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Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

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AirFAN said:
Do you think they've closed Sub Terra to implement more stringent practises to ensure people aren't injured in say the maze portion of the ride? TBH I always hated the 'actors' in that ride, completely took away from the experience with their OTT 'acting'.
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Haven't all the actors gone now, due to budget cuts?
 
AirFAN said:
Do you think they've closed Sub Terra to implement more stringent practises to ensure people aren't injured in say the maze portion of the ride? TBH I always hated the 'actors' in that ride, completely took away from the experience with their OTT 'acting'.
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Sub-Terra closed before the accident due to technical issues. Think it's buggered.
 
Balb0wa said:
id forgot about sub terra being closed, wonder if they will open dark forest at 11 as well.
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That's a good point actually. With at least five rides down tomorrow for definite, it might go some way to appeasing visitors over the next few days if everything opened when it's supposed to (I.e. when the park opens).
 
bluesonichd said:
The amount of people on twitter wanting discounts because x sector isnt open ! U N B E L I E V A B L E!
:mad:
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I don't see the problem with that. I'm going on the 23rd for 3 days, 2 days booked in the hotel. Even though it should be quiet we've booked 3 days as the smiler queue was likely to be about an hour long and 3 days gives us plenty of time for our annual visit including time in the towers and gardens. (It's also our daughters birthday and first visit @ 140cm so we'll be having a blast)...

The smiler being down is understandable and unfortunate, however despite being our 2nd favourite ride will not hamper our day.

However with the whole our X-sector closed including our FAVOURITE ride Oblivion this means queues around the park are going to be larger. 3 rides are inaccessible including a place to eat. It might also be possible that the towers will be closed (we'll find out tomorrow I guess).

It's easy to judge other people when you've spent nothing or live nearby and visit weekly. Our visit is costing £300 and a 4 hour journey. We are planning to pickup annual passes £400 (I booked hotel without tickets for this purpose). Whenever I have visited in the past it hasn't been uncommon for at least 1 ride to be out of action for part or a whole day and back up the next. With 3 rides down to begin with these small outages are going to cause much bigger issues throughout the whole park. I'd rather not go and go another day when at least X-sector is open (as was the case when I booked). Oblivion is a throughput beast and when open keeps people occupied.

If X-sector is closed come the 23rd I would wholly appreciate a cancellation refund and we'll make our way to Thorpe, London Dungeons and probably Harry Potter world for 3 days instead.

(And before anyone preaches about T&Cs I appreciate ride outages are expected but a whole area of the park 2 of the big 6 - 1/3rd of the major rides along with any normal park downtime maintenance it's not brilliant for those that are paying a lot of money.)

Anyway fingers crossed it'll be open within 2 weeks. My guess is it'll open in a few days.

Edit: Not mentioning Sub-terra is also down but will probably be backup soon. If my trip was booked for tomorrow and 4 rides were down before I got there I wouldn't be too impressed.

Edit 2: Apparently Sonic Spinball won't be ready tomorrow either according to the website? 5 rides down, can't expect people not to moan or complain.
 
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As someone who visits once, maybe twice a year, I completely see your point and do agree, however I wouldn't expect any money back as... well, how do you work out a discount amount for starters? I don't intend to preach about T&Cs but they are there for a reason. That said, I wrote to Alton Towers in August 2013 when I visited to ride The Smiler but it was closed all day, despite there being no notice on their website before, and they allowed me to return in 2014 for free.
 
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Good to see the park re-open no surprise that X-sector is closed and spinball for the same reasons as Dragons Fury at Chessie. Safety appears to have come over profit AT these past few days.
 
Really happy the parks finally open but queues will be big with people using their tickets from the last week and those rides being shut (oblivion possibly has the best throughput as they load 2 trains at once, with 2 ready to go in) hope oblivion is open soon (only whent on it 2 weeks ago. Scared of heights but loved it :p)
 
bluesonichd said:
:rolleyes:

And now people want to change the date or use a different park on their FREE! Sun tickets!!! Wow!
I love the general public, jst glad im not part of them :rolleyes:
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I thought I read the other day that they would honour any tickets from the 4th, 5th or 6th. The tickets might be free but don't you have to collect tokens for them or something? I don't think it's that unreasonable to hope they'll allow entry on another day. (Unless you mean because X Sector is closed, in which case they're just being daft).
 
I think Oblivion will open in a week or so, it's a multi-car ride so will have the same delays as Spinball
 
I wonder what they mean with regards to 'extra levels of safety' for multi-car rides. I hope I'm being farcical when I talk about a fear of them implementing something like a single 'block zone' safety barrier - i.e. one empty block between each car as opposed to cars being in each block at each time. Something like that would compromise throughput immensely.
 
If they're taking extra levels of safety with multi car rides, shouldn't 13 be closed too as it can have 3 cars on at once? (1 in the station, 1 on the roller coaster section and 1 in the crypt/dark ride bit.)
 
Tom.B said:
If they're taking extra levels of safety with multi car rides, shouldn't 13 be closed too as it can have 3 cars on at once? (1 in the station, 1 on the roller coaster section and 1 in the crypt/dark ride bit.)
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I'm going to hazard a guess (and it is a guess) it might be a lot to do with the restart procedures on multicar rides after a shutdown.
 
who said that 13 has not had the extra layer of safety protocols. the training of staff could of been done over the weekend.
 
Yeah it wouldn't surprise me if all the coasters have had these new procedures put in place (not that I have any idea of what changes have been made). Spinball and Oblivion are just a little more complex so need more time for staff to be trained.
 
I wonder if Oblivion is only offline due to its proximity to the smiler. And the great aerial view of the crash site on the smiler.
 
I agree... as many have pointed out, no matter hiw they try to stop it, Alton cannot stop people viewing the site from the top of Blivvy. It will probably be discouraging them opening it until it is cleaned up as much as possible...

Is it open tomorrow, Alton that is?
 
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