I can still remember all of the excitement surrounding the arrival of the Swarm. I was working at Thorpe Park at the time and watched with eager anticipation as the land for the new ride was being excavated and the Swarm Island rose up gradually out of the lake surrounding the park. We understood that the ride was going to be a B&M Wingrider but as none of these had yet been opened nobody really knew what this attraction would deliver.

The year before the opening a similar ride was premiered at Gardaland in Italy. Raptor’s arrival was too intriguing to miss and so myself and a friend dashed over to Italy to test it out. I recall my first look at the ride as I ran over the bridge above the station. It was the best looking piece of transport I had ever seen. Sprawling over the track like a giant alien invader, this thing looked really mean and I couldn’t wait to get on. In the vent the ride was rather tamer than I would like but it was fun all the way round and the queuing area and landscaping was excellent.

The Thorpe Park incarnation of the B&M construction was promised to be much more intense than Raptor and when I first set eyes on the inverted initial drop all was looking good. Unfortunately my heart sank somewhat when testing began. The trains looked to be moving rather slowly and the circuit was extremely short to say the least. I thought that I had better reserve judgement until I had been on it but the Swarm didn’t look great to me.

The ride opened with the usual fanfare and fuss accompanied by regular breakdowns and malfunctions! Thankfully none of the mishaps involved severed limbs per the promotional stunt where a group of test dummies were revealed in the press to have lost their extremities on the ride. A couple of days after the opening my very helpful manager walked me over to have a go. I was very impressed by the theming which has basically turned the Swarm island into an urban area suffering in the aftermath of an alien attack. There is a crashed commercial jet next to the ride and the station is minus a roof to appear liked a building under fire. It all looked good, indeed much better than the usual Thorpe theming, but what was the ride like?

Disappointing in a word. It was indeed rather slow, very short and the much vaunted near misses didn’t really seem that perilous. It was all over in a flash and I disembarked thinking it was a bit of a damp squib and that I preferred Raptor for the overall experience.

Whilst the theming for the ride was reasonably impressive the areas around the ride had been ignored completely with exposed portions of excavated ground leaving the Swarm looking like work in progress. I guess there was no budget to go any further but those portions of waste ground would have been more in keeping with the story of the ride if they had been covered with copious amounts of mangled metal like old fridges, rafters and metal pipes. I know scrap metal costs but just leaving the muddy banks bare spoils the creation.

Over the next few weeks I rode the Swarm many more times but still found it too tame and too short. The look of an unfinished construction site with the excavated mud still annoyed me as I looked over from Stealth as well. The powers that be obviously realised they had a problem with the ride and subsequently reversed the back two rows of the trains so guests could ride the Swarm backwards. I tried that as well but it was no more thrilling and rather nausea inducing so I won’t be doing that again!

I think it is fair to say that the Swarm has not been a great success. It is worth a go if you happen to be in the park but Stealth, Nemesis Inferno and Saw the Ride are still the attractions to head for.

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Article by Sally Stacey