Thorpe Park Review

Overall Rating

Short queues (if you go out of peak season)
Great rollercoasters
Good choice of food
Lots of souvenirs
Friendly staff

No DVD for the Saw ride yet
Home time :(

I went to Thorpe Park on Tuesday and Wednesday with my best friend and we had the best time. We chose an ideal time to go, the park was practically empty which meant minimal queuing times and the weather was hot and sunny. I highly recommend that you try and go to Thorpe Park before the peak season really kicks in - try and avoid school holidays if you can. We walked onto the majority of the rides with perhaps a maximum of 10 minutes to wait at some points in the day. The park was so quiet that we were even able to queue for front row seats on a few rides without having to wait very long at all! The only two rides that had a longer queue time (and we expected this anyway) were Stealth and the new ride, Saw. We queued 45 minutes to get onto Stealth which hardly seems any time at all when you consider that at peak time you'd probably have to queue this long to get onto one of the smaller rides. Saw had a slightly longer wait (as you'd expect of a new ride) at 90 minutes. Saw did break down whilst we were queuing but as we were not far from the front of the queue at this point we decided to wait it out and it was only about 10 minutes before it was up and running again. We were slightly disappointed that we wouldn't have the chance to buy a copy of the DVD showing us our experience on Saw, as we'd seen on the website. We were informed by one of the ride operators that this feature wasn't up and running yet. We would've liked to have seen ourselves screaming in terror but never mind! The only ride that was broken down for our visit to Thorpe Park (on both days) was Samurai which was disappointing as we had wanted to go on it but we considered ourselves lucky that this was the only out of action ride and that it wasn't one of the main rides.
One thing to consider when going to Thorpe Park is how wet you want to get, as a few rides will soak you. Obviously Tidal Wave is the big one and you have absolutely no chance of staying dry on that one. My friend and I saved this ride for the end of our first day as we could go straight back to our hotel and have a shower and change. We had bought ponchos for this ride but abandoned them in the end and decided to just go for it. All I can say is that I'm glad we weren't going all the way home that day (an hour and a half drive) as we would've been extremely uncomfortable in our wet clothes. We also got wet on Loggers Leap and Rumba Rapids, although these are obviously not as extreme. The good thing about the day we went was that the sun was so hot that our clothes were dry in next to no time.
My friend and I didn't really sit down and have a proper lunch but there is plenty of choice if you decide you want to do this. We chose to snack throughout the day, mostly to avoid having full stomachs for the rollercoasters! We did, however, eat at the Pizza Hut buffet restaurant on our second day and it was very good. There was plenty of food to choose from and the buffet was refilled regularly.
To finish my review, my top tips for going to Thorpe Park would be to take plenty of money with you, even if you don't intend on buying any of the many souvenirs - you never know! Wear tight fitting, comfy shoes - there is only one ride where you are hanging rather than in a car (Nemesis Inferno) but it helps to be as comfortable as possible anyway as you will be walking around all day and standing in queues. It doesn't really matter what type of bag you take, whether it is your regular handbag, a rucksack or even the tiniest bumbag - any bag you have on you will need to be put to the side when you go on a ride - they have boxes and shelves for this purpose. My friend and I took a bumbag and a very small handbag respectively and we weren't allowed to take these on the rides, although we did manage to get away with it on Colossus amazingly. We were really against being separated from our bags at first but by the end of the day we were quite happily putting them to the side and getting on with the ride. The bags are as safe as possible and there are staff watching over them but if you do not feel comfortable leaving your bag, you can always get a locker and keep your things in there but bear in mind that it costs £1.00 everytime you go back to the locker to get something out.
Overall, a great day out - I can't wait to go back but I will definitely not be going peak season!