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2018: Park Operations & Ride Availability

AstroDan

AstroDan

TS Team
Favourite Ride
Steel Vengeance, Cedar Point
There has been much discussion in recent weeks about the poor operations at Alton Towers during the first month of the 2018 season. Discussion has been very intense and interesting here on TowersStreet. However, this has meant we have had multiple topics all discussing similar things. Therefore, we have decided to close the following topics - and would like to bring discussion into this new one.

Closed Topics:

Ride Availability 2018
Opening Weekend: The Inquest Begins
The Sinking Ship: (Un)Love Letters to Merlin
 
In relation to the point made about Alton extending when the service is poor in the morning, we encountered horrendous downtime and general operations on the second Sunday of the season, yet ride close stayed at 5pm.

Social media responses are terrible as well, comments like "it's better than nothing" - REALLY?
 
Coaster said:
In relation to the point made about Alton extending when the service is poor in the morning, we encountered horrendous downtime and general operations on the second Sunday of the season, yet ride close stayed at 5pm.

Social media responses are terrible as well, comments like "it's better than nothing" - REALLY?
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They have extended more to 6pm this season than I recall in the past 2 years - but I feel that has been the least expected given the ride availability this year. Even with 6pm closes, it has been difficult for guests to ride everything without a bull-in-a-china-shop approach.

I think some of the social media responses are regrettable.
 
Coaster said:
Social media responses are terrible as well, comments like "it's better than nothing" - REALLY?
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I still can't work out what exactly they are saying is "better than nothing" - it was in reply to a complaint about no coasters being open! I'd rather actually have nothing, save the day's holiday for another time, save the fuel costs and the 4 hour round trip (usually longer with traffic) than be at towers with nothing open.
 
Occasional breakdowns are inevitable and a part of life.

Repeatedly failing to have rides ready for opening virtually every morning is not. It is demonstrative of unacceptable cuts to the maintenance team, creating a poor guest experience in pursuit of the green stuff, and dare I say it could lead to a serious breach of safety eventually.
 
Katy said:
I still can't work out what exactly they are saying is "better than nothing" - it was in reply to a complaint about no coasters being open! I'd rather actually have nothing, save the day's holiday for another time, save the fuel costs and the 4 hour round trip (usually longer with traffic) than be at towers with nothing open.
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I think someone asked why so few coasters were open.. :rolleyes:
 
The standard of service Alton Towers are offering to their guests this year is absolutely atrocious.

Both Alton and Merlin knew full well that with Wicker Man opening, interest in the park would be improving and crowds would be returning - with this in mind, you would have thought that making a good impression would be high on the agenda.

WM is a fantastic investment and had the potential to turn the place around again. Sadly, neglect for customer experience has let the investment down hugely and even with such a good ride experience opening, the park is getting nothing but complaints - and rightly so.

People do NOT pay for four major coasters to open at 11am, and moreover the fact that they aren't even ready for 11am is absolutely shocking. Alton used to be able to get ALL their rides open for the start of the day at 10am (with the exception of water rides and occasional issues as per any park), with ERT starting at 9am and consisting of more rides.

Now, I'm no expert by any means, but what the hell can have happened for standards to have dropped this dramatically? My guess would be a reduction in vital maintenance staff, ride staff, or generally a lack of care for guest experience.

Either way, it's extremely sad. Wicker Man was the perfect chance for the park to start over, but they cannot be a successful park when they show such disdain towards customer experience. These are the people who pay to visit your park, and the service offered is simply not good enough. How can they hope to attract repeat custom and good word-of-mouth like this?

Whilst I fully understand that ride closures are unavoidable at times, the sheer number of late openings and ride breakdowns at Alton Towers this year is far worse than in previous years, and wholly unacceptable. They don't care.
 
Maybe atrocious guest experiences are what the place needs. The bad press might actually cause a rethink in the way things are being done
 
Altonadvocate1 said:
Occasional breakdowns are inevitable and a part of life.

Repeatedly failing to have rides ready for opening virtually every morning is not. It is demonstrative of unacceptable cuts to the maintenance team........
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A team under pressure makes mistakes.

Considering a pressured environment was a contributing factor in a major and reputation damaging incident. I would of thought technical services would have their staffing and workload check to see if staffing levels were right to lower the human factors in a pressured environment of getting rides up and keeping them running during the day.


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Agree with all the sentiments here.

The ride availability (or lack of it) are a direct result of cost cutting. This is a calculated effort to generate more profit whilst knowing it will have a DIRECT impact on ride availability.

The imbalance of the pursuit of profit to the knowing sacrifice of guest experience is startling.
 
Don’t people spend more the happier they are?

Would be interesting to see if the the negative feedback correlates with a drop in sales from food and stalls etc.

Can’t imagive many being inspired to pay over the odds for a lunch when they’ve had to queue an hour to get into the park and then it turns out most of the rides are closed anyway.
 
Interesting to see a copy and paste reply to the bad reviews.

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mikeroller said:
Don’t people spend more the happier they are?

Would be interesting to see if the the negative feedback correlates with a drop in sales from food and stalls etc.

Can’t imagive many being inspired to pay over the odds for a lunch when they’ve had to queue an hour to get into the park and then it turns out most of the rides are closed anyway.
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Perhaps food sales will go up because of all the walking from one side of the park to the other in order to find an open ride?
 
delta79 said:
Interesting to see a copy and paste reply to the bad reviews.

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Hi *insert name here*

We're sorry that you did not have a FANTABOLOUS day at our resort. All 50 of our rides and attractions are readily available and to the highest standards. Did you know we're second only to Disney? Your feedback has been passed onto the responsible departments. Please come back soon.
 
Alastair said:
Just looked through for a while. Makes for a grim reading. Think this guy, as presumably an "average visitor", sums it up pretty well:

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This is surely going to have an impact on gate numbers, maybe not this year as people will be coming for Wicker Man but there's a good chance a lot of those people will not return in 2019. Having one fairly good season (in terms of gate numbers) is no good if it is followe up by a poor season.

I know Towers quite simply want to get numbers through the gate in 2018, regardless of how much they actually pay to get in. And no doubt investors will love to see a quick hit in terms of more guests and therefore more in park sales etc. But this short term thinking coupled with the most woeful operations in the history of Alton Towers is no good for the long term future of the park.

:)
 
Benzin said:
Hi *insert name here*

We're sorry that you did not have a FANTABOLOUS day at our resort. All 50 of our rides and attractions are readily available and to the highest standards. Did you know we're second only to Disney? Your feedback has been passed onto the responsible departments. Please come back soon.
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At the moment either copying and pasting that or just plain not responding is the best thing to do, the last thing they should be thinking about is letting the person running the Twitter account loose on trip advisor, can you imagine some of the replies they'd give?
 
I think it's sad when you see comments from people who've been visiting for years suddenly feeling let down and questioning whether to ever go back again. It's not just enthusiasts who're noticing the decline of the park
 
Alsty said:
I think it's sad when you see comments from people who've been visiting for years suddenly feeling let down and questioning whether to ever go back again. It's not just enthusiasts who're noticing the decline of the park
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There has been comments over the last couple of years that this day would come if they did not sort bits out.

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