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2019: General Discussion

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Few random observations from today.

It was quiet. Like really quiet. Arrived for opening and managed Oblivion, Smiler, Rita, Galactica, Nemesis, Duel, RMT, Wickerman, Hex and Wickerman again with a stop for lunch and still back in the car for 2pm.

Oblivion was so quiet at 10am I had to wait for more people to arrive as they couldn’t send a train with one person. Took a good couple of minutes for anyone to show up.

Hex had two members of staff in the Octagon, luckily they didn’t try any ‘skits’ but there existence is odd. Paying for 2 members of extra staff to stand in a room that has functioned fine without them for 20 years. This isn’t in line with the behaviour of a park that cuts single rider lines to save one member of staff. Makes me think *something* must have happened in there to warrant this change, guest behaviour? Dunno, so strange.

Dungeons and CCL deserted. Even the rain didn’t seem to encourage people into the Dungeons.

The chicken tenders at Burger Kitchen are surprisingly nice. Who would have thought. Chips were meh though.

Speaking of the Burger Kitchen. I felt sorry for the poor kid whose eyes lit up on seeing the Charlie and Choc Factory vinyl on the wall who them proclaimed ‘look mum, they do still have the Charlie ride!’. Cue the family searching the park map for where it was. Come on Towers, this is poor, it closed 4yrs ago for goodness sake!

Presentation across the park was its usual mixed bag. Oblivion mist off. Nemesis first drop waterfall off. Galactica portal mist on. Wickerman flames and mist both on.

Few items on sale in the shops, ride ‘sketch’ mugs were £5 and all pin bages £3.

With the place so quiet and zero entertainment to speak of, there is little to no atmosphere on days like this.

That’s probably me done for 2019 now, got 3 visits out of my £56 season pass in the end, not too bad.
 
AT86 said:
Speaking of the Burger Kitchen. I felt sorry for the poor kid whose eyes lit up on seeing the Charlie and Choc Factory vinyl on the wall who them proclaimed ‘look mum, they do still have the Charlie ride!’. Cue the family searching the park map for where it was. Come on Towers, this is poor, it closed 4yrs ago for goodness sake!.
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It’s funny cause towers love a good Leek signs vinyl, but the CCL burger kitchen still has Charlie, Sub Terra, Toadstool and Air on its walls. Plus old driving school.

Meanwhile in Towers trading behind the tills you also have Charlie, Air and Sub Terra and a sign for the farm.
 
Yeah I was there today too, just got back to Newcastle about 20 minute ago.

Park was very quiet and I wasn't sure if I was expecting this with the ride times on Monday, but pulling into the car park at 9:30am, I knew it was going to be a quiet day with the amount of cars there so we took the monorail which had a 10 minute queue. Normally it's too busy to take the monorail but I'm glad we could get on it.

Park entrance entertainment had them police troopers and that was it but what can you put out there if there are few guests.

All rides were basically walk on and it was only Galactica that we had to queue for about 10-15 minutes for mainly because they were on two trains only on one station. Nemesis was running two trains but only filling one and letting the other go around empty. Wickerman was walk on and we got a few good rides on that in a few different seat positions (Definitely the back and the middle are the best places to be). Smiler had a long queue but we just went to the single rider entrance and got straight on, once in a pair and the other time separately. Oblivion was dead and walk on. Rita and thirteen walk on too and it was good watching Rita operate in the rain while we were sat in shelter near the kebab. It was chucking it down but people still went on! Mad bunch.

We even got time to have a walk around the gardens and walked past the pagoda fountain and were looking to go further into the woods but it was a bit muddy so we left it this time, but will be back to see what we can fine. We had a look at the swiss cottage too as I remember seeing a post on here that you can walk up and past it and maybe find some old disposed waste as souvenirs (Does anyone have a description of the route to take?)

Overall a good day, yeah the park lacked atmosphere but no matter what the staff do (they were all great by the way, specially the lass operating Spinball giving the kids high fives and telling jokes), the atmosphere should be predominantly made up from the guests.

For £55 I've had 4 visits this year and it's been well worth it. Free fuel to get down there and at times some sandwiches makes it a great 'free-ish' day out in terms of value.
 
RoyJess said:
Video on the Coca cola robot

It's looks bigger than I first imagined

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What a load of crap. How does a likely hugely expensive glorified locker that moves around slower than a snail in its final throes help or improve service in any way? A minimum wage drone could dish out a hundred Coke bottles in the time that thing would take to move a few feet.
 
AT86 said:
Paying for 2 members of extra staff to stand in a room that has functioned fine without them for 20 years.
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I totally agree, why are they fixing something that ain’t broke? However the 2 staff in the Octagon are also the hosts in the Vault so the amount of staff the ride has isn’t increased.

There was something quite eerie about walking into the Octagon, especially if you were at the front of the group, but now all atmosphere is gone.

Sad times.
 
Alastair said:
What a load of crap. How does a likely hugely expensive glorified locker that moves around slower than a snail in its final throes help or improve service in any way? A minimum wage drone could dish out a hundred Coke bottles in the time that thing would take to move a few feet.
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Alton towers love a gimmick are you suprised? It will be new for 2020. Worlds first immersive robot experience. People will pay extra for fast track servings.
 
Alastair said:
What a load of crap. How does a likely hugely expensive glorified locker that moves around slower than a snail in its final throes help or improve service in any way? A minimum wage drone could dish out a hundred Coke bottles in the time that thing would take to move a few feet.
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What a awkward shape. Pallets are square for a start and how wastefull were those deliverys? Towers will spend more time on resources sending one case at a time as opposed to 10. Total waste but I bet coke paid a nice trial price.
 
SuperMuscleMan said:
What a awkward shape. Pallets are square for a start and how wastefull were those deliverys? Towers will spend more time on resources sending one case at a time as opposed to 10. Total waste but I bet coke paid a nice trial price.
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Towers PR Dept is a bit like Ryanair's - they will do anything / pull any stunt for a bit of free PR. This Coke robot is a classic example - looking at the robot, it can probably carry a couple of 25x500ml bottle cases at most. It is therefore, by definition, completely useless and impracticable for a site like Alton Towers. (That is before we get onto any safety implications & Towers are rather hot on H&S).

I would bet a years salary that Towers are still distributing stock around the site in their fleet of vans. These can take stock en-masse direct from the Distribution Centre right to the service entrance / front doors of the unit in question - out of hours. A van driver can open / close locked gates, which the robot cannot.

This story is a typical load of rubbish / a Merlin gimmick. What will they come up with next? Charging to use the toilet, fees for placing bags in the station platform holds, £20 fee for failing to print tickets booked online out at home?
 
Incredibly busy here today. Have had to get fastpasses. Been here since 9.30 and only been on 3 rides so far. (WM, Duel and Galactica). For some reason Galactica despite the huge queue was only operating on 1 station. Thankfully I hear they have extended park close to 6pm.
 
GaryH said:
Incredibly busy here today. Have had to get fastpasses. Been here since 9.30 and only been on 3 rides so far. (WM, Duel and Galactica). For some reason Galactica despite the huge queue was only operating on 1 station. Thankfully I hear they have extended park close to 6pm.
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Completely opposite to yesterday which was dead
 
GaryH said:
Rita has an 80 minute queue..... And it's running on one train!!!!
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Rita's only running on 1 train? I just thought it had a long queue cus it was busy but it's actually one of the quieter rides then. If it was on 2 trains like normal it'd only be 40 mins
 
There must be technical issues on the likes of Rita. It *never* would run 1 train otherwise.

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