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Being 'warned' of a long queue when entering just before ride close

Tom

Tom

TS Member
Yesterday the park was relatively busy and Rita had long queues throughout the day (hitting 120 minutes according to one sign at one point). We decided to leave riding until last due to the queues, nothing unusual here.

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, but there was a staff member at the entrance from about 20 minutes before ride close 'warning' people that the queue was currently 50-60 minutes and that the last monorail for the car park leaves at 6pm and he "didn't want us to miss" it.

Maybe or maybe not helpful information to some people you may say, but in actuality the queue length was closer to 20 minutes and we were off the ride for 5pm.

I find this to be a questionable policy and it leaves me to suggest that they are trying to put people off joining still-lengthy queues close to their advertises closure times - so that they are running the ride for the least amount of time as possible.

A number of people did turn around after receiving the advice, which was delivered in a very polite way but it still used language designed to repel people in my view.
 
This happened on Saturday, too. I actually mentioned it to Guest Services as its absolutely appalling that guests are being given drastically wrong queue times, and as a result, aren't experiencing as many rides as they actually can do within the time left until park close.


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As I say, it's targeting people joining just before queue close . Remember it's queue close, not ride close that is advertised.

The concept of the park having to operate a ride for an hour or longer after queue close is very unappealing in this cost-cutting environment.
 
Edited my post - I meant to refer to Park Close.

It's bad for the staff to do this. Saturday had an advertised queue time of 90 minutes last thing, on the scrolling LED board above the entrance, with staff reiterating it. However it was evidently not that at all, and would have easily been a 20 minute queue at maximum.


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Can the queue line wait times boards be changed manually? and how accurate are they ?
 
They're controlled remotely and are based on visual assessment of the queue length via staff and/or CCTV footage.

The sign for Rita was switched off shortly before queue close yesterday and there was just the 'warner' guarding the entrance.
 
How ironic then, is the quote on the "need to know" section on the reverse of the map...

You may be surprised to know that it's the queue that closes at the advertised time and not the ride. Our top tip is to leave the most popular rides till last, but don't tell everyone!
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Wow thats really not good practice at all!

I wonder if its the park trying to reduce staffing and running costs, or the staff wanting to get off earlier?
 
I don't think the staff would have taken it upon themselves to do this, it will have certainly come from management. In my mind, it's clearly a cost-cutting measure.
 
Sadly, I'd just assume it's a simple case of the staff wanting to go home. Or so that Rita can be rode less but still open to test it's new cable. Sadly and surprisingly it could be the former.
 
delta79 said:
Can the queue line wait times boards be changed manually? and how accurate are they ?
Click to expand...

Entrance queue time boards are controlled manually - specifically by the entrance host. These boards can sometimes be more accurate than the park wide boards, due to them being changed immediately by the host in relation to the changing queue.

Obviously if there is no entrance host on the ride these boards can occasionally be misleading, as they'll be left as they are until a host is available to change it.
 
Staff want to get home quicker.

It's the same reason that the monorail staff exaggerate the length of the queue massively at the end of the day before saying "or it's a 10 minute walk".
 
It's usually a case of staff doing this. You'll also often find most queue extensions closed towards the end of the day to make the queue seem longer at the entrance.

I don't think it's an order 'from above', so to speak, but managers aren't that fussed about it happening.
 
This has been happening for years, especially on the monorail "45minute queue or a 10 minute walk!" and Spinball "70 minute queue guys!"...

I'd never heard of it happening on Rita, though! Whatever happened to just e-stopping to get home quicker? :p
 
Magrathea said:
Whatever happened to just e-stopping to get home quicker? :p
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I think you're getting Towers mixed up with Pleasure Beach there :p I remember getting kicked out of a rather long queue for the Nash earlier this year because it "E-stopped" suspiciously around 5pm.
 
This has been happening on the Monorail for well over a decade now. My parents can remember back to the 2001 fireworks when staff said the Monorail queue was 50 minutes and that it only takes 10 to walk to the car park. When in fact it took almost an hour to get to the car (given how busy it was). Utter joke really! We caught on to that trick by staff over the years.

Staff just do it to get home earlier. In most jobs staff try to get things done to clock off earlier. A pub team I worked with used to do it. We'd close off parts of the customer areas so we could set it up for the next day and get home earlier. Same thing at Alton, on a bigger scale. Staff over exaggerate the times, customers turn back, ride gets to close down earlier - staff go home.

I don't agree with it, as at the end of the day it's false advertising.
 
This clearly happens all year long, last month me and a group of five work mates went for a day to the park. Towards the end of the day we decided to do the rapids since this would be the only ride that we had all been on together and wanted a photo for the wall at work.

The queue tannoy was regulary announcing two things:

(1) - The average queue time was one hour (we walked all the was to the sign saying "15 mins at this point")

(2) - Due to the long queue length they were asking people to share boats to help "reduce our queue time and increase our experiance"

The fact we walked stright to the 15 point clearly demonstrates that the ride staff exagerate the time to close the ride down on time / early. Also when we did Get to the start of the queue one of the ops asked very nicley "would you mind sharing with two people?", When I replied yes she told me that sharing a boat was all part of the experiance and I had no choice in the matter! I politley explained firstly she had asked me the question if I minded sharing and my reply had been that we did mind and that we minded due to the fact we wanted the photo and for it to be just our team. Her reply to that was to say we wouldn't be getting a boat until we did share!, After a brief moment I think she realised the fact that meant that boats would be going empty she told us to "just get on with it and get on a boat"

So in short I do think they try and fool you into worrying about longer than actual ride times.
 
This is the same in any walk of life though... People like to get home early or on time and will do what they can to make it happen. Shopkeepers will close 5 mins early if they can, supermarkets might tell people the store is closing in 10 minutes when in reality it is 20, and I'm sure there are probably other examples too.

Yes it is bad *if* this is happening on purpose, however - I wouldn't say it would be something exlcusive to Towers.
 
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