Merlin don’t seem to care about throughput these days anyway, think how much they’d lose in FT sales if this coaster was *gasps* efficient !
I’d be very intrigued to know the grounds on which people make the assumption that Merlin purposely builds low throughput rides to lead to greater Fastrack sales, as I’ll admit that it’s a theory that’s always confused me a little. I’m racking my brains as to how low throughput rides would sell more Fastrack tickets, so I’d be intrigued to hear an explanation.
I know that lower throughput rides often have longer queues, but wouldn’t a coaster with a higher throughput mean that Fastrack sales would be higher, as each coaster is allocated a percentage of its throughput for Fastrack (I know it’s capped, as I’ve seen them sell out of Fastrack before).
For instance, if the FT cap was 20% of the ride’s hourly throughput, and each FT cost £10, a ride with a higher theoretical throughput of
1,200 riders per hour would be able to sell
240 Fastracks per hour, thus making the park
£2,400 and still leaving the main queue moving at a respectable throughput of
960 riders per hour.
By contrast, if a ride had a lower theoretical throughput of
500 riders per hour, it would be able to sell
100 Fastrack tickets per hour, thus making the park
£1,000 and leaving the main queue moving at a mere
400 riders per hour.
I know it might seem like I’m overly complicating things, but by my reckoning, surely a higher throughput ride would be a win-win situation, because they’d be able to sell more Fastracks and make more money, while also meaning that the main queue moves more quickly?
I’m also seeing evidence that Merlin is not purposely lowering throughput in their installations. Take Wicker Man, for instance; I know that it’s not the highest throughput ride, at a theoretical of 952pph, but Merlin/Towers did take measures to ensure that it attained a high throughput that many other builders of GCIs didn’t.
GCI had built & opened 25 roller coasters prior to building & opening Wicker Man, and all bar 2 of them have trains with additional seatbelts and operate only 2 trains, so Wicker Man’s 3 train, no seatbelt operation certainly doesn’t strike me as purposely wanting to lower throughput, personally. If they’d wanted to purposely make WM’s throughput as low as possible, surely they would have just built it with 2 trains and seatbelts like most other GCIs on Earth have?
I’m certainly not trying to cause an argument for the sake of it, and I apologise if my viewpoint annoys you, but I’d just be interested to hear your logic. I’m not debating that throughput might not necessarily be a big part of the thought process anymore like it once was, but I personally see no evidence that Merlin are purposely building low throughput rides to increase Fastrack sales, or why it would be in their best interests to purposely build low throughput rides.
