Were you doing Thorpe at the time of Reserve &Ride, or whatever it was called pluk?
I remember reading at length on Thorpe Park Mania at the time...one a ride broke down the whole thing went tits up.
Yep, it was a farce. Rides running empty with not enough returning guests, a couple of hours later an hour plus queue after waiting virtually for a similar time for the opportunity to be able to join that queue. The throughput of any given ride is not consistent enough for a fixed return time system to work, it's as simple as that and it always will be. Couple that with their inability to prevent you scanning any old barcode rather than just your park ticket meaning it was subject to huge abuse and it was a failure. There needs to be one of two things:
- a standby line to cushion the slack. Goes against the point of implementing so not relevant here.
- a way of varying the return time to account for any downtime or throughput variation. They couldn't manage that last time so I don't know why they think they can now, although it is clearly something that is possible. Having a variation to the return time comes with its own issues though; what if you've just sat down to lunch, or are the other side of the park? It's not the same as waiting for your table at the bar with a vibrating plate, waiting riders aren't likely to be well positioned to react. A fixed return time solves that problem, but isn't flexible enough for reality.
On top of that they need a properly secure and infallible system, such as everyone using their entrance ticket, so anyone can only be in one queue at a time. Again, this seemingly simple thing defeated them last time.
There's also the question of where everybody goes while waiting virtually? If they don't put it on the smaller rides you'll end up with everyone queuing in tiny spaces for rides not designed to deal with huge demand, if you include literally everything then there will be swarms of people waiting around. Maybe that could be done safely at Towers, but at Thorpe, and possibly Chessington, there is literally nowhere for any great number of people to go and be socially distant.
Aside from that, you have the same issue as you always have with every fastrack/fastpass system. People will congregate in a scrum near the ride entrance waiting for their time to commence. There's not really a way to stop that one, and surely letting people joining a queue and leave a gap is better than a scrum of people waiting to join an empty queue?
And all of that is before the issue of social distancing on a fast moving ride being a nonsense in any case, as anyone behind anyone else will be travelling through their scream germ expulsions. 2 meters behind means nothing at 60mph.
The whole thing is a nonstarter for me.
It's surely better to accept there will be a level of risk of infection greater than staying home, and letting people make an informed choice on whether to go. Creating a false sense of safety is much more dangerous.
