Tussuads Thorpe Park, Surrey

Allow me to sketch a rather selective portrait of myself: a colour-by-numbers where the artist has only got the red paint to hand.

I am a gent in my thirties. Some might say 'his late thirties'. I am a middle-bordering-on-senior manager who wears a shirt, tie and (sometimes) cufflinks to work. I rather like museums and I quite enjoy art galleries. And despite my wittering on 80s/90s indie rock on here, I believe that Beethoven's Op 133 ...
...heard.

Let's compare that to Thorpe Park, a theme park with an image as a chav-staffed and chav-patronised hellhole. In Surrey. So why the hell is the former happily visiting the latter? Am I some sort of daft dilettante just pretending to be a renaissance man?

Erm...well, it's another of my personal blind spots. In the same way as I can't help myself when it comes to ropey horror films...I _really_ like rollercoasters. ... more

Allow me to sketch a rather selective portrait of myself: a colour-by-numbers where the artist has only got the red paint to hand.

I am a gent in my thirties. Some might say 'his late thirties'. I am a middle-bordering-on-senior manager who wears a shirt, tie and (sometimes) cufflinks to work. I rather like museums and I quite enjoy art galleries. And despite my wittering on 80s/90s indie rock on here, I believe that Beethoven's Op 133 Great Fugue is the greatest piece of music I've ever heard.

Let's compare that to Thorpe Park, a theme park with an image as a chav-staffed and chav-patronised hellhole. In Surrey. So why the hell is the former happily visiting the latter? Am I some sort of daft dilettante just pretending to be a renaissance man?

Erm...well, it's another of my personal blind spots. In the same way as I can't help myself when it comes to ropey horror films...I really like rollercoasters. And seeing as it had been a good five years since I last visited, the offer of a trip with a former employer's social club wasn't to be snubbed, even on a drizzly Saturday in early June.

'Confidence is a preference for the habitual voyeur of what is known as...'

Thorpe Park competes with Alton Towers for the responsibility of being the nation's leading purveyor of rattling speed and gravity-based fear, and while the Staffordshire attraction is doubtless more pastoral and 'rounded' as a day out, there's little doubt in my mind that the Surrey venue edges it on white-knuckle rides: I mean, the gardens at Alton Towers are nice and all, but they aren't outstanding in horticultural terms, and they take up space that could easily be used for more rollercoasters. Plus they make the walks between rides longer. Anyway, Thorpe Park is situated just inside the M25 near the M3 interchange (about 8 o'clock on the map of London), and it's so extensively signposted that arrival is inevitable so long as you select the correct direction once you reach the orbital motorway. It's also served by shuttle buses from Staines railway station: see the park website (http://www.thorpepark.com) for details.

Assuming you have your ticket before arrival you can go straight to the park entrance. The first obstacle (the turnstile) is now unmanned, so while this has reduced the bottleneck that used to form here one should still be prepared for a little delay if you get stuck behind someone who can't work out how to scan a barcode. Do what I did, and have your mate go first so he can look foolish while he works out where the hell the ticket goes, and so you can look clever by getting it right first go. Sorry Tim. A short walk over a bridge and through a big dome (The Glass House) leads you into the park proper.

Saw: The Ride
Once inside the park it seemed sensible to make haste to the newest ride on offer (to beat the masses), and half an hour later we were at the front of the queue which is caged as part of the theming of the ride: derived from the ever-decreasing 'Saw' horror movie franchise. As we inched into the station a couple of thoughts occurred to me:-

1) It's chucklesome watching legions of 11 year-olds queuing to ride a coaster themed after a film franchise they aren't legally entitled to watch.

2) The 'Saw' franchise is obviously on its last legs (next film to be the last, supposedly), so isn't this a slightly short-sighted theming? Maybe they'd have been better to style the ride after 'Final Destination 3', whose opening sequence does at least feature loads of characters dying horribly in an accident on a roller coaster.

