I have been to Thorpe Park at least twice a year for the last two years and it still remains one of my favourite theme parks. It is also only a 90 minute drive from where I live making it easily accessible.
Location
Thorpe Park is situated in Churtsey in Surrey. It is easily accessible and is well sign posted from both directions on the motorway.
Admission Costs
You can purchase your entrance ticket either online in advance or on the gate on the day of your visit. You can save money if booking online but what we prefer to do is to use a buy one, get one free voucher which can nearly always be found on a Google search.
Just to give you an idea on prices, if you book online, an adult ticket will cost you £26.52. Whereas if you pay on the gate on the day of your visit the price goes up to £40.80 so its certainly worth booking online if you don’t have the buy one get one free vouchers.
Car parking is also charged at £2 per car for the whole day.
The Rides
I am not going to bore everyone with just listing all the rides at Thorpe park, instead I will just talk about the rides that I enjoy the most during my visits.
The park is divided into seven sections; Amity Cove, Lost City, SAW Island, Calypso Quay, Neptune’s Kingdom, Ranger Country and Canada Street.
Amity Cove is designed to look like an old fishing village which has been battered by a storm and has been left with lots of water damage. In this section you will find the following rides;
Storm Surge – This is Thorpe Park’s newest ride and only opened in 2011. It consists of a huge water slide. You ride down the slide in a circular boat / dingy which fits 6 people inside. You start your journey by climbing a rather large slope which takes you all the way to the top of the slide and then the boat is released from a height of 84 feet and you travel on your journey to the bottom with the boat is spinning madly round and round. To be honest, I wasn’t overly impressed with this ride. It was enjoyable but I felt that it lacked the certain amount of excitement I like from theme park rides.
Tidal Wave
Tidal Wave is probably (at a guess) Thorpe Park’s oldest ride as I remember it being there when I was a child. It is actually a very simple ride which consists of a large boat that travels on a track, climbing to a height of 64 feet and then plunging you down again where a massive tidal wave engulfs the entire boat. Not a single person gets off the ride dry, you will literally get soaked to the bone.
Stealth – this is probably my favourite ride here. It is a rollercoaster which is designed to look like a 1950’s American car. You start the ride on a track as if you are beginning a race. One the ride starts you travel up to a speed of 80mph in just 1.8 seconds – making for a very attractive ride photograph!! You travel along the track and reach a height of 200 feet, the rollercoaster twists and then you plummet straight back down again. This ride certainly leaves your heat racing!
The Lost City section has the following rides;
Samurai – Samurai is not one of my favourites if I am honest.
It does make me feel rather queasy which amuses my girlfriend a lot. You sit in a large circle design and are basically spun round and round while swinging back and forth at the same time. This ride can be very repetitive and if you are not a massive fan of being spun round and round then this may be a ride to just walk past…
X: No Way Out – This is another rollercoaster and again is quite old. The twist to this ride is that it travels backwards which certainly wasn’t what I expected when we sat in the front carriage (which actually became the back!). The rollercoaster journey is carried out completely in the dark which adds to the thrill of the ride. There are lots of sudden drops which are made more jumpy by the fact you do not know when the next one is coming.
Colossus – Colossus is another rollercoaster and this one loops ten times on its journey. This ride is quite brutal as you are twisting and turning the whole way round and it is difficult to try and figure out which way up you are and in which direction you are travelling. Having said that it’s a very thrilling ride and one that I really love.
SAW Island is based on the scenery used in the SAW horror films. The décor around this section of the part is particularly good and this probably has something to do with the fact that it is one of the newer areas. In SAW Island are the following rides;
SAW Alive – SAW Alive is the newest of the SAW attractions and consists of a warehouse made up of different rooms. You walk through the rooms in groups of 6-8 people. You are asked to stand in a train with your hands on the shoulders of the person in front of you. The idea is you have to walk through each room (which, by the way are in complete darkness with smoke effects) and find your way through the room and into the next one. You have to complete the maze and make it through to the end! Inside there are actors (who are dressed for the part complete with makeup) who will jump out at you and try to scare you. I really enjoyed this as its different from the other rides and although you are expecting to be scared and don’t think you will be, some how they still make you jump!!
SAW the Ride – this is another brilliant rollercoaster and again, another of my favourites! The climax of the ride is where you are dragged up the vertical track of the rollercoaster to a height of 100 feet and then go flying down an inverted track the other side at speeds of 55 mph. My word does this ride make you lose your tummy!
Canada Creek is themed around the Canadian Rockies and here you will find;
Slammer – this is a similar lay out to that of a magic carpet ride – the twist being that you are sent all the way over the top of the ride! To be honest, I wasn’t brave enough for this ride as I am not sure I could cope with being upside down like that!
Logger Leap – this is the traditional ‘log-flume’ ride where you ride around the track in a log shaped boat. There is country and western music playing in the background as you are plunged down to the bottom of the slope and covered in water.
Ranger County is what I would call the children’s main area of the park. It is themed around a Jungle and all the rides incorporate some kind of animal. There are plenty of rides for very young children to enjoy in this area.
Calypso Quay is themed around a Carribean Quay and all the décor is very bright and attractive. Here you will find;
Rumba Rapids – this is where you ride the rapids in a big circular boat that fits 6 people. To be honest this ride is quite tame, and you only get a little bit wet but it is a great ride for the whole family to enjoy together. Another plus is that there is hardly ever a queue for this ride as lots of boats can go around at the same time.
Detonator – to look at, this ride really doesn’t look like anything special and you could easily walk past it without realising its there. You sit in a square arrangement around a large tower and are slowly lifted to a height of 115 feet. From here, the seats are dropped straight back down to the floor level again. Your guts don’t actually manage to catch back up with your body until you are back on the ground! This ride is quite brutal but certainly gives you a thrill.
Nemesis Inferno – this ride straps you in with an over the body brace and leaves your feet dangling in the air which I liked as its different to all the other rides. You are thrown around a track with tight twists and turns at speeds of up to 50mph. You will also venture through tunnels complete with special effects which really adds to the ride experience!
Finally, there is Neptune’s Kingdom which again, I would say is aimed more at children although is clearly well suited to the entire family. Its basically a little water park complete with a little pool and several different water slides. This areas is always really popular in the heat of summer.
Facilities
There are plenty of toilets located in the various sections of the park and these include male, female and disabled.
Then of course there are also the food and drink outlets which again there are plenty of. Most of the food outlets are in Amity Cove and Canada Creek and you can chose between a Mexican restaurant, Pizza Hut, KFC, Burger King and plenty more. The prices are reasonable which I liked as quite often you see the prices being bumped up just because of where you are. As well as the various restaurants, you also have little outlets selling snack items such as Nachos, Ice creams and Hot doughnuts so you will certainly never go short of food.
Summary
In summary I would highly recommend a visit to Thorpe Park. I think that the entrance costs are extortionate if you arrive on the day and pay on the gate, however, with the buy one get one free offer, it brings the price down to a much more acceptable level. There is a nice mix of rides so there should really be something to suit everyone’s taste. My only grumble would be the queue times at the peak of summer but to be honest, I have no right to complain about this as you fully expect to have long queue times at that time of year. My partner and I tend visit the park in March and September as this means we avoid all the crowds and can easily get on all the rides twice in one day. However, we have also been in the middle of summer when we queued for nearly 3 hours for SAW – the Ride so this is definitely something to bear in mind when planning a visit. On the whole – a really great family fun day out!
Park & Ride 
