The History of Thorpe Park
Thorpe Park is built on what used to be a quarry owned by Ready Mix Concrete. In the early 1970s after the quarry had been closed, Ready Mix Concrete decided that they would fill in the site and turn it into a leisure park. However it turned out that filling it in would take about 20 years to do and local residents would object to the dumping of earth near them for the next 20 years not to mention the firm would go bust in the process. So instead they filled it in with water to make Thorpe Park an island. In this time many companies were choosing to diversify what they did in order to have as many products in as many markets in order to make as much money as possible.
The park was opened in 1979 by Louis Mountbatten. When the park opened all that was there was Mountbatten Pavilion (now called the Dome because its a Dome) and a few other smaller attractions with educational elements. After this each year more rides were implemented including Waterbus tours, a nature trail, Magic Mill a 3D cinema. All of these succeeded but none of these were thrill seeking and thus didn't result in people traveling from all over the UK to visit the park.
In the 1980s it was decided that the Thorpe Park had to change to keep up with the leisure industry. Over the years Thorpe Park installed more thrilling rides and as they did more visitors came and profits went up. In 1998 the park was sold to Tussauds Group. The sale is quite possibly the result of the complete failure of most companies to successfully become involved in more than one market. The Park is has now reached the stage of being a Thrill Seekers park and taken over the roll of the Thrill park for the south with Chessington World of Adventures becoming a family orientated park.
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