Surely not Slammer?
Its been almost exactly a month since, if everything had gone to plan, Slammer should have opened at Thorpe Park. It eventually opened on the 28th, only to close the next day after getting stuck at the top and leaving guests in the air for half an hour. I’ve been checking Thorpe’s website regularly ever since and finally I was rewarded yesterday when it said that Slammer would be available from midday. Reports suggested this was true and, having already made rough plans on popping in to the park inbetween other things I had to do today, I drove down there this morning.
Arriving at 10am, I discovered the park had been open since 9:30. Apparently even though Semantic are back in charge of the website, its still as inaccurate as last year.
Anyway, although the lure of Slammer was intense, coasters were calling. Colossus was running two trains: no need to use the Single Rider Queue and I was on within a few minutes. A fantastic ride - after a rough couple of years Colossus is beginning to win back its #1 Thorpe coaster spot in my heart. Somehow I don’t think it’ll be keeping that for long though, but more on that in a moment. There seems to be more difference between the two trains this year: I watched the other one barely crawling around the track. I’m surprised it made it back to the station without stalling it was so slow!
Nemesis: Inferno’s queue wasn’t even emerging from the volcano, so I gave that a quick shot too. Not much to say: still its normal smooth great self.
After that, I decided I had been putting off the inevitable long enough. (For some reason I got a bit intimidated when I actually saw people on Slammer. Bizarre, considering how much I’d been looking forward to riding, but I began comparing its height with Detonator. Not a wise move if you’re me.)
The queue was very short, but it still took a while to get on. Its hardly surprising considering today must only be the second full day of operation. I’m sure as the staff get more used to the ride things will get faster. They need to: Colossus was dispatching 3 trains for every run of Slammer.
What can I say? Slammer is intense! There’s some great music as it rises into position (think dramatic Classical music with a choral accompaniment). The forces range from airtime to pushing-through-the-seat positive Gs as it spins. The restraints are fantastically comfortable … as long as you don’t try sticking your arms out in front of you (they cut into my shoulders then). They come complete with a padded headrest - ideal when you’re straining to get a few more seconds looking at the spectacular views of the Dome or Loggers Leap, depending on which way you’re facing. Of course, that’s nothing to the view of the ground hurtling towards you!
At the end of the ride, I couldn’t wait to get off. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I wanted to get straight back in the queue for another go.
Damn it. Am I really jinxing this ride? I made it all the way through the queue, only for Slammer to break down as I reached the loading bays. I waited around for quarter of an hour or so, but when all the engineers arrived the ride op advised us all that there was little point in waiting: it would be quite a while before it would reopen.
I know when to admit defeat, so I made my way over to Vortex. It had probably the longest queue in the park at the time, but I like it. How about that for justification.
Anyway, my jinxing abilities weren’t too far behind me and it soon ran into problems. Somebody managed to become detatched from their shoe whilst riding. Not too big a problem, or so you would think. That is, until said shoe gets stuck in the floor mechanism, meaning an engineer had to come to retrieve it before the floor could be raised to let all the guests off. It goes without saying that there was some additional emphasis to the PA announcement on the next ride: “Welcome to Vortex. Guests are reminded to secure all loose articles including mobile phones, hats, wallets and shoes before boarding.”
I got a fantastic ride on the top of the swing all the times it counted and a hot dog.
I bought the hot dog after the ride of course.
Wandering past Pirates 4D I saw a show was just about to begin. Since I’d just eaten and I haven’t seen the film for over a year, I thought I’d watch. Impressed! All the effects were working and the scratched old film has been replaced by a new Digital Projector (I assume from the lack of dust and filmgrain). This, however, hasn’t stopped the slightly odd out-of-sync blurred-vision when something moves across the screen too quickly.
Nothing has changed on the Project Stealth site as far as I could see, apart from the addition of a few plant pots around the construction walls and posters featuring the new coaster’s stats.
Having been disappointed earlier, I went back to Slammer in search of a second ride. This time I was more fortunate, although the wait was considerably longer. I got the leftmost seat on the back row of the paddle on the X:\NWO side. The queueline announcements assure riders that each seat offers the same ride experience. As anybody with any knowledge of physics will tell you, that’s bollocks. The back row is about 10ft higher/lower than the front row at the top/bottom of the rotation and is considerably more intense.
2pm had arrived and I had already spent longer in the park than I had intended, so I made my way to the car park, via the Rush construction site.
Rush has arrived and construction is progressing quickly. Its two towers are in place and the queueline brickwork (oh yes sir, none of your cheapo tarmac here) is being laid. Already it has become the focal point of the Dome end of the Lost City, even though it’s not yet at full height. Rush is shaping up to be another worthy addition to Thorpe’s collection of flats. Mind you, that’s what we said about Samurai.
Photos from today are available here.
