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2018: Park Operations & Ride Availability

Matt N said:
On a more positive operations-related note, it does not seem like the removal of baggage holds has even remotely impacted dispatch times judging by this operations video from Alton. Smiler achieved a 59 second dispatch! Great job, Alton! Keep up the good operations! Here's the video:
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Interesting vid. I've been to AT a few times this year and the Smiler, for me, has been the quickest dispatching ride in the park, praise the staff there.

I've found Oblivion painfully slow this year though.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
A whole minute between trains seems pretty poor to me.
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Watching the video they could have sprinted and saved a few seconds i guess. I can only speak from personal experience this year of the rides. The Smiler has always seemed a prompt dispatch this year. Nemesis too. Wicker Man not so much, largely down to retraint issues. Thirteen not too bad, Galactica slow, VR doesn't help here, and Obivion very slow.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
A whole minute between trains seems pretty poor to me.
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I think that's about what the vast majority of parks achieve, if not a bit better! I don't even think EP can get much lower than 1 minute between trains!
 
DiogoJ42 said:
You've clearly never been to EP. ;)
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You are correct there, I haven't! I really want to, but the family don't seem so convinced. My Mum said that it didn't quite look to match the magic of Disney when comparing it with DLP, despite it being substantially cheaper!

Do EP achieve 30 second dispatches, then?
 
Really?! Wow! I watch Coaster Studios' operations videos, and very few of those have dispatches under a minute in them!
 
Has anyone got a video demonstrating dispatch times on Alpenexpress before the VR was added? Or Eurosat? I think young Matt needs some enlightenment here.
 
I can live with the Dispatching for the Smiler and Nemesis this year, it doiresn't seem any worse than any other years for those two, and i get the Galactica issues. I would love to see Obivion back up to speed though. Maybe the second station would help for that. They're wide cars and there's a lot of slow walking to get to the baggage holds, and getting riders to put phones away and removing their glasses.

It used to be a queue eater.

EP is the gold standard, i've seen lots of vlogs from there and they're quick dispatching. I know Chessie and Thorpe and BPB aren't so quick as they used to be, much like Towers.

It seems EP is streets ahead for some reason.
 
Alpenexpress at EP used to be able to dispatch within about 20s of the train stopping, this was back before they bothered checking the restraints so even if VR went it wouldn't manage that now. Sat and Mir trains will generally sit in the station for around 30s or so, well below 60s between dispatches at any rate.

Towers is still generally OK, though Oblivion seems really inefficient these days for some reason and they're really made a mess of Thirteen with the baggage cages and half-blocked RAP entrance. Galactica seems to be running better these days too, though that might be just the psychological effect of being in a queue that moves due to the better merge system they're now using. Smiler's baggage cages are fairly accessible so less of an issue than they might have been, even though crossing the train from the leftmost seat is a bit of a faff.

Meanwhile, at Chessington...
 
I always thought walking through the Smiler train on the front row was rather dangerous. The front rail on the train isn't very high, fine if you're just walking through to alight but walking over peoples legs who have already sat down?

Thanks to me, a 6 ft tall wooden fence panel bought from the local Wickes will be bolted to the front of every Smiler train next week.....

You're welcome!
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Has anyone got a video demonstrating dispatch times on Alpenexpress before the VR was added? Or Eurosat? I think young Matt needs some enlightenment here.
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If you're friends with @AstroDan on Facebook, you can see his 2013 video here. If you're not, I'll sum it up by saying the train comes to a complete stop at 0:00:17 and begins moving with a new load of passengers at 0:00:32.
 
John said:
Alpenexpress at EP used to be able to dispatch within about 20s of the train stopping, this was back before they bothered checking the restraints so even if VR went it wouldn't manage that now. Sat and Mir trains will generally sit in the station for around 30s or so, well below 60s between dispatches at any rate.

Towers is still generally OK, though Oblivion seems really inefficient these days for some reason and they're really made a mess of Thirteen with the baggage cages and half-blocked RAP entrance. Galactica seems to be running better these days too, though that might be just the psychological effect of being in a queue that moves due to the better merge system they're now using. Smiler's baggage cages are fairly accessible so less of an issue than they might have been, even though crossing the train from the leftmost seat is a bit of a faff.

Meanwhile, at Chessington...
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I have to agree about Oblivion after yesterday - seemed very slow. Doesn't help when they're not using the second station - has this been an ongoing issue this year? Then they added another train which took a while.

When we eventually got on, I noticed a jolt when it dropped. Has anybody else experienced that? After that it was e-stopped after we entered the brake run. Maybe that was just a coincidence. It was up and running again about half hour later, though.
 
If you think Alton is bad come down to Chessington and watch them dispatch a Vampire train, or Thorpe a Swarm train, 1 minute is lightning fast by comparison.
 
That video means nothing.

If it takes them 59sec to load and send a train, it means a train will leave approx
every 70 to 80 seconds.

50 trains per hour on Smiler is 800/hour.

It achieved 1000/hour originally.
Matt N said:
On a more positive operations-related note, it does not seem like the removal of baggage holds has even remotely impacted dispatch times judging by this operations video from Alton. Smiler achieved a 59 second dispatch! Great job, Alton! Keep up the good operations! Here's the video:
Click to expand...


Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk
 
So I didn't bother to watch the video before first commenting. Obviously as Dan points out the important thing to measure is dispatch to dispatch, not train arrival to dispatch. The former allows you to work out throughput, the latter not so much. On Smiler, Nemesis and Thirteen the next train will be loading within 5-10s, on Rita it's more like 30.

I'm looking at some of those times and thinking they're way off what they should be and then the caption comes up and whoever edited it is clearly more easily impressed than I am, presumably they're used to much slower operations at their local park(s).

1:31 on WM = Excellent?! Imagine if they'd filmed one without the spade of doom being used, it should be 90s between dispatches not 90s in the station.
 
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