• 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.

2013: General Discussion

There was many many days last year when 5pm ride close was too early, it says a lot when there are 100s of people still hanging around on Towers Street at 5.45. If the park was open later people are surely going to spend more money on food, drink, snacks, etc, etc. Even Legoland and Thorpe open till 6pm.
 
Hmmm, it does seem annoying that Alton are going for 5pm closes. 6pm is actually a nice time to shut - with Thorpe I can miss the rush hour traffic on a weekday. And as its bank holiday this weekend, you would think they would shut a little later.
 
I think 5pm is way too early. Went to Thorpe yesterday and if it wasn't for that extra hour (5-6pm) we wouldn't have gone on Stealth, Rush and slammer. But then again, thorpe is minuscule compared to Alton Towers. So 1 extra hour might not do much difference? Not sure, but maybe they are closing early to start the Smiler testing in the evenings?

I doubt that's the reason but you never know! :twirly:
 
Back in the days when the park was open untill 7 miss those days
 
9pm?! We've got more chance of Margaret Thatcher climbing out her grave than seeing parks closing that late in future.
 
The thing with a park like Alton, is it is so big you could really use that extra time!

Closing at 5pm on a Bank Holiday is just poor. No justification for that, who makes these decisions for goodness sake?

A hot day like to day F&B would make a fortune at the end of it! I never understand either why they close the food outlets so fast, I just walk around the park at the end of the day and you can see where they are losing money hand over fist.

Beggars belief to me really.

Penny wise, pound foolish.
 
On a hot evening, you want to sit and chill on the front lawn with an icecream or a beer and relax while the coaster mad people get a few last goes on the rides.

I also have never understood why they close so early. Ok you have their money for the park entrance, but you might as well try and fleece people of as much money as you can after this.

Yes ok, the parks biggest expense is staff wages, but surely it wouldn't cost that much to maybe let a few staff go home early once all breaks are done, but keep enough on to keep the rides running and outlets open. I would have happily brought several drinks and stuff whilst sitting on the lawn. The profit they make on those must easily cover staffing and running costs of the outlet.
 
Having some shifts go home early would surely help keep the staff happy, as well? There will always be some who want to get home ASAP, and some who are happy to hang around for a few extra quid in their paycheque. As long as the shifts are flexible, it would be a win-win situation for staff.
 
Should be quite easy to keep the place open - reduce staffing in line with demand, if it's quiet reduce ride capacity to send more staff home. Then you've got ride availability, lovely weather and happy guests spending money. Should be a winner really.
 
Thing is, to further create money by staying open later they can easily have an 'after 4pm' (or 'after 5pm') ticket at a reduced price compared to the day ticket. Then promote the hell out of the offer to the local areas, they could bring in a whole load of new guests in the evening then.

As much as I hate it too, they could upsell more in the evening. As above too, cut staff so money can be saved there. Just have less staff working in the evenings.
 
We were at Alton Towers again last Friday and the rotating tunnel in Duel is no longer working (if it had indeed been working again only a few days prior). The audio in the queue was still too loud and a few of the animatronics are still not working (the most notable being the thing holding a rat near the beginning), or out of sync with the ride cars.
 
I should imagine that the second dining room demon will probably remain out of action for the rest of the season. Simply because the fact they've let such a major prop go un-resolved for so long would suggest to me that there's something seriously wrong with it, which will either cost a bit, or take a lot of time to fix.

The syncing is annoying sometimes, but I think it's probably more down to the ride system than the individual effects. Obviously, the ride cars alter their speed many times throughout the trip. This is mainly relative to both the scene they are traveling through at each moment, and to maintain the spacing clearance either side of the vehicle. It shouldn't be that much of an issue really, as when the system runs properly the speed at a set point should be fairly consistent between vehicles. However, no doubt owing to its age, it has issues where some of the vehicles are always either under or over speeding (That's why two vehicles can leave the station bumper to bumper, but can come back to offload with a 5 foot gap between them :p ). This not only causes a problem for that vehicle, but usually most of the other normally functioning ones too, as they all move relative to each other. In theory they aren't doing anything wrong, but for a moment each of them can fall out of sync with some of the effects while they all shuffle around :p

