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2021: General Discussion

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On the car parking front, Alton Towers have planning permission to part-pave the huge car park P (a field) into seasonal overspill parking. Have they used this permission & done this? If not, the powers that be missed a trick. They've had the permission for over a year & with lockdowns there have been construction workers aplenty looking for work. Huge open-air site to work on, so no social distancing issues.

Also, you don't need to be a genius to work out that more guests will visit by car now to avoid public transport / coach trips. More car guests = more car parking needed. Even a few years ago - so long before Covid - they were struggling with car parking on busy days. I've been directed to park between boulders on the grass leading into trees near the carpark exit barriers in the past.
 
Building a car park is incredibly expensive however, hence why you see so many large car parks around the world not being fully paved. They don't just roll tarmac over a field.

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Matt.GC said:
Building a car park is incredibly expensive however, hence why you see so many large car parks around the world not being fully paved. They don't just roll tarmac over a field.

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The plans for Car Park P were not tarmac-ing a field, it was concrete blocks with holes in for grass to grow through, so that when fully established it would have the appearance of a field, albeit with solid paved roadways within. The photos in the planning application showed a similar surfacing at Chessington.

Using those fields for car parking without some proper surfacing is a nightmare. I remember at Fireworks back in about 2001 it had rained for days and they used the fields for parking. Team Leaders & a tractor were pushing cars out of the fields at the end of the day. One Team Leader even went under the shower in Pinewood Lodge [an office behind Duel] fully clothed in waterproofs and turned it on. He was covered in mud head to toe from car-pushing.
 
Ah I see, in that case it is needed. I had no idea there was a lodge behind Duel though.

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Matt.GC said:
Ah I see, in that case it is needed. I had no idea there was a lodge behind Duel though.
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I didn't either, but here it is. :)

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Kraken27 said:
The plans for Car Park P were not tarmac-ing a field, it was concrete blocks with holes in for grass to grow through, so that when fully established it would have the appearance of a field, albeit with solid paved roadways within. The photos in the planning application showed a similar surfacing at Chessington.
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That’s still going to be very expensive. They still need to dig it up, level to a reasonable grade and then lay the paving. Might be a bit cheaper than tarmac but not significantly, it’s would use those blocks for looks not for speed or price. Tarmac is likely still cheaper.
 
There was also a lot of ground work to create new mounds to hide some of the area from the outside world. It certainly isn’t cheap to do but they are going to have to bite the bullet soon as they don’t have enough parking to cope with the number of cars that come on park. They also now only have two car parks to route people to on busy periods (you used to have J+K as a third route to speed up flow) so the road is backing up heavily into Farley and Alton which isn’t exactly local friendly.
 
According to The Times, the 1m+ rule is being scrapped from 21st June, but masks may be kept in some situations, as well as things like one-way systems: https://apple.news/A0LZDNV8BTRutzapQ_sviXg

Excellent news, from an operational standpoint! This should hopefully mean a far more normal season for Alton and the other UK parks going forward, not least because it allows the parks to operate rides on full capacity again!
 
Matt N said:
According to The Times, the 1m+ rule is being scrapped from 21st June, but masks may be kept in some situations, as well as things like one-way systems: https://apple.news/A0LZDNV8BTRutzapQ_sviXg

Excellent news, from an operational standpoint! This should hopefully mean a far more normal season for Alton and the other UK parks going forward, not least because it allows the parks to operate rides on full capacity again!
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Social distancing was always the thing that was going to go. I always thought that masks would remain and I'm not sure that'll change for a long time
 
I was under the impression that social distancing didn't apply in certain ride queues yesterday anyway. It certainly seemed so given the lack of announcements (other than The Smiler queue, which remains a vile place to spend any given amount of time).
 
Danny said:
I was under the impression that social distancing didn't apply in certain ride queues yesterday anyway. It certainly seemed so given the lack of announcements (other than The Smiler queue, which remains a vile place to spend any given amount of time).
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Well we're talking about when social distancing won't be a legal requirement. People not distancing right now is against government guidelines
 
Ethan said:
I've always assumed so during a pandemic. It would be stupid if it wasn't
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It's not a legal requirement, just guidance, however there is a requirement which could be enforced under health and safety laws in England for companies to ensure they put in place tools to aid social distancing etc, which Towers have done. Whether people pay any attention to it is another thing though.

It did vary from queue to queue though yesterday, with the likes of the Mine Train queue, where it was mainly families waiting, people distancing fine, but others like Galactica, Nemesis where it was mainly groups of 'adults', it was normal to see the people standing behind you barely a few inches away from you, and so on and so on.
 
Matt N said:
According to The Times, the 1m+ rule is being scrapped from 21st June, but masks may be kept in some situations, as well as things like one-way systems: https://apple.news/A0LZDNV8BTRutzapQ_sviXg

Excellent news, from an operational standpoint! This should hopefully mean a far more normal season for Alton and the other UK parks going forward, not least because it allows the parks to operate rides on full capacity again!
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Just because a paper says something Matt, it doesn't mean it is true.
They have made a prediction, nothing more.
21st June is eight weeks away, things can change.
 
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