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Thorpe Park retheming X to The Walking Dead

Matt N

CF Legend
If you haven't heard, Thorpe Park has today announced that they are retheming X, their 1996 Vekoma Enigma, to The Walking Dead. It will be named... The Walking Dead: The Ride. Sounds like a Six Flags name. Anyway, the park have stated that the ride will have its height restriction upped to 1.4m (55") from 1m (39" I think?) and a recommended age restriction of 13 has been added. Thorpe have stated that riders will "travel through dark tunnels", "come to sudden halts" and "feel like they are in their own episode of the Walking Dead". John Burton has also said that the ride will be "15 out of 10 on the scare scale" and that "even the queue is scary". My personal thoughts... what are you doing, Thorpe? You're setting yourselves up for maximum disappointment, because the families who Vekoma aimed the ride at originally can't ride, and the thrill seekers are going to find it tame!

On the positive side, however, the experience aspect of the ride should be stunning, as Wicker Man is looking to prove that Merlin are capable of a decent experience coaster, and AMC probably have high standards for Merlin to meet. I certainly won't be riding it, though, as I hate anything with live actors. Good thing I got the cred when it was called X in 2014!
 
This was announced today? I thought we'd known for ages.
I think the kindest things we can say are 'at least they've done SOMETHING' and 'at least they've not put VR on it' - XNWO was never a great coaster and no IP would have fixed that (except maybe it had been Red Dwarf themed. That would be fab). It's also worth mentioning that Saw was marketed as similarly terrifying and... it's really not. I feel like they tried to jazz up XNWO quite recently, without success, so this really feels like a last resort, clutching at yet more IP straws as they've been doing for five years or so now - not to mention the fact that the cost of the live actors could be better spent elsewhere! Oh well - not like I had any desire to go to Thorpe this year anyway :)
I also find it impossible to take the phrase 'safe zone' seriously as I imagining it being full of people bleating about social issues.
 
IP wise, isn't walking dead slowly dying...

I won't be going Thorpe this year, I was entertaining the idea of taking the boy but with now 1 cred under 1.4M it will be a while until I bother.
There's been such a colossal waste of money at Thorpe since Swarm. DBGT and I'm a celeb are pretty bad, plus Angry Birds Land makes zero sense now they are pushing the age up.
All that redevelopment cash, including this, could have been used to, I don't know.... FIX THE ****ING LOG FLUME MAYBE?!?!

I'll take the clan to Blackpool instead.
 
All that redevelopment cash, including this, could have been used to, I don't know.... FIX THE :emoji_zipper_mouth:ING LOG FLUME MAYBE?!?!

Amen to that, bruv. Bravo!
And there'd still have been enough left in the pot for a cheeky little RMC on the side.
 
OMFG. This confuses me so much. How the hell do I deal with this flustercluck?

So... I always rated X:\NWO as the worst coaster ever (below Go-Gators) because of one simple fact. With a 1.4m height limit, it was in the "thrill" category, which it fails to do in even the slightest of ways.

With it running recently with a lower height limit, I've moved the ride out of that category and it fits into the middle/low end of "family" coaster in my list. So instead of being a 0/10 it now hits like 3/10 or something (all things being relative and whatever).

Now there's this. The height limit goes back up, so as a coaster, it falls back into "worse than Howie's opinion of Empire Strikes Back" territory. However, if it's a horror theme, then it's likely to actually deserve that to a degree. Only we know it's going to be rubbish and not scary. So I don't know how to deal with it in my head any more. Ihate Thorpe Park :p
 
Oh man it's going to be so cool having images flash in front of your eyes for less than a second. I wonder how Merlin will pull that off?
 
The article also says she'll ride Mystic Manner in Hong Kong Disneyland. I've always heard the Chinese have bad manners, so I'm looking forward to hearing her opinion. :p
 
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