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Future of the Congo River Rapids

s_g_k said:
You may be onto something here. What if Wickerman was built on the site of CRR and The Flume got a heavy refurb?
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If Wicker Man cost £16m on the Flume site, imagine the cost of it if it was built on the Rapids site; we probably would've ended up with a similar sized (or smaller) coaster due to the larger costs for clearing the Rapids site if they didn't want to spend much more than £16m
 
DistortAMG said:
The fiberglass of the Flume was closing in on the end of it's life. If you get 50 years out of that material in those conditions, you've done extremely well. Which would be 9 years from now. It doesn't last that long, relatively speaking, compared to other materials, especially in the elements and in a damp environment. The whole trough would need replacing at some point as it was all fiberglass. Which is almost as good as replacing the whole attraction, as most of the attraction consisted of the fiberglass trough.
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The trough was replaced in 2004. It went from being a very battered and patched up green to a smart bright blue to match the theme of the new ride.

You can just about see the difference on Towers Street's gallery:

The Flume - The Park of the Past - Your premier Alton Towers guide

Your ultimate guide to The Flume - a former attraction in Mutiny Bay at Alton Towers theme park
towersstreet.com towersstreet.com
 
It was re lined. The underlying fiberglass would still be falling to pieces. In fact, it was relined in the first place, as a cheap way to stop the leaks from said fiberglass falling to pieces.

You could get away with that in 2004. Just over 20 years of age. More drastic action would have been required the second time around.

Bringing it back to CRR. I really do think the park are missing an opportunity here in making this a great attraction once again. Hopefully we will see some substantial TLC soon. It needs it and it deserves it.
 
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DistortAMG said:
It was re lined. The underlying fiberglass would still be falling to pieces. In fact, it was relined in the first place, as a cheap way to stop the leaks from said fiberglass falling to pieces.

You could get away with that in 2004. Just over 20 years of age. More drastic action would have been required the second time around.
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ITNG Boats get relaminated pretty much every year despite them leaking non stop. I wouldn't have put it past Towers to have just done the same to The Flume should it have remained. Fibreglass under the stress of constant submersion and battering against the walls of a trough would be lucky to last 15-20 years, not sure where the 50 years comes from above as that's under perfect conditions.

Good thing the rapids are a concrete layout.
 
JSG093 said:
Alton Towers - "Waterfalls are too dangerous."

Blackpool Pleasure Beach - "Hold my beer."

Valhalla.jpg
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Flume rides and rapids have massively different risks. There is no perceived benefit in changing seat mid-ride on a flume as you all are moving approximately towards water at the same time. Also flume rides tend to roll along the trough rather than float so restraints can be an added safety feature if you want them as the chance of a boat capsizing is next to none.

Rapids big issue is because the boat spins, there is a perceived benefit in changing seat if your current position is heading towards water, this encourages standing which is how the Drayton accident occurred. You also free float so restraints are a risk

Relife said:
I don't even know what the excuse is with the rapids anymore. Just give them an overhaul and get them back to Thier best, towers needs a decent water ride.
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As above the elements that have been cut encourage standing and the HSE went hard on that in their post Drayton accident report.

Obviously the tatty theming is another matter.
 
Dave said:
Flume rides and rapids have massively different risks. There is no perceived benefit in changing seat mid-ride on a flume as you all are moving approximately towards water at the same time. Also flume rides tend to roll along the trough rather than float so restraints can be an added safety feature if you want them as the chance of a boat capsizing is next to none.

Rapids big issue is because the boat spins, there is a perceived benefit in changing seat if your current position is heading towards water, this encourages standing which is how the Drayton accident occurred. You also free float so restraints are a risk



As above the elements that have been cut encourage standing and the HSE went hard on that in their post Drayton accident report.

Obviously the tatty theming is another matter.
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This was now years ago now. Merlin are just too lazy to invest in CRR to make health and safety compliant.
 
Relife said:
This was now years ago now. Merlin are just too lazy to invest in CRR to make health and safety compliant.
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It doesn’t matter when the incident occurred the H&S report was quite clear that guest should not be encouraged to stand up on rapids rides and cited a lot of the features parks across the country then switched off.

