Thorpe Park: Major expansion spotted!

Death · Thorpe Park: Major expansion spotted!

Hail all!

As ye all know, I'm a bit of an extreme Engineer and all round insane coaster imagineer. Earlier this afternoon, I was listening to extreme Metal and thinking about designs for über high speed and high-G woodie designs (As I normally do when listening to such music) and decided to point Google Maps over Thorpe Park to see what space might be available for such a woodie. Smile

Anyhow...Once I'd pointed the map over the park, I noticed that the aerial photographs had been taken in the middle of last summer - Saw is visibly under construction in the photos, and looks about 45% complete.
More interestingly though, panning North (To the back of Stealth) showed that a lot of the lake to the North of the park has been bound in by two new causeways, and that extensive back-filling of the lake is taking place there. Cool

Now we already know that the whole of Thorpe Park is built on back-filled land (The whole site used to be RMC quarries) but what grabs me here is the sheer amount of land being reclaimed in this instance...Looking at the "lagoon" they've created North of Stealth, the whole lagoon (Except for a small lake south of the old Treasure Island, which is being retained) is being filled in - Which will literally double the size of the park once it's complete...And that can only mean a large number of attractions being scheduled for installation in the future - I wouldn't doubt the possibility of a forthcoming Woodie there, too! Twisted Evil

Anyhow...Enough of my ramblings. The area that I'm referring to can be viewed Here on Google Maps. The areas being filled-in can be spotted from the lighter colour of water in those areas, where silt and other matter has been allowed to settle and form a natural foundation. Also, the road lines superimposed on the map clearly show that the causeways and associated paths are a recent addition, and Google hasn't updated the roads database with the new information yet. Smile

So now we know exactly why ticket and season pass prices have taken a big rise this year...And it'll almost certainly be worth it! Cool

Farewell... Twisted Evil

>> Death <<

Magic

This infilling of causeways was discussed by Thorpe management at the opening of Stealth. They said there were a couple of plans in mind, one being to put rides and shops on the causeways and expand the park, the other was the car park would move down towards the farm, this would free up the current car park with less planning restrictions for new rides, the causeways would be needed for maintenance access routes.

But at that point Saw was intended to be a B&M floorless, so who knows what they are using the causeways for.

Death

Magic

Because there wouldn't have been any change left over from buying a B&M to put in any themeing.

Death

Magic

I would hazard a complete guess that an unthemed B&M floorless would be in the region of £8million, while an unthemed Eurofighter of the size of Saw would be in the region of £3million. Speed at Oakwood reportedly cost £2million and Hyda the Revenge cost $13million

The £13million price tag for Saw will have included the lake infilling, themeing and branding rights. So Saw the B&M floorless would have ended up in the region of £19million. Obviously my figures are complete ball parks, and I doubt Thorpe would have spent out on getting the rights to Saw with the floorless already costing significantly more to start with.

You can probably ignore the current exchange rates as the decisions and purchases and some payments would have been made long before the current credit crunch. It will be over the next couple of years we will see an impact on rides due to the exchange rates.

Steel prices are also pretty high at the moment and this will have an impact on future coasters. I'm not sure how the price of wood is doing at the moment but I wouldn't be surprised if we see a few new wooden coasters in the next couple of years. Unlike like steel coaster track which has to be sourced from abroad, I'm guessing wood for the likes of a GCI could be bought in the UK and therefore be unaffected by the high price of steel or the rubbish exchange rates.

Rough Rider

BUILD A WOODIE................"RATTLER" Laughing

Magic

nemesis scribe

bluea61

I don't think the floorless would have worked for the Saw theme anyway. Maybe a dive machine but not the floorless with the long trains.

Personally I think the Saw ride has worked well, and I'd say it was popular considering the 130 min queue it had all day yesterday, that was a full queue line.