Chris Brown
Mr CoasterForce 2016
Thorpe are still running the park hours Oktoberfest where people can have beer, pretzels and roller coasters zooming in the background though. This is just Thorpe tapping into a huge potential revenue stream utilising their abundance of space and social reach to create non park / ride reliant events. The concept of drinking heavily at parks is something that just doesn't resonate well in the UK, the park time Oktoberfest lacks the drunken atmosphere required to make it feel like a justified event.I vehemently disagree with you.
Totally hear your points about locations and land being diversified in it's use; all for that. But again, as I stated in my previous sentence to the one you highlighted, Oktoberfest at a theme park conjures up images of steins of beer, pretzels, and rollercoasters zooming round in the background.
Previous beyond-open hours events, including summer nights as I previously mentioned, and Ministry of Sound nights have seen at least a limited ride lineup open throughout the event. It seems like a total no brainer to me to do this?
Of course, this is a personal perspective and I wouldn't expect everyone to imagine the same thing as me, I just think considering the history of events held at Thorpe with open attractions, why of all events would oktoberfest be the one that they decide not to have any. Thorpe is my local park yet I haven't been in years; I'm pretty certain if I told my mates about this event and mentioned even in passing that the rides wouldn't be open, they'd laugh in my face and just say to go to somewhere in central london instead.
I think the logic behind the no rides at this out of hours event is that market research has led Thorpe to rightly or wrongly believe that Oktoberfest is the most easily replicated event model for them to branch out into. Coupled with the fact their current day time Oktoberfest offering does not tap into the brand / Idea as much as it should and likely doesn't make them a huge amount of money. Theoretically Thorpe should be able to pull off a UK standard Oktoberfest night pretty easily, but I do agree that its a fine line to tread and will be a hard branding exercise to fully separate it from the regular Oktoberfest that currently takes place in the day.