Once the queue is inside the corrugated iron walls of the station, the theming largely takes the form of loud noises and voice samples from the films: they can't REALLY go too far over the top on an attraction which will need teenage patronage. Therefore the scene resembles the charnelhouses of the movies a lot less than it looks like a version of the Industrial Zone from 'The Crystal Maze' with the odd dab of fake blood here and there. Anyway, despite all the 'you're gonna die!' threats piped at you, eventually you arrive at the departure point. Down come the over-the-shoulder restraints, and away you go...

The ride starts in near-darkness, with an almost-vertical drop saving you from two swinging blades at the last moment. The next bit is a blur (well, it was for me anyway), but a blur from which I can dimly recall a barrel roll over a dummy of a dead body (Jigsaw himself, apparently: blood is meant to spurt at the rider from the corpse but it wasn't working the day I was there, with pity being taken on patrons who'd got wet in the queue anyway) before emergence into daylight, and the ride's real money shot. A plumb vertical tow leads to the top of a tower, and an immediate 'beyond vertical' 100ft plunge. The 55mph you're apparently doing at the bottom of this is immediately thrown into what the cognoscenti would call an 'Immelmann Loop' (and the likes of me call 'one of those ones where you go upside down and double back on yourself. Brilliant!'), before more mad twisting, turning and inverting and the end...like a lift from Richard Hammond, with added 'we're about to get sliced up by that circular saw...oh, maybe not' moments.

The usual merchandising assault lies in wait for you in the shop after disembarkation: t-shirts, baseball caps, ride photos (and now ride DVDs, so you can see film evidence of your being fleetingly Botoxed. Why??). But special mention must go to the biros made to look like blood-filled hyperdermic needles. Very tasteful.

So, 'Saw: The Ride' is rather good fun. But 'the world's scariest rollercoaster'? Hmm. It's not even the scariest ride at Thorpe Park.

Stealth
Because this is.

The comically mismonikered 'Stealth' (how stealthy can a 200ft high rollercoaster be, exactly?) looms like a huge (and slightly squashed) bishop's mitre over the 'Amity Cove' section of the park. (A small complaint: if you're going to call something 'Amity Cove' I demand sharks eating people as well as thrill rides). It's the Tequila Slammer of rollercoasters, but if you're going to be a one-trick pony you're as well to be Pegasus rather than the Steptoes' Hercules: Stealth's raison d’être is to make you go very fast to go very high and let gravity take you down again (involving more 'very fast' in the process). Fin.

We decided we may as well ride at the front, and so joined the little branching queueling for that privilege (and on this attraction, it's worth it), and it wasn't long before I found myself sat next to an excited Chinese lad and pulling the shoulder restraints down. The pre-ride preamble ('...hold on tight and brace yourself', '3-2-1 Go Go Go') is nowhere near as worrying as the sight confronting you: innocuous track, 205ft high tower, shudder. The stats you've read (ride reaches 80mph, does 0-80 in 2.3 seconds) aren't soothing either. And then, you're off.

I was dimly aware of no longer being at rest, but everything snapped into very sharp focus as huge amounts of air and moisture started sliding over my face, and something thumped into my back (probably the seat, but it might conceivably have been my liver). The acceleration is staggering (especially once I'd read afterwards that an upgrade in 2007 took the 0-80 time from 2.3 seconds to 1.8). But there's little time to disbelieve how fast you're going before you're heading upwards and failing to focus on the tangled juxtaposition of metalwork and sky that you're fleetingly part of, the brief respite of the summit (apparently there are great views of the Surrey and Berkshire countryside from here, but there's no-one about to bring you tea and scones to enjoy it...and try not to think about the possibility of a roll-back, where the car doesn't have enough speed to make it over the top of the ride and instead slides back down again) and the giddy (even to one accustomed to heights) plummet back down again. Here you breathe a sigh of relief, which usually comes just before the jolt of how sharp the brakes are. And in my case, before the ride breaks down and you're trapped in your seat for about 15 minutes. Quite amusing for me, the Chinese lad and everyone else on the ride, possibly less so for those behind us in the queue, who were told they wouldn't be able to have a go and had just stood in the rain for 90 minutes for nothing. That'd smart, I'm guessing.

