed. It looks like the first park you make in Rollercoaster Tycoon/Parkitect, where rides are plopped around willy-nilly at first, and then you have to build around them later and connect new rides to the main path network through a convoluted maze of pathways.
Anyway, Swarm. Yay, Swarm! The area is clearly well made and there is a consistent theme to it that they're pulling off pretty well. Ruined buildings and destroyed vehicles, and shipping containers because the Merlin top brass secretly wanted to work for Mærsk instead. Apart from its location in relation to the rest of the park, this is a pretty good area. It even had a fire truck that spit actual fire (they're supposed to do that, right?). Not a lot to do here unless you want to ride the coaster, but then again, in that case you probably wouldn't come out here in the first place. Also, the coaster is pretty good.
I think Swarm is a contender for best coaster in the park, and it might be somewhere in my top 10 as well (although this says more about my coaster count than Swarm's quality). It has great views from the lift hill, the wing rider position is very fun, it interacts well with its theming and is very smooth, but it also feels short. When the first set of brakes come up, you think "ah, yes, it's time for a little breather now before we meander back to the station", but then there's just one turn and the ride ends. Then again, it's worth riding twice because the other wing has somewhat different experiences, notably the swooping turns at the end of the ride and the inversion right off the lift hill.
Also, the operation booth is pretty well made. Kudos to the designers for an original idea. And to that guy for pulling off the sunglasses/beard combo so well.
After two rides on Swarm, I went on to another coaster I spent an hour and a half queuing for at the end of my last visit: Nemesis Inferno. It meant backtracking all the way back to Stealth, but at least I got to see more of the park. And pass behind the waterslides again.
Now this is how to do it right. A clear main street with an enticing piece of theming at the end, a so-called "weenie". Good use of sight-lines there, to draw guests to the mysterious object. Forced perspective is even employed to make it look like a mountain several miles in the distance. Okay, the execution isn't perfect, but it's a trick right out of Disney's playbook and it's pulled off well.
After some thiking, I've concluded that Nemesis Inferno is the best coaster in the park, edging ahead of Swarm. It wins due to its theming, lovely foliage and path interaction, plus the fact that it isn't miles away from everything else. It's a great fun, snappy ride, although I experienced some headbanging when I rode in the front. The restraints also felt very rigid and unforgiving, making it difficult to breathe - but that's probably the fault of my diet rather than of the designers. Easy on the chocolate, kids, it makes coasters worse in the long run. I was also surprised to see Nemesis' effects running, I've heard Merlin doesn't usually let that happen. Another surprise was how far apart Inferno's entrance and exit were: on completely opposite sides of the coaster. I only noticed that after I left the park, though, realizing I hadn't re-ridden Inferno despite the short queue.
Next on the list was Colossus. Man, what a run-down ride. It looks like it hasn't been painted since 1997 - quite a feat since it was built in 2002. As mentioned above, I didn't get to ride this back in 2009, so I was determined to give it a go now. I had heard bad things about it - even in 2009, when the ride rode like it was scarcely 25 years old - but how bad could it really be? One ride would surely be manageable. Also note the waterslide in the background, by the way. Everything in Thorpe is behind a waterslide.
I found this tree along the queue line. The hope is alive, folks! Remember that Orion at King's Island started with the word "GIGA" spelled out in the snow in - exactly! - a queue line! The cladding on the wall behind the tree is more evidence of the Merlin folks's secret dream of working at Mærsk.
So, how did Colossus ride? Well, let me provide a transcript of my thoughts as I rode it:
In the station): "Ouch, I'm pretty clamped down, or what? Perhaps it will be better when the ride is in motion?"
(On the lifthill): "Nope, still painful. But hey, the ride could be enjoyable."
(First drop and loop): "This isn't too bad?"
(Approximately halfway through the cobra roll): "Ouch! Ouch! My ears! Any my thighs!"
(Through the corkscrew): "That was painful, and I know there's one more of these! Oh no, make it stop!"
(Going into the barrel rolls): "Four more to go... Three... Oww, owww! Ah, heck, I forgot there's one more after the turn! Please, couldn't we go straight to the station without this faff?"
(At the end brakes): "Get me out of this thing! Now!"
I've heard the derogatory term "Colossucks" before, and it is pretty descriptive. From the painful restraints to the painful restraints and the painful restraints, this was not very fun to ride.
