I’ve just added the photos from Thorpe’s Opening Day yesterday.
Did I just say “Opening Day”? Forgive me, I think I was mistaken. It looked more like a jumble sale.
What a wonderful time of year it is this year at this time.
Why? Because there are only 53 days to go until the gates of Staines Wonderland open again.
Oh, and something about Christmas too.
More intelligent (or perhaps I should say more intelligent) blog posts coming soon…
I’ve just found a few photos on my camera that I took when I went to Thorpe’s late night openings with a couple of others back in August:
Stealth was down … becoming unsurprising
At least Fish & Chips was open
A nice sunset
N:Ight fall (well, I thought it was clever)
Rumba’s better at night …
… especially when you get to stay on as long as you like
Experimenting with camera settings
I’ve just got to grips with some media from trips to Thorpe in the last couple of weeks:
First of all there are arty video montages (read had to use lots of dissolves to stop the video editing software messing up the audio) of Colossus and Stealth from the 20th May. There’s also another video from that day, but you’ll have to e-mail me if you want that as it’s restricted availability (and cert 18 courtesy of Rich’s filthy mouth ![[:haha:]](images/smile/smile19.gif)
).
Also now online are some photos from the uni-esque - sorry, UniS - trip on 30th May.
A few brief remarks on Thorpe’s Be Discovered event that I went to yesterday afternoon:
As could be expected on Good Friday, the park was packed. Arriving at 2:30pm, every available bit of car park was being used - even the field at the back. I’m not looking forward to busy summer holidays 
A red carpet has been laid between the ticket kiosks and the entrance gates - the world’s shortest and lamest red carpet?
The other elements which made it a “special event” were a big stage in the Dome for all the talentless wanabees to perform on (I’m guessing - we didn’t stick around to watch), and … that’s it.
Thorpe’s marketing machine has been in overdrive hyping up this special event that turned out to be just a normal day in the park with an added karaoke contest.
Queues for most things were over an hour, but we already knew that would be the case.
Rides were open until 10pm - wahoo for dark riding!
Stealth’s reliability completely sucked. We stood in a supposed 70 minute queue for well over two hours as it managed to break down three times.
Quote of the day (from WWTP Radio DJ): “Thorpe Park operate a strict no smoking policy in all of its queuelines. I know you all fancy a crafty fag now and again but you can’t really do that here.” No, really I don’t. Or that either.
Flies are tasty - especially when you encounter a face full of them 205ft in the air.
Stealth in the dark is … how would I know? Again, another hour long queue only to be turfed out of the line just before 10pm after Stealth went down again. Got an exit pass though - but not one of the elusive Stealth ones.
All credit must go to Stealth’s platform staff who were leaning over the station fencing and entertaining the queueline throughout the breakdowns.
Final night ride on Nemesis: Inferno. This thing rocks after 12 hours of continuous operation! Dare I say approaching Nemesis standards?
Ride Count after 8 hours in the park:
Rush x 2
Vortex x 2
Nemesis: Inferno x 2 (once through SRQ)
Stealth x 1
As I said, it was fairly busy.
Overall, a good afternoon/evening in park. The special event consisted of nothing, but late night opening was brilliant. Stealth’s ride reliability sucked.
And now I’m off to do it all again…
Sunday was the day to introduce the newbies to Stealth.
The day didn’t start well courtesy of another stone hitting my windscreen on the M3. Luckily the crack hasn’t grown too much so can be repaired for free (thank goodness for Fully Comp) rather than me having to pay the excess on yet another new screen. I may be getting a reputation for attracting water, my car’s getting one for attracting stones.
We arrived just before park opening at 9:30. In true Thorpe 2006 Season tradition, the park opened on time even though none of the rides were up and running. The cold weather is playing havoc - apparently most things (including Stealth) cannot run until the temperature is above 5C.
We headed straight over to Stealth. Within a few minutes the rest of the park had joined us.
