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Fireworks 2016

BarryZola said:
Tell that to a family who had a Family Annual Pass and their kids had been looking forward to the night for the last month and got refused entry. Then a couple of 20 somethings turn up as part of a boozy afternoon/evening and just rock on in because they bought their reduced price entry tickets on-line a few days ago. If you're OK with that then I would question your thought process. If not, surely the best thing would have been to allow anyone in until capacity was reached, then turn away EVERYONE. Only people I can think of who should be excluded from that would be people who were already staying in the hotels. I wonder what the Daily Mail will have to say about all this ay?
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I didn't say I was or wasn't ok with anything, I just said I understood where they were coming from. *IF* it had to be a choice between the two, I can see why they chose to favour pre-paid guests over MAPs, that's all. And my thought process is just fine, thank you :).

But what I will say, however, is that anyone serious about wanting a trip to Towers on what has historically always been the busiest night of the year, I would expect them not to be so naive as to turn up in the late afternoon, which is when Towers started refusing guests entry. When any type of first come/first served system is in place, turning up later in the day is ridiculously reckless in my opinion, and you only have yourself to blame if you are turned away. When I take my two kids to Towers (which, I hasten to add, is a very long journey for me), I would make sure I am there as early as possible so as to avoid upset - and I am an annual pass holder.

So if we take you hypothetical suggestion of an Annual Pass family being refused entry, I'd question why, if their kids were looking forward to it so much, their parents hadn't tried to arrive as early as possible? And if they had known in advance that they wouldn't be able to get there before late afternoon, perhaps it'd have been better not to have committed to going in the first place.
 
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i can see their rational about Pre-Booked. pre-booked does give them an idea of how many are likely to turn up on that day so it's a benefit to Towers.

Again it's a symbol of their ever changing a failing systems. You can't allow pass holders to pre-book, what if they have a pass and a friend doesn't or if they have disabled people, people with vouchers or bogofs who can't pre-book.

They have so many different pricing options they've shot themselves in the foot.
 
Croftybaby said:
i can see their rational about Pre-Booked. pre-booked does give them an idea of how many are likely to turn up on that day so it's a benefit to Towers.

Again it's a symbol of their ever changing a failing systems. You can't allow pass holders to pre-book, what if they have a pass and a friend doesn't or if they have disabled people, people with vouchers or bogofs who can't pre-book.

They have so many different pricing options they've shot themselves in the foot.
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This, I fully agree with.
 
maybe the alternative would be to make pass holders buy tickets normally and give them a credit in the park, maybe the same amount off their next pass or just simply the cash back. this would solve a problem of people booking but not turning up. Or maybe the way Thorpe park does it works fine.

While they are researching this problem, maybe they could research how Food Outlets manage to sell food to it's customers, although I reckon Best Practice point 1 would be to open up the outlets in the first place :p Closely followed by nipping down to Costco to get some stock.
 
andeyhart said:
I didn't say I was or wasn't ok with anything, I just said I understood where they were coming from. *IF* it had to be a choice between the two, I can see why they chose to favour pre-paid guests over MAPs, that's all. And my thought process is just fine, thank you :).

But what I will say, however, is that anyone serious about wanting a trip to Towers on what has historically always been the busiest night of the year, I would expect them not to be so naive as to turn up in the late afternoon, which is when Towers started refusing guests entry. When any type of first come/first served system is in place, turning up later in the day is ridiculously reckless in my opinion, and you only have yourself to blame if you are turned away. When I take my two kids to Towers (which, I hasten to add, is a very long journey for me), I would make sure I am there as early as possible so as to avoid upset - and I am an annual pass holder.

So if we take you hypothetical suggestion of an Annual Pass family being refused entry, I'd question why, if their kids were looking forward to it so much, their parents hadn't tried to arrive as early as possible?
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Fair enough. My point in this mess is that there shouldn't have been a decision as to who gets entry between annual pass holders or tickets bought online. It should have just been a case of capacity being reached, then no further guests allowed in due to safety concerns. Not one rule for one group and a different one for the other.

On your final point, maybe one parent works on a weekend until 2-3pm and could not get the time off work at this time.
 
Today shows why it was better as a 3 day event and I doubt this is saving them any more money by cutting it to two days.

Capacity issues aside, the park is a bit of a shambles. Multiple park rides and attractions closed (Sub-Terra, Charlie, Hex, Driving School, no pirate shows or street ents, plus the removal of Ripsaw and closure of The Flume), hardly any food outlets open either. As the biggest event of the year they really need to open as much as possible and get extra staffing in to keep up with the high demands.

Looking on Facebook it looks like ATH only has Dragon Bar open, with not enough staff. Why not open the second bar?! On a night where the hotel is fully booked it's a mess operating everything like this and certainly won't give the event a good reputation if they keep it like this in future years.

Sort it out Towers.

On a brighter note, the pictures of the fireworks show look pretty nice. Looking forward to watching videos of the show tomorrow.
 
Sorry but people who leave it until last minute to go to the park even though it's been advertised for days telling people to get there early or prebook have no one to blame but themselves.
 
BarryZola said:
Fair enough. My point in this mess is that there shouldn't have been a decision as to who gets entry between annual pass holders or tickets bought online. It should have just been a case of capacity being reached, then no further guests allowed in due to safety concerns. Not one rule for one group and a different one for the other.

