Thorpe Park

Thorpe Park does not return what you pay for. Secondly it is a complete mess so far as health and safety is concerned, risk information for rides is not displayed prominently, Inadequte sign posting, the crowds who visit are too rude, walking in the park to reach your vehicle is a risk too as youths drive too fast in the car park when they leave, there are no speed bumps to tackle this problem. Finally the rides are too fast and can get one dizzy especially people who are 45 plus. I will not visit again and so will my wife she said this quiet firmly as we drove out.

Rajendra Mehta

What a rip off. 45.00 for a ticket. arrived at park by 17.00. Only to find the owners had set no limit on number of tickets sold, with profit only in mind they had no interest in the public. We stayed until late and only managed to get on two rides. With queuing times of 120 mins on some rides we just didn't bother. The stewards seem to just give up due too to many numbers.LEAVING WAS A NIGHTMARE. No traffic control.

Would not recommend this place to my worst enemy.

This Article May Contain Spoilers:

I read a lot of reviews about this venue and the results are mixed especially in the last two and a half years.

I must say to kick off, I was very pleasantly surprised. I am extremely very difficult to please and it does take a lot to impress me, especially on a first occasion.

I must comment to the OnLine staff, truly superlative, highly courteous, relatively quick to reply. This method of contact was extremely impressive however the lack of a 01 or 02 or 0845 or 0870 telephone number is a bane to those on BT Free call telephone contracts: This needs to be addressed. The IT of the site is very difficult to operate, this also needs attention.

On entering the site the staff in the Red Polo Shirts, were extremely impressive and I say that with an emphasised point of note. The Ladies on the gate were superlative and I must say one of them was amazing, I see a big future for such pleasant hospitality. The staff in the resort at the lesser end of the management structure were the best. Pleasant, Polite, Courteous, I could not fault the hospitality. A very well done indeed. On a negative note I was not impressed with the some of the Security staff dressed in Black Polo Shirts, nor was I impressed with what appeared to be Management staff dressed in grey formal shirt wear. It is appreciated that the team were getting ready for a large evening function, however this is no excuse for the lack of a smile or a formal address or pleasant greeting:

The park itself is rather ethereal and basically does what it state on the tin.

You cannot compare it to American Theme Parks in size, nor should one do so.In its own right Thorpe Park holds its own and in a very commendable way.

It has an element of holiday camp theme to it, however the modern day rides such as Stealth & The Swarm soon take care of the serious side of the business.

I counted about 1,000 cars in the park which guesstimates it at about 3,000 people, so this could have been seen as a relatively quiet day ? I did not see people waiting longer than 35 to 40 minutes for any ride.

The food, I could not see where the negative comments about the food came from apart from the price of a cup of decent coffee.

The average price of a decent meal in any of the eateries was about £6.95p:

I was a little miffed at the lack of the high street offers in Burger King and kentucky Fried Chicken on site, whether its a franchise agency or not.

The facilities and the bars are very good, they did look a little tired in places, but I put this down to a long hard summer season.

The private beach and swimming pool was an excellent compliment to the venue.

I was very impressed with the free X Box gaming section for kids A nice touch and well done.

If you are expecting this to be Disneyland Epcot Centre or Saint Tropez and you have high expectations with a high quality ideal, you may be disappointed. I feel this is a very good value theme park, with some excellent facilities, at an appropriate price. There are some areas of this park that are truly second to none and in a class of their own.

There is a problem with smoking in the park and I did hear park staff on the tannoy stating not to smoke while queuing up. I feel that people should not be allowed to walk around the park smoking freely in the outdoor areas.

Thorpe park needs to address the issue of having dedicated smoking areas, where smoking can take place freely, The rest of the resort outside these proposed dedicated smoking areas should be policed by staff.

It is not pleasant breathing in smoke especially after eating food, or having a ride on one of the high G machines.

There are negative externalities of this resort, much like everything in life, however I feel the positives far outweigh any negative Yin/Yang:

Disabled facilities were very good and I did feel safe and accommodated in the resort venue.

Take it from me I am not easily impressed, but Thorpe Park does a very good job in providing Theme park entertainment, to get it absolutely 100%, would require some investment and some lateral thinking.

A very pleasing and enlightening day out:

My wife, myself and our son recently visited Thorpe Park. We did a two day package and thoroughly enjoyed it. The staff were always smiling, courteous and helpful, it seemed nothing was too much trouble which made the experience much better for us. I am finding it difficult to find fault, however, the only criticism I can think of is that during busy times, when the queues were long, some of the rides were going round with enpty seats, so I think a single riderline would alleviate some of the queue length.

I went to Thorpe park 18/08/14 My gripe is the amount of major rides breaking down throughout the day namely Nemesis Samurai all day out of action. The ride Saw had scheduled maintenance, down till 4.00PM in the afternoon, Slammer kept breaking down.

