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Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

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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?
 
I don't understand why there's no ERT. The rides that were part of it are none of those that are affected anyway. Must be some logical reasoning behind it.
 
Potentially to control guest flow from the get go rather than having people arriving in dribs and drabs. Doesn't seem to be the likely concept behind it, but it's all I can fathom.
 
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.

I understand that if you have a 3 day trip planned and X-Sector along with Spinball being closed would have a big impact on your trip - you'd do well to fill 3 days at Towers with everything open! And of course people will complain, heck I bet they get complaints in the next few weeks that The Smiler is closed.

I'm sure Towers will help you as best they can if all the closures remain for you visit. At a guess - The Smiler will definitely be closed, and I would expect X-Sector to remain closed but Spinball to be open. No it's not brilliant but it is totally understandable. People have been seriously injured on a coaster, Towers and the HSE have to undertake an investigation. Towers want the park to be open but they need to give time and space for a thorough investigation. Complaints about this would be petty and inconsiderate in my opinion.

For a 3 day trip, I would either try and cancel or make use of the many other attractions that are now at Towers; waterpark, golf, high ropes etc.
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'm not so sure. All coasters across Merlin's UK parks have adopted an extra level of safety procedures. Spinball, Fury and Rattlesnake remain closed as these are taking longer to implement. The main reason Oblivion remains closed is because of its location, I would imagine it would be able to adopt the new safety procedures easily like the other B&M's across the chain.

The HSE and Towers won't want people in and around X-Sector whilst the investigation is ongoing. Towers say that X-Sector will remain closed until further notice.

EDIT:

Alton Towers appear to be giving out free return tickets to guests today as soon as they enter the park. Brilliant service!

:)
 
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Question all, sorry to be morbid and don't mean it in a scaremongering way, if this happened say on Nemesis, would the leg injuries be be much worse? As far as I remember there is no " buffer" that will stop a collision with the car in front?

But to be fair, I have never thought about it before so never would of looked
 
Question all, sorry to be morbid and don't mean it in a scaremongering way, if this happened say on Nemesis, would the leg injuries be be much worse? As far as I remember there is no " buffer" that will stop a collision with the car in front?

But to be fair, I have never thought about it before so never would of looked

All B&M coasters (that I know of) have buffers at the front and rear of the trains. However these are not designed to stop collisions during the ride, mainly because coasters should not crash. They are more for very low speed bumps in break runs (this happened to me once on Spinball actually) or possibly used against buffers in maintenace sheds.

I don't think there is any point or reason to discuss what injuries may or may not have been on other coasters though.

:)
 
Please correct me and tell me I am seeing things, been on Google earth, please tell me Google earth have not put as there satellite photo, a picture of last Tuesday. There is a crane, and what looks like a van nearby. I hope this isn't what I'm seeing. I apologise if this has been mentioned before, think its disgraceful
 
Please correct me and tell me I am seeing things, been on Google earth, please tell me Google earth have not put as there satellite photo, a picture of last Tuesday. There is a crane, and what looks like a van nearby. I hope this isn't what I'm seeing. I apologise if this has been mentioned before, think its disgraceful

That is from one of the times The Smiler stalled previously. We all thought it was quite amusing at the time that Google had captured the train being taken off. It is not from this incident.

:)
 
The google image was taken when a train valleyed during testing a couple of years back.

I am surprised that news outlets did not see this and use it
 
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