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2018: Wicker Man - General Discussion - SPOILERS! - Part One

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What's wrong with an immersive rollercoaster fusing wood and fire.

Why did they have to falsely claim it was a world's first?

I hope the marketing goes just as well as can be expected, and we might get a coaster or two that is world class even if not the first of its kind. Worked just fine for nemesis.
 
I think the whole marketing campaign around the ride has been sub par.

If it was me I would have been doing random idents in tv ads from December, nothing to em just 3 people in cloaks walking up a hill.

Then in the middle of January more idents of them dropping their hoods and pointing and chanting

then some sort of flash mob style event in london where people in cloaks gather in Trafalgar square chanting (at this time announce the ride properly under SW8) and round the country have the Wickerman logo sprayed into flooring and on bilboards but again no text or anything

then release the whole ad in February of the people in the cloaks chanting pointing at the ride and showing snippets of the ride
 
Brett said:
ive actually just heard from a worker that there has been no action taken from any ASE complaint.
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So why have all the "World's first" references been removed from advertising then?

The ASA don't "take action" unless their recommendations are ignored, so technically what the person told you was correct, still doesn't mean someone from the ASA didn't tell the advertising dept pull all the misleading stuff or you'll be fined.
 
Tibble said:
I think the whole marketing campaign around the ride has been sub par.

If it was me I would have been doing random idents in tv ads from December, nothing to em just 3 people in cloaks walking up a hill.

Then in the middle of January more idents of them dropping their hoods and pointing and chanting

then some sort of flash mob style event in london where people in cloaks gather in Trafalgar square chanting (at this time announce the ride properly under SW8) and round the country have the Wickerman logo sprayed into flooring and on bilboards but again no text or anything

then release the whole ad in February of the people in the cloaks chanting pointing at the ride and showing snippets of the ride
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This is almost exactly the campaign they did with Air 17 years ago. Short adverts of people lying in the prone position and the slogan Prepare for Air. Then the longer advert showing the ride. Oh and the people were all named after Cadbury Heroes due to the sponsorship and there was a much longer video of them all Preparing for Air in the quelling shelter.

However marketing and advertising has changed a lot in 17 years. It’s much easier/cheaper to put a viral teaser on YouTube and Facebook and let your customers share it for you instead of spending big bucks on TV adverts.
I expect there will be a big TV advert in March for the start of season. But the days of doing teaser adverts on TV seem to be dying off in favour of releasing short videos on Facebook
 
The air teasers only aired 1 week before the main tv add started, the TV teasers started two weeks before the opening in early March.
 
Highly amused at all the enthusiasts who are so butt hurt about this advertising complaint. Just the same as the ones who were proven wrong over throughputs ;)

At the end of the day we have rules and regulations for a reason. No matter how much you love the park, Merlin and Towers have exuded too much cocky-dominance like behaviour with their monoply, and need to wind their neck in a bit.

That complaint is just a small kick up the backside which will do them good in the long run.

Josh said:
Just to add to the throughput discussion, Air has never, or ever will reach 1500 pph. The highest ever recorded dispatch count is 50 crafts in one hour, and 50 x 28 is 1400. Of course realistically it never got that many dispatches on a regular basis so the typical throughput was around 1300 pph in the mid naughties.
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Ok but this is all going back to my original point - the ride is designed for theorectical throughput of 1500, but agree in reality its more like 1300.

So, Wickerman designed to be 1000 theorectically. It's actual output will be more like 800 - that's nearly 40% lower than Air.

It's total crap and unacceptable. Deliberately designed to sell more Fastrack.
 
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PeteB said:
It's total crap and unacceptable. Deliberately designed to sell more Fastrack.
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I'm sorry but that is a load of rubbish. A 4 across B&M coaster is always going to have a significantly better throughput than a 2 across wooden coaster. Wooden coaster are fairly inefficient when to comes to moving people.

:)
 
How many rides actually achieve higher than their theoretical throughput?

Be an interesting result regardless...

Mean theoretical stuff is ALWAYS unlikely to gather the same results in practice, that's why it's a theory... Especially when you involve humans in there...
 
Rob said:
I'm sorry but that is a load of rubbish. A 4 across B&M coaster is always going to have a significantly better throughput than a 2 across wooden coaster. Wooden coaster are fairly inefficient when to comes to moving people.

:)
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What difference does the construction material make?

Th13teen - 2 across seating - 1300 pph.

:)
 
PeteB said:
What difference does the construction material make?

Th13teen - 2 across seating - 1300 pph.

:)
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Wooden coasters are slow and faffy between entering the initial brakes and coming to a final stop in the station. Then when the train does reach the station it goes in, nearly gets to the end, stops, and then creeps forward again to the final parking position.

