Colossus VIP Lift Walk
Thorpe Park have offered coaster climbs for several years now, they are a great way for enthusiasts to get a glimpse both behind the scenes of the park’s iconic coasters, as well as some great views from the top!
Colossus has always been on my to do list, so it was great to finally get a chance to try it out – plus with the UK’s tallest rollercoaster Hyperia now sitting right next to it – it was a great time to give it a go!
Our lift walk began over in the Marquee, with a full safety briefing + kitting up in a full body harness to ensure we were completely secure throughout the experience, our VIP Host Harvey went through how it all works and showed us how to buckle up ready for our climb. You’re also provided with a pouch to wear round your neck to hold your phone to allow you to take pictures of your experience.
Once ready, we headed over to Colossus, here we got a chance to see behind the scenes, including in the Colossus console, for 2024 Colossus has received a brand new PLC and Control Console, this offers many advantages over the original, allowing ops to see the complete status of the train and its restraints, down to seeing individual seats where a guest may require further assistance greatly helping with its operations.
Before your climb you will also be given a padlock, this is used to “lock off” the ride ensuring its impossible for the ride to be started without your key which you must keep with you and return at the end of the experience.
From here we made our way to the base of the Colossus lift hill, we attached our body harnesses to the safety lines which run the full length to the top and began our ascent to the crest of Colossus’s 98ft lift hill. It probably took around 10 minutes before we made it to the top, with a couple of breaks stops on the way up.
Once we got to the top we had the chance to take some fantastic pictures, the views from Colossus are incredible, with its location at the park you get a great 360 degree view of the entire park, with rides all around you, including of course Hyperia’s 236ft lift hill which dwarfs everything around it!
We got treated to a great view of the sunset too, which as you can see gave us chance to grab some stunning pictures of the park as the sun set over towards Stealth. We spent around 15 minutes at the top, which gave us ample opportunity to get any pictures we wanted and take in the view of the park around us.
After making our way back down to ground level, we headed back to the console to unlock our individual lock off keys before making our way back to the marquee to get out of our safety gear. We also received a personalised coaster climb certificate, lanyard + ID and pin badge!
Our VIP Host Harvey was very knowledgeable, answering any questions we had throughout the experience.
We would thoroughly recommend anyone considering a coaster climb to go ahead and do it – it’s a great unique experience to see the park from above and you’ll be sure to learn something new! You can find all the details of VIP Experience’s on sale here!
