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Drayton Manor Park

They changed a few operations on the Haunting. Now if the queue is to the inter gate they add an extra member of staff so now your only waiting roughly 7 mins per cycle.
They also testing out 4 extra guests so currently they loading each row 2-4-2 so it’s back onto 32 guests so currently it’s roughly up to 256ph.
Also they continued with the Ivy removal
Post in thread 'The Haunting'
https://www.draytontalk.co.uk/threads/the-haunting.102/post-18130
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
They changed a few operations on the Haunting. Now if the queue is to the inter gate they add an extra member of staff so now your only waiting roughly 7 mins per cycle.
They also testing out 4 extra guests so currently they loading each row 2-4-2 so it’s back onto 32 guests so currently it’s roughly up to 256ph.
Also they continued with the Ivy removal
Post in thread 'The Haunting'
https://www.draytontalk.co.uk/threads/the-haunting.102/post-18130
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Interesting state of affairs when 256pph is considered “good”.
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
They changed a few operations on the Haunting. Now if the queue is to the inter gate they add an extra member of staff so now your only waiting roughly 7 mins per cycle.
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Never actually seen this, ive seen 2 members of staff on it, even 3! but they take turns in the usual 15 mins cycle or sit around and do nothing. Who would've knew 29 years ago there was 3 groups going through the ride.
 
Haz said:
Never actually seen this, ive seen 2 members of staff on it, even 3! but they take turns in the usual 15 mins cycle or sit around and do nothing. Who would've knew 29 years ago there was 3 groups going through the ride.
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They would have needed it then as back in 1996 I remember going with my dad in the summer and you had to queue as it was then but there also had a temporary zip zap queue in the other bit of the queue and out the front of the main gates.
 
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Themeparksandy1981 said:
They would have needed it then as back in 1996
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They need it now too, Towers didn’t stop using 3 groups on Hex after its opening year I don’t know why this should stop as well. It has the potential to be one of the most high capacity rides in the park and that doesn’t really take much effort.
 
It has always surprised me that Drayton doesn’t run The Haunting like Alton runs Hex and have a group in each room.

Even on the very quiet days I’ve been visiting on more recently, the ride has attracted a fair little wait, so I would imagine it gets busy on peak days.

If they had a group per room like on Hex, it would attain a much higher capacity. They could even use voice announcements like they do on Hex so as to save on staff (potentially?).
 
I swear they USED to run it like that?


Think parents should take responsibility for not thinking that a ride called "The Haunting" might be too scary for their kid.

Though apparently mine didn’t give a damn about Geisterschloss or the Hex pre-shows.
 
Benzin said:
I swear they USED to run it like that?


Think parents should take responsibility for not thinking that a ride called "The Haunting" might be too scary for their kid.

Though apparently mine didn’t give a damn about Geisterschloss or the Hex pre-shows.
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Parents simply not responsible anymore so height restriction increase might be the only way to stop it to keep the immersion
 
Couldn’t they find some way of automating the process of allowing people to opt out midway through so that a staff member doesn’t have to yell it every time? Wouldn’t a sign pointing to the door, or even an automated announcement, suffice so that people could discreetly remove themselves at given points?

One thing I’ll admit I’ve always thought is clever about Hex is how they can have multiple groups passing through that relatively long attraction with relatively few staff. Drayton Manor could take notes from their rival further North in terms of how to get people through a Madhouse seamlessly with a low staff requirement, I feel.
 
Matt N said:
so that people could discreetly remove themselves at given points?
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They've gave people the choice of leaving since 1996 through the C - Run, it was in 2016 when they added "is everyone ok to continue?" at every scene, im sure the staff wouldn't say it either if they had the choice. It's a scary ride, people should expect that when joining the queue, it is quite literally a massive haunted house.
 
Haz said:
They've gave people the choice of leaving since 1996 through the C - Run, it was in 2016 when they added "is everyone ok to continue?" at every scene, im sure the staff wouldn't say it either if they had the choice. It's a scary ride, people should expect that when joining the queue, it is quite literally a massive haunted house.
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Why did they ditch this in favour of the staff member speaking, then?

It doesn’t seem to make much sense. Was it felt that the prior option wasn’t well advertised enough?
 
Matt N said:
Why did they ditch this in favour of the staff member speaking, then?

It doesn’t seem to make much sense. Was it felt that the prior option wasn’t well advertised enough?
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They still let people out of course if they want to, I think they wanted the ride to be more family friendly when they did the refurbishment in 2016, and that’s why they added it into the staff dialogue. I don’t see why they repeat it every time though because it’s said before the first preshow starts. I’m sure it’ll be changed soon enough though.
 
I think one of the issues is that The Haunting is scarier than people tend to expect for the park. Yes, parents should take responsibility, but so many people raise an eyebrow at The Haunting, there must be a mismatch somewhere. For a park like Drayton that emphasises it's family friendly, you wouldn't be unreasonable to expect something more like Ghostly Manor at Paultons.
 
Drayton always puts all guests ahead of parents judgement on all rides.
Like for an example on a ride if a kid is crying, stressing out they ask the child if they really do want to ride not the parent. Many times the parent said they be ok but the staff are trained to listen to the kids and if they don’t want to go on they won’t run the ride and the adult will still be able to ride if the child is fine to stay behind the exit gate on there own or can be met by another family member.
The Haunting rule was brought in as kids were crying and parents were asking if they can leave the ride and that’s why they ask if anyone is ok to continue.
The ride will also need to be completely changed with the doors been made Automatic to open and the start sequence buttons are in the Skeleton corridor and in the library so they will need to be moved to the operator area in the trailer.
 
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