• 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.

2020: General Discussion

Status
This topic has been locked. No further replies can be posted.
That means that the £5 off Fastrack vouchers Merlin gave me with my Premium MAP are now presumably valid for use at Alton...

I wonder why Nemesis was one of the ones they chose, however. Smiler and Wicker Man, I can understand, being the park’s two most popular rides, but Nemesis is probably among the park’s least popular major rides. Maybe it’s one of the more practical rides to put Fastrack onto?
 
Nemesis is a weird one. I have memories from 20 years ago remembering it to be walk on in the morning and end of the day.

I hope they’re not planning on taking one of the trains out of service. Although what you suggested Matt sounds more likely.
 
On Nemesis it’s simple why they added it, if they are using the Fastrack gate then social distancing isn’t an issue as you aren’t near the main queue until you merge and it makes it easy. But if they are using exit as Fastrack then it’s odd why they added it.
 
I'm not sure if it's been picked up on the last few pages, sorry if it has, but next weeks original 4pm & 5pm closing times have been changed to 6pm & 7pm, leaving September 7th-10th as the only 4pm closes in that month.
 
Alsty said:
I believe you had to pay for the English version of MTV whereas the German one you could get without paying. The downside was all the lyrics were uncensored.

The managers got wind of it a few weeks later and the screens were then turned off.
Click to expand...

I’m pretty sure the German MTV lasted a couple of seasons. It certainly wasn’t only for weeks.

I think it was also linked to the changes to Sky going digital but you could still pick up analogue satellite TV from Europe, so they showed what was free.
Other than the long slow moving queue I don’t know why black hole got queue line TVs when nothing else did.
Although Air opened with some TVs showing the characters named after Cadbury Heroes assuming the position and getting ready to fly as they did in the original teaser TV adverts.

The LCD screens in boxes showing adverts were a newer thing (lasts in the Tussauds era) but they never seemed to work right and it wouldn’t surprise me if the adverts ever even paid for the hardware!
 
dickie001x said:
I wouldn’t agree with that: it’s extremely popular. It eats queues well, which is why the queue time is usually smaller.
Click to expand...
I’m not sure about that, personally. I know that Nemesis’ high throughput often makes the queue move quicker than on some other rides, but whenever I go to ride it, there are far, far less people in the queue than there are for something like Smiler or Wicker Man. Wicker Man has a pretty good throughput these days, and the queue for that always gets far, far longer than Nemesis’ does. I often see Wicker Man with an advertised 120 minute queue when Nemesis is only on 30 or less; I personally think that’s down to far more than Nemesis merely having a higher throughput. Pre-COVID, most days would see Wicker Man have a huge queue (well over an hour) while Nemesis would be pretty much walk-on; I think that implies that Nemesis is less popular than Wicker Man, personally.

Everyone’s free to think what they want, but I personally think that Nemesis’ popularity among general Alton Towers visitors is sometimes overestimated by enthusiasts on the whole due to the fact that most enthusiasts love it so much.
 
I remember Nemesis used to get around 40 min queues regularly 10 years ago. The ride is still as good as it was then and I really don't think guests have changed that much, but there are 2 more big coasters in the park now (and attendance has wobbled around a bit since then), I think that's more likely the reason queues are lower.

I noticed the similar changes for Air since 2010, except for the slower throughput on Air. Although I don't visit super regularly so maybe I'm missing something

The one that really seems to have dropped in popularity is Oblivion, even on half capacity it regularly gets a tiny queue. Youd always wait pretty long for it on full capacity 5-10 years ago!
 
A thing worth noting is that I seem to remember Nemesis still not pulling overly huge queues compared to the other stuff even when it was on 1 train at the start of 2018, so as I said, I don’t personally think throughput is the only thing causing Nemesis’ comparatively low queue times.

In terms of popularity, I know it was voted the favourite ride at the park just after Thirteen opened (so it was competing with Oblivion, Air, Rita and Thirteen), but when they conducted a similar poll after Smiler opened, Smiler won, and I also know that the park said that Wicker Man has been their most highly rated ride in feedback surveys ever since it opened, so Smiler and Wicker Man would definitely be ahead by that metric.
 
Matt N said:
when they conducted a similar poll after Smiler opened, Smiler won, and I also know that the park said that Wicker Man has been their most highly rated ride in feedback surveys ever since it opened, so Smiler and Wicker Man would definitely be ahead by that metric.
Click to expand...
But that's only because they were new at the time. New coasters always get immense popularity in their first few seasons no matter what (unless they're especially bad, which Smiler and Wickerman aren't).

Another big thing is that Nemesis is relatively tucked away at the back of the park, compared to Smiler and Wicker Man which stand out far more, at the front of the park. This might sound small but it makes a huge difference in where queues build up during the day

Wicker Man and Smiler could be more popular after all, but it probably wouldnt be that big a difference in actual guest satisfaction
 
I know I certainly like Wicker Man a lot more than I like Nemesis (but I’m very much in a minority there), and my parents seemed to as well last time we rode it, if that’s any indicator.
 
I think generally when a big new ride comes in, one of the others will take a "general" dip in its average queue time. I don't think this will ever be the case for The Smiler however, as I feel like it will always be immensely popular.
 
