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Drayton Manor Park

Take this with a pinch of salt, but according to Lofty from CoasterForce, the new trains on Shockwave are rumoured to be ART Engineering trains, similar to those found on Cannibal and Wicked at Lagoon: https://coasterforce.com/forums/thr...year-plan-2022-2026.45928/page-3#post-1165927

These trains have lap bars, and are 4 across.

If this rumour is true, these trains sound like a great choice!
I think that is quite a good choice. Hopefully the trains will be suitable for Shockwave.
 
I think i'm most excited about Drayton in 2024 of all the UK parks.

Have never been before so there's slight bias of it all being new but i think the main thing is they're essentially bringing 2 big new rollercoasters... and the fact one of them is still a mystery is probably the best bit. Will curse my lack of willpower at inevitably investigating every detail.
 
Take this with a pinch of salt, but according to Lofty from CoasterForce, the new trains on Shockwave are rumoured to be ART Engineering trains, similar to those found on Cannibal and Wicked at Lagoon: https://coasterforce.com/forums/thr...year-plan-2022-2026.45928/page-3#post-1165927

These trains have lap bars, and are 4 across.

If this rumour is true, these trains sound like a great choice!
This seems like a decent option, I am aware that Wicked has booster seats so that smaller kids can ride I wonder if this might be an option as that would fit Draytons target audience well?
 
What do these ride like though, do they feel cheap and rubbish or are they pretty good? That said, most things are better than the current setup. I wonder if they will go for one or two trains?
 
I've done Impulse at Knoebels which uses that train design. It's... alright, I guess? Feels a bit like a budget version of the lap-bar Gerst Infinity trains and not quite as comfortable.
 
Take this with a pinch of salt, but according to Lofty from CoasterForce, the new trains on Shockwave are rumoured to be ART Engineering trains, similar to those found on Cannibal and Wicked at Lagoon: https://coasterforce.com/forums/thr...year-plan-2022-2026.45928/page-3#post-1165927

These trains have lap bars, and are 4 across.

If this rumour is true, these trains sound like a great choice!
I remember the park posting saying it was KumbK_NL sadly the post is deleted but I have found the screenshot I took of it 1704491946656.png
 
I remember the park posting saying it was KumbK_NL sadly the post is deleted but I have found the screenshot I took of it 1704491946656.png
This was never tweeted out by Drayton manor. This was initially posted in a discord by someone who I spoke to who made it up as a joke, the image used is from KumbaK’s linkedin advertising there iaapa booth. No idea how you remembered them posting it when it never happened…
 
What do these ride like though, do they feel cheap and rubbish or are they pretty good? That said, most things are better than the current setup. I wonder if they will go for one or two trains?
I think it’s been confirmed that they only brought 1 train with an option of buying a 2nd train. The dispatch times will be better than shockwaves but with them lowering the height limited to 1.2m the queues could be very long in the school holidays.
 
I think it’s been confirmed that they only brought 1 train with an option of buying a 2nd train. The dispatch times will be better than shockwaves but with them lowering the height limited to 1.2m the queues could be very long in the school holidays.

How are queue times typically at Drayton? They don't have an app with times or anything as far as i can see...
 
How are queue times typically at Drayton? They don't have an app with times or anything as far as i can see...
It varies. They don't have queue times in their app but there are often regular and accurate announcements from ride ops in the queline, as to how long it is. They also still have some fairly spot on queue time posts in the main queue too.

Close of season, we managed 20 and a bit more rides for Shockwave's Last Stand, along with the Castle of Shadows scare maze, The Haunting, a stroll around the zoo and a few flats.

August Bank Holiday weekend was busy, but we didn't spend more than 30-40 mins in a queue. I think the longest was for Accelerator. We have up queuing for Loki, the loading and unloading is a bit slow to say the least.

Last day of term in July was also busy, but again nothing more than 45 mins max. As everything's within easy walking distance, however, you do feel as though you get a lot out of your day.

No idea about queues in Thomas Land though.
 
they tried to introduce queue times through the tap app around when submarine splash opened by then they had the signs on the fences with 10, 20, 35 minutes on them and are still there, I found the app totally useless as most of the time it only displayed rides like accelerator or storm force with the rest stating closed, it needs to be used properly as people coming for the first time have no idea if they want to join the queue or not and have no idea what the queue time is!, most of the year the park has no queues in my experience longest queue would be the haunting, only around school season and summer queues start getting quite big.
 
I think that’s how Drayton Manor is clever with their queue lines. Like they don’t make them to big so when they full it makes guests think it’s gonna be a long wait so they move on to another ride.
They also over estimate the times like in Troublesome trucks at the entrance it says it’s 60 min wait from here but it’s really 30-45 (depending on how many guests use the fast pass/ease of access gate)
 
yes the queue time signs round drayton have been either accurate or understimated

I meant in terms of planning future visits.

So for example, i looked at the Chessington app in the run up to Xmas and saw that the park was very quiet so that meant we could go down for the afternoon safe in the knowledge we'd likely get on all the rides in a couple of hours.

It's also useful for seeing if a particular ride is closed or unreliable.

It's a reason i've been hesitant to visit Fantasy Island because it's a 3 hour drive for us and i've no idea if we'd be likely to get on all the rides. Are queues typically 15 minutes or 60 minutes? Who knows.

Drayton is a similar situation, all i have to go on are the answers people have kindly provided here so i think supplying queue times is overall beneficial for parks. Equally i understand why some have become hesitant, though that tends to be covering up poor operations (cough cough AT).

Anyway sorry, bit of a tangent, just trying to plan for our first ever visit to Drayton this year. With all the investment they're making perhaps the app will get an update for the new season too!
 
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