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Do they ever want Alton Towers to recover?

Rick said:
The park is recovering, no doubt about that. Yesterday was insane in terms of visitor numbers and judging by the waits in food and retail, people weren't shy of spending either.

The park handled it pretty well. Rides ran consistently. Parking was fairly efficient - even with 1000+ cars on the grass.


In the UK, or generally?
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I wouldn't say queues of 2 hours for rides is a sign of a park that is handling the guest numbers well.....
 
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I think this is a good example of why more filler attractions are needed.

One coaster goes down on a busy day, the rest of the park suffers.
 
Bert2theSpark said:
I think this is a good example of why more filler attractions are needed.

One coaster goes down on a busy day, the rest of the park suffers.
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Since Smiler opened at 13:40, queues for everything else have gone up or stayed the same. The flow of people coming into the park at Scarefest is very different.

I think gate figures for this year's event will be very healthy.
 
Rick said:
The park is recovering, no doubt about that. Yesterday was insane in terms of visitor numbers and judging by the waits in food and retail, people weren't shy of spending either.

The park handled it pretty well. Rides ran consistently. Parking was fairly efficient - even with 1000+ cars on the grass.


In the UK, or generally?
Click to expand...

Don’t think the numbers where insane, high yes, very high post 2015 true, but compared to what the park used to be able to cope with insane no.
 
Dave said:
Don’t think the numbers where insane, high yes, very high post 2015 true, but compared to what the park used to be able to cope with insane no.
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Gate number I heard was not far off insane. I don't remember a Scarefest like that, for a long long time, anyway.
 
Rick said:
Gate number I heard was not far off insane. I don't remember a Scarefest like that, for a long long time, anyway.
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Scarefest was effectively condensed into a smaller event. So as encouraging as attendance was, a lot of these crowds where created by circumstance. Between events was very quiet.

Park also used to eat up these crowds regularly. Although I think the park team did a great job with the hand they were dealt, its clear from social media, Trip Advisor and my own personal testiment that the park was ill equipped for such guest numbers. Lack of attractions, Box offices and Food outlets bit guests hard.
 
Yep TripAdvisor this morning is horrendous for the park, big complaints about queues and the queue to buy FastTrack.
Also lots of reviewers complaining about the charges for the scare mazes. But if the mazes were free then wouldn't there be a lot of complaints about the queues for the mazes too o_O
 
If the mazes were free they'd have a three hour queue minimum for them, like they do at Thorpe.

I'd rather pay a small charge for a time slot than I would endure that, we paid extra for brick seating at Legoland on Friday for the fireworks, best £20 I've ever spent at a Merlin park.
 
Oh wow, never seen that many complaints. Wonder how the KPIs are looking Merlin, then again, I guess it's the share value not the customer satisfaction value they are more keen on..

Also amazes me how many people can't spell 'queue' properly!

Anyway, the theme of the complaints are around

1. Queues and fast track
2. Lack of staff
3. Facilities not maintained (no toilet paper etc)
4. Parking charge and being stuck in the muddy fields
5. Lack of Scarefest theming and actors around the park
6. Additional charges for scare mazes given there is only 1 free attraction
7. Prices of food and drink

I wonder if this weekend took the park by surprise as it seems reading people's comments that many of the guest services and food outlets were not fully staffed to deal with the queues.

As for fast track, whatever the daily allowance of tickets is, is obviously too high. Needs to either be reduced or start a time slot system to spread out the queues.
 
I would guess one of the issues with Fasttrack is even if they know they can sell 1000 a day (or whatever) they don't rate it by hour, so at 10am they could sell 1000, but by 2pm they should reduce it to 500 even if they didn't sell them all as you have fewer hours to fit the returning guests into.
 
I find it very hard to sympathize with anyone complaining about waiting in a queue to buy a fast-track. It's kind of an instant karma. Actually, just turning up on a day where there will obviously be massive queues is a poor move in general, if you like actually going on the rides.
 
Yeah it always makes me laugh this "I can't wait "culture they see a queue for a ride then say "oh that's too long" and then walk all the way to the box office and wait best part of half an hour to buy fast track then return to the ride. By which time if they had just waited they would have been getting on the ride. Saw that happen with a couple on the swarm when I went to thorpe park in the summer and with someone on galactica. I can't help laughing. Oh and some jumped up women kicked off at legoland because the dragon coaster was down but she had a queue bot. "But it says I go on at 12 o clock so let me on!" She ordered the girl at entrance. Oh these people!

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Just want to say this topic is an interesting read from both sides and not the usual tit for tat/ "theme parks are like any other business, end of" type you often get on forums discussing this sorta thing. Random post sorry! But thanks :)
 
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themeparkfan said:
Yeah it always makes me laugh this "I can't wait "culture they see a queue for a ride then say "oh that's too long" and then walk all the way to the box office and wait best part of half an hour to buy fast track then return to the ride. By which time if they had just waited they would have been getting on the ride. Saw that happen with a couple on the swarm when I went to thorpe park in the summer and with someone on galactica. I can't help laughing. Oh and some jumped up women kicked off at legoland because the dragon coaster was down but she had a queue bot. "But it says I go on at 12 o clock so let me on!" She ordered the girl at entrance. Oh these people!

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Its been surgested a few timed for them to put contactless "oyster style" machines at the fasttrack entrances so theres less of a box office queue.

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ihaveaspergers said:
Its been surgested a few timed for them to put contactless "oyster style" machines at the fasttrack entrances so theres less of a box office queue.

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Maybe a barcode reader with the member of staff and you can buy on the app and the staff just scan the code from your phone screen.
 
jon81uk said:
Maybe a barcode reader with the member of staff and you can buy on the app and the staff just scan the code from your phone screen.
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that base idea is good but rfid type systems would be better for some rides(smiler)

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ihaveaspergers said:
that base idea is good but rfid type systems would be better for some rides(smiler)

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RFID doesn't work with an iphone. and if the RFID is in the ticket then someone still has to queue up at the box office to get a ticket. Barcodes work on almost all phone screens (if the brightness is up) and can be simply generated when a fast track is bought on the app.
 
ihaveaspergers said:
Its been surgested a few timed for them to put contactless "oyster style" machines at the fasttrack entrances so theres less of a box office queue.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I think the oyster style could work - wouldn't be that hard to implement either
 
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