A park for adults more than children (Thorpe Park)

Member Name: Fiver29

Product:	Thorpe Park
Date:	02/06/09 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Really good thrill rides

Disadvantages: Not many rides for younger teens

On our way back from France we decided to pop into Thorpe Park for the day. So we went on the last Sunday of the half term, as we turned into the car park our initial fears of it being overcrowded looked to be well founded, but after getting into the park we found that it actually wasn't as busy as it first seemed.

Part of the reason it wasn't so busy could have been because of the ridiculously high prices, currently (2009) the price for an adult is £35 and a child is £21 (although a child is not really a child, because that price is only for under 12's, not for other children). It's cheaper to buy online in advance, but as we were using Tesco vouchers for some of the entry tickets and Coke Zone vouchers for the others, it actually worked out cheaper just to pay at the gate. Unfortunately, unlike places such as Blackpool Pleasure Beach, there is no provision for people who are unable or do not wish to go on the rides, and one of our party who has a prolapsed disc and cannot ride had to pay full price, despite spending the day sitting and bag watching.

Onto the rides, obviously we didn't get to go on every ride, so I can only review the ones we did. The queues were fairly reasonable; the longest we queued for was an hour for the Stealth ride. Although Stealth is probably one of the shortest rides in the park, it is absolutely worth the wait. The ride is shaped like an upturned U, and goes from 0-80mph in 2.3 seconds, which I'm told by my brother is actually faster than the fastest bike he has had because that only went from 0-60 9in just over 2 seconds. The ride then takes you up the vertical, does a half corkscrew over the top, and plummets down the other vertical, before slowing gradually. Because of the G forces, it's unsuitable for anyone with heart problems or high blood pressure and anyone with back problems. I actually found my shoulder hurt a little later on in the day, and I think that was because it got jolted on the corkscrew section. Even so, I would recommend this ride to anyone; it has to be the best ride I've ever been on.

After Stealth, Nemesis Inferno seems a bit tame; the queue here was only 35 minutes, and the ride went on much longer. From what I've been told, it's almost identical to the Nemesis at Alton Towers, and as they're owned by the same group we decided it must have been on buy one get one free! Nemesis is a roller coaster where your feet are left dangling in mid air. I actually found this ride much more comfortable than any of the others, because the harness and the bucket shaped seats kept you nice and snug and there was no jerking around. It starts of pretty slows and meanders around the first couple of twists, before climbing and shooting down into a few corkscrews and 360 flips. Luckily they have a cupboard on the off ramp where people can put their shoes (even though the announcements tell you that you have to wear shoes), because I can imagine it's extremely hard to hold onto ballet style slipper shoes or flip flops.

Luckily it was a lovely day, because my son loves the water rides. So the first water ride we went on was Tidal Wave. It's actually a fairly short ride (luckily the queue was next to nothing), but he boat plunges down a 85ft drop, and lulls you into a false sense of security for a few seconds, because you hit the water at the bottom and think 'oh that's not so bad, just a few drips', but then the water that's just gone up succumbs to gravity and pours down on your head. So wherever you sit in this boat, you will get absolutely soaked, and come out looking like a drowned rat.

From there we decided as we were wet anyway we'd go over to Wet Wet Wet, which is less of a ride and more of a slide. But my daughter was determined to get wet, but didn't have the courage to go on Tidal Wave. The queue was one of the worst, perhaps because it's the first ride you see as you enter the park, or because it's one of the rides suitable for pretty much everyone, I'm not sure. But we queued for almost an hour, and the slide was over in seconds. There's not much to it, you sit in a dingy style boat and your are launched from the top, and slide down, there's not much splashing either so you don't really get wet at all.

Whilst on the water theme I might as well tell you about the other two water rides we went on, which were Rumba Rapids, which is a circular boat holding up to 8 people, and how wet you get depends on where in the boat you're sitting and the rebounds as the boat bumps around the rapids. Finally there's a good old fashioned log flume (Loggers Leap), which unfortunately doesn't mention in advance that the first drop is in the pitch black. My daughter hates the dark as it is, and dropping and getting soaked in the dark terrified her, fortunately she'd calmed down by the time the big drop came toward the end of the ride.

We only really went onto two smaller rides, The Flying Fish, which is a child sized roller coaster, and whilst rather tame for adults, both my kids enjoyed it. Although I think they enjoyed laughing at my nephew pretending to be scared and screaming on the first drop even more! The second one was the Banana Boat, which was a galleon style swing, which pretty much sent everyone to sleep, and is probably only enjoyed by kids under 5. Whilst we were queuing for Stealth the kids went on the Teacups, and they enjoyed it, but said it was a bit 'Meh!', so not a great review for that.

My daughter decided she wanted to be adventurous and go on the Zodiac, which looks like quite an old ride, so I think it must have been one of the originals or has been bought from another park. It is a roundabout style, where you whizz round and round, before it eventually goes up and you are spinning round an upside down, with centrifugal force keeping you in your seat. This one was a bad idea for me, because it made me feel really sick, in fact I haven't felt that travel sick since being my daughter's age.

Finally we went into the Time Voyagers experience, which is a 3D film, with seats that blow air at you and shoot sprays of water depending on what is happening on the screen. It's only about 15 minutes, but well worth taking a look at because the 3D is brilliant, plus on a hot day it's lovely to cool off for a bit.

The park sells refillable soda cups, and these cost £4.99, but you could then get free refills of Coke, Fanta, Lemonade and one other drink that I can't recall. They also came with two different coloured straws, which were great to avoid arguments, and when two kids are using one cup you certainly get your money's worth out of the refills.

We only bought a midday snack at Burger King, which seemed to be priced the same as motorway service station prices, we don't actually have a Burger King in town to compare the prices, but they were about a pound per meal dearer than McDonald's meals, which seemed quite reasonable for a theme park.

The toilets in the park left a lot to be desired, I know they have a lot of traffic, but so do other places and these were by far the worst I've seen for a while. There were blocked toilets, toilet roll spread all over the floor and soap dispensers were empty.

There are, of course, the obligatory souvenir shops at the exit, which were okay but didn't sell anything special. The kids decided to buy some sweets for the 6 hour trip home, and ended up waiting for about 15 minutes in a queue of 3 people because the checkout operator was so slow.

As I say I can't comment on the other rides, my nephew and his girlfriend went on Colossus as well, and actually queued for a very long time, but they weren't overly impressed. They said it was good, but they'd been on better.

All in all it was a good day, but I don't think it's worth the full price tickets, if we hadn't had free entry vouchers and 2 for 1 vouchers, I would have been upset at paying over £250 for a day out.

Summary: Very expensive, but okay with vouchers