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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-26

So with the rapids and mine train currently closed. Plus the late openings of Spinball, Alton Manor, Gangsta Granny, and Thirteen closed from 10 til 11am does the park have something against people too old for Cbeebies but not tall enough for Nemesis.
 
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John_P said:
So with the rapids and mine train currently closed. Plus the late openings of Spinball, Alton Manor, Gangsta Granny, and Thirteen closed from 10 til 11am does the park have something against people too old for Cbeebies but not tall enough for Nemesis.
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This is year 2 of me not going because of this reason. My children are both in the 1.2-1.4m dead zone so out of all the Merlin parks in the UK Chessington is the one that’s “best” for us until they sort themselves out and have a growth spurt.

They’ll be on Velocicoaster in summer with its 1.3m height restriction which is far more intense than Rita, Oblivion and Galacitca though..
 
BarryZola said:
Think all the rides have just gone down due to an electrical storm within a 15 mile radius 💀
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Nearest lightning strikes are currently in Belgium. Is there really a chance of storms over Staffordshire today? I thought they were due to have the same mild weather as everywhere else at least until about 4.30pm

Real Time Lightning Map

See lightning strikes in real time across the planet. Free access to maps of former thunderstorms. By Blitzortung.org and contributors.
www.lightningmaps.org www.lightningmaps.org
 
No sign on my 2 usual forecasts either.

Could this not just be an outage due to the first big current usage of the new season?

Big fuse go bang like?

All seem to be back now with looong queues.
 
dave___ said:
Nearest lightning strikes are currently in Belgium. Is there really a chance of storms over Staffordshire today? I thought they were due to have the same mild weather as everywhere else at least until about 4.30pm

Real Time Lightning Map

See lightning strikes in real time across the planet. Free access to maps of former thunderstorms. By Blitzortung.org and contributors.
www.lightningmaps.org www.lightningmaps.org
Click to expand...
rob666 said:
No sign on my 2 usual forecasts either.

Could this not just be an outage due to the first big current usage of the new season?

Big fuse go bang like?

All seem to be back now with looong queues.
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Met Office reported lightning strikes at 12:56.

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weather.metoffice.gov.uk

Lightning strikes - Met Office

Our lightning map shows where and when lightning has struck in the last 24 hours.
weather.metoffice.gov.uk
 
After yesterday announcing that platinum passholders could enter via the Galactica gate, to then have none of Galactica, Sub-Terra, Curse, Mine Train or Rapids open when the park opens kind of completely defeats that perk.

That side of the park is the most immersive side, but also going to seem the most dead.
 
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My 2 cents on the delayed openings, 1- I could understand one or two areas of the park opening later EG dark forest and David Williams world inc hex opening at 11am , as it’s a concise area. Where as this staggered opening especially with sky ride closed means you need to zig zag back and forth across the park all day it’s stupid

Spinball is a very popular ride and the mix of late openings announced especially with RMT closed leaves what for someone over 0.9m …. Pretty much just wikerman open…?
 
Galactica was running on one train and one station this morning. Absloutely dire. Hex apparently on reduced capacity today- on a 45min queue at the moment so going to give it a miss. RMT shut all day for essential maintenance. Thank god it’s glorious weather otherwise think it would be miserable!
 
Does make me wonder if their maintenance staff just leave for better pay constantly and this leaves them in the mire.

Ultimately wages just arent good enough at theme parks to keep them going as cost of living is going up much quicker.
 
Operations/ availability has been a mixed bag.

Some of the rides schedule to open later opened before 11am. All the staff for the late opening rides seemed to be on site for 10am so I suspect this is a tech services issue rather than a staff budget issue.

Uptime for the rides that were running was good, ops were a mix bag but not completely out of kilter for opening day. Few obvious fails are:

Galactica on one craft.

One side of Hex vault back row is closed.

Oblivion was on three shuttles.

Add that to Mine train, Skyride and Monorail being down and you can see that tech services are a real issue currently.

As for the lightening about 10 min after rides closed there was a hail storm over the park.
 
Well I almost pulled the trigger on 6 Platinum passes for me and the family recently, a first ever purchase. I was waiting to see what state Alton Towers opened in before pulling the trigger.

For now, seeing the state Alton Towers opened in, staggered openings and what not, I'll spend the money on a single trip to Europa Park or Disney instead and completely avoid any Merlin attraction. Apart from maybe a single Alton Towers trip to get my fix, I love the place so I have gotta go at least once. They have had many years to get a grip on this tech services issue, have failed to do so, while still charging a premium price for their products and services.

I suspect there will be similar issues across their other parks. If they are not willing from the top, to put the effort into providing a decent day out, they sure as hell are not getting £1500 of my hard earned cash, plus a plethora of secondary spending over the course of the year on food, beverages, souvenirs and god knows what else. No chance.

The main sticking point for me is the staggered openings and reduced capacity as that just pushes queues up on other rides and makes the day feel much busier overall.
 
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My visits to the Towers will now be strictly weekdays in termtime, preferably moist ones, because the park now isn't comfortably doable without some form of fasttrack.
Like Blackpool, Towers currently has real capacity issues.

Personally, I don't think they are charging premium prices, many there yesterday would have been on the cheap basic passes, at around eighty to a hundred quid a year.

Those paying for "premium" passes are basically being done over by cheap passes overfilling the park.
 
rob666 said:
My visits to the Towers will now be strictly weekdays in termtime, preferably moist ones, because the park now isn't comfortably doable without some form of fasttrack.
Like Blackpool, Towers currently has real capacity issues.

Personally, I don't think they are charging premium prices, many there yesterday would have been on the cheap basic passes, at around eighty to a hundred quid a year.

Those paying for "premium" passes are basically being done over by cheap passes overfilling the park.
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I still consider the place is positioned more Premium than cheap, when you consider that the cost of the day is not just limited to the price of the cheap pass. This is just for on site costs too, you need to park with that cheap pass and need some sort of food (assuming you are not bringing your own) even just a few drinks, all add up.

This is exaggerated especially if you have children wanting sweet treats throughout the day. This would not at all be too bad, if the park was running all attractions with decent capacity and a decent set of opening times over the whole season. You wouldn't mind as much then as you are getting a decent day out on the rides (the main draw) so the additional spends can be justified somewhat.

But currently paying what you pay to spend the vast majority of the day to essentially stand in 5 or 6 (if you are very lucky) artificially inflated queue lines for the 6 hours the park can be open while people pay more money to skip the queues, leaves quite the impression of being completely ripped off.

Many different things and mediums compete with our time these days and many offer much better value than Merlin currently. Even activities on the same medium, theme parks, parks in this country, offer better availability and operations than Merlin do right now.

Sorry this does derail somewhat from ride availablity, but the root cause of my decisions is directly tied to ride availability.
 
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DistortAMG said:
I still consider the place is positioned more Premium than cheap, when you consider that the cost of the day is not just limited to the price of the cheap pass. This is just for on site costs too, you need to park with that cheap pass and need some sort of food (assuming you are not bringing your own) even just a few drinks, all add up.
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I wonder what the breakdown of pass ownership is. Especially with Towers, i’d imagine most people are either getting the passes that include parking or at least one of their group is.

So i think it is a cheap day out in most senses.

For a working class family a theme park visit used to be something you’d do once or twice a year. Merlin have created a subscription model to change that but in turn have lowered the quality of the experience.

There’s very little about visiting that screams “premium”. Long queues, staggered openings, unreliability, bad expensive food… dare i say the clientele, who are often justifiably frustrated.

Things only start to resemble premium if you spend money on fast track so you can enjoy the historical ride investments from a time when things could be considered premium.
 
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