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2014: General Discussion

IanB said:
With Ripsaw, you have the ride running, and like I said, getting peoples attention, so instead of been sat bored while they are waiting, they are kept entertained.

With Nemesis Sub Terra, you can slow the batching down, have staff interact with guest walking past,again, adding something extra to the day.

When you see rides closed, or rides opening late, it just takes a little of the magic away for me and ruins the atmosphere that you are somewhere magical.

Maybe instead of cutting things, Towers should be promoting the fact that their is shorter queues in the morning, maybe they should be having a promotion on breakfast deals, or free bus transfer that get you to the park for 9.50 so you can be on park at 10am.

I know its a strange concept, but I am sure if they did not try to cut corners, and tried to be positive, they would generate more profit. If they keep cutting things, less people will arrive at 10am, meaning shorter queues on other rides, so you might as well just open the park at 11am like I said in my initial post.

Ian
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Alton Towers have 20 years of guest data to work with, they know by now that a lot of guests don't arrive until 10am so they won't be getting onto rides until 10:30.

They are also a business, they know how to make a profit and what you think of as cost-cutting is profit generation, rides use a lot of staff and electricity to run cutting 1 hour off the less popular rides will save a lot of money!

As EnterValhalla said Sub-terra with only 5 people in it would be rubbish, its better to encourage people to ride Air & Nemesis first (which will be open for ERT first) then come back to sub-terra once it is busier and everyone gets a better experience.

Also you use ripsaw as an example for people to watch the ride, maybe it should be replaced with a show then? But more seriously I have seen it empty even on busy days, that is wasting a lot of electricity if you could wait an hour then run it for 20 guests instead of 5 there is a huge cost and environmental impact saving.

I would rather have Nemesis running with two trains all day than have sub-terra with a poor experiance first thing in the morning.
 
SkyRide closure is stupid.

Close CATCF, Battle Galleons, Blade, Sub Terra, Ice Age and Sharkbait along with the usual Flume and Rapids.
 
But using that argument, if there is not enough people on park, you might as well not bother opening until 11am.

The park should be trying new things to encourage more people to arrive early, not put them off.

I reckon most families will not go back and miss out on the rides all together, something that no one can prove right or wrong. If you go to forbidden valley for 9am for Nemesis and Blade, and then do Air at 10am, are you going to wait around 30/40 minutes after going on Air for Ripsaw or N:ST to open, or are you going to start heading somewhere else.

I guess you could then work your way back around the park to Dark Forest, before getting the Skyride back for Forbidden Valley and doing N:ST and Ripsaw at the end of the day.

I think the worst thing is, the savings are not been used to benefit the park guests. They are been used to increase the profit Merlin makes. As for the Park Ride savings, they are already running 1 ride less all year, so that saving easily pays for keeping the other rides open, and the rides in the old Farm Yard are not open until May, so that is a whole lot of other savings that are made in staff and ride running costs until May.

Ian
 
Personally I am not at all bothered by the selected rides not opening before 11am. I only really use the SkyRide when I'm tiring towards the end of a day so a late opening for it won't concern me, as for the others your lucky if I go on them once a year, I know I certainly didn't go on Hex or Ripsaw last year - I'd say I've not been on Ripsaw for at least four years!

I can see why some maybe upset say if they've come from Scotland or the south and want to get on everything even if there isn't much queue to warrant opening, but I'm sure if it is a busy busy day they'll open them early!
 
IanB said:
But using that argument, if there is not enough people on park, you might as well not bother opening until 11am.

The park should be trying new things to encourage more people to arrive early, not put them off.

I reckon most families will not go back and miss out on the rides all together, something that no one can prove right or wrong. If you go to forbidden valley for 9am for Nemesis and Blade, and then do Air at 10am, are you going to wait around 30/40 minutes after going on Air for Ripsaw or N:ST to open, or are you going to start heading somewhere else.

I guess you could then work your way back around the park to Dark Forest, before getting the Skyride back for Forbidden Valley and doing N:ST and Ripsaw at the end of the day.

I think the worst thing is, the savings are not been used to benefit the park guests. They are been used to increase the profit Merlin makes. As for the Park Ride savings, they are already running 1 ride less all year, so that saving easily pays for keeping the other rides open, and the rides in the old Farm Yard are not open until May, so that is a whole lot of other savings that are made in staff and ride running costs until May.

Ian
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How do you know the savings made aren't benefiting guests? AT could run like Thorpe with one train operation on coasters, or you could maybe the admission cost would be £60 if it weren't for cost efficiencies.

I don't think the park is doing anything to put people off arriving early, there is no mention of this on their website or anywhere else until you arrive at the park, it is only the "enthusiast" comunity that are getting their knickers in a twist over this. Most guests would arrive at the park, see selected rides open at 11am and then go and ride one that is open (probably the Smiler).

Also even when I lived in Birmingham it felt like a lot of effort to get to the park before 10am (even though its only 90min to 2hr drive, I don't want to be leaving the house at 7:30am on a day off!). By the time then we have gone to the bathroom, taken the monorail, gone through a turnstyle and got to a ride its 10:20 really, do Nemesis & Air or Oblivion & Smiler and its 11am and time for something else.

If it is a quiet weekday then you will ahve plenty of time to go back and re-ride later if you miss something, if it is a busier day then I'm sure they will open rides earlier!
 
jon81uk said:
How do you know the savings made aren't benefiting guests?

I don't think the park is doing anything to put people off arriving early, there is no mention of this on their website or anywhere else
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How do you know the savings are benefiting guests? Its one of those endless discussion points we can continue going in circles on.

And the fact it is not advertised on the web site, makes it even worse.

