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Thorpe Park Reserve 'n' Ride

Martyn B

Martyn B

CF Legend
Thorpe Park have mentioned on FB that they're trying out this new reserve n ride system. Use your phone to book your slot on a coaster etc. One small twist though, they're saying that for monday and tuesday, using this system will be the only way to ride the coasters, there will be no normal queue for you to join... :?

So I guess if you dont have a smart phone, you can't ride the coasters...

I just hope this trial kinda falls flat tbh, I love my rerides on Stealth!
 
Sounds like they are cutting staff and will just have the exit queues open?

Problem I have at Thorpe is no 3G so unless they provide wifi I have no hope.

Plus I don't have the Thorpe app as it's rubbish.
 
That surely spoils the spontaneity of a day out? Half the fun is deciding what to do next or which re-rides you can fit in before home time
 
I'm sorry but this is the stupidest idea I've ever heard. If they ran 2 **** trains even on the busier days queues wouldn't be THAT bad! The whole thing with going to a theme park is getting there and riding what you WANT to ride WHEN you want to ride. No one wants to **** plan their day in this way! Absolutely ridiculous. And what about people, not just who don't have smartphones but who don't want to use them? Theme parks are usually places of social gathering, you be social, the idea isn't that you look down at your phone all day booking rides. I know people who leave their phones in their cars to maximise the social idea. Phones are also another thing to look after, in pockets or in bags left in stations.

This is ludicrous, and in my mind there's no doubt, it simply won't work.
 
As of the now their FB says the trials will be tomorrow, tuesday, friday, and Saturday this week. They might announce more trial days in the future, which they hopefully won't as the trial days probably won't be great. I'll be visiting the following week so hopefully it stays normal.
 
^^ Here are the dates:

https://www.thorpepark.com/tickets-pass ... ve-n-ride/

So you have nothing to worry about regarding your visit.

Contrary to all of you, I quite like the idea, but I can't really see it work properly. There must be at least some kind of queue, otherwise the trains will go around half empty, with people missing their limite time slots...
 
Just enjoying myself having a read of EVERYONE moaning about it on Facebook. I've read a little more into it.

You don't NEED to have a smart phone, you can go and reserve a place in the Dome. So every time you've ridden a coaster you have to go back to the dome and book another place. For these trial days it will be the only way to queue as Martyn said. But all this will do is bump up the queue times of the other attractions surely? Coasters will have a much lower throughput as well because I can tell people won't bother, if I didn't have a smartphone or couldn't get signal I couldn't be arsed to walk all the way from Saw to the dome back to Colossus, or back to Saw for a reride.

If they do it in a sort of fast pass way so you can book your place but queue for another coaster at the same time I can see it has potential. Making it the only way too queue is just stupid. Fin.
 
TilySlo said:
Contrary to all of you, I quite like the idea, but I can't really see it work properly. There must be at least some kind of queue, otherwise the trains will go around half empty, with people missing their limite time slots..
Click to expand...

It states on the site that the main queue will be open as normal. EDIT. This only applies on other attractions. Main queues will be closed on the 5 major coasters.

I'm not a fan of the idea, it over complicates the day. Since the dawn of theme parks we've accepted the fact that we have to queue for rides, and more recently we've acclimatised to fast track (a very simple form of queue skipping). Why do we need yet another method to queue/not queue for a ride?

But, the biggest problem here comes with the park. Thorpe is one of the smallest 'major' theme parks in the world, but will easily hold up to 15,000 guests on a regular busy day. That's not a problem as at any one time 70-80% of guests will be in queue lines. Now take those people out of the queue lines and you'll have 10,000+ people meandering around the park. That's going to be **** horrendous!

For me if you're going to trial this then do it at a park that can handle the extra capacity outside of the queue lines. Oh Merlin, if only you had an extremely large theme park that was more suitable for such a trial.
 
I bet they end up for charging for this going forward? Sounds like they are trying to do what Disney are doing at wdw where you can book your ride times.

There is no way they will sell there queue jump tickets if you can book your ride time.
 
I get the feeling they're trialling it on the extreme, to see if they can cope with it on smaller scale, if that makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if this system replaces fast track's. That would make a bit more sense. But then what's so wrong with the fast track system?

To have it as the only way to queue is just ridiculous. I'd be well pissed if I was visiting tomorrow, expecting a nice quiet day with multiple rerides... and lets see what the chaos is like come Saturday which is bound to be busy!
 
I can see this lasting 1 trail day, falling flat on its arse and then leaving a lot of people angry and the park having to hand out complimentary tickets/vouchers what will be at the parks expence.

Stupid idea!

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I heard there will be more than one kiosk for non smart phone users, the dome, swarm and colossus.
I also heard that each person can assign up to 5 friends to use their reservation, so in theory 6 people could register and go from coaster to coaster.

I didn't realise that the main queues would be closed, pretty stupid idea really. I was ok with it with the queues open but this sucks. I like that det is always a short wait, during these trials that, and rush will be ridiculous.
 
This is silly. I find this more idiotic than something SixFlags would do. At least get a virtual fast pass system but removing the queue and depending on technology though. Have the Terminator movies taught us nothing?!
 
The idea behind it is so that instead of spending time in the Colossus queue for 90 minutes you're spending time on park doing other things (say like, spending money on food, merch, etc)...

Unfortunately for Thorpe, it's a park that essentially anything a park needs to make this work (i.e. some gardens or a zoo)...

It's also a stupid idea, just as it was last year when they introduced it on Swarm...
 
I didn't realize there were so many cavemen on Coasterforce. Did you guys oppose email too, when that first came out?

Either that or you are all brilliant businessmen running multi-million dollar operations...right?

I don't follow the park that closely but according to this thread they tested this last year on a smaller scale. Clearly they saw results that were positive to the business (including guest satisfaction) otherwise they wouldn't have rolled this test out.

Assuming they have the technology to do this they take literally the worst part of theme parks, standing in line like a zombie, and make it obsolete. You are free to do things like shop, eat, catch a show, take a ****, etc...

I'm curious to see how they handle ride downtimes. You can really start to mess with reservation schedules if you have to start shuffling people around.

Either way it's a bold idea and curious to see the results.
 
Isnt this similar to what Disney does with its Magic Wristband+ system?

You can reserve via your smartphone/tablet or at kiosks throughout the park?
 
^^No offence but you haven't been to or experienced Thorpe Park.

The issue is it just won't work at this park, and let me tell you why..

-Thorpe Park has no shows, Zoo's or any forms of entertainment to keep you occupied whilst waiting for your time slot.
-The water rides and major thrill rides will pick up major queues which most will avoid from fear of missing a time slot.
-There are very few drinking establishments (Bar360 is the only one I believe and that's a very small venue).
-The park is extremely small, like ridiculously small. My best comparison would be KBF but even that is bigger than Thorpe. What the hell are you going to do with all the guests that aren't queuing? The walk ways are going to be horrendous!

So before you start calling us cavemen please do a little research into the park.

If this was to be trialled at Alton Towers or CWOA most of us would be open to the idea - these parks have so much more to offer than just the coasters, Thorpe Park doesn't. It's a thrill park primarily based around the 5 major coasters.
 
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