Thorpe Park sits in the shadows of the ever passing airplanes arriving and leaving from London’s Heathrow Airport. For those looking to experience a British theme park, there is no more convenient option. The park itself is a 10-15 minute drive from the airport, and if you’re in London you can easily find a route using the London Underground to get you to Staines Upon Thames in a half hour or so. From the Staines train station, Thorpe Park runs a bus every 15 minutes that only costs £4.00 for a round trip to and from the park. As far as first impressions go, I wish more standalone theme parks had transportation this convenient.

For those who don't know much about Thorpe Park, it is located on a small island which was once home to a leisure park for water sports and has grown into one of if not the biggest park in the UK. If that biggest debate was up to question, last year the park unveiled Hyperia, a Mack hyper coaster that holds the honor of being the tallest and fastest coaster in the UK. They have really leaned into their water centric past with much of the theming around the park being nautical based. Different sections are themed to fishing villages akin to Popeye at Islands of Adventure, a tropical island paradise, and a lost Atlantean city to name a few.

With all that in mind, we figured it would make for a great stop on our most recent trip across the pond, and we were not disappointed.

Initial Thoughts

A bridge from the parking lot takes you over to the island

First a bit of housekeeping since this was how we started our day. Seeing as we only had one afternoon at the park, we thought it would be worth purchasing the Fasttrack, Thorpe Park’s skip the line offering. Thorpe Park tickets are very inexpensive, starting at £33.00 (or $43.00). That low cost makes the additional expense of a Fasttrack not hurt as much. They do make the Fasttrack pretty pricey, which I believe leads to it being a worthwhile investment as we found very few people at the park had purchased it. On a fairly busy day, most rides were 30-40 minute waits, I rarely found more than 1 or 2 other parties in the express line, which led to pretty much everything being a walk-on for us all day. Without having to worry about spending time in line, it gave us a ton of downtime to just walk around and enjoy the ambiance of the park while still getting on 18 total attractions throughout the day. To me, this is how it should be with any express and why I am constantly frustrated with Disney’s system. Make it expensive enough so only a few people who are likely on a one time only trip purchase it. In turn it doesn't ruin the stand by queue for those who visit more often.

While the Fasttrack was very efficient, we found it odd that there was no front of park location to pick up our wristbands. If you purchase a Fasttrack, you need to go all the way to the back of the park, to the left of Nemesis Inferno, to collect it.

When told it was “at the back of the park” for our Fasttrack wristbands, we were a bit nervous for the walk ahead of us, but upon reaching the back we realized that this is a pretty tight park. Due to it being an island, they have had to be very conscious of space and use it well. Even with an impressive ride collection, it does feel like you can get just about anywhere in the park within 10 minutes.

Ride Experiences

Let me begin by saying the operations at Thorpe Park were excellent. Every major coaster had multiple trains running, and every major ride had an employee at the end of the queue stopping and directing guests which row to go to. I cannot express how refreshing it was to not have to deal with the free for all in the station as people try to squeeze their way into every available space.

Thrill Forward

I loved the diversity and quality of Thorpe Park's coaster line up. Even their least themed coasters still had more set dressing than your average US regional park, and the best themed ones were on par with the best theming I've ever seen on a coaster. It's funny how the least themed ones seemed to be the two that pack the most punch.

Stealth is an Intamin Accelerator that is essentially a baby Kingda Ka in that you blast up over a top hat and take a bunny hill back to the station. It reminded me of Oblivion at Alton Towers, the original B&M Dive, in that it gave people a really fun and at the time new element and then just returned to the station. No real theming aside from some racing decor, but there is a fun radio station playing in the area based on this ride complete with fake commercials.

The other coaster light on theming was surprisingly the newest one, the Mack hyper coaster Hyperia. Aside from the actual station, which features a good soundtrack and some lighting and smoke effects, there's actually no theming at all. It reminded me of Pantheon from Busch Gardens in that regard, the park's most impressive offering that could be just that much better with a bit more of a theming budget. Decor aside, this coaster has to be experienced to truly understand. It is as intense in its pacing and airtime as any coaster I've ever ridden. After my first ride, I actually said to the person next to me “it felt like I was being thrown out of my seat for like 15 seconds during that ride”, only for him to reveal that there are in fact 15 seconds of airtime throughout the ride. And we aren't talking quick pops, every single time it's full ejector sustained over multiple seconds. Those waist only lap bars are putting in some hard work throughout that ride. The only detractor I have for the experience is that it's too short. Not including the lift hill, it’s a 40 second ride. Now do you see why 15 seconds of airtime is so impressive? There is a trim brake right before the turn around into the final brake run that I actually thought was a mid course brake, and we were just slowing to transition into the second half. You still have plenty of speed, thus the trim brake, and I think a few more well placed elements would put this into that top top tier.

