Well, just got home from Thorpe and I can finally give my thoughts on Saw...
I liked it, I liked it a reasonable amount in fact.
The ride itself has some cool blasts of intensity and some great flowing sections. In part there are some rough areas which give you a bone jangling, but nothing that really killed the hell out of me. Airtime was also present in very small dosage.
I wasn't overly fussed with the whole of the prelift section, barring that small drop from the station level. That was very cool! Even though I knew it was there, it got me on both rides. The rest of the apparently amazing theming was, for me, rather non existent. Leigh was telling us that not all effects were on during our first go, but on our second everything was working. Not that it really made all that much difference unfortunately. The whole body bathroom tunnel bit has too much light streaming in from the outside and it kind of spoils it because all I could see of the body was a shape on the floor... it may as well have been a sack of potatoes. But then, having said that, I wasn't ever expecting the all singing all dancing extravaganza that some people were, so I actually wasn't overly disappointed by it. It was pretty much what I expected. Mid standard theme.
My only major criticism, is that because of the rather incoherent theme throughout the building the lift hill actually acts as too much of a pause breaking into the ride. On both occasions we came to a full stop and took some time before engaging the lift hill. Meaning that any pacing or excitement that had been given in the initial section was now all but lost. Now, they HAVE to stop you there, I know this of course, but had the theme and story been more coherent in the building section (on the actual ride) and had the theme and story continued until you actually move up the lift hill, perhaps it wouldn't feel like everything came to a complete grinding halt. I dont know how to explain it properly, it all just felt very disjointed.
Overall, the ride is good, not amazing, not fantastic, not anywhere near the amount of hype that has unavoidably been built up. It certainly isn't be any means world-class. Once again, the company that implies their world class status by flexing their "2nd Largest Group" quote a fair bit, leaves me feeling as though my initial response to this to ride was right:
It would be a great ride, if it were for a much smaller, lower budget park. I know that is harsh, but I can't help walking away from Thorpe expecting so much more. At one point in the lead up to opening I actually begun to believe that Thorpe might just pull something out of the bag, but alas no, I should have trusted my initial instincts.
