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2018: Park Operations & Ride Availability

This "guest feedback" is almost certainly along the lines of surveys asking questions such as "which of the following is most important to you?", they then cut whichever option comes in last place.
 
A bit of warm weather an everything breaks. Skyride now broken.

Didn’t this happen last year. The reason Nemmy lost her wheel covers. And the Smiler have to have its track permanently hosed down
 
bluesonichd said:
A bit of warm weather an everything breaks. Skyride now broken.

Didn’t this happen last year. The reason Nemmy lost her wheel covers. And the Smiler have to have its track permanently hosed down
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Machines in general don’t like dramatic changes in temperature.
 
Whilst the thrill rides are getting a lot of attention, one thing that I spotted recently but really came to a head yesterday is how badly the rapids is coping with increased demand this season. They've been a few boats down for several years without much of an issue as the park has been so quiet but at one point yesterday they announced a 90min wait to the queue line, which was some way off being full. Back in the 90s the whole lot held barely an hour and that was with the 6 seat boats. According to ride times it's 90min now and the longest queue in the entire park.

With guest numbers much higher this year due to Wicker Man and no flume to share the demand for water rides, they really would benefit from a few more boats from somewhere. If only there was another park nearby that had some going spare...
 
John said:
Whilst the thrill rides are getting a lot of attention, one thing that I spotted recently but really came to a head yesterday is how badly the rapids is coping with increased demand this season. They've been a few boats down for several years without much of an issue as the park has been so quiet but at one point yesterday they announced a 90min wait to the queue line, which was some way off being full. Back in the 90s the whole lot held barely an hour and that was with the 6 seat boats. According to ride times it's 90min now and the longest queue in the entire park.

With guest numbers much higher this year due to Wicker Man and no flume to share the demand for water rides, they really would benefit from a few more boats from somewhere. If only there was another park nearby that had some going spare...
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Did they have all the queue line extensions open yesterday out of interest? When I last visited it was super hot with the queue backing up to the entrance, but the main extension closest to RMT was shut off...
 
MakoMania said:
Other UK parks (including Merlin ones) are experiencing similar temperature fluctuations and downtime is nowhere near as bad.
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Looking at the various available queuetime reports I would suggest that’s not really the case. Seems to be a healthy bout of tech issues across the U.K.

Towers looks pretty variable, everything bar thirteen is currently open, that ride has always hated warm weather.
 
John said:
Whilst the thrill rides are getting a lot of attention, one thing that I spotted recently but really came to a head yesterday is how badly the rapids is coping with increased demand this season. They've been a few boats down for several years without much of an issue as the park has been so quiet but at one point yesterday they announced a 90min wait to the queue line, which was some way off being full. Back in the 90s the whole lot held barely an hour and that was with the 6 seat boats. According to ride times it's 90min now and the longest queue in the entire park.

With guest numbers much higher this year due to Wicker Man and no flume to share the demand for water rides, they really would benefit from a few more boats from somewhere. If only there was another park nearby that had some going spare...
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Is the boat issue not because they opened it earlier than tech services planned and a few boats are still waiting for sign off? Getting boats from elsewhere won’t make a difference as they will still need the various checks doing and there is clearly not enough techies on park to get it done.
 
Well I couldn't know for sure, but I didn't get the impression there were significantly fewer boats than at any time over the past few years. I'm fairly sure there used to be more going further back though. I've always put that down to them not having enough inflatable sections that don't leak, I can't imagine there are many issues with the inner parts.
 
HermanTheGerman said:
Did they have all the queue line extensions open yesterday out of interest? When I last visited it was super hot with the queue backing up to the entrance, but the main extension closest to RMT was shut off...
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Nemesis, RMT and Duel all had theirs open yesterday, although Nemesis' one closed later when it was quieter.
 
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Dave said:
Looking at the various available queuetime reports I would suggest that’s not really the case. Seems to be a healthy bout of tech issues across the U.K.
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What makes you say that? BPB has had little to no downtime all weekend with the exception of Valhalla this morning, didn't see any significant downtime at Flamingo Land on Saturday, I hear that Chessington has been a similar story, Thorpe has been Thorpe :p

It is not the weather, Towers just does not have the technical services staff to cope.
 
MakoMania said:
What makes you say that? BPB has had little to no downtime all weekend with the exception of Valhalla this morning, didn't see any significant downtime at Flamingo Land on Saturday, I hear that Chessington has been a similar story, Thorpe has been Thorpe :p

It is not the weather, Towers just does not have the technical services staff to cope.
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I'm not sure one way or the other. I've been a few times this year. The other week Nemesis broke down twice in half an hour and became unavailable. Technical services arrived within a few moments and it was open for the rest of the day.

Then, last week, i was actually on The Smiler when it broke down, with all trains on the brake run. Within five minutes a couple of tech guys came, and it was testing again in about ten minutes.

You could be right about there not being enough tech staff, but they've arrived quickly in the two incidents i witnessed.
 
Mikw said:
I'm not sure one way or the other. I've been a few times this year. The other week Nemesis broke down twice in half an hour and became unavailable. Technical services arrived within a few moments and it was open for the rest of the day.

Then, last week, i was actually on The Smiler when it broke down, with all trains on the brake run. Within five minutes a couple of tech guys came, and it was testing again in about ten minutes.

You could be right about there not being enough tech staff, but they've arrived quickly in the two incidents i witnessed.
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Towers have two tech teams, one for each half of the park. Maybe one team have less personnel than the other?
 
How hard can it be to "maintain" a rapids boad? Surely if you can fix a punctured bike inner tube, you are qualified?
 
spinba11 said:
Don't forget it is towers.:tearsofjoy::tearsofjoy:
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Tep. There will be a Rapids Boat maintenance manual you have to read & be assessed on. Then there will be the generic training on how to use a compressed air pump (including a section on the dangers of compressed air / over-inflation of the raft). I could go on... but I would hazard a guess that I am not too far from the truth!
 
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