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Oblivion: General Discussion

Could be a weight thing but if that's the case, typically you wouldn't be too concerned about particular seats, only that you would restrict the number of guests on the train, especially if you have a batcher.

Have never worked on a Dive Machine, so unsure of the specifics of the quirks of that particular model, or indeed Oblivion itself.
 
Could it be the lack of maintenance around Enterprise? Those 2 left seats on the banked turn are closest to Enterprise. Perhaps it’s just overgrown and they don’t want to risk someone catching an arm on a bit of foliage or something?
 
I did notice the empty seats last time I was there and I wasn't too sure why that was the case, then again given the tree situation some have said that might be the case, though honestly given how Oblivion I found to be something of a 5 to 10 minute wait time it didn't really bother me.

Anyway, glad somewhat brought up the topic because there is something I've wanted to know with the ride. With its sister ride on Gardaland which uses roughly the same theme albeit very much modern, was it planned that for the ride's anniversary in 2018 that it would get a refurbishment to update the theme to be like it's Italian counterpart? Does seem pretty plausible given how Merlin copy and paste several ideas around their parks and that given they opened Italian Oblivion in 2015, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a test to see what it looked liked before given it to our Oblivion in 2018. Only due to the Smiler crash that it and so many other plans all were delayed or thrown out of the window.

I know it might not happened or if I'm just making something out of nothing, but given the recent work for Duel and Nemesis, all pre-Merlin attractions which before they wouldn't touch, I might suspect that Oblivion might see something for 2028 or sooner perhaps for a long awaited update for the theming which honestly and the rest of X-Sector did look to be not only a sorry state but rather dated in someway, mostly with Oblivion which now screams 1990's. I love the '90's but still...

This might have been talked before and I'm left out of it as before.
 
With it being the same extreme edge seat on every shuttle it surely must be a clearance issue? Nothing else makes any logical sense to me.

One person on a shuttle that size with varuable guest builds is utterly meaningless weight wise.
 
If it was a clearance issue caused by greenery, though; wouldn’t they just trim the bush in question?

I can’t think of anything else that would cause a clearance issue on Oblivion’s edge seat.
 
Matt N said:
If it was a clearance issue caused by greenery, though; wouldn’t they just trim the bush in question?

I can’t think of anything else that would cause a clearance issue on Oblivion’s edge seat.
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Yes, probably not greenery for this amount of time.

If there has been a damaged fingertip incident this would be the immediate reaction, could well be someone with abnormally long arms has touched something and it needs looking in to or some bit of maintance in the tunnel has reduced the clearance so this is preemptive.
The clearances aren't that large.
 
That's me that is.
You could have added tall idiot.
Found a brand new one on the Big One just a few weeks ago...
This would have my vote too, hanging out the side of the end seats on Oblivion is scarier than being upstanding on the National.
Time I stopped at my age.
 
Could having only 14 seats rather than 16 be why the ride has appeared to have slightly quicker dispatch times this year (from my timings, at least)? Because each staff member is having 1 less restraint to check, therefore it’s not taking quite as long?

On a side note; why is it that Oblivion’s queue line randomly splits into two lanes at so many points throughout? It’s always confused me… it can’t be FT, as that gets merged into the queue far later on (possibly even at the station?), and RAP gets on via the exit.
 
Matt N said:
Could having only 14 seats rather than 16 be why the ride has appeared to have slightly quicker dispatches this year (from my timings, at least)? Because each staff member is having 1 less restraint to check, therefore it’s not taking quite as long?
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Perhaps but it's definitely decreasing throughput, it was dreadful for Oblivion standards (usually pretty good) when I visited the other Saturday. Never seen Oblivions queue move so slowly.
 
JAperson said:
Perhaps but it's definitely decreasing throughput, it was dreadful for Oblivion standards (usually pretty good) when I visited the other Saturday. Never seen Oblivions queue move so slowly.
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That’s very true; the throughput will be decreased due to having less seats open, but the dispatch time has seemed slightly quicker this year to me; assuming a full 16-rider train, I’ve almost consistently timed Oblivion’s dispatch times as equating to over 1,000pph in 2022, whereas 800-900pph was more typical in 2021, from my experience.

