• A day at Thorpe Park • Themeparkblogger

Preface

Because of a wonderful cheap flight to London (with all fees 16€ for there and back) via Lübeck, I thought it would be time to visit Thorpe Park during the Fright Night event. Soon some more people were found who wanted to do this for a long time and so we could set off.

As with every proper tour, something had to happen and our Stefan, who practically defies all danger, had a small fracture five days before departure. In short: We were only two of us now and our luxury plane from Ryanair took off on schedule. Many thanks to Merlin Entertainments, who refunded our money at Madame Tussauds and sent us a ticket for the next season at Thorpe Park.

After we took the coach from London Stansted to Liverpool Street Station and made our way from there to Waterloo Station, we were already on the train to Staines, where we took the shuttle bus to the park at about 9 am. Quickly we picked up the prepaid Bloody Horrible tickets (Thorpe Park and London Dungeon) and we were ready to go.

Tour of the park

Colossus

The first ride of the day was Colossus. The ride is quite comfortable, but the one or other encounter of head and shoulder restraints in the first two inversion figures could not be avoided. I personally would consider the corkscrews and the last Heartlineroll as the highlight of the course, because the ride feeling of these two is much better than the rest of the course. Colossus is also very photogenic and due to its location wonderfully laid out.

Logger’s Leap

Roller coaster #2 was to become the nearby Eurofighter. Since it was supposed to open a little bit late, we decided to take a ride on the log flume Logger’s Leap. The ride has a pleasant level of wetness, whereas the drop in the dark is quite nasty and soaks you a bit. The double drop that follows later is not so wet, but offers a nice portion of airtime.

Slammer

For dry spinning we went to the nearby Sky Swat Slammer. S&S really did something massive with this machine. The ride is intense and very fun (I would not market this thing as a family ride).

Nemesis Inferno

This was followed by Nemesis Inferno, which alone is very convincing because of the part in front of the lift. But if the queue is empty, you have to zigzag a few times to get to the station (with Tidal Wave the longest queue to be crossed during the day). The ride is quite amusing from my point of view, which is why the ride became the first B&M Coaster that I enjoyed.

Stealth

St.Jimmy now saw the roller coaster of his desire, which is why we immediately set off in the direction of Stealth. Quickly we handed in our luggage and off we went. The launch was nice and the top hat afterwards too. Especially in the front part of the train it is very convincing. The descent is awesome, only the hill that follows is not very pleasant.

Tidal Wave

Since the weather was oddly good and therefore T-shirt weather prevailed, the Spillwater Tidal Wave had to be ridden as well (although it should be done in all weather conditions). The ride itself was great and with Slammer, X:\No Way Out and the new Coaster for the year 2012 the only reason for me to visit the park again.

X:\No Way Out

Let us now come to one of the highlights in the park: X:\No Way Out. You only hear mostly bad things about the ride, but it deserves the appreciation of some fans who enjoy the special. The ride is perfect in what it does, which is why I am so enthusiastic about it. All in all one of the best indoor coasters I ever had the pleasure to ride. Many thanks to Vekoma for this ride.

Saw – The Ride

Since meanwhile also Saw – The Ride ran, we joined the line. The queue was moving quite fast, so it didn’t take us long to get to the station. Again we had to hand in our bags and take a seat in one of the two trains, which are loaded at the same time.

We could experience our first ride in the first row and were immediately taken with the dark ride part. The first drop is pretty intense and the roll after the block brake has a nasty little extra, but I won’t tell you more. The outdoor part can be described very well by one word: fast. Not only does the lift run at top speed, but the car is also just racing down the track. On block brakes no consideration is taken into account, so that one experiences partly extremely positive and negative forces without braking.

Flying Fish

We almost forgot the Powered Coaster Flying Fish, but we still didn’t want to miss this roller coaster. I haven’t ridden the standard model from Mack Rides for a very long time, which made me very happy. Nevertheless I think that there is something missing at the coaster. A tunnel at the end would make the ride much more interesting, but the 4 laps are a lot of fun even without a tunnel. The beautifully designed train does its best for that.

Rush

Let us now come to the S&S Screamin’ Swing Rush. Praised by many we wanted to test this ride of course. It’s fun for a few seconds, but in general the ride is much too short and the rocking motion is not that special.

Samurai

Between Saw and Colossus there is the Mondial Top Scan Samurai. After many years, it was nice to see a Top Scan once again in person. The ride was okay, at least it was better than the rides on the other flat rides in the park.

Detonator

Very close to Nemesis Inferno is the Fabbri Tower Detonator. Like its 40m high brothers (to be found in Attractiepark Slagharen, BonBon-Land, …) this tower offers airtime in masses. The Humpty Dumpty rhyme before the fall is a really nice feature for Halloween.

The waiting times were generally between 0 and 20 minutes during the day. In the meantime it was also necessary to wait 50 minutes for Nemesis Inferno. Because of the Fright Nights, Thorpe Park was open until 8 pm, so some reruns could be done in the dark; after all, most of the English were waiting over 60 minutes for the Mazes.