Photo TR: Thorpe Park 20th March 2012

andyuk200523 · March 20, 2012

It has been a long time since I have followed a new Coaster from Concept, Through Construction and getting to ride it in its first week of operation, so with that in mind, I was already excited for The Swarm, Thorpe have done a fantastic job in marketing this ride (I'll forgive them the stupid PR stunt with the dummies!), they haven't said it is the Worlds Scariest or anything similar to that, they are just saying it how it is (Which makes a nice change from the normal Merlin marketing strategy!).

We managed to get to the park just before opening, but having to sort out my Annual Pass took a good 15 minutes, by which time, the mammoth queue at the entrance had disappeared. We were thinking this would be a bad thing for The Swarm as no doubt this is where everyone was heading, our worries were quickly removed though by seeing No Queue!

I love what Thorpe have done with the area of The Swarm, the Themeing really is Top-Notch (not Nemesis standard however), but damn close.

Our first rides were on the Right hand side of the Train, front then followed by the back, there is a huge difference between both seat positions (probably due to the length of the train). Personally I preferred the front for a pure fun ride, but the back for something with a little "kick" in it. next up we took another 2 rides, this time the left hand side front and back, I definitely prefer the left side over the right, the feeling of being pulled under during the zero g roll and the closeness of all of the effects works best on this side.

Morning rides were a little bit slow, but still left me laughing at the end of each ride.

Next we headed over to Stealth (4 rides in on this, very disappointed that Thorpe have removed all the single rider queues from the Park for this season, its a hell of a walk with no queue from the station up to the entrance and back again!!!) This is still my favourite ride in the park, the acceleration is insane.

Fake Nemesis was calling us, so we thought we would give it some love (No photos today though, Camera was in the car at this point). Always a good solid ride, especially in the 3 back row rides we had (well, 2 on the back row, and 1 just ahead).

Detonator time! We had 4 goes without walking round - I still regard this as one of the best drop towers I have ever ridden (and I am getting a good catalogue of those!) It may only be a mere 110ft tall, but the out of seat feeling is better than pretty much all Intamin Drop Towers combined.

We spent the rest of the day either riding Swarm or Stealth (we also had 1 go on both Storm Surge and X:\No Way Out - Still a crap ride)

Managed to get a ride in each row on Swarm and my conclusion is that although it isn't the most intense coaster in the world, it is just pure re-rideable fun! However, something may be amis on Train 2 - as it was jolting a hell of a lot more than Train 1 was.

Enjoy the photos!