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2020: General Discussion

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LordOfDarkness said:
I had a mixed experience the other day, nothing to scare me away from visiting again but there were a few areas they could've improved on which I've sent my feedback to towers about!

  • Was in the queue for Wickerman when it broke down. They played the pre-recorded announcement to leave the forest which caused confusion and led to people pushing past me in the queue line wanting to leave the queue. Feel like a simple announcement from the ride team explaining the situation and either saying to remain in the queue or saying a managed emptying of the queue was going to take place would've solved the issue.
  • Congo river rapids & runaway mine train queues ended up queuing outside the entrance onto the paths, causing overcrowding in Katanga Canyon and making the pathways impossible to socially distance. This wasn't just a few people but a full fledged queue had formed over some time. Feel like these queues should've been closed once they reached capacity (like they do with The Smiler).
  • Certain rides not playing enough announcements or at all, found it was luck of the draw whether you were going to enter a socially distanced queue or a free for all. Dark forest seemed specifically bad for this.
  • I did praise The Smilers ride team who handled social distancing fantastically. Instead of playing pre recorded messages the Ride Op was making announcements every five minutes telling people to stand on a chevron and saying masks are needed once entering the building. Every person I could see listened to this direction. A long with closing the queue once it had reached capacity I was very impressed with them. I made the point that if Towers were consistent and every ride team was like The Smiler's then my experience would've been a lot more pleasant!
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I'm sure the Rapids queue was closed the other day, and the app said it was at capacity. Interesting they didn't do that when you were there.
 
LordOfDarkness said:
I had a mixed experience the other day, nothing to scare me away from visiting again but there were a few areas they could've improved on which I've sent my feedback to towers about!

  • Was in the queue for Wickerman when it broke down. They played the pre-recorded announcement to leave the forest which caused confusion and led to people pushing past me in the queue line wanting to leave the queue. Feel like a simple announcement from the ride team explaining the situation and either saying to remain in the queue or saying a managed emptying of the queue was going to take place would've solved the issue.
  • Congo river rapids & runaway mine train queues ended up queuing outside the entrance onto the paths, causing overcrowding in Katanga Canyon and making the pathways impossible to socially distance. This wasn't just a few people but a full fledged queue had formed over some time. Feel like these queues should've been closed once they reached capacity (like they do with The Smiler).
  • Certain rides not playing enough announcements or at all, found it was luck of the draw whether you were going to enter a socially distanced queue or a free for all. Dark forest seemed specifically bad for this.
  • I did praise The Smilers ride team who handled social distancing fantastically. Instead of playing pre recorded messages the Ride Op was making announcements every five minutes telling people to stand on a chevron and saying masks are needed once entering the building. Every person I could see listened to this direction. A long with closing the queue once it had reached capacity I was very impressed with them. I made the point that if Towers were consistent and every ride team was like The Smiler's then my experience would've been a lot more pleasant!
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The Smiler crew are great, aren't they?
 
LordOfDarkness said:
I had a mixed experience the other day, nothing to scare me away from visiting again but there were a few areas they could've improved on which I've sent my feedback to towers about!

  • Was in the queue for Wickerman when it broke down. They played the pre-recorded announcement to leave the forest which caused confusion and led to people pushing past me in the queue line wanting to leave the queue. Feel like a simple announcement from the ride team explaining the situation and either saying to remain in the queue or saying a managed emptying of the queue was going to take place would've solved the issue.
  • Congo river rapids & runaway mine train queues ended up queuing outside the entrance onto the paths, causing overcrowding in Katanga Canyon and making the pathways impossible to socially distance. This wasn't just a few people but a full fledged queue had formed over some time. Feel like these queues should've been closed once they reached capacity (like they do with The Smiler).
  • Certain rides not playing enough announcements or at all, found it was luck of the draw whether you were going to enter a socially distanced queue or a free for all. Dark forest seemed specifically bad for this.
  • I did praise The Smilers ride team who handled social distancing fantastically. Instead of playing pre recorded messages the Ride Op was making announcements every five minutes telling people to stand on a chevron and saying masks are needed once entering the building. Every person I could see listened to this direction. A long with closing the queue once it had reached capacity I was very impressed with them. I made the point that if Towers were consistent and every ride team was like The Smiler's then my experience would've been a lot more pleasant!
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Each park seemingly has that one stand out social distancing ride team, THORPE it's samurai, Alton it's The Smiler.
 
It’s been closed for weeks now, it probably only open for a week or two before it went down, and it’s now got a large themed closed sign so it must be down for a while.

Like Blade it probably spends more time down and broke than actually open, it spent more of last season out of action, and looks set to be the same this season.

This should have binned it off and replaced it years ago, but of course that’s not the Merlin way, rather spend more and more money trying to keep it going than the initial larger cost of a new one. We all know Merlin hate flat rides. My recent visit to Heide park confirms that, where there is a whole area which used to contain 7 flat rides, it now contains 3 (all of which were closed when I visited).
 
Hopefully they'll see sense eventually and replace it with one of the next-gen floorless ones, like Dreamcatcher at Dreamland (single seat version) and Endeavour at Tayto (double seat version). I think that would be a real hit at Towers.
 
skyscraper said:
Hopefully they'll see sense eventually and replace it with one of the next-gen floorless ones, like Dreamcatcher at Dreamland (single seat version) and Endeavour at Tayto (double seat version). I think that would be a real hit at Towers.
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It's merlin. I don't expect to see significant new flats until the management structure changes significantly.
 
I would love for towers (and other merlin parks) to just add a big wave of flats one season, they don’t have to be world firsts, or anything. Just some decent flat rides. You can then advertise the additional of a few new rides all in one season.

I would replace blade and enterprise, and also put a new flat in the dark forest and even where Submission and Ripsaw were.

That’s three or four new rides, all of which are fairly cheap to buy (compared to coasters and dark rides), only require one or two staff members and don’t need expensive buildings or work to construct them.
 
djtruefitt said:
I would love for towers (and other merlin parks) to just add a big wave of flats one season, they don’t have to be world firsts, or anything. Just some decent flat rides. You can then advertise the additional of a few new rides all in one season.

I would replace blade and enterprise, and also put a new flat in the dark forest and even where Submission and Ripsaw were.

That’s three or four new rides, all of which are fairly cheap to buy (compared to coasters and dark rides), only require one or two staff members and don’t need expensive buildings or work to construct them.
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They also eat queues up and would reduce the pressure on the headline coasters. :)
 
More flats = more staff to pay. Not gonna happen.

Shame really because that year when Vortex/Zodiac/Detonator opened was brilliant. The marketing was spot on and i still remember the adverts.
 
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