On your final point, maybe one parent works on a weekend until 2-3pm and could not get the time off work at this time.
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In that case, they should maybe not have committed to going in the first place.

But you're right, it is a mess. Turning away guests sets a terrible precedent. The biggest issue, however, I would say is the lack of food options available, not to mention the fact they all appear to be under-staffed. The queues for the food, from what I've seen on social media, is unacceptable even on a day as busy as this.
 
GaryH said:
Sorry but people who leave it until last minute to go to the park even though it's been advertised for days telling people to get there early or prebook have no one to blame but themselves.
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I agree but when u can't get there until late(due to commitments) and u can't prebook what are you suppose to do????


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James said:
Today shows why it was better as a 3 day event and I doubt this is saving them any more money by cutting it to two days.

Capacity issues aside, the park is a bit of a shambles. Multiple park rides and attractions closed (Sub-Terra, Charlie, Hex, Driving School, no pirate shows or street ents, plus the removal of Ripsaw and closure of The Flume), hardly any food outlets open either. As the biggest event of the year they really need to open as much as possible and get extra staffing in to keep up with the high demands.

Looking on Facebook it looks like ATH only has Dragon Bar open, with not enough staff. Why not open the second bar?! On a night where the hotel is fully booked it's a mess operating everything like this and certainly won't give the event a good reputation if they keep it like this in future years.

Sort it out Towers.

On a brighter note, the pictures of the fireworks show look pretty nice. Looking forward to watching videos of the show tomorrow.
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That's the thing, they've just about managed to get away with the closed attractions for the majority of the season with guest numbers still low. But it's on days like this, and scarefest, that the depleted line up really causes problems.
 
Maybe they should of bussed up some of the Thope/Chessington F&B hosts for a few days. Thats what My company would have done if they needed trained staff...
 
I apologise if I caused any offence to anyone, but all I was trying to ask is why have things got to a situation like this? who thought trying to have such a high profile event was going to work over two nights instead of three? A company wants to make money , I manage a shop. If I turned paying customers away due to poor organisation I would be in trouble, big trouble!. So all I am asking is who made this decision? and is this going to be investigated? Why so few food outlets open too? isn't this were a lot of money is to get spent?
 
I was there tonight all day and will be again tomorrow to see the display a second time.

This was my first visit to their fireworks event and it must be said, I loved every minute of it! Everything from the selection of music to the perfectly synced lasers, lights, fireworks and fire effects used both on the rig and behind the lake was very well done.

As for the giant LED display used, it was used to tell the story of where the captain's daughter takes over the space ship and accidentally flies it though several galaxies and planets, one of which involved getting stuck in the hands of an alien race.

To get out of this and return to earth, she had to fly the ship herself and she knew how to as she played the Space Invaders game using a virtual reality headset. So there was a firework display segment involving Space Invaders and the music having a sort of retro gaming twist to it.

When she returns the ship to earth back to her father, the finale begins with as always the ITHOTMK theme played which also had the retro gaming twist added to it at the beginning.

To summarise, this really was dedicated purely to Galactica and nothing else. I really enjoy the ride (and especially it's theme music), so this was a great show for me and I can't wait for it all again tomorrow!
 
I'm very surprised at the amount of negativity surrounding the park hitting capacity, obviously they brought it on themselves with the reduced ride and f&b availability, but they took the correct course of action given the number of guests they got. Smiler didn't clear it's queue until around 10pm tonight and thirteen was probably similar. Food outlets in also really struggled to cope with demand all day as TS pics show.

They've been warning people all week to arrive early to avoid disappointment and short of setting up a prebooking system for map holders at short notice I don't think they could have done much more.
 
This is making great reading. Maybe the towersstreet team could asked towers about why they decided on the turn away rules.
Closing to guests is not a decision they made lightly.
 
Absolutely disgusting level of service from the park today. Absolute idiots. Imbaciles. Utter morons. That's who's running this park. I'm gonna have a major rant about this when I get home.

On the positive side the "show" aspect of tonight was a good effort. Felt like the old days theming the show to a ride, but the fireworks were cheap. Really cheap! Jubilee's own firework event in September at Catton Hall was 100 times better than what I saw tonight. Obviously just no money for fireworks at Towers. Sound was spot on this year, back to where it used to be. It was loud, and good coverage with multiple delay towers positioned around the site.

I will say however that the vibe of the show was kinda killed off, again, with another awful pop mashup. Why do they keep doing this year after year just when the show is starting to go somewhere? Once the girl mentioned "space DJ" I knew exactly what was coming. And ITHOTMK ending again. Urgh!

But as I say it was ok. Good effort!
 
For me this years show was all just a bit mediocre.
Last years show gave me goosebumps watching it,
maybe I just have a soft spot of hex, but by the end I did think wow :D fireworks , lights , orchestral sound track .. can't go wrong
This year however the only part that elicited any kind of emotion from me was David Bowie .. all the rest and by the end was all just a bit of a let down imo :(
 
Surely Towers should have done a pre booked ticket system for everyone? Thorpe does this on special events, even MAP holders have to book, even if there's no charge. This will inform all guests whether they can enter the park prior to the day in question, and Towers have a clear idea of how many guests will arrive.

Not rocket science surely?

Partaking in geekery since 1985
 
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