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2018: General Discussion

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If they're selling out of FP packages that include WM, then there's no need to sell one shots for it. I'd have restricted it to 1 or 2 uses on platinum/VIP too. Main queue throughput needs to be the top priority - minimise the number of people using fasttrack entrance.
 
Utter shambles at the entrance plaza today, after a journey that took a whole hour for the last three miles. And no monorail in the morning. The staff were actually preventing visitors from entering the plaza because it was so busy. However, and it wasn't advertised, there was a qucker way in for season pass holders. Go out of the queue and then back in near the monorail station, and straight into the turnstiles.

Rider operations were a mixed bag. Accurate queue times for Hex, Duel, Thirteen and the Runaway mine train. But Oblivions we advertised for an hour, and i gave up after an hour of the queue not moving. Due to slow dispatch and letting too many fast tracks on before those without fast pass.

Park was very busy i have to say.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Soon fastrack will be essential. And all I can think of is that line from the Incredibles...
"And when everybody is super.... no one will be!"
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Soon they'll be more than one fast track system.

Super Fasttrack and just ordinary Fasttrack.
Maybe even they'll open a fast track for the entrance turnstyles too.
 
Mikw said:
However, and it wasn't advertised, there was a qucker way in for season pass holders. Go out of the queue and then back in near the monorail station, and straight into the turnstiles.
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We found the other week that the annual pass/disabled entrance gate wasn't being used by anyone and everyone was queueing for the 2 or 3 turnstiles which were open, so we just walked past everyone and got straight in. :)
 
Burbs said:
We found the other week that the annual pass/disabled entrance gate wasn't being used by anyone and everyone was queueing for the 2 or 3 turnstiles which were open, so we just walked past everyone and got straight in. :)
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LOL we did that too and got a load of abuse from someone in the queue about queue jumping, me being me just pointed at the sign above my head, waved our passes at them and handed them to the girl who scanned them and let us in, a few f's later and she informed the gentleman we were in the correct queue and if he continued to be abusive she'd call security and he wouldn't even be let in the park, I gave her a Merlin star as I was walking to the RBO.
 
Burbs said:
I'm almost surprised they didn't do what they did with The Smiler when it first opened, and not have a Fastrack queue until the hype starts to die down somewhat.
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That’s a different era of Towers where the customer experience actually mattered. Now we have the attitude of “it’s better than nothing” and it was guaranteed they were going to milk fastrack as much as they could and that was a dead cert after adding it to top tier fastrack.

Please the few, frustrate the thousands
 
IanSR said:
LOL we did that too and got a load of abuse from someone in the queue about queue jumping, me being me just pointed at the sign above my head, waved our passes at them and handed them to the girl who scanned them and let us in, a few f's later and she informed the gentleman we were in the correct queue and if he continued to be abusive she'd call security and he wouldn't even be let in the park, I gave her a Merlin star as I was walking to the RBO.
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That's brilliant haha! No one made any comments at us (loud ones anyway).

Is the annual pass entrance also useable by regular ticket holders or is it only for annual pass? I will be going sometime soon with friends who will be using sun tickets so just wondering... :)
 
IanSR said:
LOL we did that too and got a load of abuse from someone in the queue about queue jumping, me being me just pointed at the sign above my head, waved our passes at them and handed them to the girl who scanned them and let us in, a few f's later and she informed the gentleman we were in the correct queue and if he continued to be abusive she'd call security and he wouldn't even be let in the park, I gave her a Merlin star as I was walking to the RBO.
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Well, she certainly did the right thing! :)
 
6pm ride close is Great! Now if they can confirm some more dates for these so it's not just pot luck on the day it would probably be an incentive for me to visit.
I don't mind the odd ride breakdown as long and i'm not having to race around trying to fit everything in during the current meagre opening hours.
 
Burbs said:
That's brilliant haha! No one made any comments at us (loud ones anyway).