I am going to stop posting in this topic for a bit, and let others post their views, but all I am suggesting is that this is a step backwards, and that IMO, Alton Towers should be taking positive steps to resolve an issue, rather than backwards steps.

Ian
 
How would closing rides in the morning benefit guests?

Like I understand why these particular attractions have been chosen to open later (although Skyride is a tit move as it will affect disabled guests and guests with health conditions). Although there's no way in which having them closed benefits guests. It benefits Alton as they have to cut operations budget. But guests? It's just more of an inconvenience.

The more sensible way I think this should have been approached is by closing a selection of smaller rides off-peak and have a new off-peak ticket at a lower price. Would save them a hell of a lot! Or they could go the way of opening the park an hour later (since the park is nearly always quiet in the mornings).
 
IanB said:
How do you know the savings are benefiting guests? Its one of those endless discussion points we can continue going in circles on.

And the fact it is not advertised on the web site, makes it even worse.

I am going to stop posting in this topic for a bit, and let others post their views, but all I am suggesting is that this is a step backwards, and that IMO, Alton Towers should be taking positive steps to resolve an issue, rather than backwards steps.


Ian
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I agree, yes, there is no evidence whether it is benefiting guests or not. The only thing I can go on is that Thorpe Park run with lower capacity on coasters on quiet days, but no selective opening, AT uses selective opening but keeps throughput higher and I know which I prefer.

I think it is largely a neutral step rather than backwards as they have been using selective opening for years.

I'm also going to stop posting on this as I think that everything that can be said, has now been said really!

James said:
The more sensible way I think this should have been approached is by closing a selection of smaller rides off-peak and have a new off-peak ticket at a lower price. Would save them a hell of a lot! Or they could go the way of opening the park an hour later (since the park is nearly always quiet in the mornings).
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Yes, weekdays during school term they could open the whole park cheaper and have an offpeak pricing, this would be a great idea as lower off-peak prices would bring more guests in. But they seemed to abandon the idea of off-peak prices when they started relying on 2for1 vouchers.
 
i personally think everything should be open from opening time. people are paying a lot of money to get there and get in only to find things not open till 11. this means people have to go back to certain areas to get on rides, so they probably wont manage to get on everything they want to ride in 1 day.for me personally not opening the skyride till 11 is a absolute joke i suffer with bad knees so this will limit my time on park.
 
It's got nothing to do with the park being quiet for the first hour, nearly all their guests arrive in that time. But what do people do when they enter the park... Go to a roller coaster! The last time they pulled this stunt they got bitten because it included coaster. This time people probably won't notice with the exception of Skyride which should be open.

The sad fact is the majority of parks in the world do this (Disney just close rides fully and pretend they are maintaining it).
 
I hated it when they closed sky ride at about 3:00 during SF, especially when we were at the square, and had got ourselves some free Air F/Ts from GS, we had to walk all the way back down to HH then up to FV. Right pain in the arce. Especially since we'd walked 6.5 miles by midday. :/
 
Tom.B said:
I hated it when they closed sky ride at about 3:00 during SF, especially when we were at the square, and had got ourselves some free Air F/Ts from GS, we had to walk all the way back down to HH then up to FV. Right pain in the arce. Especially since we'd walked 6.5 miles by midday. :/
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That's mainly down to evacuation purposes. Imagine trying to evacuate from across the valley in near pitch black darkness.
 
Stevie said:
Tom.B said:
I hated it when they closed sky ride at about 3:00 during SF, especially when we were at the square, and had got ourselves some free Air F/Ts from GS, we had to walk all the way back down to HH then up to FV. Right pain in the arce. Especially since we'd walked 6.5 miles by midday. :/
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That's mainly down to evacuation purposes. Imagine trying to evacuate from across the valley in near pitch black darkness.
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Yeah I understand that. Was merely saying how annoying it was! :p
 
I remember going in the summer (busy part) in 2004 and it was closed, I also remember getting told by the head of maintenance that it was broken for most of the 2004 seeason (something about the system kept stopping it because it kept thinking the doors hadn't closed fully but the door were closing fully), but I could be wrong.
 
spinba11 said:
I remember going in the summer (busy part) in 2004 and it was closed, I also remember getting told by the head of maintenance that it was broken for most of the 2004 seeason (something about the system kept stopping it because it kept thinking the doors hadn't closed fully but the door were closing fully), but I could be wrong.
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You're right, it was closed for much of 2004, but that was genuinely due to maintenance rather than the park closing it. Although I think 2004 was pretty much the nadir of the park in the twenty years I've been visiting nonetheless.
 
Did anyone else who rode the Skyride today hear the new audio and think of DiogoJ42's post?

Amazing coincidence that they have moved from the modified Monorail upsell everything soundtrack to a "look at the views from the skyride" soundtrack at the same point that they may need to sell the idea that the Skyride is an attraction (and subject to closure in non peak times) as opposed to a part of the infrastructure.
 
Enk27 said:
Amazing coincidence that they have moved from the modified Monorail upsell everything soundtrack to a "look at the views from the skyride" soundtrack at the same point that they may need to sell the idea that the Skyride is an attraction (and subject to closure in non peak times) as opposed to a part of the infrastructure.
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Oh Merlin....bless you. :p
 
There have been some nice improvements over the closed season. The new Skyride audio is brilliant, we commented that it was a throwback to the late 90s era. Also the inside of the CCL Burger Kitchen now looks fantastic with lots of ride decors all over the walls and windows.

Elsewhere Towers Street looks better for a fresh lick of paint and I believe that CCL has had some fresh paintwork although I did not see this.

:)
 
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