By the way, another bit of musing as we move on to the next coaster: The path winding through Colossus is one of the main thoroughfares of the park, but it still feels like a cramped, narrow back road. Look at how four supports are plonked in the middle of the path here. If you follow it up to the loop (the picture above) the path does an S-bend to weave around the track. And from the other side, it really doesn't give the impression of being the quickest path back to the entrance:
Now, this isn't really a bad thing, after all, it's pretty cool that the path winds through a coaster like that. But making it the main path? Especially when they could have had a lovely lakeside promenade around it? Also have a look at the loop, Google isn't perfect when it comes to image splicing. Although the loop might not have been quite like that (it was the smoothest part of the ride), I would certainly have believed it if it was the corkscrew instead.
There even is a path along the lake, you just have to slip behind the restaurant (no sign directs you here) and walk past Saw Alive, but that's not where the shops and stalls are. There isn't even a claw machine there, a sure sign that the path is completely abandoned by the park.
Anyway, next on the list was Saw. Another coaster I saw (heh!) back in '09, but didn't get to ride.
It was alright, I guess. I'm no big fan of horror, but it didn't take the theme too far (I think - I closed my eyes for the indoor portion of the ride). A decent layout but with some headbanging, and not much force to it. Its drop was surprisingly weak too. As if it needed a holding brake. The lift chain just whipped us over the top and then we were down before I could take in how tall or steep it was.
It gets bonus points for the hilarity of Jigsaw giving ride instructions, though. You can just imagine him as an acne-faced teenager in a colourful cap and T-shirt, calling out the kids who try to bring their phones on the ride. Or calling a mechanic when the ride breaks down, in that voice.
With this being the last of the major coasters, let's muse a little about theme too. By this point, it's hard not to notice a trend among Thorpe's rides:
Anyway, I had a ride on Samurai too:
It was alright at first, but by this point I had been in the park for an hour and a half riding attractions non-stop, and hadn't had any water since breakfast. Halfway through Samurai's ride cycle I realized I really needed to go lie down or I would throw up. So I stumbled into the Old Town kiddie area (why the heck is this all the way at the back of the park?) and sat there in the sunshine, reading a book I'd brought for the train ride. Afterwards I spent the rest of the day doing re-rides, as well as trying out Rumba Rapids (pleasant!), Rush (fun!) and Flying Fish (it exists!).
Walking back and forth across the park eventually made me realize it has a main area of sorts; it begins approximately at Storm Surge and continues up to the entrance of Nemesis Inferno. But everywhere else in the park manages the spectacular feat of feeling like a back area, a shortcut away from the busy parts. Everywhere feels like it's out of the way. There's hardly any signs you're moving from one area to another, or an intuitive way to get anywhere. You just find the small path behind the waterslide, which turns out to be the main path, and then you somehow get to your destination. I really can't see the logic in the way the park is laid out.
And then there's the claw machines. Let's do a lightning round:
Holy bleepin' bleep. It's not like there's one of them on every corner. There's four of them on every corner. And again, they are a total sham. These machines are constructed so that the claw will only apply sufficient force to grab and hold on to an item every so often. Most of the time, your skill is completely irrelevant, it's all down to chance whether the machine is physically able to catch an item. The question then becomes: Why are Thorpe keeping so many of them? Did they buy a hundred of these at a factory sale, or is there an actual demand for them? Is it really profitable to keep that many claw machines? Apparently so, otherwise they would have had fewer. I'm not sure if this speaks the most about the greed of the owners or the gullibility of the customers, but this many claw machines in one place is a symptom of something gone badly, madly wrong.
So, overall, what did I think of Thorpe Park? I actually liked it. It has a decent line-up of thrilling rides, and a large number of smaller flats that help fill out a day. There was a certain commitment to theme, if a little one-tracked. The food was affordable and competently made, which is way more than you can say about the food at TusenFryd. The park has some quiet areas where you can catch a breath between the thrill rides. And even some nicely themed buildings:
(Look! Stealth living up to its name!)
However, the layout of Thorpe Park is a complete mess. The water park is extremely badly located, it should have switched places with the Old Town or something, not blocking the entrance area. Even its main street is confusingly built, with game stalls blocking the sightlines and obscuring the otherwise nice themeing. And how come there are back alleys even in the main street? Why are the buildings even located so you can walk completely around them, when there's only themeing on two of the sides?
