James Salter

S&S: Stuck & Stranded

Look what I found on my lunchtime trawl of the web:

Sequioa Adventure managed to strand its riders hanging over a vertical drop for nearly 2 hours (see the photos in the second post).

First Slammer leaves riders suspended upside down, now SA - albeit a totally different type of ride - does something similar. S&S aren’t having a good year. It seems their rides just love to get stuck, and when they get stuck they love to get stuck upside down.

Can we still say all these problems with new S&S rides this year are just a coincidence?

The first time I saw the Slammer & Rush plans, I immediately wanted to ride. The first time I saw a picture of a Screamin’ Squirrel, same thing. S&S have fantastic ride concepts, but - certainly this year - are failing to deliver them on time and in a reliable working state.

Thorpe Park (yes, again)

I headed off to Thorpe Park on Sunday to meet up with Paul O and have a few rides on Rush. Paul hadn’t yet riden Rush, because he had to go on holiday to Florida. Yeah, don’t feel too sorry for him.

Unfortunately, come opening time, Rush was closed and was being worked on by an engineer up the top of a cherry picker. A slight change of plans resulted in an early morning ride on Colossus instead (my suggestion, guilty as charged). As Sunday was the hottest day of the year so far, Tidal Wave was the necessary next stop. At least we were cool for the rest of the morning!

Since we were already wet, we decided to do a mini-tour of the water rides. After stopping off at Loggers Leap (where we somehow managed to flood the boat - sorry about you being in the front Paul - total accident!) we headed for Rumba Rapids.

It was as uninspiring as usual, until we reached the end of the ride where we encountered our first breakdown of the day:

For some reason, the lift had stopped meaning boats were backing up at the bottom
Eventually the entire fleet of boats surrounded us
When the lift was restarted, we still didn’t go anywhere: all the boats had wedged themselves together, out of reach of the spinners

A member of staff was dispatched to come and, well, just stare at all the boats with a puzzled expression on his face

The current eventually pushed our boat onto the lift

There were still a lot of boats stuck

The empty boats pushing their way in front didn’t exactly help

Finally somebody had a sensible idea: hold the boats back so that when one moved, it didn’t get wedged against the others

After escaping our river adventure, we took a couple of rides on Detonator. From the top of the tower you get a good view over the Stealth construction site. A fair amount of progress has now been made. They’ve begun to put in footers and groundwork for the launch. It really is a compact site!By that time, Rush had finally opened and we were able to ride … after it breaking down while we were in the SRQ.

Paul gets a Rush (4th from the left, with his hands up)
Following some lunch, while in the Pirates 4D queue, we spotted one of the trains stopped at the top of the Inferno lift hill. According to The Sun, it was a major incident where 50 people were stuck in blistering heat for half an hour. Apparently the passengers began to panic and shout for help, but it took ages for anybody to notice or for staff to go to their aid.From what I saw, and after talking to other people stuck on the ride, the reality was somewhat different. The ride was only stopped for about 10 minutes. Staff were almost immediately climbing the lift hill to make sure all the guests were OK. As for the blistering heat - apparently it was actually quite pleasant up there with a nice cool breeze. Oh, and also only has 28 seats per train, not 50.
Attending to Inferno riders on the lift hill
Staff decending a few minutes later
I’m surprised the tabloids didn’t pick up on the real news story of the day: Slammer broke down again, trapping riders for 30 minutes at the top. (See the separate blog entry for the full story)
We also noticed that Detonator had broken down and had staff/engineers on the cage mid-afternoon
Throughout the day we managed a few rides on Rush, although it broke down every time we were in the queue. We had to be evacuated off it once (hardly a big deal since it can’t stop anywhere but the bottom of the swing - just step off the ride and out of the exit gate). Worryingly, the engineer then went to fiddle with the restraint and look under the seat I had just been sitting in. Another breakdown meant they had to clear the queueline - oh well, another exit pass to add to our growing collection!
Rush broken down … again
Overall, Rush stands to become a brilliant ride. Its only a couple of weeks old, so the breakdowns are understandable. The real problem at the moment is the short ride program, but that should be sorted soon.We spent the end of the afternoon on Inferno, which had a minimal queue by that stage. It was getting too hot to walk all the way around, so we ended up using SRQ a couple of times. When that closed, we used one of our exit passes (don’t worry, its not exactly as if we’re short of them and as I said, it was hot).
Inferno in the sunshine: its been getting quite intense recently - following in the footsteps of its big sister?
A hot, busy day resulted in piles of litter in the N:I queueline by the end of the day
Possibly the biggest shock of the day - Slammer reopened only a couple of hours after it threw its wobbly. Strangely, we declined to ride it, even though it was walk-on for the rest of the afternoon. The blue sky and sunshine did allow for some nice photo opportunities though:
Slammer and an aeroplane
Heading for the ground
Just before park close, we walked past Rush in the hope of a final ride. You’ve guessed it: it had suffered another breakdown, meaning the queueline had been closed for the day. Closed, that is, for everybody but us. Courtesy of a friendly staff member, we were allowed to join the back of those already in the queue who had been promised a ride when Rush was fixed. Huge thanks to her for adding yet another “magic moment” to our day!A day in the park when there are so many breakdowns on major rides (Rush, Slammer, Inferno, Colossus, Rumba Rapids and Detonator were all down at some stage) can be miserable - especially in the heat we had on Sunday. However, thanks in large part to some great staff members we had a fantastic day, proving its always worth being friendly and stopping for a chat.

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.

Rush to … nowhere

I got back from the Lake District yesterday (more about that soon!) so thought I’d do a spur-of-the-moment-ish trip to Thorpe Park this afternoon to try out their latest ride, Rush, which opened on Friday.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. Although it was testing throughout the afternoon, the TP website only said Rush “may be temporarily unavailable throughout the day” and signs around the ride area said “there will be limited opportunities to ride”, it never actually opened.

According to some very friendly staff (how you can be friendly after the 500th person has come up to you that day asking whether the ride is open when they can clearly see it is loaded witha full set of water dummies testing is beyond me), they were getting it working with both gondolas at the same time rather than the single one they were running with on Friday.

By the end of the day, Heath & Safety had signed it off completely, so it should be ready for tomorrow at least. Guess who’s expected on park tomorrow? Yep, Sky News, reporting on the new ride. Coincidence they should want to get it running 100% for then? I don’t think so…

A disappointing wait, but made easier by chatting with the staff. I also bumped into another ECC member and we rode a few other things together, so not an entirely wasted journey. At least I renewed my Annual Pass ready for the ECC trip the week after next too!