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2024: General Discussion

Replace the missing "A" with a "LO" and you're probably not far off summing up the season so far.

I've still not been back since opening day and just don't have a huge desire to do so. Had Mardi Gras been on I would definitely have made a visit.
 
I’m not quite sure how your lack of desire to go back to Towers directly equates to the park’s performance to date..?

I was on park for opening day (admittedly I skidaddled fairly early on the Saturday following the Nemesis queue!) but returned on the Sunday evening for a resort stay, with a day on park on the Monday and had a great day.

I went back again on Friday just gone for my second visit of the season and again, had a great Resort stay and a good day on park.

I didn’t notice anything having huge amounts of downtime, all food options were available, staff and operations were above average. The rapids opened later in the day, as did N:ST. I was aware Hex and Skyride were unavailable so wasn’t disappointed by that.

I got on everything I wanted to and left feeling I’d had a great day.

Not sure why there’s so much hate?

I never experienced Mardi Gras as I felt it was a weak event (another excuse to serve beer!) and certainly didn’t miss it on my visit.
 
I had the complete opposite experience the following weekend. Most big rides were either down all day or part of the day, queue evacuations etc. Part of this was due to the weather, part wasn't. But it's an experience many people here have recited still 3 months after opening, so i think the lack of appetite to return stems from that. If you're lucky you'll get a good day of operations but that seems the exception rather than the norm and it seems such a low standard to accept.

We still have free fast-passes we were given as compensation for the poor day. If we lived closer we'd perhaps go but it's not worth the 300 mile round trip to take the unfavourable gamble on rides being operational currently.
 
Availability consistency isn’t there, given the various reports of downtime, but Thorpe are also having their share of poor performance on a far more noticeable scale (without taking into account Hyperia!!).

My sense is that, for whatever reason, ageing hardware might be kicking up a fuss more so this year. Perhaps there’s a smaller maintenance / tech crew? The weather has been cooler and wetter, perhaps that plays a part?

I’m sorry to hear your experience @Bowser , but my time at the park & Resort this year couldn’t be further from it.
 
I can see both sides of the argument to be honest, I’ve only been twice this year too, once in March and then yesterday. On the face of it yesterday was an excellent day, I got on everything I wanted to, most of them more than once, but for some intangible reason that I can’t really explain I came away feeling like I’d had a decent day rather than a great one.

Maybe I’m just getting greedy, or old and miserable, maybe things just felt a little stale, maybe I’m getting a bit bored of only having the same ten or so attractions to go on.

I still love the place but can only see me going back again near the end of the year if at all.
 
On my most recent visit getting on a decent number of rides was down to pure luck rather than good performance by the park. We did mostly smaller rides in the morning when multiple coasters were down, then mid afternoon headed to FV for Galactica only to find Nemesis just about to open for the first time that day. Galactica immediately broke down causing everyone waiting for that to run to Nemesis, then reopened with no wait just as we got off Nemesis (which had gone from a 10min queue to 60+ whilst we were waiting).

Getting on rides at Towers often feels like a lottery this season. With the park being so spread out, trying to chase the open rides round the park can be a frustrating and tiring experience if you repeatedly get unlucky.
 
Aging hardware is certainly playing a part.
Been twice this year - and it’s been really hit and miss.

But - even the miss was a vast improvement on last year, which in turn was an improvement on the year before.

It’s heading in the right direction. No need to abandon ship yet. Trouble is - it’s a bloody big ship to turnaround.

Credit is needed for the effort being made this year.
 
MaxPower said:
More complicated hardware is also a factor that needs to be considered.

Far easier to keep the Corkscrew and Black Hole trundling around back in the day with the limited technology installed, it's a bit different with Thirteen and Smiler nowadays.
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That always seems a bit of a get out to me. There are plenty of parks with similarly complex rides and far greater reliability.

Only real difference is rides being prototypes.
 
MaxPower said:
More complicated hardware is also a factor that needs to be considered.

Far easier to keep the Corkscrew and Black Hole trundling around back in the day with the limited technology installed, it's a bit different with Thirteen and Smiler nowadays.
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Complicated when first installed?

Air was a prototype 22 years ago, I would think whatever is included in that ride is now something that can be improved upon to increase reliability.

Nemesis has been replaced and seems more reliable than ever.
 
Bowser said:
There are plenty of parks with similarly complex rides and far greater reliability.
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Parks with better maintenance budgets and more engineers I would imagine.

Air is still a very complex ride even if improvements have been made to the reliability of parts, the trains alone are incredibly complicated as is the station mechanism.

Nemesis has always been pretty reliable as it's a much simpler system with less to go wrong, B&M have inverts nailed down at this point.

I'm not making excuses for Merlin, if anything it should justify a bigger maintenance budget and higher wages for engineers at the park due to the unique skill set that is required to diagnose and repair these things.

I would guess that they've lost a lot of very knowledgeable engineers over the past 10 years and Alton have struggled to replace them due to low wages, location and working conditions and this in turn has affected ride downtime.
 
MaxPower said:
Parks with better maintenance budgets and more engineers I would imagine.
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That’s the crux of it though, it’s not an acceptable excuse from a customer point of view that they’re charging you to enter a park they won’t maintain.

People pay a premium at other places in the knowledge that unless advertised all rides will likely be operating, seems strange for parks of the calibre of Merlin’s not to do the same.
 
Bowser said:
That’s the crux of it though, it’s not an acceptable excuse from a customer point of view that they’re charging you to enter a park they won’t maintain.

People pay a premium at other places in the knowledge that unless advertised all rides will likely be operating, seems strange for parks of the calibre of Merlin’s not to do the same.
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The internet/apps etc have only really given parks a caveat for ride closures. Well it was on the website etc….

It’s not likely that everything will be 100% reliable. But when the same ride keeps going down time after time, or you see 3-4 major rides down all at the same time then questions are going to be asked, even more so by people who don’t have any understanding of rides and maintenance.
 
Bowser said:
That’s the crux of it though, it’s not an acceptable excuse from a customer point of view that they’re charging you to enter a park they won’t maintain.

People pay a premium at other places in the knowledge that unless advertised all rides will likely be operating, seems strange for parks of the calibre of Merlin’s not to do the same.
Click to expand...

Blackhole_Sun said:
Complicated when first installed?

Air was a prototype 22 years ago, I would think whatever is included in that ride is now something that can be improved upon to increase reliability.

Nemesis has been replaced and seems more reliable than ever.
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I agree to an extent. But I think the point that was being made is that we are where we are due to lack of maintenance budgets over many years and the fact that the ugly issue rears it's head quite bad at Alton Towers is because most of the rides are technologically complex. Above average, meaning lots more time needs to be spent checking over the rides for morning checks, general maintenance and breakdowns (even if they are more rare).

Air may be 20 years old, Smiler around 10, Thirteen a bit older, they have had improvements to them for sure. But that doesn't remove the fact that these are the type of rides with complex computer and control systems, multiple lifts, switch tracks and many trains with huge amounts of sensors, wiring and redundancys that can all go wrong and need checking on a regular basis. Much easier to check and troubleshoot a ride with 10 sensors than it is when the ride has 500, much more motors, greese points and whatever else. Regardless of how many reliablity increasing improvements have been installed.

Nemesis is reliable for many reasons, one being because it's very basic in terms of complex control, blocking and other systems. A relatively basic blocking system, two trains and one lift. Its basic in terms of modern rides. Much less to go wrong on a technical side than many other rides on the park.

When you have complex rides like Alton Towers do, you need a strong maintenance team which for whatever reason has dwindled. Other parks cope fine, for sure, they have the man power needed to service the complex rides.
 
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