Swarm being located so far out on the fringe of the park seems like a strange choice, but it's a consequence of poor planning too. Hopefully one day the next island will be developed, and connected to Stealth. Storm Surge might be the most stupidly located ride I've ever seen, it completely dominates an area where it simply doesn't belong (a water slide in the dry park?!?) and hides away other attractions (like the X/TWD pyramid - to get there, you have to pass under a water slide).
And I noticed that the park has only really added two new attractions since 2009: Swarm and DBGT. It's not like its lineup suffers from the lack of anything, but a park lineup needs some renewal every now and then, and Thorpe feels overdue for something new. A total revamp of all of Amity could give the park a sense of order it's currently lacking, or the waterfront along Colossus could be developed. Come to think of it, Colossus itself is reaching the end of its lifespan already, and could do with a total replacement.
Overall, though, I had a nice day. Got a little motion sick, but also a great number of rides and two new creds. It was my only park visit in 2019, and I consider the park well worth a visit. Doubt I'd go there again if I returned to London soon, though, unless the park adds something awesome or I get company.
Anyway, a little over a week ago, I went to Thorpe Park in England, UK. I presume most of you are familiar enough with the park that I don't need to introduce the rides, and in any case others have done that better than me before. I don't think a straight-up list of the rides I rode would be very engaging either, and my pictures are not very good (at any rate, the battery on my phone gave out halfway through the day, so I didn't take many of them). So instead, let me just take you along on a ramble through the park from my perspective. It's an interesting little place, which does some things right and makes some ... confusing choices. I'll try to supplement my own poor photos with pictures found elsewhere, such as Google Maps. Anyway, let's Thorpe.
Transport to the park was pleasantly convenient: Find the right platform at Waterloo station, hop on a train, and wait until you arrive at the village with the unfortunate name Staines. From there, a bus will take you to the park. Interestingly, the bus crosses the Thames on the way, and there's actually only 200 meters of dry land between Fleet Lake (where Thorpe Park is situated) and the waters of the Thames. If you can wiggle through the right drainage pipes, it should theoretically be possible to swim from Thorpe Park into central London. The other way 'round would be considerably more difficult, I imagine.
I had last been at the park in 2009, during Easter break when the place was absolutely crammed. A friend and I queued for more than an hour to ride each of Stealth and Nemesis Inferno once, Saw had just opened and had a three-hour line, Colossus was broken down, and we queued for ages for the major flats. That wasn't a very productive day, so this time I was determined to make more out of it. I came on a Thursday as soon as the park opened, and practically every ride was practically walk-on. I decided to head for Stealth first, figuring it would be the most likely to break down so I better get to it before it did.
On the way to Stealth, there will be some musings. You see, the entrance to this park is rather fascinating in its badness.
Thorpe Park has such a lovely outer entrance, with a bridge across the water, here captured by Google Street View. The bridge leads to the park's entrance dome, which I think is supposed to combine a souvenir shop, a restaurant and an arcade. It is crammed with coin-op machines including those terrible claw machines that are designed not to be able to grab prizes until a certain amount of money has been poured into them. Most of the time, buying the price directly on some Chinese website would probably cost less money than the machine asks for in the first place. Anyway, we'll come back to the claw machines later.
The machines weren't there the day Google went in early 2017, but you get the idea. Anyway, the dome is not a very interesting place. It's dark, the music is loud, and there is nothing to do there except spending money on faff or visiting the bathroom. So I went for the latter, since it had already been more than an hour since I left the hotel, and it was a few minutes left before the park properly opened. There was another claw machine placed outside the bathrooms. Sigh. Either way, I like the way each urinal and bathroom stall down there was branded with a ride. It lets you choose which ride to take a leak or a dump on. With Derren Brown's Ghost Train sufficiently watered, I went back up and headed for the bright light of those doors beckoning me into the park proper...
...umm ... what? I seem to have missed the entrance somehow. Why am I on a balcony? Where's the way into the park? Why am I behind the waterslides? This is the park entrance, right? I walked straight through the dome out of the main doors, I can see the rides off in the distance, but I'm behind the waterslides!
