• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

2025: General Discussion

GooseOnTheLoose said:
Can we all admit now that it's never exactly been the most reliable at predicting crowds? It doesn't help that Easter is a moveable feast, leading to inaccurate data for previous years, etc.
Click to expand...

The historical records on there are not predictions, they are real data scraped from the app. May last year the midweeks before the school trips, many rides were walk on or very short queues. I doubt toxicator is that much of a draw this year that it affects it that drastically.
 
shaun3 said:
The historical records on there are not predictions, they are real data scraped from the app. May last year the midweeks before the school trips, many rides were walk on or very short queues. I doubt toxicator is that much of a draw this year that it affects it that drastically.
Click to expand...
I'm aware that the predicted crowd levels, as the site refers to them, are based on data scraped from the site over previous years. The issue is precisely that the data isn't mapped around moveable dates, feasts, events, or holidays. It doesn't account for weather changes, which may have impacted visitor numbers, over previous years either.

Easter Sunday, in 2024, was on 31st of March. This year Easter Sunday isn't until 20th of April. There's two and a half weeks variance there between the event itself, and when the associated school / company holidays around it can take place.

The crowd calendar will tell you exactly what crowds were like on any specified date, over previous years. The 31st of March could be a rainy Monday, three weeks before Easter. It could be a Sunny Tuesday, in the second week of Easter. It could be Easter Sunday itself. Without presenting you with this information, alongside the crowd levels, the prediction based on historical data is borderline useless or very inaccurate at best.
 
The Queue Time predictor does incorporate public holidays and weather tbf.

Ultimately it’s an estimate and I think people with the level of interest to use it are aware of that as opposed to expecting it to always be correct.

You can delve further into the data to refine the estimate if you desire, which I often do and have found it incredibly useful for planning our trips.
 
Bowser said:
The Queue Time predictor does incorporate public holidays and weather tbf.
Click to expand...
Only for the current year, not for the historical data. It uses this year's weather and public holiday information to tell you that April 20th is Easter Sunday, will be sunny and that might make it busier.
 
Again we're back to Theme Park Management 101. Know where your guests come from, factor in local school holidays, and use the data to predict crowd levels (along with advanced ticket purchases of course). The crowd levels should be no surprise to Merlin - perhaps they just prefer to "blame the customer" for long queues.

Maybe they need some AI, or just I 😉
 
Beautiful sunny weather at Towers, quite low queues but yet the park is open til 6pm. I get they expect busier crowds at weekends but having lower queues on a day where you have 2 hours longer just makes Towers look like they click a random generator for opening hours.
 
In a case where everything opens on time, I would always head to Dark Forest first. Rita and Thirteen have low queues at the beginning of the day, and the lower capacity of Rita in particular can make its queues longer later on.
 
jonhotboy2023 said:
I’m going on the 25th and 26th April never been befor so excited what the best ride to do first
Click to expand...
Oblivon was the first ride I ever did when I went for my first time. Still gets me to this day all them years later. Probably wouldn't be so into theme parks if it wasn't for the sheer intensity of that drop!

Although if you're trying to minimise queue times the most optimal route I hear get chucked around is

13/Rita
Nemesis/Galactica
Oblivion/Smiler
Wickerman

Definitely still a tried and true route for me and it never fails to cut the queue times personally. Some people might recommend a different order but this is the most common one I have came across.
 
Numaticjoe said:
Oblivon was the first ride I ever did when I went for my first time. Still gets me to this day all them years later. Probably wouldn't be so into theme parks if it wasn't for the sheer intensity of that drop!

Although if you're trying to minimise queue times the most optimal route I hear get chucked around is

13/Rita
Nemesis/Galactica
Oblivion/Smiler
Wickerman

Definitely still a tried and true route for me and it never fails to cut the queue times personally. Some people might recommend a different order but this is the most common one I have came across.
Click to expand...
Last time I tried this, Rita opened late, 13 didn't open at all, nemesis was shut, and so Galactica had a massive queue as well.
Not the best of starts!
With dodgy ops, head to what is actually open with a reasonably short queue at the start of the day, then mop up the rest over time.
Don't rely on rides opening promptly at the start of the day, they often don't.
 
Incredible day at Towers yesterday. All rides were showing as open and operational on the app, and when I checked the queuetimes , the highest was 40 minutes.

Very impressive for a Saturday!

  • Excellent run through on Curse,
  • Toxicator had 30 mins downtime whilst waiting for it
  • Ordering process at Oak in Chains is abysmal. Asked for another tablet and just get shrugged shoulders in response.
  • Loved getting back on Oblivion
  • So good to be able to experience Hex again. I don't necessarily mind the vault, my biggest bugbear is that I feel the branch should only use white fibre optics and not the rainbow of colours it cycles through now. I think white only would make it feel classier.
  • Bonus ride on Go Jetters
  • Spinball Single Rider queue works super super well. Love this. Really wish we could get the Nemesis one back. I know they said the reason for its removal was that it was on the opposite side of the station, but so is Spinball's now!
 
rctneil said:
Incredible day at Towers yesterday. All rides were showing as open and operational on the app, and when I checked the queuetimes , the highest was 40 minutes.

Very impressive for a Saturday!

  • Excellent run through on Curse,
  • Toxicator had 30 mins downtime whilst waiting for it
  • Ordering process at Oak in Chains is abysmal. Asked for another tablet and just get shrugged shoulders in response.
  • Loved getting back on Oblivion
  • So good to be able to experience Hex again. I don't necessarily mind the vault, my biggest bugbear is that I feel the branch should only use white fibre optics and not the rainbow of colours it cycles through now. I think white only would make it feel classier.
  • Bonus ride on Go Jetters
  • Spinball Single Rider queue works super super well. Love this. Really wish we could get the Nemesis one back. I know they said the reason for its removal was that it was on the opposite side of the station, but so is Spinball's now!
Click to expand...
Can only concur with this and say today was much the same, brilliant day on the park one of my favourites in recent times. Beautiful day, busy enough but a chilled atmosphere around, I think you’d struggle to find many people who were there today who said they’d had a bad day.

The ops were consistently excellent with The Smiler in particular having extraordinarily quick dispatches. Oblivion being on one station was the only ride not operating at full capacity that I noticed. The usual slow start in opening rides up which I can only assume is staff related as once rides got opened they pretty much always stayed open.

Managed Spinball, Mine Train, Curse x2, Toxicator, Galactica, Thirteen, Hex, Smiler, Oblivion, Wicker Man, Nemesis with no wait longer than around 25 minutes - Hex and Toxicator are so great for the park capacity. Left around 4, could’ve got Rita done to complete all the coasters as well as another couple of rides but feet were in pieces so left early but very satisfied.

And yes - Rapids reopened in the afternoon, perfect day for it but sadly a lot of people thought the same and with no official queue time the workers were advising an hour!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top