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Wicker Man - General Discussion - Part Two

Excalibur said:
It’s a cheap fix to replace the cotton signs I reckon, not a essential but it was sort of the themeing of the ride. Again, I agree about the buntin.

Battle Galleons has had new buntin this year so hopefully they can make there way over to Wicker Man too!

I noticed in the pre-show room the smell pods were on point! Very atmospheric smell! I did notice the projectors too. The images look more crisp now so I’m guessing it’s a better HD projector?
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My guess is an LED projector. Is it still a grey screen (as opposed to totally off) between the animation and the Wicker Man reveal? In other words, can you clearly see the curtain drawing back?
 
Excalibur said:
Noticed today themeing has started being removed from the queline, more so the hand painted/cotton signs/signage/flags.

Do we know if this is being replaced, or just removed all together. Some themeing pieces were specifically designed to have these and otherwise just look like random sticks/twigs poking out.
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I believe that much of the theming was damaged in the storms. It is being replaced, but it may take a little while for the new pieces to be made.
 
Rob said:
I believe that much of the theming was damaged in the storms. It is being replaced, but it may take a little while for the new pieces to be made.
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I really don't understand why they don't remove/cover up the more delicate theming when the season ends. If they can move a huge stage from the lawns to Fountain Square just for 1 month, then I'm sure they could remove/cover up theming in Wickerman for 3-4 months! Theoretically, all the theming would last nearly twice as long too, so must be worth doing surely?
 
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Steve74 said:
I really don't understand why they don't remove/cover up the more delicate theming when the season ends. If they can move a huge stage from the lawns to Fountain Square just for 1 month, then I'm sure they could remove/cover up theming in Wickerman for 3-4 months! Theoretically, all the theming would last nearly twice as long too, so must be worth doing surely?
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I guess the stage is designed to be dismantled, but no-one thought about how to get the bunting and flags back down again. Getting the cherry picker or ladders in isn't as easy.
But yes it would make some sense to remove flags and similar for the winter and they should have considered this when designing these themed elements, they should ahve thought about how easy removal is and budgeted for replacement every few years.
 
Considering the killed the screens inside the Wicker Man by not taking them in for winter, I doubt they cared about some banners.
 
I was there on the back row in the afternoon on the 22nd and 24th March [yay, unseasonably warm and good weather] and it was flying along. So much so that a strand off this blonde lady's hair, who was sitting in front of me, flew into my mouth. 😯

I thought it was grit at first but I wonder if they caught that on camera when I took it out of my mouth? 🙂

To be fair, the lady was really apologetic when I mentioned it to her.
 
Sorry if this sounds like a slightly random question, but it’s been confusing me ever since I got back from Europa Park (but don’t worry, it does relate to Wicker Man).

My question is; how on Earth does Wodan manage to get a throughput 25% higher than Wicker Man’s? Wodan was around the 1,250pph ballpark when I timed (for a Towers comparison, that’s about the same as Nemesis attained when I timed it), whereas Wicker Man tends to be around the 1,000pph ballpark or a bit over.

However, I’d genuinely say that Wicker Man’s ops are no slower than Wodan’s (or at least weren’t in 2021), and it’s a shorter ride in terms of both lift hill height and ride duration than Wodan (or at least, it seems a bit shorter than Wodan on-ride). Not to mention, it doesn’t have baggage cages like Wodan does either.

I’ll digress that Wodan’s control system appeared to be a tad faster at entering and leaving the station than Wicker Man’s (it didn’t do the whole repetitive stop-start routine that Wicker Man does when entering the station, and it seemed to leave more quickly), and the lift hill seemed a bit faster as well (and didn’t do the same back-and-forth jolting thing as Wicker Man’s, either), but surely those would have been offset by the factors I mentioned above?

Does anyone have any insight? I’m surprised that WM doesn’t attain 1,250pph like Wodan does when the ops on it are so fast…
 
Im just guessing here but when operations on wickerman are really good there are some instances where there are no guests in the station due to the pre-show snarling things up. So could be that? Even if it’s only a minute lost every 6/7 trains thats maybe where 100pph ish goes? All i’ve got. Lol
 
Tommy85 said:
Im just guessing here but when operations on wickerman are really good there are some instances where there are no guests in the station due to the pre-show snarling things up. So could be that? Even if it’s only a minute lost every 6/7 trains thats maybe where 100pph ish goes? All i’ve got. Lol
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From my experience, the pre-show doesn’t actually affect the throughput much, if at all. The throughputs were broadly similar when the pre-show wasn’t operated during the height of COVID.
 
I don't think it's possible to dispatch WM much faster than it does when running well (i.e. when the train on the lift passes above one entering the brakes). This is a physical limitation of the ride and if they hypothetically maintained that pace would give a throughput of just over 1000. Wodan, presumably, is designed in such a way that it can dispatch earlier - it's possible for it to run without stacking, which absolutely is not the case for WM.

As for operations, Wodan saves quite a bit of time by opening the air gates much earlier, plus it often has 4 platform staff rather than 2. This helps offset the time lost at the bag store.
 
John said:
I don't think it's possible to dispatch WM much faster than it does when running well (i.e. when the train on the lift passes above one entering the brakes). This is a physical limitation of the ride and if they hypothetically maintained that pace would give a throughput of just over 1000. Wodan, presumably, is designed in such a way that it can dispatch earlier - it's possible for it to run without stacking, which absolutely is not the case for WM.

As for operations, Wodan saves quite a bit of time by opening the air gates much earlier, plus it often has 4 platform staff rather than 2. This helps offset the time lost at the bag store.
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Cheers for your input @John!

Out of interest, do you guess that Wodan’s design difference is in layout or in terms of control system?
 
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