Cred Hunting 06/24 – Thorpe Park

If context is necessary, I haven’t been to Thorpe for many years now, since I stopped renewing the annual pass I had because I went to two preview events for The Walking Dead: The Ride with it and yet have still never experienced The Walking Dead: The Ride.

Also the only reason I had the pass was to pop in on a September weekday after nearby work and walk onto something fun like Inferno or Detonator. The last time I did that everything had a 30 minute wait and I just left again. Now I use the internet and it’s like the American Dad bit of old man Steve watching the weather – judging it on behalf of how bad a day everyone else would be having there. 30 minutes for <insert any ride at Thorpe Park here>? No thank you.

Plus parking costs, the faff of getting in, all that, it’s amazing how the tiny little details of logistics can be so offputting just because it’s your local park and you could come back any time, or you could just leave any time and be home in the same time it takes to queue for a ride. Also again shows I’m really not a revisit kinda guy. Any effort at all is only worth it to me if it’s for something new. And then it’s game on!


This was not long after #1 Hyperia got its second train back on track. Arrived about an hour before park opening and strolled through far too much empty security cattle pen to end up queueing between Vortex and a beach for rope drop.

Headed over to the brand new ride. It wasn’t ready due to still being under morning checks, but plenty of people had filled the queue. There goes the smoke budget for the year.

It was stupidly hot, to the point that their new ugly and unshaded land was essentially a risk to human health and some staff managed to scare most people back out of the queue again with varying statements from ‘dont know how long it’s going to be’ to ‘highly recommend you check out some other rides’.

As it was Thorpe Park I had no interest in checking out their other rides, so managed to ignore their advice and camp out in the shade of the queueline shop. It opened not too long after anyway, about an hour after the park, so my ‘wait time’ was ~2 hours all in, not bad considering what it had been for most up until that point.

The main queue is pretty horrible, was thankful to move through its entirety at a walking pace. Reminds me of the Mandrill Mayhem – it’s there, it meanders, it doesn’t seem to have had any further thought put into it. There’s no good focal points for the ride, a lot of cages, a lot of sunburn, fences were already in disrepair because of simple mistakes and people being people. I don’t like the tagline, the theme is offensively weak to the point that it would have been better off without one, the Ride Access Pass Entrance queue was longer than the main one, nullifying its existence, I’m in a bad mood and could go on, but meh.

So, how was the ride?
Well god damn.

As we’ve established, it’s Thorpe Park and expectations were low. A 200ft Mack Rides coaster in the UK should have had me all over it but somehow I remained ambivalent to its existence while everyone else had already made up their minds about what it was going to be like based on some mud.

With what it did, it far exceeded those expecations. I didn’t get any special rows but the first drop is rather unhinged in delivery. You don’t get your traditional ejector out of it because things change too much as you go down, but I like that, first drops need a good shake up to still be interesting sometimes.

The positives hit hard and fast at the bottom, I like that, with a lack of any real ‘speed moments’ it needs a way to remind you that this is now the fastest in the country, baby.

What happens next? *checks photo* Erm, some inversion into airtime thing that hits nice and hard, with a sustained pinning to the restraint, I like that. A real moment of yes, UK, this is what airtime is actually like, we’re not playing around.

The more I think about the next element, the more I love it. It’s so out there. Like nothing I’ve ever seen or done before, except in bad planet coaster creations. It shouldn’t exist. It’s hard for the brain to process and I couldn’t even say what forces it brings to the table, I like that.

Then there’s a stall. It’s ok.

Then there’s a trim. It’s a shame.

Then there’s some airtime. It’s ok.

Then there’s some brakes. And the only other photo angle I managed to get. It felt very Lightning Rod (when it was good) to me, minds blown but over before you can think about it. It’s an acquired taste in coaster design for sure. There’s some merit to not naturally fizzling out, but then it doesn’t naturally do so. It artificially does with the trim and ahhhh, it’s eh. A downer for the coaster connoisseur, but loved the crowd reactions it got. Thorpe teens were not ready for this thing.

Not quite a top 25, but not far off. As a piece of hardware this is something special, even if it didn’t manage to walk away with an absolute W. I’m very interested to see already how ‘having done Hyperia’ skews the new UK enthusiasts perspective of foreign rides now, compared to what used to basically be ‘oh THIS is how coasters can be’. We’ve got the taste, but it’s a tease.

Guess I’ve done all the big Macks again now and I remain super excited for where they’re headed. Individual parts of all of these are next level, once again, it’s just about wrapping it up in the neatest of packages now. The best is yet to come, surely.

Obviously I hadn’t done Ghost Train since they fell out with Derren Brown. It opens late so you can get on it pretty easily, unlike anything else in the park right now. Also no one knows what it is any more. I had to explain it to several guests who approached me while standing outside for just a moment. Well, er, it’s a ghost train.

No, I couldn’t help myself, but themed experience with actors? Yeah, we’ll go with that.

If context is necessary, I hated Derren Brown’s themed experience with actors. Narratively it flowed horribly, the VR was complete rubbish, the ‘improvements’ they made only worked once and it was forever tainted with the air of ‘we could have had 6 Gravity Group woodies instead’, or something. You know, home park problems.

I didn’t hate this, but I didn’t care for it either. The preshow wastes time by having a voice tell you the rules, and then the actor repeating those rules, probably because people are people. Your own experience may vary hugely depending on the gravitas of said actor and the rowdiness of the room but it all turns it into a slightly structured Merlin Dungeons-style flow rather than a messy Alton Towers Sub Terra-style flow.

So they’ve bailed on the magic of the train, because that never worked anyway. You get on and the actors kill time by attempting to be creepy for far too long. Some (children) are genuinely scared or playing it up and it’s fine, it just doesn’t do anything for me, I don’t get in that zone.

You get off and stand in another room. Actors writhe about. A couple scares, the human one worked well on the group, the mechanical one was laughable. Back on the train.

I’ve since been told that something may have been wrong with the ride system (other than the fact that they don’t use the fancy bit of it any more anyway) and it was more of the same, actors killing FAR too much time attempting to be creepy, waiting for the lights to go out. Big human scare again that worked well, but then where do you go from here? Oh, the danger isn’t real and you’ve fizzled out like the trim on Hyperia, now we sit and wait in a less scary atmosphere for the train to stop and get off?

The problem is probably me, I’m trying to think of something that’s actually good to compare it to and I can’t. I first need something like this that actually gets me going, like I have in the coaster and dark ride world. This is neither, and I’ve spent far too much time on it already.


Anyway, the rest of the park was looking especially grim. Queues I wouldn’t want to wait in for rides I both would and wouldn’t want to ride. It was a million degrees, Staines was on fire, had a gig to go to in London that evening so called it a day after 3 rides in 3 hours. The Thorpe Park way.

Still haven’t done The Walking Dead: The Ride.