I only asked because I remember Thirteen having some insanely quick dispatch intervals during COVID… when they only loaded 6 people per train. The throughput was vastly, vastly lower, but the intervals between trains were a fair bit quicker.

I also remember Wicker Man getting slightly quicker dispatch intervals during COVID when they only loaded 2/3 of the seats.

With that in mind, I wondered whether something similar might be happening on Oblivion (albeit not nearly as extreme as Thirteen or WM during COVID).
 
It’s an open secret among park staff that the hole has been getting tighter for years now. Expect to see it running with Spinball Whizzer’s rolling stock before the end of the decade.
 
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Matt N said:
On a side note; why is it that Oblivion’s queue line randomly splits into two lanes at so many points throughout? It’s always confused me… it can’t be FT, as that gets merged into the queue far later on (possibly even at the station?), and RAP gets on via the exit.
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It was built like this from day one and was a popular feature for parks at the time, one side fed into the front loading train and the other side to the back one. This was before fastrack was a thing.

It was common at Disney too, there would be two sides to the queue, feeding into different loading areas. When Fastpass was introduced it was easy for them to re-purpose one side for Fastpass and one side for standby.
 
Matt N said:
That’s very true; the throughput will be decreased due to having less seats open, but the dispatch time has seemed slightly quicker this year to me; assuming a full 16-rider train, I’ve almost consistently timed Oblivion’s dispatch times as equating to over 1,000pph in 2022, whereas 800-900pph was more typical in 2021, from my experience.

I only asked because I remember Thirteen having some insanely quick dispatch intervals during COVID… when they only loaded 6 people per train. The throughput was vastly, vastly lower, but the intervals between trains were a fair bit quicker.

I also remember Wicker Man getting slightly quicker dispatch intervals during COVID when they only loaded 2/3 of the seats.

With that in mind, I wondered whether something similar might be happening on Oblivion (albeit not nearly as extreme as Thirteen or WM during COVID).
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Yes I imagine that is the case, I don't think it's evening out though, because all it leads to is more trains sat on the break run. Realistically Oblivions 1,000pph is perfectly fine but at the minute, as a pure guess, I would say it's at least 20% lower.
 
JAperson said:
Yes I imagine that is the case, I don't think it's evening out though, because all it leads to is more trains sat on the break run. Realistically Oblivions 1,000pph is perfectly fine but at the minute, as a pure guess, I would say it's at least 20% lower.
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Indeed; 1,000pph on a 16-rider train would equate to 875pph with a 14-rider train (as it is currently).
 
AT86 said:
It was built like this from day one and was a popular feature for parks at the time, one side fed into the front loading train and the other side to the back one. This was before fastrack was a thing.

It was common at Disney too, there would be two sides to the queue, feeding into different loading areas. When Fastpass was introduced it was easy for them to re-purpose one side for Fastpass and one side for standby.
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So are you saying that the ride used to have one queue for each train? That’s very efficient; with the 2 airgates per row too (for instance, the front row of the first shuttle is fed by both A1 and A2, with the riders who board alternating between the two), Oblivion is a very efficiently designed ride!

On a random aside, I always thought that having separate queues for the front half of the train and the back half of the train, with a batcher allocating equal numbers of guests to each queue after a certain point in the queue, would be a cool way to ensure quicker batching on coasters with long trains. For instance, I remember someone saying once that Silver Star at EP doesn’t have a batcher because they were never quick enough to batch 36 riders at a pace that matched the ride operations; if you had two lines, with one feeding the front half of the train and one feeding the back half of the train, then each batcher would only need to batch a maximum of 20 riders per train in the same time interval (due to the odd number of rows on SS, splitting batching in a perfect 50/50 way isn’t possible, so one batcher would need 20 riders/5 rows while another would need 16 riders/4 rows). It would require slightly more staff, but it would make the efficiency of batching terrific!
EDIT: Sorry for double posting…
 
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