Thorpe Park Resort

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Danny
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Scruffy Dog, the company behind a lot of Merlin's theming and scenery, are designing a number of props for this as well, check out their Instagram page!
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TheBeast
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Where actually is it being set?
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Morgan
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Where Studio 13 was
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lewis97
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It's nice to see from coverage of yesterday's preview day that there have been lots of things around the park which have had a refresh. This includes the replacement of The Swarm's billboard 'adverts', a repaint of Depth Charge's submarine and a new sign for Stealth, which had previously had it's colour run. There's also the possibility of Tidal Wave's water tower effects being fixed, with it's reappearance after Half Term, although this remains to be seen.
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Morgan
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It seems X is open today.
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Alex
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I reckon Rush is going to be down for a while, there was some pretty major work taking place on it after the park shut!
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Max
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^ Rush had multiple cranes around it all day today, with engineers seemingly focused on the tops of the swing. X was open all day, but SAW was still down :( Loggers and Detonator also made appearances, and as previously mentioned the park has been generally tidied up a lot. Hoping for good things for Thorpe this year.
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Danny
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NemesisNosh wrote:^ Rush had multiple cranes around it all day today, with engineers seemingly focused on the tops of the swing. X was open all day, but SAW was still down :( Loggers and Detonator also made appearances, and as previously mentioned the park has been generally tidied up a lot. Hoping for good things for Thorpe this year.
They weren't cranes they were cherry Pickers to get the engineers to the top of the swings ;)
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Max
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You know what i mean ;)
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Lee
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Thorpe really struggled to cope yesterday at times, with its limited offering being hit by further ride issues and closures. However, those issues aside, overall I thought the day was a success and has filled me with some hope for Thorpe's 2015 season.

Admittedly, I do have a VIP Annual Pass so I can't comment on queues in general, but for those rides running at full capacity the staff seemed to be eating away at the queues on the majority of attractions. Staff training appears to have been another major consideration over closed season as 99% of the staff were fully briefed on everything required and truly went out of their way for each guest.

People were aware of the planned ride closures and I have to give Thorpe Park full credit for opening additional attractions to compensate those that were not able to operate. The park operated on a 'soft close' basis yesterday and therefore extended ride queue times till 4:30pm presumably as a result of the closures and delayed entry. I do believe that a sore point for the majority of MAP Annual Pass Holders will be the horrendous queue to gain entry that resulted in some people taking upwards of 45 minutes to get through the turnstile. I appreciate that an awful lot of people arrived in mass at the same time, but operationally Thorpe were not prepared with only 4 access point open. I do hope that they look into that for next year.
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Dom
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Having just read another forum's page about Thorpe Park, i was surprised by one thing. Neptune's Beach has had a name change and it is even changed on the map, which was previously posted a page ago. Neptune's Beach is now Amity Beach.
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lewis97
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Thorpe Park have released their 2015 TV Advert on Facebook, which sees a focus on the I'm A Celebrity Maze with Ant and Dec providing the voiceover.

I also noticed the following message in the marquee at the top of Thorpe Park's website: "Rumba Rapids and Samurai will be returning for the Easter holidays". Therefore it seems as though these rides will remain closed for the first few weeks of the season.
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Max
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I guess slammer will be down for the foreseeable future then.
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Dan
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I think they'd be better off just resigning Slammer to the scrapheap.

Over the past couple of years it has spent more time down than it has been running, and Thorpe must be burning through cash performing maintainance on it, while being hard pressed to find spare parts for it.

I appreciate that they want to keep it running as it is the only Sky Swat left in the world, but it can't be long before they will need to make the decision of retiring it or not.
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TheBeast
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Could they not just remake it? Luke, build a new one from scratch? I liked it while it worked
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Dan
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TheBeast wrote:Could they not just remake it? Luke, build a new one from scratch? I liked it while it worked
The problem with that idea is that S&S discontinued the Sky Swat years ago, so even if Thorpe wanted to completely rebuild it they wouldn't be able to as there would be no-one to supply the parts.
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Max
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I'm not a particularly huge fan of slammer anyway, so it wouldn't bother me to see it leave. Hopefully if it does end up being scrapped, then a much needed new flat for Merlin could take its place.
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Luce
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Personally, I'm not a fan of Slammer and would be happy to see it go and be replaced by something better at some stage :)
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paige
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Dan.N wrote:
TheBeast wrote:Could they not just remake it? Luke, build a new one from scratch? I liked it while it worked
The problem with that idea is that S&S discontinued the Sky Swat years ago, so even if Thorpe wanted to completely rebuild it they wouldn't be able to as there would be no-one to supply the parts.
I do believe that it's not impossible for them to do, but the parts aren't mass-produced and they literally have to be made specially. I heard that it's major downtime over the last season was down to them waiting for a part to a certain extent. Even if they could get their hands on the parts still (I'm not entirely sure on that situation in fairness), I don't think it'd be very plausable for them to replace the ride entirely bit by bit. Besides, the ride puts too much strain on itself and (now atleast) it needs to be balanced more or less perfectly before it can even start! I love Slammer but it's time will come soon. I've seen 3 dispatches in about an hour which is a bit ridiculous.
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400 tickets to the I'm A Celebrity! Maze Launch Event on the 26th March for Merlin and Thorpe Park Annual Passholders will go on sale tomorrow morning, subject to a £2.50 booking fee.
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