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2020: General Discussion

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rob666 said:
Some travel companies are putting heavy pressure on customers to accept credit notes, saying they (the credit notes) are abta covered.
They are not abta covered.
That, in particular, is a con.
Lots of companies are doing it, but it isnt right, or legal.
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Wrong. If you read the ATOL and ABTA website it says:

Thousands of customers have already amended and rebooked their holiday or have received a Refund Credit Note from their travel provider. If your original holiday was covered by a financial protection scheme (e.g. ATOL or ABTA), your Refund Credit Note is financially protected by ATOL or ABTA (whichever covered your original booking) in the event your travel business fails. It is important that your Refund Credit Note includes certain things, please see more detail on this there (see What is a Refund Credit Note above). If you are uncertain about accepting a Refund Credit Note, then talk to your travel provider about your options.

Also, accepting a credit note also means later on you can still get a refund

A Refund Credit Note preserves your right to a cash refund, which can be redeemed at the latest at the expiry date of the note.

The only thing that isnt covered would be a "holiday voucher" but as I understand companies are giving credit notes, so you are covered.

https://www.abta.com/news/coronavirus-outbreak
 
So I was wondering if anyone knew these 2 things and could tell me:
>The theoretical throughput for each of the big 7
>The actual throughput for each of the big 7
 
Ethan said:
So I was wondering if anyone knew these 2 things and could tell me:
>The theoretical throughput for each of the big 7
>The actual throughput for each of the big 7
Click to expand...

Can only speak for Nemesis... but here goes...

The dispatch interval on Nemesis is 67 seconds. That is the earliest you can dispatch one train after the other has left the station. 3600 seconds in an hour, divided by 67 gives a theoretical 53.7 dispatches per hour. Round it down to 53 and multiply by 32 seats per train & you get 1696 riders per hour.

In practice, anything over 1250 per hour is good. Staff the ride properly with 4 hosts on the train, one in the loading bays and one on the ride entrance and you can hit 1400 per hour, even with RAP / disabled guests. On a really busy day add an extra host on the offload platform to manage the baggage cage / RAP / disabled guest queue on the exit (this used to happen, pre-Merlin cutback days).

The killer to decent throughput is the guests themselves! They won't load 4 to a bay where possible unless asked to do so. They only need to tighten their shoelaces once they are on the ride. They mess around dumping bags / try to open the closed side of the cage as they deem it safer. Height checks have to be done in the station (as opposed to ride entrance as no host there), so this slows things down, as does the ensuing "discussion" with a parent whose child is too small to ride... I could go on, but you get the picture.
 
A bag store (be it lockers or a room) before entering a ride station, removal of FT, batcher and making sure disabled riders enter via the airgates are things to help increase throughput by streamlining the loading process. Theoretically The Smiler ticks the most boxes here but is limited by it's train size and track length.
 
Ethan said:
So I was wondering if anyone knew these 2 things and could tell me:
>The theoretical throughput for each of the big 7
>The actual throughput for each of the big 7
Click to expand...
According to various sources, the theoretical throughput for each of the Big 7 is:
In terms of the other 3 coasters at the park, they are as follows:
 
RCDB figures for capacity are often wildly inaccurate, as are numbers from manufacturers who like to massage the figures somewhat. I'm not convinced that Spinball or Oblivion are physically capable of those numbers, even if you were sending empty trains as quickly as possible for a full hour. Spinball would have to consistently send a car every 15 seconds and I don't think the station is quick enough to maintain that sort of rate for more than a couple of dispatches, plus you'd need to run all 8 cars.

In terms of actual values, I would guess that the only rides that reliably get over 1000/hr these days are Nemesis and Galactica.
 
Yeah I'd say Oblivion generally gets around 1000/hr but not reliably over. Put a good team on there and it will still manage more but a lot of the time it isn't run particularly efficiently.
 
I was also under the impression that Wicker Man was attaining pretty high throughputs these days?
 
I'm also surprised Wicker Man's throughput is at 952pph - I thought it was supposed to be a fair bit higher than that.
 
