• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

2018: Park Operations & Ride Availability

Kraken27 said:
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!
Click to expand...
Don’t get me wrong, where appropriate training like that is needed but to pump up a bloody inflatable rapids ring?
 
Went to park today - mainly to get season pass. Decided to go later to miss the traffic (and queues at the turnstiles). I had a ticket so got straight in but noticed that there was still a big queue at the collection windows - and that was at 11.30. I hate to think what it was like at 10.

I was thinking of going straight to guest services to get my season pass but the queues were already building there. Looks like they were doing a roaring trade in fastrack as gold and platinum had already sold out.

I was quite optimistic of getting a few rides in today as queue times were ok when I arrived. FV was quiet so I managed to get on AIR and Nemesis within half an hour but then 3 of the coasters went down so queues for everything else were all over an hour so decided to cut my losses, head home and return on a quieter day.

As many have previously suggested, the park can longer cope with large numbers. Ride availability (or reliability) and a lack of flats is causing major problems. And, on a personal level, the removal of SRQs is devastating.
 
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.
Click to expand...

You also have to remember that most of those parks don’t allow you to see queue time boards outside of the park. If you are at a park and not scrutinising a queuetime app you can easily miss downtime at a park. I was at Towers on Sunday and the only ride I visibly witnessed going down all day was Wickerman, if it wasn’t for the app I would never have known any other ride had an issue.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
How hard can it be to "maintain" a rapids boad? Surely if you can fix a punctured bike inner tube, you are qualified?
Click to expand...

Not hard but regardless of complexity each boat will need yearly sign off for structural evaluation and etc and I suspect a lot of boats are yet to get it due to the pressure tech services are under.
 
Think a lot of people are underestimating just how much goes into the maintenance of even the most basic thing at a theme park...

But sure, the only thing those techies need to do is inflate some rubber rings, who needs a degree and high levels of training to ensure all these attractions are fit for purpose, bloody so called 'experts' :unamused:
 
Dave said:
You also have to remember that most of those parks don’t allow you to see queue time boards outside of the park. If you are at a park and not scrutinising a queuetime app you can easily miss downtime at a park. I was at Towers on Sunday and the only ride I visibly witnessed going down all day was Wickerman, if it wasn’t for the app I would never have known any other ride had an issue.
Click to expand...

Come onnnn, on peak days you can see on the speedy pass site what rides are open/closed at BPB, and if you still have the unupdated old version of the Chessy app you can see queue times for all but Tiger Rock, the difference between these two and Alton Towers is huge!

I went to Towers 3 times in 2018 before my pass expired, saw downtime on The Smiler, Th13teen, Nemesis, Galactica, Rapids, Spinball, RMT and have been evacuated 3 times on Wicker Man and once on Oblivion. I've visited BPB 7 times this year and have seen Valhalla and PMBO down. The difference is massive and Alton Towers was nowhere near this bad in 2017.
 
I was on park today (Tuesday 8th May), my second trip this season.

The park was quiet in the terms of gate numbers, but the queue line queues felt very busy. It was hard seeing many seats empty and I only added to that as a single rider.

Rita and Thirteen opened late today.

Rapids should have been a 10 min queue max from where I joined the queue, but I queued 30mins, this was due to them not filling the boats with people, mainly just filling each boat with 2 people on average.

Wicker man was being sent around empty and full alternately. No flames, no pre-show during my ride during the ERT

I do feel like there is a conspiracy to make you queue as much as possible.
 
MakoMania said:
Come onnnn, on peak days you can see on the speedy pass site what rides are open/closed at BPB, and if you still have the unupdated old version of the Chessy app you can see queue times for all but Tiger Rock, the difference between these two and Alton Towers is huge!

I went to Towers 3 times in 2018 before my pass expired, saw downtime on The Smiler, Th13teen, Nemesis, Galactica, Rapids, Spinball, RMT and have been evacuated 3 times on Wicker Man and once on Oblivion. I've visited BPB 7 times this year and have seen Valhalla and PMBO down. The difference is massive and Alton Towers was nowhere near this bad in 2017.
Click to expand...

You have turned over two pages of the book at the same time. The question wasn’t whether Towers has an uptime problem greater than the previous years (which it undoubtedly does) it was whether temperature changes had a general impact on machines considering the sudden increased over the BH weekend.

My point is unless you where doing a side by side comparison of downtime data via an app or website and not just a casual observation as you wandered a park you can’t say that there is not a general impact in temperature change to ride mechanics.
 
RoyJess said:
Wicker man was being sent around empty and full alternately. No flames, no pre-show during my ride during the ERT
Click to expand...
Why was there no preshow? Was it not working? Or was it due to other circumstances (e.g. someone in the group didn't want to see it)? Or do you not know?

If it is broken, then I'm sure it will get fixed soon.
 
Danscott22 said:
I think if someone doesn't want to see the pre-show, they can just skip it, they wouldn't make a whole batch of riders miss it because of one person!
Click to expand...
Ah OK. It wouldn't really make much sense, would it, to make everyone skip the preshow because 1/48 (I think?) of the riders didn't want to see it?
 
They consider skipping the pre show queue jumping according to a ride host I spoke with.
If you don't want to watch they hold you in the baggage store then take you through when the preshow has finished.
skyscraper said:
Yes, guests do indeed have the option of skipping the pre-show.
Click to expand...

Sent from my Swift 2 X using Tapatalk
 
ihaveaspergers said:
They consider skipping the pre show queue jumping according to a ride host I spoke with.
If you don't want to watch they hold you in the baggage store then take you through when the preshow has finished.


Sent from my Swift 2 X using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Like the queue isn't muddled entirely once you get into the preshow room. Every time I've been in there people desperately pushing forward to advance in the queue (despite the view of the preshow being a bit rubbish when you are right up at the front).

If I was with a child I didn't think would enjoy the show but would enjoy the coaster then I'd happily hang back, only fair.

Edited to fix.
 
Last edited:
They even consider it q jumping if you are first into the baggage hold
Lurker said:
Like the queue isn't muddled entirely once you get into the preshow room. Every time I've been in there people desperately pushing forward to advance in the queue (despite the view of the preshow being a big rubbish when you are right up at the front).

If I was with a child I didn't think would enjoy the ride but would enjoy the coaster then I'd happily hang back, only fair.
Click to expand...

Sent from my Swift 2 X using Tapatalk
 
I've been in the Hex batching area and accused of queue jumping before :rolleyes:

But I wouldn't lose any sleep as I've never seen any queue jumpers evicted from the resort without a refund like those signs say...
 
We get accused of queue jumping all the time, but strangely enough not on Wickerman yet, when we asked to skip the pre-show there seem to be some confusion over whether we could, the operator said yes, the batcher said no (but then he was being a right arse letting friends walk through the disabled queue to skip the main queue), then a ride op from the cabin happen to be passing through and said yes of course you can and took us through the staff entrance behind the baggage area into the batching area.
 
I've always stayed further to the back, whilst everyone is shuffling right to the front. Much better view of the pre-show from there, and a slightly better chance of being seated further back of the train as you'll be last to exit the pre-show. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top