Yeah, Thorpe Park has a very confusing entrance area. Beyond the dome, it feels like you're suddenly dumped into the park's most remote backlot corner and tasked to figure out the way to the attractions yourself. Forget Disney's classic concept with a straight path leading you to the park's centrepiece, with sightlines to each of the main lands and obvious paths leading you there. Thorpe lets you see the attractions, but it doesn't exactly lead you into the park. Apparently, the right way to go after exiting the dome is to the left, following the balcony until you pass the restaurant's outdoor seating area(?!?), where this side path along the bushes will lead you to the central area:
Makes perfect sense. Thorpe Park's version of Main Street. It looks like you're headed down a maintenance road for another waterslide, but it's the fastest way to the center of the park. Where the waterslide is. Yeah, this place is confusingly laid out. Alternately, you can go to the right and follow a narrow path winding between two kiddy pools, that way will also take you to the main attractions.
As you can see, Thorpe has this big waterpark right between the entrance and the rest of the park, with various minor paths radiating out from the dome and winding behind a lot of stuff before they go anywhere. As seen in the pictures above, it's like everything is in the far distance when you enter the park, with no obvious way to get there. You just follow one of the paths that go behind a water attraction and hope there's some interesting stuff on the other side. Also note how no path seems to go for more than fifty meters in a straight line before you hit an intersection and have to jut out at another random angle.
Anyway, on to Stealth now. I just had to pass Amity Beach, walk between the two slidy-splashy water rides, up where a main street starts to form, it turns into Angry Birds Land halfway up the street for no conceivable reason, and then back into Amity Speedway when you enter Stealth's area.
Yay, Stealth! Second for second, it's clearly the best ride in the park. But those seconds are so, so few. You go "Launch - wheee!" to "Over the tophat - wheee!" to "Flying into the brakes - wheee!" and then the ride is over. Very fun all the way, but also very short. However, so was the queue, and operations were efficient. I got a front seat without queueing, and when I got off the ride on the offload platform, I could go straight onto the onload platform and sit down in the other train before it could dispatch. I got four or five rides in a row this way before remembering that other rides might build up a bit of a queue. So I decided to head to what would probably be the busiest coaster in the park, Swarm. As seen on the Google Maps photo above, it lies so close to Stealth they're practically touching, so there should only be a brief walk between them. Hang on a second, where does the path between them go?
As the park map helpfully showed me, I had to exit Amity Speedway, go through Angry Birds Land, back into Amity, around Tidal Wave, past Flying Fish, behind the waterslides (why is everything in this park behind a waterslide?) and up a small side path to get to Swarm. Half a kilometer to walk between rides that lie thirty meters apart. Not that I mind walking, but I find the planning pretty poor here. It seems like Thorpe Park was built without an overall layout idea in mind. Or the layout they went for was ridiculously poorly future-proofed. It looks like the first park you make in Rollercoaster Tycoon/Parkitect, where rides are plopped around willy-nilly at first, and then you have to build around them later and connect new rides to the main path network through a convoluted maze of pathways.
Anyway, Swarm. Yay, Swarm! The area is clearly well made and there is a consistent theme to it that they're pulling off pretty well. Ruined buildings and destroyed vehicles, and shipping containers because the Merlin top brass secretly wanted to work for Mærsk instead. Apart from its location in relation to the rest of the park, this is a pretty good area. It even had a fire truck that spit actual fire (they're supposed to do that, right?). Not a lot to do here unless you want to ride the coaster, but then again, in that case you probably wouldn't come out here in the first place. Also, the coaster is pretty good.
I think Swarm is a contender for best coaster in the park, and it might be somewhere in my top 10 as well (although this says more about my coaster count than Swarm's quality). It has great views from the lift hill, the wing rider position is very fun, it interacts well with its theming and is very smooth, but it also feels short. When the first set of brakes come up, you think "ah, yes, it's time for a little breather now before we meander back to the station", but then there's just one turn and the ride ends. Then again, it's worth riding twice because the other wing has somewhat different experiences, notably the swooping turns at the end of the ride and the inversion right off the lift hill.
Also, the operation booth is pretty well made. Kudos to the designers for an original idea. And to that guy for pulling off the sunglasses/beard combo so well.
After two rides on Swarm, I went on to another coaster I spent an hour and a half queuing for at the end of my last visit: Nemesis Inferno. It meant backtracking all the way back to Stealth, but at least I got to see more of the park. And pass behind the waterslides again.
Now this is how to do it right. A clear main street with an enticing piece of theming at the end, a so-called "weenie". Good use of sight-lines there, to draw guests to the mysterious object. Forced perspective is even employed to make it look like a mountain several miles in the distance. Okay, the execution isn't perfect, but it's a trick right out of Disney's playbook and it's pulled off well.
