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2018: Park Operations & Ride Availability

I don't post here very much nowdays but having visited yesterday for the second time this season (The first being the second weekend of the season), I thought I'd share my thoughts on operations and ride availability.

Needless to say my first visit was pretty awful. Having parked up at 11am and walked towards main entrance, I was met with a queue to get tickets which stretched back in to the coach park and meandered around the entrance plaza. Having joined the queue at 11:15, I eventually got my ticket at 12:10.

Yesterday however seemed much better, though I arrived at the entrance plaza for 9:30 this time. I needed to change the ticket I purchased previously for a Season Pass as the Box Office was closed when I left the park on the previous visit as didn't leave until 20:30 (Cheers Wicker Man:eek:). All done and dusted within a couple of minutes. Allowed in to park at around 9:50, I guess simply because there was no room left for people to queue.

Waited 2.5 hours for Wicker Man. Queue was moving much quicker this time, and despite the initial breakdown when we joined the queue, didn't break again whilst we queued for it. Was running 2 trains, and all being filled up, but still having lots of trouble with the restraints. This would of made it pointless having the 3rd train on.

Went on again last thing, advertised at 110 minutes, and with the obligatory breakdown waited probably about 90. Would of been around 70 were it not for the breakdown.

In terms of operations of other rides in the park, Nemesis was powering through the queue on 2 trains. Advertised 40, waited 20. Oblivion using dual loading again, but struggling to get the shuttles out, with long waits between dispatches.

Smiler on 4 trains made the queue somewhat bearable, though only just. I made the comment that it was like being incarcerated in a pit of absolute despair. I take that back, it was like actually like being incarcerated in a Cesspit of absolute despair. The state of the queue line is shocking, with rotten themeing, litter, and some rather unsavoury litter everywhere. It's Waterlogged, and at times wondering what we were actually walking through, was it water or sewage?
I would hope some TLC is applied here, and sooner rather than later.

Didn't do Thirteen but observed from the RITA queue very slow dispatches. RITA dispatches seemed ok, but queue moved rather slowly and the advertised 20 minute queue ended up being around 30.

I didn't eat on park itself so can't comment about operations of food outlets, or at least whats left of them:D.

On the whole operations seemed to of improved somewhat from my last visit a couple of weeks ago. I was originally wondering if it was worth going back yesterday. I dreaded the prospect of having to wait nearly an hour to get a ticket and then barely get on any rides due to long queues and reduced capacity. A second chance I gave the park though, and although there is still a long way to go to get back to true form it was a big improvement on a couple of weeks ago.

Will be back in a few weeks time, so be interesting to see if things improve again, which they really need to do, or simply stagnate in to a cesspit of despair :p.
 
I would generally echo Vik's post and say that yesterday, whilst not where the park should be - was much better. There was still bits and downtime on rides, but far less.

The main issue is Wicker Man and its restraints. I will not be riding WM first thing in the morning until the issues are sorted unless I am literally one of the first 200 people in the queue. It is insufferable to wait for. The entire morning was wiped out because of it!

However, operations on other rides were OK. Smiler was hitting 850, Rita the same. The main problems were Th13teen's sluggish operation and the fact that Duel was down half the day. Nemesis operations were fantastic.

Definitely an improvement, and 6pm close seemed about right, I guess.

Park was busy. Smiler was a cess pit.
 
I would generally echo Vik's post and say that yesterday, whilst not where the park should be - was much better. There was still bits and downtime on rides, but far less.

The main issue is Wicker Man and its restraints. I will not be riding WM first thing in the morning until the issues are sorted unless I am literally one of the first 200 people in the queue. It is insufferable to wait for. The entire morning was wiped out because of it!

However, operations on other rides were OK. Smiler was hitting 850, Rita the same. The main problems were Th13teen's sluggish operation and the fact that Duel was down half the day. Nemesis operations were fantastic.

Definitely an improvement, and 6pm close seemed about right, I guess.

Park was busy. Smiler was a cess pit.
I was there yesterday as well. Managed to do everything I wanted to apart from Smiler (yet to ride it) which I decided to miss at the end of the day in exchange for 3 backrow walk-ons of Nemesis which I decided was probably better value in terms of positive Gs and not giving me a headache before the drive home.

It was busy-ish with lots of younger families around but could have been worse.

