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Monorail Refurbishment

They could always create a new entrance by Galactica but also keep a smaller entrance by Towers Street but obviously with a smaller amount of parking nearby. When the smaller parking available near Towers Street is full then all traffic would then go to the Galactica end. So if you want to enter at Towers Street you just make sure you turn up nice and early. Saves the cost of running and looking after the monorail but you may lose a bit of express parking revenue, as well as initial costs for creating the new Galactica entrance. That would be my preferred plan.
 
They won’t open a new entrance as I guess they make quite a bit of money from the express parking and the coaches park near the entrance. I think the monorails have got years left In them.
 
Does the coach park even make money? Also, money saved on staffing and running the monorail would offset a potential loss of express parking revenue to some degree but I won't pretend to know the figures. I'm not saying it's the best plan but I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand without knowing a bit more detail. As I said, that would personally be my preferred plan but there may be reasons why Towers wouldn't even consider it.

Edit - I've just read your comment back again and realise that you didn't mean that the coach park makes money so disregard what I said about that :D
 
BarryZola said:
They could always create a new entrance by Galactica
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I feel that the main entrance if removed would be a great loss to the park, the views of the Iconic Towers as you enter the park is the first thing that you see and is a great start to the day. However the gates next to Galactica are always open
to exit at the end of the day. So if you finish your day in or near FV, then just head towards Galatica to exit and advoid the long walk to the main entrance and the mad rush to get onto the mono rail back.

I can't remember the last time I personally used the monorail, not suitable for Jess and too small to fit her wheelchair in. When I'm staying on site, I'm quiet happily walk from the enchanted village to the entrance and pushing a heavy wheelchair too. Not only great exerciser that keeps me fit, but also gets us to the turn-styles before anyone else.

At the end of the day, the walk from the enchanted village to the entrance is nothing compared to the amount of walking that we do once we are on the park.
 
To be fair, I did say a new entrance near Galactica ALONG WITH keeping a smaller one with less staff at Towers Street. That way you can still walk from the Galactica car park all the way to Towers Street if you'd like to, or turn up early and get one of the limited car parking spaces nearer Towers Street. You personally wouldn't be restricted by this, it just offers you an extra choice of entering near Galactica if you wanted to one day.
 
They will have to move all towers street for a new entrance. How else will they be able to sell all the tat they have in towers trading to people coming and going. How will they be able to sell all the extra tickets and fastrack from box office.
What they need is one staff at galactica gate to scan passholders in.
 
bluesonichd said:
They will have to move all towers street for a new entrance. How else will they be able to sell all the tat they have in towers trading to people coming and going. How will they be able to sell all the extra tickets and fastrack from box office.
What they need is one staff at galactica gate to scan passholders in.
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Yeah, I suppose the tat sales do have to be taken into consideration also, I didn't really think about that. I could live with just having the 1 or 2 members of staff to scan passholders in at Galactica. Cheap as chips and does the job.
 
I think the cost for refurbishment of the monorail is being overstated. It won’t be cheap, but neither is it likely to be tens of millions. The cost of moving the entrance to FV is going to be significant if they do any sort of half decent job (think shops, Guest Services, turnstiles, the corkscrew...). It would also significantly shift guest flow to the point there would be horrendous bottlenecks. More so it would also remove the ability to charge for express parking, and we know how much Merlin love those secondary revenue streams.

By the time they’ve sorted all that, a refurbishment of the monorail almost feels like the cheaper (and better) option.
 
venny said:
I think the cost for refurbishment of the monorail is being overstated. It won’t be cheap, but neither is it likely to be tens of millions. The cost of moving the entrance to FV is going to be significant if they do any sort of half decent job (think shops, Guest Services, turnstiles, the corkscrew...). It would also significantly shift guest flow to the point there would be horrendous bottlenecks. More so it would also remove the ability to charge for express parking, and we know how much Merlin love those secondary revenue streams.

By the time they’ve sorted all that, a refurbishment of the monorail almost feels like the cheaper (and better) option.
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If new trains are in the mix, I cant see it not being 8 figures.

The rule of thumb for electrical passenger transport (taking a direct feed, rather than a battery) is normally that a 40 year life can be expected with proper maintenance. Perhaps you can add a bit to that because these spend half the year sat still (although there are cons to that) but subtract a significant amount from that since it's unlikely these have ever had the maintenance Von Roll would have suggested.

Sometimes these things can be re-motored to extend their life by 10-15 years, but that relies on the vehicle itself being fundamentally sound, and even that is likely to cost millions.
 
