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Thorpe Park | Hyperia | Mack Hyper Coaster | 2024

Fingers crossed Mack Rides and Thorpe Park work together on Hyperia over the winter to stop this from happening, or atleast work on a solution for recovering trains from this spot. It’s just awful timing falling before the start of Fright Nights.

I did fear seeing just how slow the empty the test runs were on Sunday after they had been stationary for 15 minutes, that this was going to happen again.
 
I said on the Live it was going to stall again soon. I hate that I was right.

Coasters run slower in poorer weather conditions, but this is a bit of a concern. Extra concerning it happened when there 3 rows of dummies on it.
 
Yes the tests were pretty slow during the Live. We got extremely lucky with that weekend's weather being better than it had been.

It is concerning though as it's often cold here even in autumn or spring so this could be a persistent problem if not resolved in a more permanent way.
 
As others have said with the colder weather now this is could be a regular occurence every winter.

Pretty big deal if every time it happens they have to crane the train off the track and the coaster goes down for a few days and then down to 1 train operation for a while longer.
 
Apart from reprofiling the outerbank is there much they could do to stop this happening? As it looks like this time they had water dummies on some of the rows. I know for The Smiler they switched to running 'faster' wheels after it's valleying issues so I guess that could be an option.

I remember when we were discussing that it was running too fast and NEEDED TRIM BRAKES.
 
Thorpe management are going to be holding their breath every morning now when those first test trains are sent.

Not ideal with the extremely busy Fright Nights coming up.
 
Coasterfreck said:
Fingers crossed Mack Rides and Thorpe Park work together on Hyperia over the winter to stop this from happening, or atleast work on a solution for recovering trains from this spot. It’s just awful timing falling before the start of Fright Nights.

I did fear seeing just how slow the empty the test runs were on Sunday after they had been stationary for 15 minutes, that this was going to happen again.
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Thorpe should have filled the full train with dummies, only filling 3 rows is lazy and has resulted in this situation twice now
 
VonRolland said:
Thorpe should have filled the full train with dummies, only filling 3 rows is lazy and has resulted in this situation twice now
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That's not entirely a fair comment.

I don't know about this time but the first time it valleyed they had been running it with almost all the dummies (as they do every morning), slowly emptying and removing them row by row before sending empty trains.

The first time they even had staff loaded on the train in the station and were about to dispatch it when they saw the empty train on the circuit valley.

I can't vouch for this time, but I see no reason why the team would have done anything different.

catsounds said:
Did they already put wheel heaters in the station?
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Yes, I believe so.
 
VonRolland said:
Thorpe should have filled the full train with dummies, only filling 3 rows is lazy and has resulted in this situation twice now
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They do.

They do tests with trains completely filled with dummies. Then they empty 1-2 rows' worth of dummies, remove the dummies, and repeat until they clear the train, then do a test run completely empty.

They've done that every day for months.

They have even built scaffolding behind the station to hold the dummies so they don't have to carry them up and down stairs daily.

The stalling categorically isn't down to the laziness of Thorpe engineers. It's stalling in spite of their work.
 
JoshC. said:
They do.

They do tests with trains completely filled with dummies. Then they empty 1-2 rows' worth of dummies, remove the dummies, and repeat until they clear the train, then do a test run completely empty.

They've done that every day for months.

They have even built scaffolding behind the station to hold the dummies so they don't have to carry them up and down stairs daily.

The stalling categorically isn't down to the laziness of Thorpe engineers. It's stalling in spite of their work.
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If its crawling round then it needs to run longer with more dummies doesn't it, warm it up before just taking more off
 
VonRolland said:
If its crawling round then it needs to run longer with more dummies doesn't it, warm it up before just taking more off
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On Sunday during the CF Live, the ride was running fine with people on. It then shutdown for 5 minutes, a train was sent empty, and it then  crawled through the outerbank twisted dive. This was just after 5pm, and with the wheel heaters being a thing.

Obviously not running for a few minutes will cool wheels down, but surely something is not right if a ride can run fine all day with guests, but struggle to go empty after being idle for a few minutes?

I'm not an engineer so this opinion is pretty worthless. But...it feels like there's a bigger, design-related, issue that means the train struggles to go round empty when cold. Obviously coasters run slower under certain weather conditions and when empty. But there's a potential trend developing here, and I don't think "stick water dummies on for tonnes of test runs" is the answer.
 
JoshC. said:
On Sunday during the CF Live, the ride was running fine with people on. It then shutdown for 5 minutes, a train was sent empty, and it then  crawled through the outerbank twisted dive. This was just after 5pm, and with the wheel heaters being a thing.

Obviously not running for a few minutes will cool wheels down, but surely something is not right if a ride can run fine all day with guests, but struggle to go empty after being idle for a few minutes?

I'm not an engineer so this opinion is pretty worthless. But...it feels like there's a bigger, design-related, issue that means the train struggles to go round empty when cold. Obviously coasters run slower under certain weather conditions and when empty. But there's a potential trend developing here, and I don't think "stick water dummies on for tonnes of test runs" is the answer.
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I don't believe the wheel heaters were on & yes it did crawl through however as the ops were announcing Hyperia was running at the limits of its wind speed for the majority of the day so no wonder it crawled through
 
I was at the park yesterday, heartbreaking to be spited after waiting pertinently all year to get on Hyperia. Witnessed more than one irate member of the GP karen-ing that they've been twice this year and not got on it. I chose to grieve in peace all day, to not give any staff members a headache and just got on with it. Didn't have the worst day, however even after a 9 year gap most things still felt very "been there, done that". I hope these issues with Hyperia are resolved quickly and she has a more successful second season - leading to more investment. I hate to say it but Thorpe in general feels quite tired and "20 years ago".
 
VonRolland said:
I don't believe the wheel heaters were on & yes it did crawl through however as the ops were announcing Hyperia was running at the limits of its wind speed for the majority of the day so no wonder it crawled through
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I don't recall ever hearing a specific wind speed announcement, just a generic "current weather conditions may force us to close".

However, according to Thorpe themselves, the max wind gust speed Hyperia can operate in is 47mph, which is the highest on park. That will be a number coming from the manufacturer in some way (and probably less than that). I fully expect the park aren't running it at that wind gust speed either. Which leads to the thought of has there been a design problem, which hasn't taken into account the weather conditions Hyperia will operate it, leading to these issues.
 
How long did it take to recover after the last valley? Selfishly asking as attending TP tomorrow
 
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