After some thiking, I've concluded that Nemesis Inferno is the best coaster in the park, edging ahead of Swarm. It wins due to its theming, lovely foliage and path interaction, plus the fact that it isn't miles away from everything else. It's a great fun, snappy ride, although I experienced some headbanging when I rode in the front. The restraints also felt very rigid and unforgiving, making it difficult to breathe - but that's probably the fault of my diet rather than of the designers. Easy on the chocolate, kids, it makes coasters worse in the long run. I was also surprised to see Nemesis' effects running, I've heard Merlin doesn't usually let that happen. Another surprise was how far apart Inferno's entrance and exit were: on completely opposite sides of the coaster. I only noticed that after I left the park, though, realizing I hadn't re-ridden Inferno despite the short queue.
Next on the list was Colossus. Man, what a run-down ride. It looks like it hasn't been painted since 1997 - quite a feat since it was built in 2002. As mentioned above, I didn't get to ride this back in 2009, so I was determined to give it a go now. I had heard bad things about it - even in 2009, when the ride rode like it was scarcely 25 years old - but how bad could it really be? One ride would surely be manageable. Also note the waterslide in the background, by the way. Everything in Thorpe is behind a waterslide.
I found this tree along the queue line. The hope is alive, folks! Remember that Orion at King's Island started with the word "GIGA" spelled out in the snow in - exactly! - a queue line! The cladding on the wall behind the tree is more evidence of the Merlin folks's secret dream of working at Mærsk.
So, how did Colossus ride? Well, let me provide a transcript of my thoughts as I rode it:
In the station): "Ouch, I'm pretty clamped down, or what? Perhaps it will be better when the ride is in motion?"
(On the lifthill): "Nope, still painful. But hey, the ride could be enjoyable."
(First drop and loop): "This isn't too bad?"
(Approximately halfway through the cobra roll): "Ouch! Ouch! My ears! Any my thighs!"
(Through the corkscrew): "That was painful, and I know there's one more of these! Oh no, make it stop!"
(Going into the barrel rolls): "Four more to go... Three... Oww, owww! Ah, heck, I forgot there's one more after the turn! Please, couldn't we go straight to the station without this faff?"
(At the end brakes): "Get me out of this thing! Now!"
I've heard the derogatory term "Colossucks" before, and it is pretty descriptive. From the painful restraints to the painful restraints and the painful restraints, this was not very fun to ride.
By the way, another bit of musing as we move on to the next coaster: The path winding through Colossus is one of the main thoroughfares of the park, but it still feels like a cramped, narrow back road. Look at how four supports are plonked in the middle of the path here. If you follow it up to the loop (the picture above) the path does an S-bend to weave around the track. And from the other side, it really doesn't give the impression of being the quickest path back to the entrance:
Now, this isn't really a bad thing, after all, it's pretty cool that the path winds through a coaster like that. But making it the main path? Especially when they could have had a lovely lakeside promenade around it? Also have a look at the loop, Google isn't perfect when it comes to image splicing. Although the loop might not have been quite like that (it was the smoothest part of the ride), I would certainly have believed it if it was the corkscrew instead.
There even is a path along the lake, you just have to slip behind the restaurant (no sign directs you here) and walk past Saw Alive, but that's not where the shops and stalls are. There isn't even a claw machine there, a sure sign that the path is completely abandoned by the park.
Anyway, next on the list was Saw. Another coaster I saw (heh!) back in '09, but didn't get to ride.
It was alright, I guess. I'm no big fan of horror, but it didn't take the theme too far (I think - I closed my eyes for the indoor portion of the ride). A decent layout but with some headbanging, and not much force to it. Its drop was surprisingly weak too. As if it needed a holding brake. The lift chain just whipped us over the top and then we were down before I could take in how tall or steep it was.
It gets bonus points for the hilarity of Jigsaw giving ride instructions, though. You can just imagine him as an acne-faced teenager in a colourful cap and T-shirt, calling out the kids who try to bring their phones on the ride. Or calling a mechanic when the ride breaks down, in that voice.
With this being the last of the major coasters, let's muse a little about theme too. By this point, it's hard not to notice a trend among Thorpe's rides:
- Swarm is themed to a disaster area, where buildings are razed and left to crumble, abandoned vehicles lie by the wayside, debris is scattered around, weeds are growing and metal is slowly rusting away as there is nobody left to paint it.