Add a few tat shop containers around the new entrance, and make a fortune from extra express parking around the new entrance.
Keep the old entrance as well, but add more express parking on the coach park area.
The coaches could drop off and park further away.
I would happily pay extra for a two minute walk to nemesis at the start of the day.
 
I think a plausible way forward might be to keep the main entrance at Towers Street, but have the gate by Galactica as a "priority entrance" of sorts, to be used by groups such as hotel guests and MAP holders. Maybe disabled guests or people who have trouble walking to the main entrance or boarding the Monorail could use it too?

This method would keep the entrance in Towers Street, but it would also offer quite a good perk for staying in the hotels or buying an MAP, in my opinion, especially if the FV rides were opened for ERT!

Blackpool Pleasure Beach does something similar; they still have the main entrance up by Noah's Ark and the Casino building, but they have a small gate for hotel guests near Big One and Skyforce. This seems to work quite well as a perk for hotel guests, and it didn't even require a lot of infrastructure to be added, as far as I'm aware.
 
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I definitely think the monorail is slowly on it's way out - it's now about to enter it's 33rd season. The efficiency changes (not in a good way due to the boarding process / no air-gates) have impacted it's capacity.

Land-trains would offer a lot more flexibility and could, of course, make different / additional stops - whereas the monorail can only stop in two places (to guests - there is a 3rd halt only accessible from the drivers cab at the maintenance shed / transfer track).

Given the proposed semi hard surfacing of the "the meadow" / car park P, land trains would be very useful on the 50 or so days a season when Towers expect to use the facility - and would improve the guest experience as they would be able to run directly to that car park.

There are only two caveats I have about land trains. First, you cannot have too many stops & the trains have to run frequently. Ask anyone who had been to Center Parcs in Longleat and stayed in the west-side [Fir] area... it's a common complaint that the land train all too often turns up already full & it's 15-20mins until the next one is due. The second is I have seen how some of the Towers staff drive their personal vehicles... let the wrong staff near a land train and it'll turn into a white-knuckle ride before you've even entered the park!

Finally, the coach park does not make any money per-se, but given that a double-decker coach could be delivering circa 80 guests to the park, that's a lot of potential on-park spend & profit. I'll use McDonalds as an example - the ingredients cost of a medium extra value meal is under £1. So now think about the Burger Kitchen prices & food quality - their cost-base will be lower than McDonalds. NB: this is the ingredient cost only - (you have to add on labour & running costs) but even so, even if only 25% of the guests off a coach trip buy food, it's a nice kerr-chink for Merlin. And lets face it, a far higher percentage of guests off a coach trip will spend on-park.

Towers definitely need to keep the main entrance on Towers Street for non-hotel guests - as land trains & indeed the monorail are not suited to disabled guests who need to use a wheelchair & the Towers Street entrance has disabled parking.
 
@Kraken27 raises a good point about a land train if one was to be put into use; it could stop in far more places. The issue that the Monorail currently suffers from is that it was built in 1987, long before Alton Towers even had any hotels or non-theme park activities on site. I'd also imagine that the field car parks got substantially less use in the 1980s, as I'm under the impression that the crowds didn't really get massive until Tussauds took over in the 1990s.

What I'm basically trying to say is that the Monorail was built in an era where all of the car parks were a relatively easy walk away from the station at the car parks end. Nowadays, however, Alton Towers has 5 accommodation places, a waterpark, a high ropes course and a mini golf course, as well as overflow car parks. These have naturally expanded the park's boundaries and been placed on the farthest edges of the site in some cases, so the journey to the Monorail station from some of these places is quite a hike in itself. If you're staying in Splash Landings or at Extraordinary Golf, it's not too much of a problem, but I'd imagine that if you're staying at the Enchanted Village, at Treetop Quest or in one of the overflow car parks, the Monorail station is a fair walk away in itself.

If the park keeps the Monorail as its primary transportation source, then this isn't an issue that can be solved without a major extension to the Monorail that would likely cost a huge amount of money. A land train would solve this issue for a much smaller price, and if they ran them frequently, then I think they would work well. I've been to Center Parcs numerous times, and they work well there.
 
If the entrance did move then the Corkscrew's track would also have to be moved, which would be a real shame. Walking under that on the way in and out has got to be one of the best theme park entrance experiences of any park, anywhere.
 
DiogoJ42 said:
Each to their own, I guess. All it does for me is remind me of the park we used to have.
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That's why it's so important; It reminds visitors of the park's past. :)

jon81uk said:
I still don’t get why they stopped allowing people to wait for the next train on the platform. Every single train station around the country works with people stood on a platform as a train comes in.
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There are boarding aisles, they just need to add gates. We all know it won't happen though as it would cost money. :p
 
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