It takes a lot longer to get from the brakes on Wodan to the station than it does say on something like Silver Star.

If they had deliberately designed Wicker Man to have low throughputs so they can sell more fastrack then why would they bother wasting money on a third train? Bizzare.

:)
 
GCI rides are guilty of being very slow when parking and shifting between block zones, particularly brake runs and the station.

They also don't utilise kick wheels/feeder wheels which elongates the dispatch time! Compare that to how rapid TH13TEEN chucks trains about.

EDIT: Sorry for repeating post above, did not see this.
 
For throughput, the best like for like I can think of is the Big Dipper, I don't know the numbers but the queue shifts on two pretty well, so it should be ok on three.
 
Rob said:
Wooden coasters are slow and faffy between entering the initial brakes and coming to a final stop in the station. Then when the train does reach the station it goes in, nearly gets to the end, stops, and then creeps forward again to the final parking position.

It takes a lot longer to get from the brakes on Wodan to the station than it does say on something like Silver Star.

If they had deliberately designed Wicker Man to have low throughputs so they can sell more fastrack then why would they bother wasting money on a third train? Bizzare.

:)
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Sounds like a crap system and ancient way of doing things. I mean you have trains rolling on a track - could be made with carrots and wheels of potatos, and it wouldn't make a difference. You have a moving vehicle and must stop it somewhere.

Just checked Wodan on RCDB and says there the capacity is 1250 per hour. Whether or not that is what it consistantly runs at doesn't matter. Towers have desinged a ride at 20% lower capacity than this.

For the sole purpose of selling more Fastrack. :)
 
rob666 said:
For throughput, the best like for like I can think of is the Big Dipper, I don't know the numbers but the queue shifts on two pretty well, so it should be ok on three.
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Number of trains doesn't necessarily equal amount of throughput if there is a limiting factor. Good example of this is The Smiler. Running it on 5 trains as opposed to 4 makes virtually no difference. But why did it come with 5?

PeteB said:
Sounds like a crap system and ancient way of doing things. I mean you have trains rolling on a track - could be made with carrots and wheels of potatos, and it wouldn't make a difference. You have a moving vehicle and must stop it somewhere.

Just checked Wodan on RCDB and says there the capacity is 1250 per hour. Whether or not that is what it consistantly runs at doesn't matter. Towers have desinged a ride at 20% lower capacity than this.

For the sole purpose of selling more Fastrack. :)
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I agree - it is rather weird how, with modern technology, trains can't park and shift quickly and efficiently. The complete absence of feeder wheels surprises me.

Rob is correct, too - a lot of GCI's rides have erratic breaking for over-speeding in the station, which over-compensates and brings the train to a complete stop before it is ideally supposed to. Naturally this consequently increases loading time and decrease the overall throughput.

This same issue is also found on The Swarm (in their final break section) and Shambhala, where the trains stop and start erratically instead of just 'passing forward to trigger' (technical term), and keeps some momentum. This style of braking can be found on rides such as The Smiler and Taron.

It is my opinion that this issue is due to Consign. They coincidentally produce the systems that control the ride for both GCI and B&M.

I doubt they would engineer a ride to sell more Fastrack, more just ineptitude on the designers' behalf in how to get titanic throughputs.



:)
 
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WickerManiac said:
I doubt they would engineer a ride to sell more Fastrack, more just ineptitude on the designers' behalf in how to get titanic throughputs.
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I sat for an hour with my former business partner one a relatively busy day not long after The Smiler opened, we had coffee and a chat while counting the number of people going handing over tickets through the Fastrack entrance. Based on the price at the time, we estimated they raked over £10,000 in that day just on The Smiler alone. They've done higher than this number on busier days when the tickets were at £10 each.

So would they tailor a ride in favour of pushing more sales when there is this amount of money at stake? It's an absolute certainty, and probably reasonably high up on the priorities list.
 
PeteB said:
I sat for an hour with my former business partner one a relatively busy day not long after The Smiler opened, we had coffee and a chat while counting the number of people going handing over tickets through the Fastrack entrance. Based on the price at the time, we estimated they raked over £10,000 in that day just on The Smiler alone. They've done higher than this number on busier days when the tickets were at £10 each.

So would they tailor a ride in favour of pushing more sales when there is this amount of money at stake? It's an absolute certainty, and probably reasonably high up on the priorities list.
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I am not so sure.

Surely there's, if anything, an incentive to get the highest throughput possible?

This way, on busy days, they could sell even more Fastracks than the current allowance.

And for the quieter days, operate it on less trains to compensate for less guests.
 
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