I think WM can get over 1000 - if you watch the ride when its running flat out there'll be a train entering the brakes and another on the lift (around the point where it gets shallower). It takes about 80s between those two points which gives 45 trains/hr = 1080. Thanks to the bag store it generally gets fairly close to that but you'll lose a bit of time whenever the spade of doom has to come out.
 
Matt N said:
According to various sources, the theoretical throughput for each of the Big 7 is:
In terms of the other 3 coasters at the park, they are as follows:
Click to expand...
Now that I think about it, the last time when I went on Spinball the operations were low because of different group numbers as they want to try and fill the cars. They usually say that 3 in a car is fine but two is not so they'll always try and call down the queue line!
 
John said:
I think WM can get over 1000 - if you watch the ride when its running flat out there'll be a train entering the brakes and another on the lift (around the point where it gets shallower). It takes about 80s between those two points which gives 45 trains/hr = 1080. Thanks to the bag store it generally gets fairly close to that but you'll lose a bit of time whenever the spade of doom has to come out.
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Out of interest, what is “the spade of doom”? I saw them with a large pole on opening weekend when the train only moved about 3ft out of the station and then stopped, presumably in order to try and make it move (as a matter of fact, we were then evacuated and the ride shut), but I’ve never seen a spade?

If Wicker Man attains 1080pph when running flat out, I’m surprised at how Wodan at Europa Park allegedly manages to attain such a good throughput; RCDB lists it as 1330pph, and even off RCDB, I’ve heard people say that it can attain well over 1,200 riders per hour. Considering Wodan is a much longer ride than Wicker Man and has the same number of trains, shouldn’t it in theory attain a lower throughput? I know Europa’s infamously efficient operations may well increase throughput, but my point still stands.

Also, I was thinking; could the theoretical throughput listed by Gerstlauer for The Smiler be with 5 trains and a separate unload station like Saw? 1,200 riders per hour with trains seating 16 riders leads to approximately 75 trains per hour, which would be a train dispatched approximately every 48 seconds. If the ride didn’t have exiting guests to worry about, I think this could definitely be attained. Which does make you wonder; how come they didn’t go for a separate unload like Saw? Rita has one, and I think it would definitely increase throughputs if they added one!
 
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Ethan said:
So I was wondering if anyone knew these 2 things and could tell me:
>The theoretical throughput for each of the big 7
>The actual throughput for each of the big 7
Click to expand...

I wouldn't know about what the manufactures/ride manuals claim each coaster's theoretical hourly throughputs are, but on a realistic basis, they each achieve around:

Nemesis: 1,100
Air: 1000
Oblivion: 1000
The Smiler: mid-800s
Rita: 750
Wicker Man: 1050

I don't actually know about Thirteen, though I would assume its fallen quite a lot since they removed the bag room. I'd wager around 900pph on 3 trains, but that's just an educated guess.

Nemesis, Air and Oblivion will obviously only be pulling around those numbers posted when running at full capacity. That being a station batcher, 4 platform staff and potentially an exit host for Nemesis, 3 crafts and no VR faff for Air, and 5 shuttles with both stations + full team for Oblivion. Nemesis is the one that drops the least by losing some of these factors, as it's the most 'simple' to run.

The Smiler and Rita are certainly capable of more than what I've listed, but as both have smaller train capacities, they rely more on consistently speedy dispatches, so it's more difficult for the team to hit and maintain high throughputs than it would be on Nemesis for example. The Smiler would obviously also be helped by the return of the bag room and the purchase of a 5th train again, as the fact it so often runs just 3 is pretty poor given its the most popular thrill ride in the park. The fact there's bag faff as well for loading and unloading slows down those quick dispatches it needs to reach a high figure.

As a side note, those numbers posted for Mine Train and Spinball from RCDB are wildly inaccurate. No way does Spinball get 950 at all, 600 is much more accurate as an average. Mine Train will be around 500pph realistically, procedures on it are quite faffy these days, so load and unload takes a lot longer than it should.
 
spinba11 said:
@Matt N the spade of doom is used to manually release the lap bars, they used to be one on each side of the station at the back but they disappeared last year.
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Ah right; thanks for the clarification @spinba11! That’s probably what it was used for on opening weekend, then!

But I must ask; how come they’re still using it now, as I was under the impression that Wicker Man’s reliability had majorly improved since 2018?
 
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