Elevated Familiarity

There are a handful of often used coaster models that are truly elevated by the set design. The B&M Wing Coaster The Swarm essentially has its own mini land with incredible theming throughout and a very impactful full land soundtrack. The ride is based on an alien invasion, and they went all out on depicting that in this area. There are overturned trucks, plane wreckage, a full helicopter sinking into swamps all surrounded by the ruins of a village. They also use the sets to masterful effect in creating head choppers and near miss moments, an absolute must for any good Wing coaster. This takes what would likely be a mid tier Wing Coaster and has it punching well above its weight class.

The same goes for Nemesis Inferno, a thrilling but compact B&M Inverted Coaster that is made so much more impactful with the addition of a massive volcano that you interact with throughout the ride.

Saw: The Ride is another familiar model, a Gerstlauer Euro-Fighter, which while unfortunately I found it to be pretty uncomfortable, features an incredible indoor section. While in the show building, you come face to face with an animatronic Jigsaw (complete with tricycle) before plunging through a series of pretty well designed “traps”. Any discomfort that I experienced during the outdoor portion was definitely made up for by these dark ride-esque portions.

The Weirdos

The other three coasters at the park were unfamiliar treats that all provided something different.

Colossus is a custom built Intamin from 2002 that features 10 inversions. This was the park's first major attraction, and what a way to start by breaking the inversion record at the time. It features fun Atlantean theming with a thrilling original score (a trend I noticed around most of the park). It also features one of the most bizarre coaster elements that I've ever experienced, a quad heart line roll at a weirdly calm pace. It just keeps going and going and going, it’s so long you can't even get the whole thing in one shot if trying to film it from a stand still. The ride is a bit of a head banger with really tight seats and over the shoulder restraints, but absolutely must be experienced at some point by any enthusiast.

The Colossus heart line roll with Hyperia and Saw behind

The Walking Dead: The Ride is a Vekoma that answers the question: what if a zombie attack happened on Space Mountain? If that excites you as much as me, you'll be a huge fan of this attraction. Not just that, but you walk through a permanent scare maze to get to and from the ride, with live actors! As a haunt fanatic, I could not believe that a park would invest in year round scare actors for essentially the queue of a ride. Not even Universal kept that up in The Mummy and Kong.

Flying Fish is a Mack Powered Coaster that is meant for children but made me sicker than any ride I've been on in years that isn't screen based. It's a figure 8 layout with decent speed and because our ride operator was feeling unhinged she sent us around 5 times. You can only take tight circles at 20mph for so long.

Non-Coasters

While the park had a really fun and unique coaster lineup, it definitely lacked in a few places. There were plenty of high quality flat rides, especially in the “Lost City” area where they were all well themed as discovered ruins. Where the park fell short was with dark rides and transportation rides.

Ghost Train is the only dark ride, which unfortunately was up and down all day, and both times we tried to queue up for the next showing it closed. However, you may have noticed I said showing instead of ride. Since we didn't get to do it, I can't fully speak to this, but from descriptions this seems to be more of an interactive show than a dark ride. Meaning that the park has no true dark ride. Especially in Europe, this was a huge surprise, as strange little dark rides based on the lore and history of the area seem to be mandatory at overseas parks.

We also were really disappointed that there wasn't a single transport ride in the park. We don't usually ever use transport rides for actual transportation, but rather as a great way to take a load off while still riding something and getting an interesting view of the park. I'm assuming the lack of transport ride was due to the previously mentioned aspect of this park being very tight. You don't really need a way to get from one side to the other because it's never more than a 10 minute walk. However, nothing beats pointing out little details from a sky ride or circling the park in a train or monorail.

Food and Beverage

Food was something that left a lot to be desired. There are three, count em three Burger Kings inside of Thorpe Park. Thorpe Park is a place that sticks to the basics with the food selections, the craziest you're going to find is a burrito or a kebab. None of the restaurants are built as an experience either, there are no patios with a great view (maybe Vibes Kitchen by the entrance but their outdoor seating is off to the side), and any highly themed environments are a part of the land around the food location, not the location itself. Every time we got food or a drink, we basically had the “where should we go to sit?” conversation to try to seek out a scenic spot since they aren't really provided.

They did have some fun ride specific beers. Unfortunately they were out of the Hy-BEER-ia, but I was able to get a Swarm Lager to enjoy among the wreckage of the alien invasion.

Final Thoughts

All in all, we had a terrific first visit to Thorpe Park. This is definitely a coaster forward park. I could recommend our trip last year to Europa-Park to any park fan at all as it had a little bit of everything, but thrills are the primary focus here. This can absolutely be scheduled as a one day visit, especially if you purchase a Fasttrack you can get on every major ride multiple times in just one day. We went on a Tuesday, and at mid afternoon the major rides were commanding 30-45 minute waits. Even with some long lines and decent crowds, we found the pathways to be uncrowded and very pleasant. So if it's within your ability, I would try to go on an off peak day like we did to ensure you're not met with a very crowded park.

Thorpe Park has only been in the big leagues for about 25 years, so they still have a lot of room to grow. If they keep the quality of their offerings high, and continue to prioritize excellent guest service and experience, they're on their way to becoming a world class destination.

Thorpe Park - First Visit Review