Six Flags over London....

or, "we should have just gone to Alton again."

THORPE PARK

The amusement park scum of England

(well, its not that bad, but I wanna make it seem dramatic)

So we'll just go with Six Flags over London. You know, a bunch of coasters, mostly sub-par, and not much else to do... and lets not forget an awful park clientele.

The day started off "later" due to all of us not really caring about going to Thorpe and wanting to try and catch up on some sleep. We made it to the park more than an hour after opening, sadly, at that point it became clear we should have got here earlier. ugh. So back in 2006 Thorpe was the last park I visited over a ten day, fifteen park trip across the UK and while it wasn't necessarily a bad park it just wasn't as good as maybe twelve of the other parks visited along the way. Not having any sort of high-hopes for the park and seeing it as more of a credit run... it still managed to disappoint. At an outrageous £49.99 ($82!) I'd have been pretty pissy but thanks again to the amazing Joey, I'd be getting in for free (payback for the time I gave him Free Disney? :P)
There's just so much offputting-ness to the park. The operations, paint (lack of), cleanliness, atmosphere, so much un-desirableness. It truly feels like the English equivalent to a dirty unkempt Six Flags of years now almost gone (good for SF, bad for Thorpe) its just kinda, sad. 

Even the main entrance is terrible. 

steel barricades, roll-away trashcans, not very welcoming.

(but way less people than last time)

Can't you just tell how thrilled I am.....

Honk honk honk

Hey wait a minute, this isn't Canada!

Once past the awkward secondary entrance.. the first thing we headed over to was Swarm.

My third B&M Wing Coaster... and while the other two weren't very exciting... 

this one has a unique feature.

The last two rows on the train have their seats turned around backwards!

(Called like.. Mraws, cause its Swarm backwards)

And while not overly excited for the ride itself, I was excited to try the backwards seats.

Also, less than thrilled for the wait.

But we eventually made it into the station, that was being loaded extremely poorly, leading to the right side having rows go out completely empty while the left side (our side) was full. This was a complete failure on the grouper employee's part (and lack of care)

The ride itself is fun. Not the best, not the worst, but for sure not worth the wait again!

Even with the backwards seats, there isn't any real force to the ride and I just don't get the big deal.. But as with Rita, the locals seem to love it (for now, its still new) and that's what the parks care about.

I'm just not a fan of the ride style I guess, I've ridden 3 of the B&M's and the Intamin original and X-Flight was the only one I liked.

Woo, Flying Fish!

Credit? Flying Fish is the parks oldest coaster but it was placed in storage for the 2005 and 2006 seasons, so it was still new for me this time around. Everyone but Joey sat it out (haha)

Oh hey! Cypress Gardens' old Spinning Raft ride!

For some reason the parks marketing department felt it was a good idea to say this ride was haunted by dead/headless monks upset during construction... or something.

What the hell is this crap?

Angry Birds Land was a re-theme new for 2014... but why.

 No thanks.

Umm.....

And to make things worse...

Detonator.. now named like Bombs Away.... was down

For the whole day :(

So we continued onward to Nemesis Inferno :D

The line was fairly long, but moved quickly 

and the ride is fun, so its worth the wait.

I actually like the ride but it gets a lot of flak from both enthusiasts and locals alike, simply for the park trying to piggyback off the successfulness of the original at Alton. Had the park just called the ride "Inferno" I doubt anyone would have bitched.

Umm.

Oh hey look, Stealth.

I was pretty OK not going for a ride, but since everyone else was... I waited it out. Far to long for what you get... but eh, its New England themed! <3

I find it kinda funny thinking I've ridden this ride more than Kingda Ka, the ride its a miniature version of. Seeing is how I've now only been here twice and yet have made a dozen visits to Great Adventure since Ka's opening (maybe if it was open more often... or like.. fun)

They think they're having fun.

Me? Not so much

(also, see what I did! I had my Legoland Florida shirt on... because Thorpe has a ride that came from Legoland and both have the same parent company!)

Glad to see Mr. Monkey's Banana Ride is still here.

Sadly,  Miss Hippo's Fungle Safari is gone.

Oh wow, but Slammer is still here AND running!

(unlike Catapult at Six Flags New England)

Took it for a ride because it'll likely be gone before I return and its now the last of its kind.

Sad bear. :(

Oooh, but SAW! 

The final new coaster in the park for me.

Themed after the SAW movie franchise, the ride is rather fun although rough. And thanks to Joey knowing someone working at the dispatch... I was able to get a second ride without having to wait. :D

And it sure had a wait. Although neatly themed.

Suffering the same fate as Alton did the day before... with loads of guests and hours of daylight left.. the park was about to close... We walked up to Colossus where the display was saying the line was an hour so we were gonna skip it. Two girls walked past us saying the sign was wrong and that there was no wait at all. Turns out, they were right. We pretty much walked right into the station.

Ugh, Colossus.

Former record holder for number of inversions and the first coaster to ever have 10.

I wasn't a big fan of it back in 06 (although a lot of other people I was with, were) 2014 was no different. I just find it kinda-rough and boring.

  The famous/infamous Quad Heartline Roll

The first of its kind, although now found on four coasters (and on three more being built)

despite what this photo shows... I'm laughing at how bad the ride is, not good.

with barely 10 minutes before park close we jumped in line for X, making it our last ride of the night, afternoon.

For 2012, X:\ No Way Out got renamed (to just X) and got new trains but lost its only redeeming quality. With the upgrades the park turned the train around so you ride forward. When opened it was the "Worlds First" indoor backwards coaster... and it was oddly fun. (I guess its still fun now, but I liked it backwards better)

Oh hey, and a photo completely unrelated to Thorpe....

A shopping cart flipped upside down into a tree with a bush growing up between it? lovely.

Um, so yeah... Thorpe Park and stuff... Not so good. Could be worse, maybe someday it'll be better. I'm be totally fine not going back to the park for a while even if able. If Chessington had added new things since my visit I probably would have gone there instead. The drive back to Joey's place took far longer than it should have and I think we even got lost in traffic at one point (and saw a man peeing on the side of the motorway) Scarlet bid us farewell and I passed out for the night, ready and hopeful to make tomorrow a better day than today.. 

(hahahaha)

Uh, Thorpe also had WiFi like Alton... but because I just didn't care... I forgot to take any photos with my phone. So I don't have any twitter photos... but I did find some tweets.

Being so hopeful and optimistic in line for Swarm - Tweet

The post-ride realization - Tweet

 Trying to be positive? - Tweet

And lastly, the truth. - Tweet