2013: General Discussion

[Bob]

Brilliant, the rides that rarely have queues through the day anyway are free to use for an hour whilst rides that were useful to get out the way quickly such as Thirteen and Oblivion, now unavailable completely.

Suppose I should be grateful that anything is open at all. :/

 

[Benzin]

Before Smiler appeared Oblivion was in that exact situation with being dead all day yet open for ERT...

It makes logistical sense for them not to open Oblivion, and Thirteen has struggled to get the required minimum amount of people to run the ride...

Why not add Air though? Unless it takes forever in engineering of course... It does make more sense to keep the ERT rides reasonably close together (at least for Towers), but I'm sure there will still be a fair amount who will wait for Smiler initially anyways...

 

[Slugjc]

Time to get real. ERT is all very good, but lets face it. We cannot have everything we want. With a shiny new ride to go to, everyone will go there. They could have every ride open and 98% will still go to the smiler. So it must be difficult for them.

 

[BigAl]

Just heard from Panda on Twitter that not only are Smiler and Rita down but Spinball, Th13teen, RMT and the Rapids were also down. Not sure for how long or if any are back open yet. Doesn't sound good though.

 

[AstroDan]

There's significant ride availability problems today.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

 

[delta79]

Looks like tech services are going to be spread thinly around the park trying to get them back up.

 

[LiamC]

I feel for members of staff on days like today, they must deal with so much flak regarding problems that are, generally, out of their control.

 

[delta79]

I can not see the point of give ride staff grief over a hardware failure. Anyway I find if you are nice to the staff over a failure they remember it and you.

 

[GaryH]

Could this be Alton's worst year ever!!! Things just seem to be going wrong thoughout the park nearly every week this year so far.

 

[LiamC]

Could this be Alton's worst year ever!!! Things just seem to be going wrong thoughout the park nearly every week this year so far.

I can, unfortunately, only agree with this point.

The most substantial investment in the park in it's history and it has been far and away to most disappointing year in my eyes

 

[Rob]

I agree that it is turning into a very disappointing year. The Smiler is great but with the delays and then all the problems after it has opened, even it is somewhat disappointing. I haven't been to Towers since Alton Towers Live and have only made 3 visits since The Smiler opened. I currently have no desire to return any time soon. I think me saying that says a lot about things at the moment really.

 

[Scott]

I think the most disappointing thing to do with 2013 is how optimistic and excited we were in the last 12 months.

I think we all feel let down.

 

[Ollie]

I'm unsure if anybody else has noticed, and I apologise I didn't take a picture but has anyone seen the increasing presence of graffiti in the Skyride cars? In all three cars I travelled on last week there was a level of graffiti - either large tags engraved in the windows or just marker pen.

Am I just unlucky or can this be found in most of the cars?

 

[Tom]

They seem to be closing at 5:30 and not 6? Do they frequently cut 30 mins off?

 

[delta79]

I'm unsure if anybody else has noticed, and I apologise I didn't take a picture but has anyone seen the increasing presence of graffiti in the Skyride cars? In all three cars I travelled on last week there was a level of graffiti - either large tags engraved in the windows or just marker pen.

Am I just unlucky or can this be found in most of the cars?

Yes, I seen it in the Skyride car that I was travelling in earlier in the year. A comment with a couple of rude words, written in marker pen. if i had alcohol hand rub with me i would of tried to remove or at least made them unreadable the rude words.

I find some of the graffiti guest generate within the park unsuitable for a family park.

 

[Ash]

What happens when you get rid of all the techies due to having more "electronic" based rides...

 

[Scott]

From TS News - a roundup of today:

It’s been a busy day on park today so we’re bringing you our first round-up of all our social media posts today, just in case you don’t follow us on Facebook or Twitter already! We know some of you don’t use social websites but would still like to see all our updates, so today’s are all here in one place.

Scarefest Preparations
The preparations for Alton Towers Scarefest have begun with the now famous hearse taking up its place at the end of Towers Street:

The Smiler: Still Closed
The Smiler was closed once more for unknown reasons and this sign was informing guests:

The Smiler: New Netting
The maintenance team appear to be using the current bout of downtime as a good opportunity to install some safety netting over the X Sector toilets. This appears to also be the area of the ride where some “debris” fell from the track last week.

What The Duck?
The (now famous) farm ducklings are growing up fast…

Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!
It’s been so hot today on park that the water rides have been very popular. Battle Galleons, which is usually quite quiet, even amassed a big queue!

Ferret-y Fun
The farm ferrets have a new toy!

Sir Algenon Opens His Doors
Sir Algenon’s Explorer Diner has opened its doors in the Conference Centre (located between the two hotels). It’s selling sandwiches, pasta and pizza and will be open during peak times this summer to ease the strain on the resorts two permanent restaurants: Flambo’s and The Secret Garden.

 

[Wilsy]

They seem to be closing at 5:30 and not 6? Do they frequently cut 30 mins off?

Alton Towers has been closing at 6 for a few weeks now, certainly not closing earlier.

 

[John]

Ridetimes.co.uk seems to be set up to automatically change the status of all rides to "closed" at 5:30 even though the park is still open. Someone needs to fix that at some point, otherwise it'll be a bit useless at Scarefest (well, more useless than it is already).

 

[Tom]

Slightly annoying that I'm not going to have seen it in the flesh before all of these horrible nets go up.

And thanks John, it was RideTimes.co.uk that I was looking at.