There isn’t a rapids ride in the country that didn’t get toned down after the Drayton incident and retrofitting a 30 year old rapids ride with modern safety systems seen on newer models is not going to be particularly easy. Firstly they would need a new fleet of boats and that is going to cost hundreds of thousands of pounds considering how many they run.

I agree the theming has been left to ruin and that is standard Merlin but I just don’t think they have a lot of confidence in returning the ride to its previous intensity (you would be surprised how often guests ended up in the trough at Towers, though usually deliberately, and they had better CCTV even pre-Drayton incident to monitor the ride).
 
Relife said:
This was now years ago now. Merlin are just too lazy to invest in CRR to make health and safety compliant.
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Utterly irrelevant how long ago it was - it sparked new HSE guidance which is very comprehensive, available to download for free from the HSE website, here.

It's well worth a read for anyone who has some time to spare (it's a weighty document...) - it shows just how incredibly difficult it is now to run a rapids ride in the UK. There'll never be another rapids ride built in the UK, and I honestly believe that within the next five or so years those that still exist will have been closed - the guidance is just too restrictive. But, quite possibly, this is what the HSE wanted all along...
 
Islander said:
There'll never be another rapids ride built in the UK, and I honestly believe that within the next five or so years those that still exist will have been closed - the guidance is just too restrictive. But, quite possibly, this is what the HSE wanted all along...
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You might be proven wrong seeing as Paultons is currently building a water ride heavily rumoured to be a Hafema rapids ride for 2024.

With that being said, I agree with your overall point. The HSE guidance all but forbids parks from employing effects that encourage people to stand up, which rules out any of the old classics like waterfalls, water cannons and such, as well as overly forceful wave machines.

If you think about it, it is almost a wonder that the HSE allowed rapids rides to operate as they did for so long. I’m not saying that rapids rides are/were unsafe by any means, but there is a lot of risk involved in operating them compared to other ride types.

Things like roller coasters with no restraints and block systems died out decades ago; modern roller coasters have restraints, block systems, upstop wheels, and all kinds of other failsafe mechanisms to make them completely foolproof.

Rapids rides, on the other hand, have no restraints and no way of controlling the boat’s flow past the station other than through the use of very blunt instruments like those roller-type things that you see every now and then on Congo. They are arguably not failsafe in the same way as something like a roller coaster, or even other types of modern water ride, because you have little way of controlling a boat that is freely flowing down a river and the guests seated within. Some responsibility for staying safe is handed to the guest, which is always risky, and there are no ways to control the flow of boats past the station. In the same sense as block sections, at least.
 
A question.

How on earth is there a scenario where rapids rides are under such strict restraint that waterfalls can’t be turned on due to concerns about guests standing, but it’s fine for Valhalla to throw you down numerous drops and up lift hills within a massive warehouse with no restraints whatsoever?
 
Josh555 said:
A question.

How on earth is there a scenario where rapids rides are under such strict restraint that waterfalls can’t be turned on due to concerns about guests standing, but it’s fine for Valhalla to throw you down numerous drops and up lift hills within a massive warehouse with no restraints whatsoever?
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As @Dave inferred, the risks are very different with a rapids ride.

On something like Valhalla, there is little incentive to move because everyone is plummeting down the same drop and (in theory at least) you'll get just as wet wherever you sit. On a rapids ride, however, waves and effects can often hit one seat far more than the others, so there is sometimes an incentive to stand up and move away from the wettest seats.

I'd also wager that people would be more aware of the dangers of standing up when a boat is plummeting down a big, steep drop, whereas the dangers are arguably less obvious on a rapids ride.
 
Skyscraper said:
Wasn't it kind of shoehorned into a space that wasn't quite big enough?
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@Rick might correct me here, but I believe Intamin actually told Geoffrey Thompson that the site wasn't big enough to accommodate runoffs of appropriate length after each drop. Despite this, Geoffrey Thompson told them to build it anyway.

So in short; yes, I think it was.
 
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