- Colossus is themed to a ruined city, where buildings are razed and left to crumble, debris is scattered around, weeds are growing and metal is slowly rusting away as there is nobody left to paint it.
- Saw is themed to an abandoned warehouse, which is in disrepair and left to crumble, abandoned vehicles lie by the wayside, debris is scattered around, weeds are growing and metal is slowly rusting away as there is nobody around to paint it.
- TWD: the ride is themed to a zombie apocalypse, where buildings are razed and left to crumble, debris is scattered around, weeds are growing and metal is slowly rusting away as there is nobody left to paint it.
- All of Amity is themed to a seaside village after a natural disaster, where... oh, you get the point. To top it off, there's also Derren Brown's Ghost Train and all the 742 Halloween mazes that do variations on the same theme.
Anyway, I had a ride on Samurai too:
It was alright at first, but by this point I had been in the park for an hour and a half riding attractions non-stop, and hadn't had any water since breakfast. Halfway through Samurai's ride cycle I realized I really needed to go lie down or I would throw up. So I stumbled into the Old Town kiddie area (why the heck is this all the way at the back of the park?) and sat there in the sunshine, reading a book I'd brought for the train ride. Afterwards I spent the rest of the day doing re-rides, as well as trying out Rumba Rapids (pleasant!), Rush (fun!) and Flying Fish (it exists!).
Walking back and forth across the park eventually made me realize it has a main area of sorts; it begins approximately at Storm Surge and continues up to the entrance of Nemesis Inferno. But everywhere else in the park manages the spectacular feat of feeling like a back area, a shortcut away from the busy parts. Everywhere feels like it's out of the way. There's hardly any signs you're moving from one area to another, or an intuitive way to get anywhere. You just find the small path behind the waterslide, which turns out to be the main path, and then you somehow get to your destination. I really can't see the logic in the way the park is laid out.
And then there's the claw machines. Let's do a lightning round:
Holy bleepin' bleep. It's not like there's one of them on every corner. There's four of them on every corner. And again, they are a total sham. These machines are constructed so that the claw will only apply sufficient force to grab and hold on to an item every so often. Most of the time, your skill is completely irrelevant, it's all down to chance whether the machine is physically able to catch an item. The question then becomes: Why are Thorpe keeping so many of them? Did they buy a hundred of these at a factory sale, or is there an actual demand for them? Is it really profitable to keep that many claw machines? Apparently so, otherwise they would have had fewer. I'm not sure if this speaks the most about the greed of the owners or the gullibility of the customers, but this many claw machines in one place is a symptom of something gone badly, madly wrong.
So, overall, what did I think of Thorpe Park? I actually liked it. It has a decent line-up of thrilling rides, and a large number of smaller flats that help fill out a day. There was a certain commitment to theme, if a little one-tracked. The food was affordable and competently made, which is way more than you can say about the food at TusenFryd. The park has some quiet areas where you can catch a breath between the thrill rides. And even some nicely themed buildings:
(Look! Stealth living up to its name!)
However, the layout of Thorpe Park is a complete mess. The water park is extremely badly located, it should have switched places with the Old Town or something, not blocking the entrance area. Even its main street is confusingly built, with game stalls blocking the sightlines and obscuring the otherwise nice themeing. And how come there are back alleys even in the main street? Why are the buildings even located so you can walk completely around them, when there's only themeing on two of the sides?
Swarm being located so far out on the fringe of the park seems like a strange choice, but it's a consequence of poor planning too. Hopefully one day the next island will be developed, and connected to Stealth. Storm Surge might be the most stupidly located ride I've ever seen, it completely dominates an area where it simply doesn't belong (a water slide in the dry park?!?) and hides away other attractions (like the X/TWD pyramid - to get there, you have to pass under a water slide).
And I noticed that the park has only really added two new attractions since 2009: Swarm and DBGT. It's not like its lineup suffers from the lack of anything, but a park lineup needs some renewal every now and then, and Thorpe feels overdue for something new. A total revamp of all of Amity could give the park a sense of order it's currently lacking, or the waterfront along Colossus could be developed. Come to think of it, Colossus itself is reaching the end of its lifespan already, and could do with a total replacement.
Overall, though, I had a nice day. Got a little motion sick, but also a great number of rides and two new creds. It was my only park visit in 2019, and I consider the park well worth a visit. Doubt I'd go there again if I returned to London soon, though, unless the park adds something awesome or I get company.