Nemesis Inferno
In a nifty bit of cross-marketing, the Merlin Group plonked a version of sister venue Alton Towers' best ride at Thorpe Park. It's not quite as good as its sister, which fares a bit better on the 'kidding you you're about to be dashed upon nasty pointy rocks' front.

Unusually, the ride starts with a little drop straight out of the station, through some refreshing mist (if the mist is working, which it often isn't) before the tow up the lift hill. A little bit of gravity suitably gained, it's then about 45 seconds of vertical loops, corkscrews and rolls. While it's far from the fastest ride here (48.8 mph, apparently), the sleek sharpness of the bends and inversions makes up for it. And it's another one that's better/worse at the front.

Colossus
To complete the 'big four coasters' we made our way over to the 'Colossus'. 'Colossus' is the daddy of the white-knuckle rides in the park, fulfilling much the same purpose upon its installation in 2002 as the 'Corkscrew' did at Alton Towers back in the day: a ride designed to make folk sit up and take notice of Thorpe Park. Its major selling point was (and remains) its hitherto-unprecedented 10 inversions, and its twisted metal skeleton is the most prominent feature of the Lost City area of the park. Vertical loop, cobra roll (which counts as two inversions), double corkscrew and five-heartline-twists a-go-go...

It has some other things in common with the now-defunct 'Corkscrew', unfortunately. Not only are both rather old-fashioned rollercoasters (if you put aside the upside-down thing), but they feel old too. 'Colossus' is uncomfortable on a Turkish Massage scale: the trains (14 rows of two) simply don't have enough legroom if you're tall like me (and the restraints are bordering on painful if you're diminutive, apparently). Your journey around the track is accompanied by oscillations liable to shake your teeth loose from your gums. And the five twists at the end obviously serve no purpose other than to get the inversion number up to ten: it should be noted that no coaster in the world (even seven years on) has decided it's worth breaking Colossus's record and it will be immediately (and bruisingly) noticed that the last few flips are so slow as to have gravity forcibly squash you into the shoulder restraints.

Oh, and 'Colossus' is often praised for its integration with its environment. That's spot on: it integrates so effectively that I clipped a few thin branches on trees during my ride. (I'm not that tall). Despite all this, these calamities seem to add to Colossus's charm rather than diminish it: they should probably leave a few loose bolts on each seat just to further amplify the effect.

'Who's that gut lord marching? You should cut down on your porklife, mate, get some exercise!'

By this point (and despite a couple of emergency Magnums to keep me going) all assembled were peckish, so we decided to adjourn for lunch. A little bit of cunning pays off here: stagger your food consumption to avoid the refuelling rush around 1pm and you can enjoy shorter queues both on the rides and at your chosen meal location. There are a lot of places to eat around the park, from little kiosks that probably sell things other than ice-creams (not that I'd notice) to many of the usual franchised purveyors of slop to the masses (Pizza Hut, Burger King, KFC, Caffe Nero). We chose the 'Calypso BBQ & Bar', whose food (ribs & burgers) seemed perfectly acceptable to my uncultivated palate, but more importantly didn't seem to kill anyone else in my party. It's a theme park: don't expect anything better than 'survival' from sampling the catering.

