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Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

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do you see the guest numbers as a long term or short term problem? Its mad that people consider alton unsafe! I love pleasure beach and i could understand the term that place looks unsafe, rickety wooden coasters but alton its all modern, OTSR and to be fair my criticism in the past would be its quite sterile, a bit too safe feeling, health and safety corporate world.

its crackers, that pleasure beach is busier than towers on a wet day compared to a sunny day at towers. I have my annual pass in hand and will ride the rides and hopefully people fly through those doors for scariest. As to be honest alton is designed for queues, waiting 10 mins for people to join hex, seeing trains fly around with no one on them, is bad enough but being only a few people through a scare maze will be feel like when i did blackpool dungeons with 6 people and christ that felt so boring and slow
 
Grand_Nash said:
do you see the guest numbers as a long term or short term problem? Its mad that people consider alton unsafe! I love pleasure beach and i could understand the term that place looks unsafe, rickety wooden coasters but alton its all modern, OTSR and to be fair my criticism in the past would be its quite sterile, a bit too safe feeling, health and safety corporate world.

its crackers, that pleasure beach is busier than towers on a wet day compared to a sunny day at towers. I have my annual pass in hand and will ride the rides and hopefully people fly through those doors for scariest. As to be honest alton is designed for queues, waiting 10 mins for people to join hex, seeing trains fly around with no one on them, is bad enough but being only a few people through a scare maze will be feel like when i did blackpool dungeons with 6 people and christ that felt so boring and slow
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I've also been wondering if it's a short term or long term problem. I'm a little surprised that visitor numbers are still extremely low a couple of months on.

And I agree that Blackpool Pleasure Beach feels a lot less safe (and probably is a lot less safe). I suppose people are reacting to the association between AT and the recent serious injuries, rather than an in depth consideration of safety issues overall.
 
Id say every park is safe in its own right, and pleasure beach is probably in the same league on safety with merlin, drayton etc as i know the woodies are inspected so tightly and the reason they look poor is because they have stopped painting the wood so they can inspect all the joints easier and effectively. Id say the industry is moving away from thrill seekers and to the kids market and i think if this is still biting in 18months then alton will focus more on cbeebies and try to rebuild on that market and ready cash through pester power. It was telling that thorpe seem to have been affected in the profit warning too. consumer confidence is low atm
 
I think sadly it may be a long term effect on visitor numbers. I thought it would be quiet but I was shocked on how quiet it actually was.
Every ride being walk on is not usual at all for this time of year let alone empty cars going round. It's like the whole place had been privately booked for a couple thousand people every day, very strange atmosphere :eek:
 
Well I'm picking up my merlin pass today and had no plans to go to alton towers till the end of September but in support I'm making the 7 hour round trip either next weekend or the one after and dragging as many people with me as I can!
 
I think guest numbers will pick up at the back end of the season. Early summer is actually quieter than you think (not this quiet) as people are away.

Think the recent Daily Mail article about how quiet it is will help too.
 
An additional factor is just how unpopular the Smiler will be if and when it reopens. It would probably be a financial liability to open it anyway. If the park has had such a dramatic loss in guests, how popular do you think the ride itself would be? It would be virtually enthusiasts riding and no one else, certainly this year.

I think all days/periods remaining of this season are going to be down on numbers massively. They project that there will be continuing effects into next season, but that the new addition in 2017 will help them to recover back to normality.
 
Actually, lots of people aren't going because the smiler is shut. It's their favourite ride, so they don't want to go until it's open.
 
Tom said:
An additional factor is just how unpopular the Smiler will be if and when it reopens. It would probably be a financial liability to open it anyway. If the park has had such a dramatic loss in guests, how popular do you think the ride itself would be? It would be virtually enthusiasts riding and no one else, certainly this year.

I think all days/periods remaining of this season are going to be down on numbers massively. They project that there will be continuing effects into next season, but that the new addition in 2017 will help them to recover back to normality.
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So many pros and cons, I do think if it's opened next season then the negative or will carry on into 2016 season though but you would understand their decision though
 
They could generate tons of free press coverage for the all the new Scarefest by re-opening The Smiler. Sure, it'll be bad press but at least it'll be getting the halloween event noticed.

Only thing is it may be considered bad taste.
 
They need focused marketing for scarefest aimed at the scare community. The opening pf smiler for scarefest would be in gad taste
 
Yes, but maybe considered worse taste if it is opened before all compensation is sorted out and they can say what happened (human error, technical fault...) I think opening it for scarefest would be good, but it just gives more excuses for people to give them hate. If they did open it for scarefest though, they could use the air shop developments to get people to visit, and looking at their Facebook, lots of people are not visiting until the smiler is open.
 
I was thinking about how it would look opening the smiler, a ride where legs where lost at the start of scarefest where blood and gore is celebrated.
Personally i think many would see this as incentive, and some newspapers will push that fact.
 
delta79 said:
I was thinking about how it would look opening the smiler, a ride where legs where lost at the start of scarefest where blood and gore is celebrated.
Personally i think many would see this as incentive, and some newspapers will push that fact.
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I agree, I think they would either need to soft launch it in September or wait till next season, hope it's September though
 
I think it will take about 2 years before visitor numbers are back to normal. I think next year will be quiet as well.

As for the Smiler, i'm not sure what will happen here. They wont reopen it this year and certainally not before the H&S investigation is published and the compensation has been paid out. I cant ever see it reopening as the Smiler again, I would say thats a certainty given the name of the ride and what happened. A major re-theme is needed to try and reintroduce the ride I think.

As for visitor numbers this year - charging £250 a night to stay in a lodge isnt helping entice people back. I notice people were complaining on Towers facebook page when the "free kids and kids eat free" offer started the other day. People we getting quotes for a 2 night stay of over £600, which people just cannot afford to pay. Plus, given the "standard" of the rooms in the hotels, I wouldnt pay it either when I can stay in a larger and air conditioned room just down the road in the Holiday Inn for a quarter of that price. They need to be doing better offers to get people to go back and stay.
 
The investigation into the smiler and payout could take anything up to 3 years even as long as 5 so it's unlikely they will leave it that long, but yes I can't see it reopening as the smiler. Past incidents at other parks such as lightweight Valley have resulted in a renaming.
 
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Ive always thought, hoped and said that the Smiler would be running before end of season. Ive now changed my mind.
The ride will stay closed this year then come next March the park will open and I believe so will the Smiler, no big fan fair no big deal it will just be open along will all other rides.
 
I don't see anything worse about the name the smiler, surely 13 (bad luck), oblivion (the state of being forgotten) or nemesis (enemy).

The tag lines, yes. Knowing about the crash, they were a bad choice.
 
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