In 9 hours there I only managed to go on 7 rides,

Here is the rides and queuing times:

Detonator 1.0 HRS Queue

Swarm 1.5 HRS Queue

Colossus 2.0 HRS Queue

Slammer 0.45 HRS Queue

Vortex 0.20 HRS Queue

Rush 0.45 HRS Queue

Saw 1.5 HRS Queue

Almost 8 hours Queuing for 7 rides is not a bargain at a cost of £83.00 inc parking for 3 people. I can only recommend to go there when the kids are not on there 6 week summer Holidays. Basically there were too many people and not enough rides. I can only presume this is an average day at Thorpe park when the kids are off school.

I visited Thorpe park today,was good day out,although i bought my tickets online and the signage for online tickets at the entrance is poor,no staff were around to help you go to the right queue.only one baby changing room! which made it difficult and the queuing times stated for each ride was not updated quick enough,and differed quite alot to the actual queuing time, overall a good day out,staff on rides friendly.would go again!

i went on the website when I noticed that I saw some FALSE advertisement it shows a picture of a theme park on a island when really its in London you better remove the picture before I sue for false advertisement

We me and my family brought our first Merlin Passes as a treat for ourselves after we finally came into some money after a very hard time financially about 5 years ago. At the time myself and my sisters were young teenagers and frankly the idea of Thorpe Park terrified us! We left it until the last day of the summer that year before we finally went and that was honestly the biggest mistake we could've made!

As I'm the oldest I was going through a "nothing scares me I can go on anything!" Stage, so I stormed in through the gates at 10am with my heart set on walking straight to Stealth and proving how I'm not a wimp but I didn't even make it over the bridge before I was shaking at how BIG everything was! The Dome you have to walk through before you can get to the park is impressive enough, but walking out to happy calypso music and laughter (which is really the sound that makes the day so special - I've never really seen anyone shout or cry there! Except little ones who "hate dad soooo much for tricking her into X://No Way Out" (that might have been me..)

The queues at thorpe park are a thing. Don't ever trick yourself into thinking that you can "cheat" and go on school days or sundays - everyone else always has the same idea! The only day I've had where there was almost no queue at all was on Mothers Day last year! (No, I didn't force my poor mum into it - she likes it as much as us!) but you have to be REALISTIC. a 30-60 minute queue for one of a handful of theme parks in the country is NOT as bad going as people would have you think! And most queues are 30-60 minutes! The Unholy Trinity as they're known often go over and can hit between 90 and 120, but you really must hate the people you come with if you can't stomach that long with them. Or you could do what we do; make conversation with the people around you! I've had lengthy chats with thrill seekers from across the world. Seriously. I met a group of schoolgirls from australia who had travelled here with Thorpe Park being one of the few main days out they'd organised!

The good is NOT overpriced: if you aren't ridiculous about it. If you go into KFC or McDonalds then yeah you can definitely expect to pay normal over the top prices but there's nothing thorpe park can do about that. Their own restaurants (DEFINITELY recommend the fish and chip shop or the noodle bar! Or the Mexican!) do plenty of meal deals and offers - which actually work out cheaper than cafe's or restaurants in a normal town! And honestly; I've never had a SINGLE problem with the quality nor quantity of what I've been given.

Every single one of The rides are amazing, none have EVER been a let down. Its been 5 years and I can happily tell you that we have NEVER lost the feeling of giddy excitement just before you set off on a ride. Its really amazing.

One thing I do recommend avoiding - side stalls and games. **Not** because they're seemingly "rigged" - lies. I've won many times - but because they're so addictive! Once you've had a few goes its difficult to stop and then you realise you could've used the time on rides!

Definitely visit during Sun Scream in the summer (if only for the free pairs of Doctor Pepper pants I wear to this day!) and Halloween! Ministry of Sound is intense. Thorpe Park do know how to throw a great party!

I wasted £20 worth of Clubcard vouchers on this. I had hoped you could walk around and look at some nice gardens and sit down for a coffee with a nice view, but this place is all about rides and nothing else. Sorry, wrong - it's all about fleecing people.

First mistake was to e-mail the park with some practical questions - what made me think they'd bother to answer? Silly me. They have a contact page but apparently don't bother to check it.

My friend and I arranged to meet there, not knowing that you have to pay to park your car, so it cost £10 to park two cars. If I'd known I would have met him somewhere and gone in one vehicle. What a cheek, charging for parking!

My friend got on one of the rides and it lasted about 30 seconds! Apparently you can go as many times as you want - I should think so if they only last half a minute each! But you have to get back off and queue again.

I was so disgusted by the place that refused to buy anything to eat.

Don't go there thinking you can have a nice day out - there is nothing but the rides, and they were all really short.

This place must make a mint ripping its customers off like that. It's even worse than Tivoli in Copenhagen, and that's saying something!

My family and I went to the park for a day out and were very unimpressed with the level of maintenance.

We bought fast track tickets because we know that the waits are long. there is not much the operators can do about that and the fast track was good.

One thing that the operators do have control over however is the level of litter collection and the general level of paintwork and presentation of the park.

It just said saving money to me and I was upset because we definitely did not save money when we bought our tickets. Shame on them and if they save money on litter collection then do they also save money on safety inspections.