One thing I must compliment is the huge improvement in customer facing skills exhibited by the staff since I last visited the park. Back in the day the workforce seemed to be peopled by that select band of teenagers unable to put the words 'want', 'fries', 'you', 'do', 'that' and 'with' in the correct order at the McDonald's interview. I don't know what's happened since (maybe they thought head office were doing anonymous inspections the day we were there, or something), but pretty much without exception everyone was incredibly polite and helpful, and evidently able to dress themselves without serious mishap. The shock when a lad selling me a Magnum (probably everyone in the park sold me a Magnum at some point during the day) asked me if I was having a nice day was almost disabling: he sounded like he genuinely meant it. That said, a large part of the clientele are still chavs who can't even enunciate a swear word properly...so not everything has improved. Looks like Burberry is conclusively 'out' these days, though.

Rush
Alas, once you've run out of big coaster-type things to do, you tend to then seek succour (or acute motion sickness. One or the other) in the big swingy-swirly stuff. Or more accurately, your friends decide to go on them and you tag along via a pathway strewn with your own gritted teeth because you don't want to look like a wuss.

So, 'Rush'. Two long arms suspended from a metal frame, sixteen passengers on each, just swinging back and forth. How bad can it be? Just swinging back and forth...

But once you're sat on the thing, too late to go back, you remember just how vehement the screams of the riders before you were. Before the memory is drowned out by the deafening hydraulics powering the motion, obviously, and you realise you're stuck on the grandfather clock from hell with just a bloody flimsy-looking lap restraint (no reassuring over-the-shoulder number on this one). Eventually the ride describes two arcs that take the arms just past the horizontal, and you're 75ft up in the air with the G force (4, I believe) attempting to drive your intestines out via your throat...before the momentum is sucked from the swings and the sweetness of Mother Earth is regained.

Blimey.

Vortex
Vortex is another 'swingy arm thing', said arm sporting an eight-sided carousel seating arrangement at its end. Unsurprisingly, as the arm sways back and forth the carousel spins, making this a markedly different proposition to the single-plane-of-movement/terror offered by Rush, with the rider struggling (and usually failing) to keep track of where the ride is in terms of both rotation and tilt. With that in mind (and with shoulder rather than lap restraints increasing the feeling of security and despite your being 65ft up at the high point) this ride doesn't scare you nearly as much as it makes you feel sick.

For reasons other than motion sickness, Vortex was one of the more memorable rides of the day. We arrived at the front of the queue, climbed into the seats (problematic for the shorter-than-average, I should point out) before being told the ride had developed a fault and we should get off. We waited around while the problem was fixed: a delightful young lady of around 16 years of age had managed to drop a Spongebob Squarepants furry toy into the ride mechanism and it needed to be fished out. I say 'delightful' in the 'dressed like an Australian's nightmare and having just spent most of her time in the queue spitting food at her friends. I'm not making that last bit up' sense of the word.

Maybe Lakeside shopping centre was closed that day, or something.

Slammer
Resembling a couple of fly swats glued together at the handles, fortunately Slammer is slightly misleadingly monikered: when a ride involves passengers being strapped to both ends of a long arm which is raised at its centre to about 65ft before it starts rotating like a demonically possessed hamster wheel, it's just as well that it doesn't actually hit anything. It did fix the headache I'd had all day though. With your lap bar down and your (not especially substantial) shoulder restraints in situ, the arm starts paradiddling around its axis, with one end taking the fall from the high point forwards (which is quite stimulating/scary), and the other end thinking they've got off lightly because they're going backwards. No matter...after three rotations it stops and does the whole thing in the other direction.

Tidal Wave
Those of us of a certain vintage would describe the 'Tidal Wave' as a 'water chute' ride: a rollercoaster that's towed up a hill before the track turns the corner and plunges down into a lake. Most wet rides (log flumes, rapid rides and the like) threaten to soak you but in actuality render the rider almost apologetically 'vaguely damp'...the 'Tidal Wave' is an entirely different kettle of marine life. It's a great moment when you slice through the pool at the bottom of the drop, a faint moist mist refreshing you, and you look up and wonder where that great mass of displaced water above you is going to go next. 'Why do they have all those drying booth things near this ride?'