Morning was pretty much all taken up by queuing for Wicker Man. Ride operations seemed painfully slow at first but improved gradually. Only two trains in operation but was stacking all the time so 3 trains wouldn't have improved things anyway. Didn't really notice problems with restraints, just assumed the ride ops were being slow, but maybe there are still technical problems slowing things down. Fast-track quota per rider batch seemed reasonable. Pyros still not working but I'll give the park the benefit of the doubt that they are trying to sort that. Overall I think it was a pretty good investment for the park, hopefully they can resolve the technical issues soon.

Nemesis is running great on 2 trains. If you want back row walk-on rides then go in the last hour of the day when they close the fast-track (row 8 is reserved for fast track usually). Ride ops were great at dispatching trains as quickly as possible and don't think the queue was more than 25 minutes all day. New paintjob on the station looks good, although the 2nd train is still running without the wheel covers for some reason. The ride still runs brilliantly. Smoother than I can remember as well, no headbanging in any of the rides I had. Only minor issue I had was that the steps down near the queuline entrance were quite wet and treacherous.

Galactica operations were painfully slow despite the queue being relatively small. They even announced that the fast-track queue was exceptionally large and that people towards the back of the fast-track queue were better off leaving and using it on another ride (nice of them to tell people I suppose). I don't think that the VR was slowing things down that much though, it just seemed like the ride ops were really slow at getting trains ready for dispatch. The Galactica branding does look quite tired and a bit naff already (especially that video and the bridge over to station 1). I'm not sure what the park will do with the ride in the future, I don't think it is anywhere near as timeless as Nemesis or Oblivion. The ride itself was ok but imo it's a toss up between it and Rita which ends up being removed for redevelopment first (probably which one ends up having a majorly expensive breakdown first).

Rita was running ok, trains were being dispatched at frequent enough intervals. I think the ride just really suffers from having a short ride cycle but a lot of that is wasted on waiting for the train to launch. If the train moved forward out of station like some of the other accelerator coasters then it would be able to board the next train already but instead it has to wait. But nothing the park can do about that now.

Thirteen was down for a lot of the day and there were a lot of frustrated families around in Dark Forest. We got incredibly lucky though and it re-opened literally just after we got of Rita so we were able to walk on. The loss of the bag drop really slows things down though as the bag cages are right in the far corner of the station. Three trains probably doesn't help much now, we had to wait quite a while on the final brake run before moving into the station. Dark Forest does look a bit neglected now though without a flat ride of some sort to soak up the crowds.

Hex was a walk-on but was a surprisingly good experience. It seemed like it was a relatively recent addition despite its age, I really enjoyed it as a ride experience.

Oblivion queue line still seemed quite tired despite the supposed TLC. It was dual-loading but the ride ops did seem quite slow at dispatching trains. Didn't really see any particular reason why. Realised that it is a ride to ride at the beginning of the day rather than the end when I have already saturated my dopamine levels....didn't seem as thrilling as I remembered.

Still yet to ride the Smiler as I said. The ride and track itself does look very impressive all tangled up in that space especilally with two trains running round at the same time although the building itself looks very bare imo, just like a concrete bunker with some faded yellow pipes. Next time I visit I guess...hopefully the queue line won't resemble a cesspit as the above posters have suggested it does at the moment.

Overall I was expecting the day to be worse but it was actually ok and fairly enjoyable for someone visiting in the first time in several years (the nice weather probably helped). You can see areas of the park where a flat-ride or two would really help disperse the crowds and I picked up on some frustrations about queue lengths and rides being down (Thirteen in particular). I guess this summer and then 2019 will be real test for the park and its future.
 
I wonder how they can expect their rides to be more cost-efficient when running them only for short time. It has been posted here that Nemesis was originally planned to open as late as 12 o'clock (and close at 5 PM?).

I mean, most machines have their best cost efficiency when operating at high or maximum load. Theme park rides should be no exception from this. They have a huge amount of fixed capital, usually some 10 million, partly fixed maintenance costs and aging, independent of usage. What can they save when they reduce operation time to as low as 5 hours a day? A bit of electric energy, some staff, wearing and spare parts. Probably much less than the fixed costs, which can't be reduced this way. But they take away what makes a theme park exciting, what people expect and pay for.

Why do they cut or abandon extra ride time for hotel guests? This is a premium service, for which people are willing to pay extra, or for which they decide to stay in park hotels, and it does not harm regular visitors, other than fasttrack lanes (with no different effect for them than ordinary queue jumping).

It almost looks like Merlin is nearly broke and desperately trying to save costs in any possible way, while squeezing out ever more money out of visitors. Even by gutting their operations and turning towards more aggravating money-making. Don't know their balance sheets, but such will backfire in the mid- or short-term.
 
