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The Smiler - General Discussion

I don't think they had in mind that the ride would need dummy testing daily, as in theory it should go around the track fine without any. Clearly the stalling has resulted in them having to use dummies for testing.
 
It will be interesting to see how the pit holds up when the weather gets worse... How much rain will it take to make the queue one giant puddle :p
 
Scott said:
It will be interesting to see how the pit holds up when the weather gets worse... How much rain will it take to make the queue one giant puddle :p
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Not very well going by how it's looked in recent, rainless weeks! One thing I noticed when I was last there was that the drains closest to the indoor queueline are at the top of a slope! So that the water flows away rather than towards them. Pretty poor design even at the most basic level there.
 
The dummies were only added once it had stalled a few times, so clearly not planned! All it would take is a bit of a roof under the breakrun (that is above the queue line) with some guttering, so that the whole queue line doesn't remain flooded all day! There is already frame work under the breakrun holding up a platform, so it could be added to that really easy.


Also for a new ride, I can't believe how much is broken/not working already, they may all be minor, but surely can't take much to fix!
- Smoke in station is very hit and miss.
- I have yet to see the smoke in the indoor section apart from opening day.
- Various speakers don't work in the queue line including two of the tall speakers: one on the marmaliser and one in the far corner near the indoor queue.
- The TV near the indoor queue had a big black spot on during the weekend, and yesterday was off completely.
- One of the TVs in the shop seems to be on at some points during the day, but off at other points.
 
djtruefitt said:
- The TV near the indoor queue had a big black spot on during the weekend, and yesterday was off completely.
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Isn't that a result of being in direct sunlight? Especially considering the heatwave of the weekend, not a surprised one or two of the TVs might have died...
 
None of the TVs looked top-notch anyway. I'm not really very surprised that some are already starting to fail.
 
I think one of the biggest disappoints for me is the lack of smoke. I've not seen the dispatch smoke working since I first rode on June 1st. Then the indoor smoke is incredibly hit and miss, there didn't seem to be any at all over the weekend. It's a shame as the dispatch smoke looks really good, and the smoke at the bottom of the drop is really effective with the strobe and hides what is a very ugly interior. It surely can't be that hard to sort it out.

:)
 
My biggest concerns with the queue line are not rain, but sun!! Being stuck amongst all the concrete in that pit for hours in the blazing sun is really hard work. Add the cattlepen layout so people are all close to each other, the high fences, the fences above you, its also very claustraphic for some people. I was reading on Facebook about some people passing out over the weekend.

Problem is there is poor access for staff to get to people quickly in the queue, and little room for someone to exit quickly or summon help if they need to.
 
Scott said:
It will be interesting to see how the pit holds up when the weather gets worse... How much rain will it take to make the queue one giant puddle :p
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The smiler. worlds first roller coaster with swimming pool queue line, bring your Budgie smugglers, it splash time.
 
djtruefitt said:
There is certainly a difference in the trains on the Smiler, on Saturday I did it first thing and it was fine, then did SRQ and got on the front row, and the whole ride felt completly different, and very jolty the whole way round. I think its the train that rattles a lot!
There is the two bits right near the end of the right that jolt on all the trains due to the track, but the rest is fairly smooth.
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I found this too. Until today, I'd ridden it 10 times and it'd always been pretty smooth, and I'd tried every row. Loved both the front and back for different reasons. The cobra roll was rough, but that was it. Today, however, I rode it on the 3rd row and it felt different! I'm guessing it might have been the first time I rode on a 'rough train'?! I certainly didn't enjoy it as much as on other days.

Still loved it by the way! But I rode Nemesis straight after today. On other days, I've always liked The Smiler more, but today I enjoyed Nemmy more. Just really do love them both!
 
Amy_D said:
Still loved it by the way! But I rode Nemesis straight after today. On other days, I've always liked The Smiler more, but today I enjoyed Nemmy more. Just really do love them both!
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I knew you'd return from the dark side eventually.
 
I had my first ride today. It is brilliant, it's the coaster which provides the best wider experience on the park. I found the ride very rough, however. I was on the third row both times, but perhaps it was on the same train which is the troublemaker.

There was no giggler gas or inoculation fluid, nor was there indoor smoke. There was dispatch smoke, however, and all the TVs were working.

The amount of temporary queue pens outside the entrance are really ugly and cumbersome, though. Are they a hangover from Alton Towers live?
 
Jon said:
I had my first ride today. It is brilliant, it's the coaster which provides the best wider experience on the park. I found the ride very rough, however. I was on the third row both times, but perhaps it was on the same train which is the troublemaker.

There was no giggler gas or inoculation fluid, nor was there indoor smoke. There was dispatch smoke, however, and all the TVs were working.

The amount of temporary queue pens outside the entrance are really ugly and cumbersome, though. Are they a hangover from Alton Towers live?
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Nope, those are permanent external queuelines. They've been moved several times now, although I think that they will leave them there for good now. I wonder how long it'll be before the queue will never consistently extend into them?
 
Check out the Facebook page for AT. There's some Cracking behind the scenes photos from the advert
 
Though the park has been quite busy in general recently, one point that I think is worth noting is the positive effect that The Smiler is having on the distribution of guests and queue lengths. Obviously The Smiler is having a vogue period this year, and its queues are likely to be twice that of all the other coasters for a while yet, but in general it has made queues for other rides much more even.

It's great that The Smiler has dragged guests towards Oblivion, which now pulls a bit more weight in terms of eating up the park's capacity.
 
Does anybody have an idea of the overall capacity of The Smilers queue? If they still require the extensions for a two hour queue they must have seriously misjudged how many people they could fit in that cattle pen. Either that or the high volumes of people and temperamental nature of the ride are leading to a case of overcrowding.

Whilst its good to see Blivvy eating up queues, its still a shame that the capacity os no longer anywhere near what it was... Bloody Fastrack :p
 
Nope, it's because the queue IS too short because there wasn't enough space in the pit for more. Lots of people want to ride it, but that was the same for Nemesis, Oblivion and Air and those three rides all have far bigger queues. The only upside to this is that once people stop being bothered there shouldn't be any (or much) unused queue line like there is for Nemesis and Air.

:)
 
I'd imagine that Oblivion would have been the same all those years ago, considering that the queue line regularly gets filled these days.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2
 
The other thing to note is that if you take the best throughputs of The Smiler and Sub-Terra they have added about 1800 an hour extra capacity on park in 2 seasons. For the last few years most new rides have replaced old ones so that is significant.

The Smiler has about an 80 min queue capacity so i imagine once the "new ride" effect dies down it will be suitable length though they should have had more main queue!

Oblivions queue length has been cut by a third since opening due to the Fast Track addition
 
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