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2013: General Discussion

KingNemesis said:
The actor who plays the conductor in them videos showing the bravo show is called Ian hayles and has done a number of park related shows such as:

- Pirates of mutiny bay
- Park keeper
- "Michael" the drunk during 2012 scarefest scare rooms
- Steampunk guy in the Hotel (Sir Algeon I believe, could be wrong though)
- Sir Edward England
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Yes he sometimes plays Sir Algenon in the hotel. He was also a roaming actor for the Sanctuary (the doctor) during scarefest.

Quite a few of the actors at towers do a variety of roles, you can quite often see someone playing Sir Edward England one day, then that night they are a plumber in Splash Landings, then the next day they are a park keeper.
 
According to various sources, Alton Towers has sent their new app to Apple for approval so it should appear on the store soon.

This also means that the Android version should appear just after it. :)
 
Good effort from Oblivion staff today. two of the three goes we had on it, our shuttle was despatched as the second shuttle from the previous despatch had just crested the lift hill.

Spinball had a couple of hours down time in the afternoon, but was back running near end of day. Most other rides seemed to be operating OK, except Smiler of course. Only activity there was a train being transferred from brake run to maintenance bay.
 
Rob said:
The Bravo Band is absolutely fantastic! I really hope that it goes down well with guests and continues. Entertainments are one of the few positives on park at the moment.

:)
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I've just watched the show on Youtube and agree! This is a great effort from the Ents team. :D
 
A few points to make...

People say the magic has gone from the park, perhaps this is true of the 90s stuff, but there is still something there within the park... Going to a park with non-enthusiasts is always a good experience, because you see the excitement on their faces throughout the trip and it's rather catchy at times...

With Woodland Walk reopening for ERT you can see why they plan on opening more in that area rather than elsewhere (although Oblivion/Hex/Thirteen were all still open this weekend), because it's effort... They also need to advertise it more, as we were the only group of people on it on Sunday morning, as most hotel guests got the Monorail (maybe as a result of Smiler possibly opening at 10 that day though)... Also of note, you don't need to prove you're of the hotel to use it, which may be of interest to enthusiasts...

Smiler being down all Saturday meant we went on the GS ride, with unsurprisingly lots of other angry guests of varying levels... They were starting to pull the old "it's on the website" line, which is a bit off considering it had no message for a few days of it being closed, but as we'd booked in advance we got entry for another day for the non-MAP holders and a fastrack adrenaline (or of choice of any of the bronze packages) for myself and Nicky... I sense that the level of complimentary entry however was not high once they put the message up on the website... Poor show...

On the other hand, Smiler has really captured the GP as a brand and ride... I've never seen so many specific ride shirts being worn by guests over a weekend at any park before... They've also added a strobe to the indoor section of the queue which is mental and annoying in equal measure... They could also do with LOTS of fans to keep it cool, because it's a hotbox when people remain stationary for a long time... Seemed slightly smoother on my rides as well (although the Cobra Roll jolt still exists), and it's a brilliant ride...

Duel's trommel is back on after being broken, Sub Terra's exit lift seemed to not move (left side), Charlie was struggling with life as always and Hex still over-shoots... Thirteen's shutter didn't close but tbh it's not overtly noticeable in a weird way? It seemed brighter but I had to look back to see if it was down to the shutter, it's nowhere near as bad as Polar X-Plorer with that shutter CLOSED...

Aside from Smiler, I didn't see many breakdowns, though Spinball and Rita both had some small ones (surprise surprise)...

A big burden was at Courtyard BBQ/Hot Dogs where they weren't taking card for some reason, it's nice to be told this after queuing 10 minutes for food, taking that 10 minute walk to the free cash machines and back before queuing 10 minutes again... Apparently they can't post up a sign mentioning cash only? That's a load of rubbish, so we complained about it, because we wasted 30 minutes as a result of the issue... Poor, poor show...

To end this on an extremely positive note, the entertainments department this year on park is out-doing itself immensely... When I heard about the orchestra I was worried that it would mean the removal of the Park Keepers, but nope, they're still there and roaming, the Pirates are still roaming, and the Orchestra are rather good... When we left yesterday all 3 groups were around Towers Street and interacting with each other, and it really does top off a day at the park... The Pirate Show is still brilliant and the Park Keepers are excellent as well... If there's anything to keep Towers positive this year, it's the ents due to the amount of stuff they are doing on a limited budget... The hotel singers though need to be turned though a lot, because it's headache fuel... Be interesting to see how Scarefest affects the current ents as well and what they might try and do for it...

