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Thorpe Park 2012 Updates

Ollie said:
Yeah, people do like scare attractions and they always have queues. You just have to look at how long the lines for the mazes are at Fight Nights to see how popular they are (I've seen Asylum with a 2 hours queue).
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I don't disagree that they are popular, but I think the attention the Halloween mazes at Thorpe receive is simply because it is Halloween, and part of the fun of the season is being scared out of your pants! And the fact that it is a limited attraction, people try to do it while they can. I bet if Asylum were open all year it wouldn't receive the same attention (or hype for that matter) that it does on Halloween.
 
I never really saw the point of having the Saw maze all year round. Apart from the fact the all the films were released around Halloween which sets an expectation, it detracts attention away from the main attraction and isn't cost-effective to run for a full season.

Thorpe put their prices up for Halloween to budget for the extra capital they spend on the Halloween theming and extras, and having a burdenous ride which requires a lot of effort isn't economical if there's not sufficient money coming in to support it.

There are year-round scare attractions like Pasaje del Terror, but these are all self-sufficient.
 
nadroJ said:
Ollie said:
Yeah, people do like scare attractions and they always have queues. You just have to look at how long the lines for the mazes are at Fight Nights to see how popular they are (I've seen Asylum with a 2 hours queue).
Click to expand...

I don't disagree that they are popular, but I think the attention the Halloween mazes at Thorpe receive is simply because it is Halloween, and part of the fun of the season is being scared out of your pants! And the fact that it is a limited attraction, people try to do it while they can. I bet if Asylum were open all year it wouldn't receive the same attention (or hype for that matter) that it does on Halloween.
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I couldn't agree more Jordan.

I know there are a few of these scare attractions around, normally in cities with large numbers of Tourists. The one along from the London Eye seems to do ok but that is of course, because it is located closely to the cities largest tourist attraction which has a massive footfall of different tourists who arent likely to have done it before. Does it have a massive pull on repeat visits? I doubt it.

I have done the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds a few times but now when I visit I just don't bother anymore. I was impressed the first couple of times but the effect wears off and like I say, I just don't bother. Yet it always has a queue. Why? because of the tourist first time visitor foot-fall.

What I am getting at is that I think Scare Attractions are very much a one/two time attraction and don't really get that much from repeat business apart from the die-hard fans. This works when you have a constant stream of first time visitors, looking to do something different. Put it in a theme park that doesn't have a massive amount of tourists visiting and has a large number of repeat visitors and you may find that is why SAW Alive has become less 'popular'. If the attraction was extremely popular they would keep it open, regardless of budgets. Why? Firstly, because happy guests = more revenue (happy customers are more likely to buy merch etc) and because guests would want it to be open, they would demand it and complain about it even. If they had a notable number of complaints that it was closed they would open it more frequently. Since I imagine they haven't... they wont.
 
TP Rich said:
The Google Earth image above Thorpe Park has been updated, with an image taken in 2010. :)
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2 years out of date is now deemed successful?


Went on Friday, nothing has changed. Things still break with regularity (with all 5 coasters experiencing downtime), the kids that do go looked bored, Storm Surge looks awful, are there even smoking areas?

One thing Swarm does do is make you realise how dire the rest of the park is... Aside from Det and Inferno (which is running well)...

Special recognition for Colossus. New restraints, same **** ride... Surely there must be a better train design so that people can actually get in and out of the back seats of each car?
 
I think Saw Alive is pretty good, but I wouldn't go on it often.

This is the thing.

It has NO replay value, and because it's not a major attraction people would rather get the 5 big coasters in on a busy day. So the number of people actually doing it is slim at best.
 
Lofty said:
TP Rich said:
The Google Earth image above Thorpe Park has been updated, with an image taken in 2010. :)
Click to expand...
Um, it's been like that for AGES now..
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No, it hasn't. Until yesterday, the image was of one taken in 2008, while SAW - The Ride was still under construction.

And due to Google's licensing, they cannot publish an image that is under two years old, so this is the best we're going to get.
 
552277_393616513989927_312433085441604_1498121_1525979277_n.jpg


LOL
 
Oh for **** sake. Not this crap again.

Why is it so apparently moral to favour pissing off adults without children over adults with children? It's ridiculous. If people are complaining that there's only one ride for their under 12s in the park, and the park see this as a problem, maybe they should build some more rides suitable for younger guests. If they DON'T see it as a problem, then I'm sorry but it's tough **** if families decided to come to a park which has made every effort to make it perfectly clear who its aimed at. What about adults who don't like intense rides? It's just so unfair. Nothing is stopping families from still going on this. Ughitraglheeptjg!
 
Oh great. Are they trying to piss off their paying customers here? You know, the people who actually come to the park expecting to be able to ride stuff without being told that "no, you must have a young child with you in order to ride this attraction that's intended for all age groups".
 
This is ridiculous. Thorpe Park have made it clear that the park is aimed at teens and adults, yet they do stuff like this!

I agree with Joey. If they want rides aimed at younger children, they should build some small rides. Maybe even where the Hippo Safari ride was? Eurgh, I hate Thorpe for this. They build a good coaster one month, and pull some crappy stunt the next.
 
They won't be able to keep this up for June half term/ summer holidays, as rumba helps lower others queues.
There's a very small number of under 12s that visit Thorpe these days if you think about it.
 
Ok, so Thorpe Park systematically remove everything small children can go on, and puts the height restriction up on things they can, make it clear their target audience is teens and young adults, then restrict access to a ride designed for all ages to family groups with children under 12 - who, as Merlin have so helpfully suggested in the past, "should have gone to Chessington".

Family groups go to theme parks, that's what happens, that's how this whole bleedin' industry works. Thorpe have gone a long way down a very dangerous road by removing all their family attractions, and it's not fair that other paying guests, the teens and young adults that Thorpe have geared themselves towards, should have to suffer being banned from a ride because Merlin cocked up their forward planning a few years ago and never attempted to correct their mistakes.
 
Oh Thorpe... You were off to a great 2012 of positives and then you go and do this.... I shake my head...
 
I agree with the comments above. Thorpe bulid The Swarm which is epic and then do this. I usually go on Rumba Rapids, I guess my sister will have to be 12 from now on.
 
Just gonna throw it out there.. Have any of you been refused a ride on Rumba Rapids because you weren't with someone under 12?
 
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