• 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.

Ride Availability/Operations 2022-25

When me and my partner go we both get a silver fast track, this is down to having a barely 1.2m child though, and the parks limited opening hours. So we take turns at fast tracking the bigger rides on our own and looking after the little one. This allows us to spend more time with the little one going on rides too. If the park was open a few hours later though we likely wouldn't bother with the fast pass and just take turns queuing for the bigger rides whilst doing tge smaller rides with the little one.
 
Ops today really showed how short staffed the place is on some days. Some rides ran on a skeleton crew & reduced capacity (Galactia and Oblivion), others a hodge podge of ops from various teams (Spinball with a Smiler & CBeebies op, 13 also with a Smiler op- granted this could have been break cover), and somehow Wickerman keeping it strong and kitted out with a full ride team going as fast as they could.

Nemesis constantly up and down in the afternoon, and then right at the end due to a guest. Spited- no birthday ride for me 💔
 
There is a new queueing method on oblivion at that 3 queues into the station,

I think they now send srq down the center queue, then send the normal queue down the left and right queue one for each station where as it used to be one for the queue, one srq and a fast track / srq
 
Has anyone been on Galactica recently? Was a sorry state of affairs today- one station with about 2 trains on. SRQ had to queue across unused station being batched by someone with those call centre/ Britney Spears mics.

Just awful- not how the ride is designed to run at all!
 
That’s a shame to hear. Operations were brilliant when I went back in July; the ride was on 3 trains/2 stations and hammering out an easy 1,200pph!
 
I didn't ride but I saw it was running 2 stations at one stage yesterday but only with 2 trains. From what I understand there is no prospect of the third train retuning before the end of the season
 
It is better than it was a few weeks ago it was running like 1.5 trains single station, the queueing in the station they can't help as they have to have the non ambulant RAP queue on the left station (which I understand can do something similar but with the right starion)

I have seen them operating the left and right station, when single station so it could be many reasons thr left station is in use (maitanence, even wear, etc)

Galactica was a first of its kind and is usually quite unreliable with its trains and station.
 
There’s a reason Galactica regularly has the longest queue on the park in recent times, and it isn’t because it’s the most popular rollercoaster!

No evidence for this other than anecdotal evidence but it seems it’s been operating well below capacity for large parts of the last two years, either super slow dispatches, or reduced trains/stations, or both.

A shame as operating properly I like it and think it offers something to the park, but the way it runs now I’d happily see it replaced sooner rather than later. The way it currently runs it would barely even be missed during the period of construction for anything new.
 
B&M Flying Coasters in general have lower capacity due to how long each loads Galactica not the only slow loader Manta, Tatsu, Superman Ultimate Flight, Acrobat all share the same issue. Flying Dinosaur is the exception but even then its slower than some other Universal Flying Coasters
 
Running with 2 stations and 3 trains easily offsets the inherent long loading times. Galactica is theoretically capable of a throughput in excess of 1400/hr when running flat out. Back in the day they would regularly send a train when the previous one was just going through the lie-to-fly inversion and that side of the station would be empty for a long time before the next train rolled in. When operated like that it was one of the highest capacity coasters in the UK
 
John said:
Running with 2 stations and 3 trains easily offsets the inherent long loading times. Galactica is theoretically capable of a throughput in excess of 1400/hr when running flat out. Back in the day they would regularly send a train when the previous one was just going through the lie-to-fly inversion and that side of the station would be empty for a long time before the next train rolled in. When operated like that it was one of the highest capacity coasters in the UK
Click to expand...
For Altons faults with operations still think they have the fastest operations in the UK and on a good day they send the trains quicker out than even European Parks
 
Galactica's biggest issue IMO is that it is the first design, meaning there were probably slight flaws (not dangerous, just flaws that means some faults occur) in the design of some parts such as the locking mechanisms add on a very complex mechanism and 20+ years of age and you end up with the struggle galactica has with multiple seats require rechecking per dispach,

consider that only one fault per dispach can hold it up, even a 1% fault rate in each seat (gal has 28) means you would have an ~25% chance of at least one fault after every dispach

I would agre, whenever I go AT tend to be very focused on opps, even quiet days they somehow make quick dispatches, whilst being polite
 
Hid said:
Flying Dinosaur is the exception but even then its slower than some other Universal Flying Coasters
Click to expand...

Pretty sure Flying Dinosaur is the only flying coaster at a Universal park?

It runs on 4 trains with a theoretical 1600pph and operations are fantastic so I wouldn’t be surprised if it exceeds that, as like most rides at USJ the number of staff dwarf any equivalent in the UK.

Hid said:
B&M Flying Coasters in general have lower capacity
Click to expand...

Lower than what? The numbers and coasters being referenced (1500pph range) don’t strike me as particularly low.
 
Bowser said:
Pretty sure Flying Dinosaur is the only flying coaster at a Universal park?

It runs on 4 trains with a theoretical 1600pph and operations are fantastic so I wouldn’t be surprised if it exceeds that, as like most rides at USJ the number of staff dwarf any equivalent in the UK.



Lower than what? The numbers and coasters being referenced (1500pph range) don’t strike me as particularly low.
Click to expand...
Lower than what they should because the lpsf time is so long when on 1 Station and just 2 trains
 
Bowser said:
What’s Lpsf? Any circuit coaster would have lower capacity when running on fewer trains, not sure what your point is?
Click to expand...
The rides are designed to run multiple trains with 2 stations when you take 1 out it severely decreases the capacity more than other rides because the load time is longer
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tom
Hid said:
For Altons faults with operations still think they have the fastest operations in the UK and on a good day they send the trains quicker out than even European Parks
Click to expand...

Depends which parks you reference. Europa Park staff absolutely munch queues and several other parks are no slouches, with only Kirmes ops better.
 
Poisson said:
Depends which parks you reference. Europa Park staff absolutely munch queues and several other parks are no slouches, with only Kirmes ops better.
Click to expand...
Not referring to parks like Europa Park, Efteling or Disneyland Paris but other major parks like Walibi Parks and the Parques Reunidos Parks
 
Hid said:
Not referring to parks like Europa Park, Efteling or Disneyland Paris but other major parks like Walibi Parks and the Parques Reunidos Parks
Click to expand...
It's impossible to lump "European parks" into one category when it comes to ops. There are extremes at both ends - on the one hand you have staff at Parc Asterix shouting at you and basically bullying people onto the rides as quickly as possible. At the other extreme you've got Superman at Parque Warner stacking on one train because the two staff members haven't even started batching yet.

In the UK I'd say Thorpe have a much stronger commitment to getting trains out quickly than Alton Towers. When I last visited in August the Swarm team appeared to be going for a record-breaking number of dispatches per hour and the Ninferno crew were literally running down the platform checking restraints. I've never seen anything like that at Towers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top