How much can possibly be saved in reality by opening things an hour later and reducing the ERT for MAP and hotel guests?

The reducing benefits for staying at the hotels really irritates me, especially given the quality of accommodation for the price. 30 mins early access is bloody appalling
 
How much can possibly be saved in reality by opening things an hour later and reducing the ERT for MAP and hotel guests?
As in any business, the staffing costs are normally the biggest outlay. In terms of operations, that's probably about £8/hr per host I'd guess. It's not a lot really (although would add up per ride over a season), so I suspect the biggest savings are in tech services. The staggered and delayed openings mean less of them are required to get the rides signed off each morning, so maybe you could have a few less of them on the payroll and that's possibly a bigger saving.

I don't think running costs of the rides is a big factor, although the pumps for the rapids and the skyride motors are quite energy hungry.
 
Electricity shouldn't be an issue, a place the size of Alton Towers would almost definitely be on a fixed rate tariff.
 
From what I remember of the adverts when I looked some months ago the salary offered would be unlikely to attract people from outside the area and probably also difficult to retain skilled people

Saw their salary for techs on previous adverts. It would be my dream job but they're offering nowhere near what I'm getting in my current job as an airport maintenance engineer. Plus I'm across the Irish sea and would have to up sticks and move. If the money was good I'd be tempted though.
 
It is no good if everything works when there are 3000 guests on park but falls to bits when there are 13000.

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I agree. Would only recommend visiting on a quiet day at the moment. I've been a few times this year. The two off peak Tuesdays have been great to be fair. No massive queues, pretty much all rides working

Contrast this with a visit in the Easter holidays. Long queues, rides breaking down. Slow ops. Chaos on the entrance plaza.

It's sad that the park struggles so much with busy days, but on quiet days it's great.
 
The park have not done well today, whatever they do with the rest of the day, operations are not good. It does not deserve congratulations for opening rides late.

There's nothing "well done" about doing your job the way it is supposed to be done.

Interesting points. I once worked in an office where we'd had a particularly tough year in terms of being understaffed as they'd cut our team down by one member, whilst giving us MORE work, not less. On our annual performance reviews, our line manager wanted to acknowledge how hard we'd had to battle through, so gave every one of her staff a 4 out of 5 rating, meaning she thought we'd gone 'over and above' what was required of us. Part of the review process was that she then had to pass them all on to her boss for approval. The bar steward knocked us all down to a 3/5 rating, stating that he thought the things she had praised us for, were just part of our job anyway, and that we didn't deserve extra credit for it. Absolute BS of the highest order, our boss felt terrible as she had to explain to us all that he'd downgraded her ratings of us. If our extra efforts weren't worthy of a 4/5, then I dread to think what level of brown-nosing you must perform to get a 5/5 from your boss AND to have that agreed by the big boss too. From that day on the lot of us became utterly disinterested in performance reviews, corporate crap and the stupid surveys the company would 'encourage' us to fill in annually. In a nutshell, the big boss said "Hey, that's your job. Get on with it."

So, credit where credit is due, but I don't really think we should be praising a park for opening a ride late. Do we go into the supermarket and congratulate the bakers for getting all that fresh bread out for opening time? No, because its their job and its what we expect of them. Opening a ride on time is not rocket science, surely. Their staff's rostered hours should be such that ride ops start work in ample time to perform whatever safety checks and ride tests they have to, before opening them to the public at the stated time. If rides are frequently not open on time then I can only presume the staff aren't starting anywhere near early enough.

I have no idea what time AT's ride ops start their working days, but I have stayed in BPB's Big Blue hotel, overlooking the park, and been genuinely surprised some days at how early rides like Steeplechase and others you can see from the bedrooms, begin testing. I've walked in the (sadly, hotel guests only) former South Entrance on an 11am opening day and walked onto Steeplechase within a minute. It seems that with AT, it is total pot luck if a ride opens on time. You then have the ride times website which is not particularly accurate. On my last visit a few weeks ago, we went straight to Wickerman (enough has been said about trying to ride this early doors) so I don't know if the other coasters opened on time, but I know that on the days leading up to that Friday there'd been a fair bit of late opening.

It takes a lot to stop goons from visiting a park, but for the GP. . . poor operations, late openings, long queues to get in, breakdowns of a brand new ride, poor trip advisor reviews etc all contribute to them feeling like they've had a wasted trip and may not bother returning to the park for a couple of years.
 
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