But is it big enough for a B&M hyper, that's what we all wanna know? From the pictures I'm thinking probably not, unless they go for one of those twisty hyper layouts like... heaven forbid... Raging Bull!
My money's still on wood, but with an outside possibility of RMC, I guess? Either the 'Uk's longest, tallest woodie' or the 'UK's first hybrid'.
Either would be ok with me.
As
@FistedColossus said, you could have the station, brake run, lift hill etc on the Logger’s Leap area and have it go elsewhere; an out and back layout going either over the water at the front of the park or around the back of the park would work phenomenally, in my view!
it also would seem a bit of a U turn investing in a Hyper in a park that has been getting the square root of nothing for the past ten years (besides one of the most problematic dark rides in the world!).
I’m not entirely sure I agree with this statement; as much as the last 2 years or so haven’t been too eventful at Thorpe, the last 10 years have seen 2 significant investments at Thorpe in terms of cost. Swarm in 2012 cost either £18m or £20m (the number varies between sources), and as much as I know many probably try and wipe it from their memory, DBGT in 2016 was an incredibly significant investment, costing at least £20m (it was officially cited in press releases as “Merlin’s most expensive investment ever”), possibly closer to £30-40m based on rumours. That’s not an insignificant sum of money, and if you look at it in terms of number of significant investments within the last 10 years, they’ve had the same number as Alton (Smiler and Wicker Man), and people don’t seem to portray Alton in anywhere near the same neglected light as they do Thorpe, in spite of them having had a fairly similar level of investment (in terms of major investments, at least).
In terms of non-majors; I’m led to believe that DBGT’s 2017 rework cost more money than you might expect (at least 7 figures), and I think Walking Dead was also a fairly significant outlay for a retheme, from what I’ve heard; apparently, the whole project was some way into 7 figures.
In terms of why the last couple of years have been less eventful; I remember reading online (may even have been from someone on here) that the park did have a major investment planned for 2020 originally (they even teased it at an enthusiast event in 2017), but the park had a pretty significant change in upper management in the late 2010s that did ultimately see this scrapped, and ultimately set the park’s next major investment back a few years.
I guess we’ll just have to see what happens… but I wouldn’t rule anything out, personally.