Detonator
Probably the simplest ride in the park: 12 seats (with shoulder restraints) are arrayed in a circle around a 115ft tower, which you are then lifted to the top of. And then you're dropped. Actually no, you're not dropped: pneumatics actually give you an initial hearty shove downwards. Because, y'know, gravity simply isn't good enough. It's like throwing a few bags of sugar at a man who's already fallen out of a plane.

X:\ No Way Out
Thorpe Park has made a bit of a habit of breaking new ground that nobody bothers following. There still isn't a coaster with more inversions than Colossus (not because no-one can build one, but because no-one can be arsed), and along similar lines, here's X:\ No Way Out...the world's first backwards rollercoaster in the dark. It was built in 1996 and there still isn't another one anywhere else. I wonder why?

I've ridden it once, years ago, and didn't deem it worth the time on this visit. But if the queue's short it's worth a go for the 'eh?' factor: its novelty value is its only real thrill, and that's a card that can't be played twice.

Samurai
Unfortunately we ran out of time before having a go on 'Samurai' (rough translation: 'we decided we'd far rather have another go on something thrilling that didn't look liable to make us ill, like 'Saw''), but I can report it's another trip down the dark alley signposted stuff-rotating-on-the-end-of-a-rotating-mechanical-arm. Lovely.

There are of course rides more amenable to those who prefer their thrills slightly more moderate. Some are time-honoured stuff that most parks have (a 'not bad' log flume, a rather generic rapids, a Magic Carpet), some less so ('Mr Monkey's Banana Ride'?). And there are rides explicitly aimed at young children, such as the railway and the carousel. There's even a beach area aimed at families, although if I hear of any of you deciding to give your kids the seaside experience in the middle of Surrey I'll consider myself licensed to mock (or tempted to phone Social Services).

Because, realistically, Thorpe Park is all about the thrill rides, so it isn't really a family-with-young-kids sort of place. Unless you possess an excess of chaperoning adults, turning up with any cherubs who are either a) under the crucial 1.4m in height, or b) over 1.4m but terrified, you're going to have a rather frustrating time of it. Better not to go to a place where you'll have to spend all day looking at fun stuff you'd have been able to have a go on but for limiting offspring: remove yourself from such torture by going to Chessington or Legoland (which are far more pitched at the children's market). Or, even better, fob your little bundles of joy off on your own parents / some other trustworthy adult relative for the day and go remind yourself of the larks you used to have.

Tickets. To rides.

Basic daily prices are:

Adult (anyone 12 or over)£28 (online) £35 (on the day)
Child £18/£21
Family of 4 £82/£92
Family of 5 £97/£115
Senior (what constitutes 'senior' isn't mentioned) £22/£24
Disabled / Helper £18/£20
Child under 1 metre FREE (adults under a metre might wish to take this up with the EU)

Groups of 10 or more are £22 a head for adults and £16 for children, and can't be purchased on the day. what can be purchased on the day are Fasttrack tickets (for individual rides, usually £4) or for a group of rides (£9 for 4) to cut your queuing time.

For other ticket options, refer to...

http://www.thorpepark.com/ticket-prices.php

You'll quickly discover how expensive this could get.

'It's got nothing to do with your Vorsprung Durch Technic, you know'

So, why indeed should one go here? It's quite expensive unless you have the mental discipline. You'll doubtless come across other park visitors that make the word 'eugenics' repeatedly enter your head. But the place always has been a guilty pleasure, and I have to concede that since my last visit it's made itself much more palatable for parole. The staff have had their ideas bucked up admirably, and the park as a whole is much, much cleaner (in the queue for 'Saw' I commented to my friend Tim that you could tell this was the new ride because the walls of the queue weren't yet encrusted in the time-honoured tacky shell of discarded chewing gum...only to discover later on that the old rides no longer had it either).

And even if you like the finer things in life, sometimes it's bloody good fun to slum it. I bet even Marco Pierre-White has a kebab every once in a while.

(Thanks to Tim for his supplementary photos) 

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