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2019: General Discussion
- Thread starter WL18
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Steve74
TS Member
If you think about it, it's not surprising really - the park is 40 next year so most of us (if we were lucky enough) visited as kids (I did - I remember the old ski-lift cable car!) and then as teens and young adults in the 90s/00s. Being the ages we are I guess we also embraced forums before social media which explains why we're on here having this conversation and not on Facebook or Instagram!
All this talk of ages reminds me, I'm off to Towers tomorrow, must remember my walking stick...
Does make you wonder though what the rides will be like in the next 20 years when us 40 year olds visit in our 60s. Entrance price will be around £140 for the day. Parking, well, cars may be banned by then, or everyone driving electric, so the car park will be full of electricity posts, charging to park and charge the car, with a mini nuclear power plant just behind the hotels!
Monorail will have gone and extremely long electric bendy busses will transport people into the park. I think rides will be more like simulators, with large coasters becoming a thing of the past as simulators and VR are cheaper, and safer in the eyes of the general public.
Staff will be replaced with holograms around the park to offer any assistance, while food and drink will be replaced with self service vending outlets where you can build your own meal. There will be no water rides (too risky) but a lot more covered areas to protect from the intense heat due to climate change in the summer months.
Only thing that wont change will be the beautiful gardens, except they will be maintained by robots.
What do you think?
Monorail will have gone and extremely long electric bendy busses will transport people into the park. I think rides will be more like simulators, with large coasters becoming a thing of the past as simulators and VR are cheaper, and safer in the eyes of the general public.
Staff will be replaced with holograms around the park to offer any assistance, while food and drink will be replaced with self service vending outlets where you can build your own meal. There will be no water rides (too risky) but a lot more covered areas to protect from the intense heat due to climate change in the summer months.
Only thing that wont change will be the beautiful gardens, except they will be maintained by robots.
What do you think?
imanautie
TS Member
Ironic you mention nuclear considering Disney got permission from basically themselfs to build a nuclear plant.
For destination charging you don't actually need to power all of them at once as you can switch between each vehicle.
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Steve74
TS Member
I bet people were thinking pretty much all that back in 1980 about 2000, except we'd all be floating around on hoverboards and have flying cars.
Austin Towers
TS Member
Apologies for going off topic. I believe that along with renewable sources, small modular nuclear reactors (SMR's) are the way forward until they can sort out fusion (not to be confused with fission).
Rob
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Steel Vengeance
Ethan, please use one of the threads in Future Discussion to speculate the future of various rides rather than keep bringing it up in this thread which is for discussion about the 2019 season at Alton Towers.
Thanks.
Alsty
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Fury 325
Only one? Things like this happen every day across the park. It always seems like some people leave their brains in the car park!Sounds like there was an idiot earlier today.
imanautie
TS Member
Your assuming they Brought them that far or even had them!
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Steve74
TS Member
SuperMuscleMan
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Colossus
Lifetime with only a £50 parking fee.If we got a lifetime Merlin pass out of it, then count me in!
Skyscraper
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Nemesis
Did they recheck the whole train or just the seat in question?
Just the seat.
Steve74
TS Member
Visited yesterday and had a brilliant day, considering it's the summer holidays and the weather wasn't up to much. The park was busy but not hugely (the bad weather forecasts must have had an influence), in fact Scarefest is much busier.
Headed to Oblivion for ERT but they were having technical difficulties so joined The Smiler queue for opening. Was on the second train of the day. By the time that was done, Oblivion was open and was walk-on. Walked round to Rita and Th13teen and both were almost walk-on. So by 10.45, 4 out of the 8 coasters were ridden!
On the way to Wicker Man, did Hex which had an interesting change. At the end of the Octagon show, just as the generator starts up, a ride op came to the top of the exit stairs in full "restoration gear" with a torch and hard hat and ushered us through to the vault, from memory I think he was a bit in character too. At first I thought it was an evacuation or there was an ongoing technical fault with the show but as we left it sounded like it completed as normal, so whether a new thing or just the ride op being eager and keen, I don't know.
In the vault, as the ops left, one of them shouted "Activate the branch" which I thought was an unusual but nice touch!
After that was Wicker Man which had a 30 min queue. Track was sopping wet so it flew round it, absolutely awesome. No mist on Big Bob but plenty of smoke elsewhere. The chain was doing that flapping it does occasionally - I've only seen that when it's been raining so maybe water related?
Skyride over to Forbidden Valley, got this awesome video on Skyride, just a shame I'd missed the train! (forgive the cheesy music, my phone added it - I thought I'd muted it!)
Nemesis, walk-on and good as ever. Galactica was probably the longest queue - not amount of people but time. Ride host stopping people at the FastTrack merge point then directing you to either station. Two trains were operating, 1 on each station and they returned to the same station. I noticed that quite often, the other train wasn't dispatched until the first train was actually back in it's station. That must have some bearing on the queue times because other than that I couldn't see any other cause of the slow moving queue.
