2017: General Discussion

[John]

Fairly good ops today. They resurrected Th13teen about noon.

The only thing yet to take guests seems to be Skyride, but it is testing. EDIT: it's open.

Hex taking a year out has seemingly done wonders for its popularity. It's a long time since I saw them consistently having full batches, even on the busiest of days.

There are still major operational issues in the park. Thirteen on 2 trains and Smiler on 3 are the most well documented, but Spinball was running just 4 cars today which coupled with wet weather operation in the morning and long fasttrack & exit queues resulted in an extremely long and slow moving main queue. Rita now runs about 30% below what I consider full capacity and Smiler about 40% below - plus they sent an entire row out empty when I rode today as they weren't letting people past merge quickly enough. Nemesis even went down to 1 train due a fualt. Galactica was the exception, which thanks to a lack of VR was running flat out. Oblivion pretty good too, but away from the B&Ms operations are poor at the moment. They generally get away with it though as the park is nowhere near as busy as in previous years.

 

[themeparkfan]

Great day today hit ERT Nemesis 3 times, blade twice and Galactica twice by 10:30 duel and then hex (which was very busy ) th13een broke at 11:300 and Rita heaving so walk on oblivion good Friday meat free pizza at explorers and back to a working th13een twice on smiler twice on Rita and last ride on spinball. Big thank you to the guys on spinball working through the post 5 o'clock queue in the rain. Worked very hard with a smile on their faces and very friendly considering it was nearly 6 o'clock

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[Rick]

They generally get away with it though as the park is nowhere near as busy as in previous years.

I would suggest you can look at it the opposite way around - they are able to do this because the crowds are lower. You can run the park with less rides and lower capacity, in some cases (and hotels, come to that!). I don't think that capacity got in the way of us having a good time today. We got there late, spent far too long at lunch and got on every ride outside of CBeebies, bar Enterprise

The Rita crew were smashing those dispatches today. Hats off to them - it's a very physical ride to operate.

 

[John]

Rita was getting 700/hr when we were in the area, it should be over 1000, though admittedly doesn't tend to get anywhere near that now as they rarely have 4 platform staff and don't have an SRQ any more so staff have to close some restraints themselves now.

I still think the park lacks support rides, but having Hex instead of Toadstool this year is a minor improvement.

 

[Rick]

@John I agree with regards to Hex, I can't remember the last time I rode Toadstool. Hex is a firm favourite.

Rita was a 15 minute wait for front row on our first ride around 1pm and we walked on at 4.30pm. I didn't count dispatch times, but they seemed to be fairly solid.

 

[Poisson]

I clocked Smiler at 602pph which is very poor, Valley on the other hand was run quite well in general (as usual?)

Regarding Oblivion's restraints, you want to get an entire fist behind them ideally, turned sideways. Freefall then is beautiful but you have to hold the restraints on the lift otherwise then will click in

 

[Towerslover]

I was on park Monday and operations were very poor on th13teen - took way too long for our train to dispatch. Operations were good on Rita and not too bad on the smiler.

 

[AstroDan]

Food options full stop are thin on the ground in the park, let alone veggie options!!

It seems Th13teen now has addtional H&S procedures - they have to lock the gates at exit. This delays the dispatch of the trains!

H&S has really put the sword in a lot of the good throughputs at ATR as Merlin tighten the belts more than any other European operator.

 

[pj]

Food options full stop are thin on the ground in the park, let alone veggie options!!

It seems Th13teen now has addtional H&S procedures - they have to lock the gates at exit. This delays the dispatch of the trains!

H&S has really put the sword in a lot of the good throughputs at ATR as Merlin tighten the belts more than any other European operator.

But if they didn't do these steps and someone got hurt ....


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[Error]

But if they didn't do these steps and someone got hurt ....


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There's taking safety precautions, then there's taking the p!ss.

For me its the latter.

 

[Wonderbolt]

The extra health and safety would be good if they added extra staff so it didn't result in longer dispatch times.

 

[Poisson]

They should just get electric gates tbh then the staff aren't needed to check them

 

[bluesonichd]

They should just get electric gates tbh then the staff aren't needed to check them

Oh I thought you would know better, that would cost money of course !

 

[jon81uk]

Exit gate would just need a spring and a magnetic lock (Nemesis already has a spring loaded exit gate, not sure if it has lock or sensor). It's getting guests off the platform that probably takes time though!

 

[Josh]

Exit gate would just need a spring and a magnetic lock (Nemesis already has a spring loaded exit gate, not sure if it has lock or sensor). It's getting guests off the platform that probably takes time though!

Nemesis doesn't have a spring loaded exit gate, and it's not got any sensors. It has exactly the same lock as Th13teen now has, except it's now so loose that you can open it by hand

 

[imanautie]

Food options full stop are thin on the ground in the park, let alone veggie options!!

It seems Th13teen now has addtional H&S procedures - they have to lock the gates at exit. This delays the dispatch of the trains!

H&S has really put the sword in a lot of the good throughputs at ATR as Merlin tighten the belts more than any other European operator.

The time's I've been this season they have always locked the 13 gates (25/26/27th march, 2nd April) then again that may be part of the RAP procedures.

 

[themeparkfan]

Does anyone know when we can explore the towers again ? I went yesterday and they were closed off. My brother was a bit peeved as he was looking forward to exploring . What's going on? ?

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[imanautie]

Does anyone know when we can explore the towers again ? I went yesterday and they were closed off. My brother was a bit peeved as he was looking forward to exploring . What's going on? ?

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From what I gather they seem to be in some sort of cycle of this bit of the towers open and this bit not.
There are signs they are still doing work on getting the towers ready for visitors, an example that springs to mind is one blocked off staircase with a ton of blue led strips as well as RGB led's lying around.

 

[Poopoohead]

Food options full stop are thin on the ground in the park, let alone veggie options!!

It seems Th13teen now has addtional H&S procedures - they have to lock the gates at exit. This delays the dispatch of the trains!

H&S has really put the sword in a lot of the good throughputs at ATR as Merlin tighten the belts more than any other European operator.

The veggie options at the RCR are pretty good for theme park standards, but yes dire else where around park

 

[BarryZola]

My interpretation of what is going on is:

They generally try to keep the Towers ruins open for the opening couple of months (barring the usual blocked off areas that contain Scarefest stuff). However, depending on staffing, the Towers don't get opened sometimes in this early period, whether intentionally or not. I genuinely believe that it's a lack of communication to people to open the gates/doors on certain occasions. It obviously shouldn't be this way, and I don't like it myself, but that's the only way I can understand it before the Scarefest preparations begin.