Is the annual pass entrance also useable by regular ticket holders or is it only for annual pass? I will be going sometime soon with friends who will be using sun tickets so just wondering... :)
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As far as I know it's strictly supposed to be for annual passholders and wheelchair/pushchair users, we saw someone try with a paper ticket and get turned away which made me hesitant but as we'd come from express parking side I though screw it and pushed my son through the queue and told him to go and ask and he shouted back "yes this is our entrance dad" which I think is what set the guy off, but I saw someone tweet them about ERT the other week and they said they wouldn't split a party up at the entrance if some were map and some ticketed and to go to the ap entrance as normal, so I guess it's something to try, the person on the gate can only say no but if you're like me and play the fool well and send a kid for the slaughter first they might take pity on them lol.

Ticket does need a barcode though, saw someone on Fb complaining the barcode was missing from their print at home tickets and they couldn't get in, I also think the majority of these plaza problems are people following sheep mentality and just joining a queue because they think it's the right thing to do instead of asking someone at the gate if they can use alternative turnstyles / gates. I'm sure that when we went in on Friday all the turnstyles were open but people were still queuing and using a single one instead of them all (this was near 1pm too).
 
Makes you laugh all the crying about poor attendance and when they are busy early in new season they can't cope what will Merlin do?

Sent from my SM-J320FN using Tapatalk
 
themeparkfan said:
Makes you laugh all the crying about poor attendance and when they are busy early in new season they can't cope what will Merlin do?
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Tell investors gate figures have increased and Wickerman was a success, see that profits have gone up and cut more staff? Becaus hey people are coming through the gates again? Shareholders don't need to know about pesky little things like customer satisfaction, that's just a distraction.

I don't even think increasing staff will help, the issues are more to do with operations, perhaps if they had more people on the gate it might mean getting in the park is quicker, but that would just shift the problem park side and make queue even longer.
 
Ollie said:
Park operations have been poor all day today and it has put me off returning until something is done about it.

Entering the park was a bit of a farce with no end of confused people over who was/wasn’t able to enter

I understand that there is an issue with Nemesis, but there was no excuse for the third train not to be added to Galactica until 2pm, or for Oblivion to be on one loading bay, for example. The Smiler and Runaway Mine Train also both had downtime during busy parts of the day - I wasn’t religiously checking RideTimes so I’m sure there was more.

The ratio of Fastrack to main queue seemed a bit crazy on some rides, Wicker Man at the start of the day in particular. Given there are no longer seemingly any places to buy Fastrack either other than the Box Office, this was surprising.

The queue at the Box Office just was a sight to behold, trailing well past the fountains and almost backing up to Towers Trading across the path, with the other queue flowing out of the entrance also.

It’s great that park close has been extended, but I don’t really think the park should be congratulated for park hours that should be standard in a school holiday period anyway, and certainly not against the background of everything else.
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This concerns me, and this is why I am extremely wary to use queue times as an indicator of how busy the park is this season.

Nemesis on one train and lots of fastrack on park = long queue even if slightly busy.
Galactica on two trains and lots of fastrack on park = long queue even if slightly busy.
Oblivion on one station and lots of fastrack on park = long queue even if slightly busy.
Wicker Man being new and fastrack being allowed = long queue even if slightly busy.

It does not take a genius to work this out yet Merlin refuse to provide budgets that allow the park to operate sufficiently.

It sounds like getting in to the car parks was a nightmare yesterday, I am assuming that this is because they have not fixed the traffic lights meaning the temporary lights remain in place (and temporary traffic lights always result in queues because they are stupid) combined with the fact that any form of staff managing traffic into the park seem to have been cut.

And the entrance plaza is clearly a farce and will continue to be unless they implement significant changes.

Sure the park is busier, that's great! But if say 80% of people are having a bad day out because of all the problems across the park, are they really going to want to return this year, or next year, or the year after that? Are they going to recommend Alton Towers to other people or tell them to not bother going because the park is hell?

It's not looking good at all.

:)
 
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