Speaking of the hotel, Splash Landings repaints are not that bad at all, and Secret Garden is really good for the food as well... Shame it's limiting but the Salmon of JOY made things worthwhile...

I had an excellent weekend overall, where it wasn't too busy and we got on all major rides aside from the Flume... If they can sort out any further issues with Smiler (without the need for queue evacuations and extended downtime, though cracked concrete is a fair reason in the end) then they might be able to salvage something out of the season and push on...
 
I wish my experiences with more casual 'non-enthusiast' friends (that aren't really friends now, but anyway... :p ) were more positive but everyone I've been with complained about the usual points often picked upon and out of everyone in my year, about two people still bother visiting.

Whenever I tried to convince them to visit, even with the arrival of The Smiler, nobody cares. All I ever get is "it's boring and hasn't changed enough" or "it's too expensive". Hmm... :/
 
I think that you need to tie it together with something, so with us, it was a university friends reunion, so whilst we were at Towers, it wasn't THE reason we were together...

One had never been before, and she loved it, and I seem to have people who don't go around nit-picking everything... Which is always a bonus, as I don't think they noticed such issues as Nemesis' station decaying or whatever else is the flavour of the month to moan about...
 
My school friends didn't nit-pick, they just didn't think the price justified their experience, hence no further visits.

The attractions that they enjoyed were all the old 90s attractions, most of which are either not looking too good or have been tampered with (Nemesis and Haunted House/Duel being the two main examples).

There hasn't been enough interesting additions for them to want to visit which is a shame because they'd probably like The Smiler.

:(
 
MAP discount works out very well in that respect then, £23 which can then be used for BounceBack getting you 2 days for £28 is exceptional value for money we discovered...
 
Benzin said:
Sub Terra's exit lift seemed to not move (left side)
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I forgot to post in here about Sub-Terra after my past two visits.

On Thursday the right exit lift was completely broken, with no movement of the floor what so ever.

On Saturday the left lift going down had no movement what so ever, and also no audio of the lift moving (only the audio of the screen). And to make things worse, the left exit lift also had no movement!
 
I think the park has been in a lot worse position but i want it to do better and will say so. For comparison in 2011 we had:

- Fantagate
- Towers Street was like Notting-Hill market
- FT was way over sold (i know it still is but the quotas where much higher back then)
- No new attractions
- First round of attempts at ride closing cuts
- Scarefest was crap atmosphere and crap mazes.

This year i think they have slipped up on some GS stuff but consider the following:

- Hex fix (Vekoma can't find the reason why it wont park, but the bad creaking and terrible speakers fixed)
- Oblivion Paint
- Oblvion station clean up.
- X-Sector clean up (yes it's not perfect but hey)
- Towers Street is no longer notting hill market
- Better Pirate show
- More street theater

Is this enough... no, but only because i want it to be the best. I don't think the weather or the Smiler delays helped and the park are playing catch-up.

So is it the worst it's ever been.... No! Does it have problems.... very much so! Can it do better... definitely! I think some people tend to only see the negative and others only see the positive but most are fairly balanced.
 
Wasn't sure where to put this but Alton Towers are now selling Nemesis Beer

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Photo from TST's facebook page. Gotta admit that's pretty awesome.
 
That's really cool, that beer has been sold in local pubs before (there have been a few based on Towers rides by Peakstones Brewery) but think this is the first time Towers have sold any.
 
On Oblivion during my visit today, I experienced a new form of batching... At the point where the queue splits for fast track and single rider, the staff were splitting up the main queue - using the normal queue to fill up the A rows and sending the half through the fast track queue to fill up the B rows. Is this a recent change? I've never seen this done before. Although, the crowds were diminishing at this point in the day.
 
If there aren't many people in the Fastrack queue, they will send the main queue down into the Fastrack queue to keep station B full.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk.
 
Just watched a documentary on bbc4 about pugin, who most the design for the house. AT gets a good 2 mins (guess they didn't pay merlin enough) but its a good programme to watch ,if you want to see just how spectacular the house would have been in its prime.
 
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