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Broken Effects

This is very disappointing. These effects aren't optional extras. They're essential elements of the ride experience!

It's a theme park, and these are the themes!

They really do need to have someone responsible for maintaining them.
 
Well at points today none of the waterfall was on at all!

It was a bit odd not seeing it working at all, was working later though.

Strobe worked in the tunnel today for The Smiler - forgotten what a difference it can make in the dark!

They still can't seem to get those Projection Mapping effects in the building working properly though.
 
James said:
I'm surprised they've never tried putting together a new department/team that deals with park wide effects. I guess that would be way off the cards at the present time though.
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Other parks do it - certainly Legoland (scoff as much as you want...) has an 'Innovations' department ( ;) ) which looks after precisely these kind of effects across the park. But then each park runs very differently - there have been minimal changes operationally/organisationally to each since Merlin took charge.
 
After having a think, the following effects often don't work or are turned off more than they do work:

Towers Street:
Frogs
Monorail TV screens
Monorail audio

Adventure Land:
Sonic queue line games

Mutiny Bay
Duck effects on Flume
Water sprays on Battle Galleons

Katanga Canyon
Smoke on Mine Train
Bell on Mine Train

Valley:
Smoke in Nemesis bus
Smoke in Nemesis gun
Waterfalls on Nemesis
Queue line screens on Sub Terra
Water in Sub Terra
Smoke in Sub Terra exit

X-Sector:
Marmaliser (most effects)
Smiler Projectors
Smiler Smoke
Oblivion Mist
Oblivion queue line screens

Dark Forest:
Smoke on Rita
Smoke in TH13TEEN

Towers:
Smoke in Hex

Gloomy Wood:
Smoke outside Duel
Various effects in side Duel

The worst thing about that list, is that most of them are very easy to fix, it is probably no ones proper job to do. Like filling smoke machines up, or fixing screens/projectors.
 
One thing you have to remember is the techies have very little time at the moment to fix theming as the park close is so late. Also with the season ending in a week a lot of maintenance is aimed at getting it to the closed season.

Not to the same extent but at Phantasia and EP you could see stuff that needed sorting that wasn't done. Due to the proximity of closed season.
 
To add the S-Sector list, the light bars in the "ha ha ha" chamber on the smiler there are 6 lights not working and the sreens on the 2nd lift keep saying "no signal".
 
Islander said:
But then each park runs very differently - there have been minimal changes operationally/organisationally to each since Merlin took charge.
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Unless you count Chessington's big management changes across the Operations and Entertainments teams in 2012/13 even till this season for Ents...

Chessington did employ someone a few seasons back to focus on just effects/scenery etc but she couldn't do it on her own and sadly the techies are too stretched - so that finished.

It's the same story at Towers, although they have no team dedicated to this (which they desperately need) the techies are so stretched, especially now during the long hours and all sorts that there should be a dedicated team responsible for all of the resorts "image"...but, they don't see the benefit. With their thinking, it's extra money/time/staff for something which brings nothing back profit-wise.
 
It seems silly for a park as big as Towers not to have a dedicated team for effects. But ah well, we're all used to things being broken there anyway. Bit depressing how low our standards are with UK parks.
 
Absolutely @James it's so sad we're so used to everything being in a poor state.

When you pay for a meal on the menu at a restaurant, you don't expect your meal to come to you half prepared or stone cold etc. Or like you say, you want this pictured on the menu and it comes out looking nothing like how it is photographed. You've paid for a product and if it isn't satisfactory, you send it back.

Where I used to work, despite being in charge of ents...it then became part of my job to point out everything that was broken or scruffy and every day something would crop up. The team who worked with me was really small yet they tried to deal with every element as quick as they could. It only really came about because a group of staff were extremely passionate about the image and presentation. Until new management came in and simply got frustrated with the upkeep and didn't deem it worthy of having time devoted to it.

Problem is, the parks try to draw the public in by the experiences/services and say they invest in amazing new rides hence the prices. But really away from the "thrills" the entire package is not delivering what it should be day in - day out. The parks know this and try to draw the focus onto the fact they're paying for a premium product with premium experiences or deliver something new to justify the increase or the reason for the prices when actually, the public are paying for a premium product which isn't delivering it's full service. Regardless of age, the rides should be in presentable and acceptable condition because you don't just pay for the "new experience of the year" you're paying for the whole selection.

So you go to a restaurant and have a meal and the main is alright and then you have flat fizzy drinks and disgusting starters/desserts/side orders and you pay full price with no complaints...exactly, you wouldn't.

Sadly, in the UK we don't tend to complain as much about park effects/stuff, experiences and stuff like we should. Parks take your money and they think the price is justifiable with the addition of new areas or rides, but the public aren't dim...they notice the scruffiness and they do get a bitter view that they're paying for something which has dirty/scruffy/broken elements but instead of raising this/complaining they just don't bother returning which achieves nothing.
 
I agree @Imagination totally, I don't think the members of "public" get the credit they deserve for noticing these things either, yes I must admit there does seem to be a "dumbed down" aspect of society which I actually find concerning, but aside from this people do notice - and it's like people leaving the Smiler queue were REALLY irritated because of how long it was taking and they had pre-booked tickets for elsewhere which they could in theory have managed to do! I suggested they go and see guest services, but when I popped in to bring the issue up - they said I was the first that complained about it, but all I heard around me was people complaining about it.

Now, those people left annoyed about it and having wasted a lot of time, what will they do?

The state of the park is similar, people are too busy/kind/nervous etc to go in and make complaints but they do go tell their friends instead.

Towers are really not on the ball with this. They seem almost a little naive about it. Living in a bit of a bubble as it were.
 
Another one to add to the list from my visit today and a few weeks ago. The curtain is broken in Hex, so just stays open all the time.
 
The wet spray/mist on Olbivion defo worked at the weekend.
 
Tom.B said:
It didn't on Saturday when I was on! It is very hit and miss though.
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Hmmmm went on Oblivion around 1:30 on Friday and about 10:15am on Saturday, 100% worked on Saturday morning as me and my daughter talked about it on the walk off the ride!
 
I do have it on good authority though that The Smiler is running as consistent as it has all season!
 
Seems to be a problem on both Thorpe and Alton. Just spend a season fixing and replacing whats broken, cant be that much of a investment and would do wonders to not look like a run down fairground at the local carnival. River rapids at thorpe is ruined when nothing works and looks a complete mess

Alastair - fixed punctuation and grammar @chris556!
 
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