Ridin’ The ‘Coasters At Thorpe Park
Seeing as how we didn’t manage to go away for a few days during our time off this week, The Wife and I headed out yesterday to the wilds of Surrey and spent the day riding roller-coasters and spotting boy band members at Thorpe Park. The latter being an unfortunate by-product of the day out.
Yesterday was the first day the park was open this year after being closed for the winter and as a result the park was quite empty. We didn’t really have to queue for any of the rides, except for the very first one where it took us ten minutes to get from the end of the queue to being strapped into the ride.
Thorpe Park has 5 big rides, rollercoasters of various styles, lengths and thrills and numerous other rides that spin turn upside down or get you wet.
The first ride of the day was Colossus, a standard coaster with ten loops including a quadruple barrel role. Maybe this wasn’t the best one to kick off the day with as it turned out to be one of the best.
Next up was Saw: The Ride a ride based on the film of the same name. The highlight of this ride is a 101° and 100ft drop towards spinning saw blades. If I’m honest it was probably the worst ride of the day. It lasts for about all of 30 seconds. On a busy day imagine having to queue for ages for a 30 second ride?
Third ride was Nemesis Inferno which turned out to be The Wife’s favourite one of the day. It’s one of those dangly-legs rollercoasters with a couple of twists and loops. It’s the only ride that we both came off and felt a bit wobbly in the legs. Good fun!
As we walked to the next ride we spotted a group of people and a cameraman all walking towards us and following someone. As they passed, The Wife pointed out that Liam Payne had just walked by.
No, me either! I had no idea who he was. Apparently he’s in One Direction. You may have heard of them!
Back to the rides and the next one was Swarm, a wing rollercoaster with nothing to hold onto. After we’d ridden it, I got off and as there was no queue hopped back onto it. But this time I was going to ride it backwards!
The last row of seats on the ride have been turned around so when you’re on it you can’t see what is coming. You can only see where you’ve been. It really does make the ride that bit more exhilarating!
The final ride of the big 5 was Stealth which doesn’t look like much from outside, but it goes from 0-80mph in under 2 seconds and then launches up a 205ft vertical climb. The best place to sit on this one is at the front as you get the full force of wind in your face and so on the second ride a little later in the day that’s where I put myself.
We spent the rest of the day on the smaller rides such as Rush and Vortex, the water rides Loggers Leap and Rumba Rapids and then re-rode each of the big ones again, except for Saw, it wasn’t that great. I doubt that if we were to come again we’d have the luxury of multiple rides and no queues. When I rode Vortex I was the only person on it!
It was a good day out, not cheap, but the benefit of the park being empty made it all worthwhile. I doubt you’d have the same experience if you had to queue ages for every ride!