James Salter

ECC Furious Inferno 2: Thorpe Park

This was only my second trip with the ECC, the first being the trip to Thorpe and Chessington last year, but I can already see it being near impossible for me to get trip invites in the future and throw them away: ECC trips are full of fun, laughs, coasters and good friends.

Our weekend started with a day at Thorpe Park. After a bit of a wait around the entrance, we were in for our 30 minute ERS on Rush. It was originally planned that we’d also have Slammer available, but it was still being worked on following its “minor difficulties” recently.

Rush is a ride I’ve been eager to try out for a while. Due to its opening half way through the season, I�ve been able to follow construction and testing during park visits this year. A couple of weeks ago I tried to get a ride on the Sunday of the supposed opening weekend, but ended up being disappointed. So, was it worth the wait?

Well, Rush does exactly what it says on the tin. It’s supposed to be a giant swing, and that’s what it is: a large swing. I was expecting it to have more of a punch and it was disappointing to only have one full-height swing. As it stands, you can quite comfortably hold a conversation throughout the ride, as Paul and I proved. Apparently the ride program will be extended soon, which should help a lot. I think I�d have been a bit annoyed with the ride experience if I’d queued for an hour. Ah, the joy of an early morning ERS! No waiting in lines, no need to contend with the less desirable members of society. Just a bunch of coaster enthusiasts having a good time.

After the ERS we spent the morning riding the usual candidates (the following is not necessarily in chronological order!): We had a couple of rides on Vortex, but annoyingly ended up at the bottom of the swing both times.

At one stage I managed to end up in a log flume boat with (in order from back to front) Tom, Hywel, Owen and Paul, then me in the front. I’m not sure for exactly how much of the big drop we were actually in contact with the trough, but it wasn’t much. Nor was I expecting quite so much water to end up in my lap after coming over the front of the boat! Just as I was drying out, we took a ride on Tidal Wave, which I think proved to be drier than Loggers Leap.

I was “allowed” to ride Detonator, oh joy of joys, courtesy of Margaret and Tom gently “encouraging” me onto the ride. There’s something weird about Detonator. I have a consistent hatred of it, for all but the couple of seconds of freefall where it becomes my favourite ride in the park. After getting off and looking back up the tower, however, I swear I’ll never ride it again. Every time.

The group split and a few of us went to watch the stunt show. Mick (renamed Julian) was one of the volunteers at the beginning of the show. They seem to have removed the stupid bouncing over the car section, and there was no fire dive today. It was replaced with some random diving from the pool side and about two thirds of the way up the dive pole. Still much better than Spider-Man though!

Lunch time eventually crawled around at 2:30, so with stomachs rumbling we made our way over to Bush BBQ to be greeted with a “20 minute wait for food”. For anybody who hasn’t been to a Tussauds park, you need to know that they don’t use GMT/BST as a standard time measure. Instead, Tussauds Time determines everything from estimated queue times on information boards, park opening times, closing times and FastTrack entry times. In fact, every park operation vaguely time-related. As a rough conversion, every Tussauds minute is equal to about two everyday Earth minutes. Therefore, it was hardly surprising that our food didn’t arrive until 45 minutes later.

We passed the time watching a couple of ducks (a possible alternative food source?), wondering whether the staff had travelled to the farm to slaughter a couple of cows and were now making there way back with them on the Canada Creek Railway, and watching Slammer testing.

After consuming erm, what do we call it? Following the concept of Brunch being Breakfast and Lunch, maybe Linner?? Anyway, whatever it was called, after we�d eaten it we spent the rest of the afternoon on a few more rides, including quite a nice program on Samurai. Its still not as intense as when it lived down the road at Chessington, but its slowly getting there.

Our evening ERS began with 15 minutes on Slammer (delayed from the morning), before moving to Nemesis Inferno for the rest of the session. Slammer seems back to its usual self, and didn’t deem it necessary to enhance its ride experience by dismantling itself and getting stuck upside down for half an hour.

Inferno was spectacular. There’s nothing like looking over a deserted park from the top of the lift hill. I’m not sure where everybody got to, but the trains were running around only �-� full. We ended up just staying on and swapping seats. Even the front row was relatively queue-free. Close to the end of the hour, queuing for the front row involved sitting in the 2nd row on the previous ride!

The day was rounded off when a few of us met up for a meal at the Monkey Puzzle. Apparently the chef has special psychic powers - the food arrived within a couple of minutes of ordering. Maybe they need to share their secret with the Bush BBQ staff!

Photos of today are available here.