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Drayton Manor Park

If u read the comments on trip advisor and on FB the biggest Moan has been about the food prices and the queues.
Now they kind of sorting out the food problems with the kids meal deals and adult combo meals they just need to add the drink in them prices again and they be back to where they were in 2020. They can’t do anything about the queues and a paid fast pass is the only option they can do.
I was there with my kids on Sunday from half 1 to half 5 and we got on:
1) Jolly buccaneer
2) Flying Dutchman
3) Sheriff showdown
4) Carousel
5) Sleipnir
6) Polperro express
7) Toby’s tram express
8) Blue mountain engines twice
9) Captain’s sea adventure
10) Bertie bus
11) Rosie train
They also played on all 3 play areas and looked round the zoo.
 
Nothing says **** you, to your guests better than selling overpriced fast track for a ride, then having 50% of the ride vehicles sitting on a berm literally rotting away and visible to guests. As is the case with Storm Force 10.

You could not make this up if you tried.

Trooper Looper said:
I think you're missing the point of the rides original intention. It was meant to pay homage to those types of cheesy sci fi films and TV shows of the 80s. The ride was intentionally goofy, and It looked like it executed it in na very charming way. You're absolutely correct about the ride having a ridiculous wait though, it used to be a lot lot quicker before the 2016 update actually with the Count Erika Version. The ride is mostly long nowadays because the Preshows have been extended, and unfortunately aren't as scary nowadays.
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Sorry to say it, but I think it is you who is missing the point slightly. Easy to do as you never rode the original. The ride was not meant to be goofy, nore did it try to be. The original attraction had quite a serious tone to it, this tone also comes across in the tone of the trailer.

You have to remember, the scifi films of the 80's are in a sense, what the Harry Potters are today, which by the way, are also over 10 years old at this point. The movies were not seen as cheesy or goofy at that time, they may have aged that way, but they were not in any way seen as that back then. Even 10 years later, they were still quite big hits.

The ride was executed laughably bad to be fair, that is how it was certainly seen by a lot of people, especially just before the "Vampire Strikes Back" revamp in 2004, which only made the ride worse. I always recall almost on every ride, guests laughing in the mad house portion of the ride for the badly executed and overall poor effects at the very end of the ride after the revamp. Not laughing because the ride making them laugh, but because of the poor quality. It certainly did not have the indented affect. At this point the ride was goofy down to them not having enough money to make it better. Nothing more, nothing less and certainly not intentional.
 
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DistortAMG said:
Nothing says **** you, to your guests better than selling overpriced fast track for a ride, then having 50% of the ride vehicles sitting on a berm literally rotting away and visible to guests. As is the case with Storm Force 10.

You could not make this up if you tried.
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You’d think there must be some reason why the boats are there. Maybe they are broken and are awaiting parts to fix them? Maybe they are spare in care they need to swap a boat out? Maybe the ride itself struggles to run a large number of boats now? The ride does have a lot of downtime to be fair, so the more boats on the layout at one time, the more congested and backed up the layout will get every time the ride goes down (which is at least every hour).

If the above reasons aren’t true, and it is the park just trying to get more money from their guests, then it is pretty disgusting of them.
 
The downtime these days is usually due to a trip, pretty normal, but nowadays it requires maintenance to reset the ride, this was never the case before.

The boats have been there for a few years, they look like they have been used for spares, so I doubt it is due to the ride being able to use them, The ride should be able to handle them fine. It may be the case they are struggling to find someone to repair them, it may not. I suspect the latter due to what I say next.

In any case, if they are going to charge fast track, they should at least have them operational before they start selling fast track, not after. Same goes for Shockwave, they have 1 train totally out of action. Yet are selling fast track. There would be no issues getting Shockwave train working, just money. Intamin still exist.

The fact they have not repaired them now does show they are purposely making the queues larger, which will increase fast track sales. If they were not doing this, the vehicles on both Shockwave and Stormforce would be operational. It is very, very cheeky.
 
DistortAMG said:
The fact they have not repaired them now does show they are purposely making the queues larger, which will increase fast track sales. If they were not doing this, the vehicles on both Shockwave and Stormforce would be operational. It is very, very cheeky.
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Shockwave can only run one train though right?
 
John said:
Shockwave only has 1 train built up, no idea when it last had 2 available
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This is true, just like Storm Force 10 only has 5 of it's 10 boats essentially built up. The start of the issue is, that they have another train, built or not, needing parts or not and they have 5 boats, built or not and again, needing parts or not.

Then the major part of the issue arises when they decide to charge you extra to skip the queues, while purposely not building up the other train and boats. Very shady business practices in my opinion. Especially as they have and are making the conscious decision to keep the capacity of both rides essential at 50% of what they can hold from the hardware they already own, then charging you for the 'privilege' of skipping said queue.

Maybe we will see them built up as time goes on. But for now, they should not be charging fast track while having capacity they have decided to not use, for whatever reason. Pure ripping customers off, both by having to buy fast track then for the extended queues for normal paying customers for two rides with an already limited capacity plus fast track on top.

Both rides could co exist with extra capacity and fast track too, it is not like it is one or the other. Maybe for part of the season, but there has been quite a few times this summer where queue times for both have exceeded 120 to 140 minuities.

This is more than likely something they inherited from the previous owners, but they have decided to not spend the money since then to fix them, then they are the ones who have decided to introduce fast track.

As far as things go, it is a relatively minor nit-pick I guess, but a specifically bad one I think.
 
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The fast pass system comes in handy with circumstances though. I’m a lone parent with a 5 year old. If I take my Child and grandparents accompany it means I can do the big ones without having to leave him for too long for example the ques on shockwave have been awful anyway due to them only running one train. This system means every now and then I’m able to do 1 or 2 rides by myself until he’s old enough and tall enough to wait In those ques himself. We frequent dm once a month as a treat day as it’s his favourite place in the whole world where it’s to the point of him watching the YouTube videos daily. I’m not saying I will be using the fast pass every time but for the short term the pass makes sense for us as a family every now and then however we used it at a time that the pass wasn’t advertised as dm have been using it at least the last 2 months before they created a link for it.
 
The fast pass system works well at every park as if people and families can afford it they will pay to jump the queues on at least 3 of the rides listed so I’m sure a once a year family of 4 would be happy to pay £96 on top of the entrance fee so they can enjoy Stormforce 10, shockwave and Apocalypse with minimum wait.
 
DistortAMG said:
I agree with these answers somewhat. But they are completely missing the point of the argument I was making.
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Yes having 1 train operations isn’t ideal but I notice not many have paid for fast pass tickets but are for guests who can’t join the main queue. I do like that they only letting on the guest and 1 carer now on the attraction and send the rest of the family round to the main queue.
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
The fast pass system works well at every park as if people and families can afford it they will pay to jump the queues on at least 3 of the rides listed so I’m sure a once a year family of 4 would be happy to pay £96 on top of the entrance fee so they can enjoy Stormforce 10, shockwave and Apocalypse with minimum wait.
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IF they can afford it.
Fastpasses in all forms are great for those that can afford it.
That is the point.
However, it makes all regular park users wait longer, making them second class citizens.
That is why they are very poor if you do not have good operations and rides at full capacity.
Drayton has neither.
 
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