He only reason they’ve added fastrack on those rides is it’s easy to do. Nemesis will use the merge gate, so the people queuing for fastrack can stay well away from others. wicker and Smiler are popular, and I be,I’ve they’ve added screens to make those work.

the TH13TEEN fastrack queue is currently being used by disabled so they’ll have to have a move around to sort that, and I think it’s a similar story for Galactica.

Oblivion would be a pain to add back as the queue runs right next to the main queue, so a lot of screens would have to be added if they didn’t want people stood next to each other, the same with Rita.
 
Matt N said:
I’m not sure about that, personally. I know that Nemesis’ high throughput often makes the queue move quicker than on some other rides, but whenever I go to ride it, there are far, far less people in the queue than there are for something like Smiler or Wicker Man. Wicker Man has a pretty good throughput these days, and the queue for that always gets far, far longer than Nemesis’ does. I often see Wicker Man with an advertised 120 minute queue when Nemesis is only on 30 or less; I personally think that’s down to far more than Nemesis merely having a higher throughput. Pre-COVID, most days would see Wicker Man have a huge queue (well over an hour) while Nemesis would be pretty much walk-on; I think that implies that Nemesis is less popular than Wicker Man, personally.

Everyone’s free to think what they want, but I personally think that Nemesis’ popularity among general Alton Towers visitors is sometimes overestimated by enthusiasts on the whole due to the fact that most enthusiasts love it so much.
Click to expand...

I've said many times before on here that a short queue doesn't mean that ride is unpopular, it just means it can get more people through it. An example (ignoring COVID restrictions):

Nemesis has no queue, completely walk on, however is still filling every train to capacity and getting 40 dispatches an hour. This means that it would be getting 1,280 riders every hour, add that up during a 10-5 day and it would've had 8,960 people ride it that day. Now even if Wickerman had at least a 60 minute queue all day, it is still held back by it's inferior throughput, let's say 45 dispatches an hour, meaning it would be getting 1,080 riders every hour, so 7,560 people ride it the same day. Now which ride seems more popular? Even if it closed with a genuine 60 minute queue, that only adds an extra 1,000 riders to it's total for that day, which would still be less than what Nemesis had.

Yes Wickerman and Smiler are newer so much more popular, however if they had throughputs as good as what Nemesis and Oblivion can get then their queues would be much smaller, and they would have had more riders to properly reflect their popularity. This doesn't mean Nemesis and Oblivion are any less popular than normal just because they have a shorter queue.

Tl;dr - Nemesis and Oblivion are still popular rides, despite the short queues.

EDIT: Also, older rides tend to have more accurate advertised queue times as they've had many more years to gauge reliably accurate times from different points of the queue, whereas newer rides tend to have over-inflated queue times as the ride team hasn't had the years to properly measure the times from various points in the queue-line. So a 30 minute queue for Nemesis is more likely to be accurate than a 120 minute queue for Wickerman. I have on a few occasions entered an advertised 70-80 minute queue for Wicker and only waited 30-40 mins
 
Last edited:
Thinking about it, for people looking to go on an intense ‘No way am I going on that’ type of coaster, there’s really only Nemesis, Oblivion and The Smiler that offer that in my opinion.

Wickerman is obviously more appealing to a wider age group, very family friendly and a 1.2 min height for riders.

The Smiler is clearly the crowd drawer but I certainly wouldn’t say Nemesis is one of the least popular rides at the park.
 
Josh said:
I've said many times before on here that a short queue doesn't mean that ride is unpopular, it just means it can get more people through it. An example (ignoring COVID restrictions):

Nemesis has no queue, completely walk on, however is still filling every train to capacity and getting 40 dispatches an hour. This means that it would be getting 1,280 riders every hour, add that up during a 10-5 day and it would've had 8,960 people ride it that day. Now even if Wickerman had at least a 60 minute queue all day, it is still held back by it's inferior throughput, let's say 45 dispatches an hour, meaning it would be getting 1,080 riders every hour, so 7,560 people ride it the same day. Now which ride seems more popular? Even if it closed with a genuine 60 minute queue, that only adds an extra 1,000 riders to it's total for that day, which would still be less than what Nemesis had.

Yes Wickerman and Smiler are newer so much more popular, however if they had throughputs as good as what Nemesis and Oblivion can get then their queues would be much smaller, and they would have had more riders to properly reflect their popularity. This doesn't mean Nemesis and Oblivion are any less popular than normal just because they have a shorter queue.

Tl;dr - Nemesis and Oblivion are still popular rides, despite the short queues.

EDIT: Also, older rides tend to have more accurate advertised queue times as they've had many more years to gauge reliably accurate times from different points of the queue, whereas newer rides tend to have over-inflated queue times as the ride team hasn't had the years to properly measure the times from various points in the queue-line. So a 30 minute queue for Nemesis is more likely to be accurate than a 120 minute queue for Wickerman. I have on a few occasions
entered an advertised 70-80 minute queue for Wicker and only waited 30-40 mins
Click to expand...

We had all this discussion, at length, a couple of months ago.
Couldn't be bothered looking it up.
Some people have memories shorter than mine!
And fasttrack is coming back because the summer peak is over...simple.
 
Matt878787 said:
Thinking about it, for people looking to go on an intense ‘No way am I going on that’ type of coaster, there’s really only Nemesis, Oblivion and The Smiler that offer that in my opinion.
Click to expand...
Does Rita not exist anymore or something. From my experience, Rita has the most intense moment with its launch
 
Status
This topic has been locked. No further replies can be posted.
Top