Did Duel next, then Pizza and Pasta for lunch. After MAP discount, £11.20 for unlimited everything is pretty good value (for a theme park). Pizzas were great as was the salad and ice cream. However my main issue is lack of choice - there were only about 5 pizza toppings including veggie and 2 choices of pasta. They need more. But what they had was very nice and tasty.
After that was Rapids, probably about 40 min queue. Wicker Man was down at that point but started up again within that 40 mins. Then we walked to the dungeons and did that. We got in for £2.50 each as MAP holders. Total of 10 of us in the group we were in. Definitely works better with more than that. However, acting quality was great and appreciated the effects and timing more in the finale this time round than my first try in April.
Over to Spinball next, said 35 mins, on within 15. Probably had my second best ride ever on that, was great fun. Then finally 2 re-rides on Wicker Man. After it's downtime earlier, the chain had stopped flapping and the mist was back on Big Bob and with the lack of wind at times, it was hanging around all of Bob's orifices a lot so it really looked like it was smouldering. That was going so fast (and my lap bar wasn't fully tight on me on purpose) there was actually what felt like air time as you leave the hill and enter the unbanked curve! Fair play, that coaster is just getting better and better as times goes on. By this time, it as gone 6 so home time.
All in all, great day and to be honest if we didn't re-ride Wicker Man in the afternoon, there'd have been plenty of time to relax and chill around the park. So 6pm for me (after being up at 5am and driving for 2½ hours to get there) was an ideal closing time! Besides, the heavens opened then so just as well it did close at 6!
Oh forgot to mention, Peter Dickson aka X Factor voice-over man now announces very grandly which till is free in Towers Trading.
Headed to Oblivion for ERT but they were having technical difficulties so joined The Smiler queue for opening. Was on the second train of the day. By the time that was done, Oblivion was open and was walk-on. Walked round to Rita and Th13teen and both were almost walk-on. So by 10.45, 4 out of the 8 coasters were ridden!
On the way to Wicker Man, did Hex which had an interesting change. At the end of the Octagon show, just as the generator starts up, a ride op came to the top of the exit stairs in full "restoration gear" with a torch and hard hat and ushered us through to the vault, from memory I think he was a bit in character too. At first I thought it was an evacuation or there was an ongoing technical fault with the show but as we left it sounded like it completed as normal, so whether a new thing or just the ride op being eager and keen, I don't know.
In the vault, as the ops left, one of them shouted "Activate the branch" which I thought was an unusual but nice touch!
After that was Wicker Man which had a 30 min queue. Track was sopping wet so it flew round it, absolutely awesome. No mist on Big Bob but plenty of smoke elsewhere. The chain was doing that flapping it does occasionally - I've only seen that when it's been raining so maybe water related?
Skyride over to Forbidden Valley, got this awesome video on Skyride, just a shame I'd missed the train! (forgive the cheesy music, my phone added it - I thought I'd muted it!)
Nemesis, walk-on and good as ever. Galactica was probably the longest queue - not amount of people but time. Ride host stopping people at the FastTrack merge point then directing you to either station. Two trains were operating, 1 on each station and they returned to the same station. I noticed that quite often, the other train wasn't dispatched until the first train was actually back in it's station. That must have some bearing on the queue times because other than that I couldn't see any other cause of the slow moving queue.
Did Duel next, then Pizza and Pasta for lunch. After MAP discount, £11.20 for unlimited everything is pretty good value (for a theme park). Pizzas were great as was the salad and ice cream. However my main issue is lack of choice - there were only about 5 pizza toppings including veggie and 2 choices of pasta. They need more. But what they had was very nice and tasty.
After that was Rapids, probably about 40 min queue. Wicker Man was down at that point but started up again within that 40 mins. Then we walked to the dungeons and did that. We got in for £2.50 each as MAP holders. Total of 10 of us in the group we were in. Definitely works better with more than that. However, acting quality was great and appreciated the effects and timing more in the finale this time round than my first try in April.
Over to Spinball next, said 35 mins, on within 15. Probably had my second best ride ever on that, was great fun. Then finally 2 re-rides on Wicker Man. After it's downtime earlier, the chain had stopped flapping and the mist was back on Big Bob and with the lack of wind at times, it was hanging around all of Bob's orifices a lot so it really looked like it was smouldering. That was going so fast (and my lap bar wasn't fully tight on me on purpose) there was actually what felt like air time as you leave the hill and enter the unbanked curve! Fair play, that coaster is just getting better and better as times goes on. By this time, it as gone 6 so home time.
All in all, great day and to be honest if we didn't re-ride Wicker Man in the afternoon, there'd have been plenty of time to relax and chill around the park. So 6pm for me (after being up at 5am and driving for 2½ hours to get there) was an ideal closing time! Besides, the heavens opened then so just as well it did close at 6!
Oh forgot to mention, Peter Dickson aka X Factor voice-over man now announces very grandly which till is free in Towers Trading.
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