UK Tourist & Leisure Attractions - Thorpe Park

We arrived at Thorpe Park bright and early, paid our £28.50 entrance fee (look out for 2 for 1 deals) and, guide pamphlet in hand, headed for the...

...café to plan which scary and thrilling rides to do first.  There were many new rides since our last visit to Thorpe Park in 2001 and one of these was...

...Colossus, which not only had several large drops, but corkscrewed upside down about five times!  After being scared senseless we wanted to go on it again afterwards, but the queue by then was an hour's wait and the Fastrack time was way into the afternoon.

After Colossus we tried something a bit tamer with the Pirates 4D show in Ranger County, complete with large 4D glasses as modelled here by Belinda.  The 4D effects included getting squirted and vibrated plus loads of stuff coming at you out of the screen!  Eeek!

Next up was the Rumba Rapids at Calypso Quay, a wild ride round a fast flowing river where you frequently get sloshed and squirted with water!  As by now we were a little wet, we headed off to Canada Creek...

...and Loggers Leap and got even wetter!

Here's us on Loggers Leap.  Thorpe Park try to sell you your picture on the ride exit, but we took this from the TV screen and saved £4.99, he he.

As you can see, Mike got pretty drenched on Thorpe Park's Loggers Leap.  The down side were the long queues; the Fastrack system does allow you to get an allocated time to ride, but we found you often miss your time slot as you're the other side of the park when your time comes up.  Bummer!

There's many catering outlets within Thorpe Park, and we stopped by Kentucky (watch out for the higher Thorpe Park prices) in Amity Cove.  This shot's looking towards the Rumba Rapids near the Detonator ride.

Here's Slammer, a 105ft rotary thrill ride that flips over to slam you towards the ground at 30mph!  Another upside down experience, just what you really don't need straight after lunch!

Well by now we were just starting to dry off so we went to top up on what's probably the wettest ride ever - Tidal Wave.  After climbing to a great height (85ft), Tidal Wave thunders down and throws up a huge wall of water above you which then...

...crashes down on top of you!  You can see the water surge created here, with the Tidal Wave track in the background.  To the left is the large arch of Thorpe Park's new-for-2006 Stealth ride which unfortunately we didn't get to go on as Stealth kept breaking down whenever we went back for our ride (got away with that one then, phew!).  It rises 205ft in the air and does 0 to 80 in 2.3 seconds - a bit faster than the car then!

And this is Nemesis Inferno, a scary ride in Thorpe Park's Calypso Quay that involves your feet dangling down most of the time except for when you're upside down when they're flying furiously through the sky, and there are a number of upside down loops on this ride!  A real stomach churning scary ride was this one!  Ooo, is that my lunch again?

Now Detonator, which rises slowly to 100ft then plummets rapidly, causing you to think you're going to fly out of the seat and head skywards!

After getting soaked and having our stomachs ripped out on all the thrill rides at Thorpe Park we thought we'd try something a little more gentle so headed to Thorpe Farm on the Canada Creek railway.

Thorpe Farm has many animals including sheep, pigs, goats and rabbits and was rather relaxing after all those Thorpe Park thrill rides earlier.  Also here was a café and, of course, a gift shop.

Here's Belinda exploring the barn at Thorpe Farm.  Well, we had a thoroughly good time at Thorpe Park, check the theme park out in our UK tourist resources.  Home now to dry off then!
Note: Thorpe Farm is no longer operating.

Aww!  A cute little, er, what is it?