There's no denying it, though the team do a great job with the limited resources they have, Duel is a large scale dark ride with hundreds of effects and a complex transit system. It needs a budget assigning to it accordingly to keep on top of it. I would absolutely love for this closed season Towers to go over and give Forbidden Valley and Duel the same treatment they've given Hex and X-Sector this year. It's that side of the park where I feel the problem attractions and less presentable areas lie since X-Sector and Oblivion have been cleaned up. If they could do the same to Duel and The Valley the park would be looking brilliant for 2014. Please Towers? Pretty pretty please? :*
 
The "rat-in-hand" demon was working on Sunday, as was the spinning tunnel.
 
Ian said:
I should imagine that the second dining room demon will probably remain out of action for the rest of the season. Simply because the fact they've let such a major prop go un-resolved for so long would suggest to me that there's something seriously wrong with it, which will either cost a bit, or take a lot of time to fix.

The syncing is annoying sometimes, but I think it's probably more down to the ride system than the individual effects. Obviously, the ride cars alter their speed many times throughout the trip. This is mainly relative to both the scene they are traveling through at each moment, and to maintain the spacing clearance either side of the vehicle. It shouldn't be that much of an issue really, as when the system runs properly the speed at a set point should be fairly consistent between vehicles. However, no doubt owing to its age, it has issues where some of the vehicles are always either under or over speeding (That's why two vehicles can leave the station bumper to bumper, but can come back to offload with a 5 foot gap between them :p ). This not only causes a problem for that vehicle, but usually most of the other normally functioning ones too, as they all move relative to each other. In theory they aren't doing anything wrong, but for a moment each of them can fall out of sync with some of the effects while they all shuffle around :p

There's no denying it, though the team do a great job with the limited resources they have, Duel is a large scale dark ride with hundreds of effects and a complex transit system. It needs a budget assigning to it accordingly to keep on top of it. I would absolutely love for this closed season Towers to go over and give Forbidden Valley and Duel the same treatment they've given Hex and X-Sector this year. It's that side of the park where I feel the problem attractions and less presentable areas lie since X-Sector and Oblivion have been cleaned up. If they could do the same to Duel and The Valley the park would be looking brilliant for 2014. Please Towers? Pretty pretty please? :*
Click to expand...

I can agree with all of this. Nice to see FV and Duel get a good make over, but i cant see it until end of this season. All resources will be put into Xsector
 
The tunnel in Duel apparently has warped and is no longer perfectly round, hence its mostly turned off. Apparently to get it going it has to be started manually as the motor struggles, and they are actually thinking of removing it completely and to fix it will involve rebuilding it.


As for Alton at the end of the day, I always thought in the summer why not put some tables and chairs out on the lawns, have a mobile bar sorta thing, some music, and let people chill on the lawns overlooking the towers with a soft drink, beer, ice cream etc. Even if they continue to close the rides at 5pm keep this bar area open until 6-7pm - they could make a fortune from people who want to spend a bit more time there, or let the going home queues go before they head home....
 
The second Demon was working perfectly fine yesterday. Shame though that none of the bats, spiders and half of the flying demon faces or zombies were working. The zombie in the crypt outside has had his trousers ripped showing the mechanics inside but the queue line inside was on top form absolutely faultless. Just a shame the ride seemed a little on the struggling side of things.

Also, whats up with Hex's projector? It doesn't seem to like bright flashes or intense colours and just "whites out" those areas and flickers - I find this projector worse than the last one?

For me, yesterday proved how dire Charlie currently is. Augustus' chocolate pool was broken. Mrs Beuregarde wasn't working, neither was violet and the balls that fire were just getting stuck. One of the berries on the ceiling of the juicing room has obviously broken or fallen as it's missing with just the strings hanging there. Litter in the scenes, nothing in the nut room working at all - not even Veruca's little animation. It's just a mess. To top it off the lights in the old Toyland bits illuminated the rest of the boat path and ruined the whole rubbish chute idea. It's just so sad, I left the ride feeling pretty deflated and down.
 
davewazere said:
Mutiny bay and for Forbidden valley are now open, don't know about the rest.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Taking the chance to geek out!

y6ydy3ur.jpg



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top