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Opening day chaos! !

neil.r.benson said:
Just thumbing through some of the latest reviews on Trip Advisor.
Not good.
:(
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If you ask people to queue 2hrs to get in then have a load of rides closed it won't be. Shame they have let themselves down so much, as said we seemed to miss the bad stuff in our group but it clearly happened.

I worry Towers are going to finally get over the bad PR from the Smiler crash then the cuts will start to show in operations and F&B and lose more guests because of bad experiences. Just as we predicted.

Shame
 
Although I think there are some fair points in here about the shambles on Saturday, I think suggestions regarding the park's demise are somewhat premature. It's opening day - it's often a disaster, that's just the way it goes. This year it was hampered by the glorious weather - a damp weekend would have seen very light crowds and minimal fuss.

Book a week off work and stand in the queue at the Box Office for some apathetic teenager to tell you that they're sorry, if it helps.

Like a school play on opening night directed by Mr. Bean, it may have been. But.... stuff happens.
 
As I've mentioned in a post a couple of days ago, there were some things I wasn't pleased about on opening day. However, it did seem really busy. I usually don't make it on opening day, and avoid Saturdays as a rule generally. I'd be interested to know if it seemed much busier than last year, or other recent years. The weather probably had some effect, but maybe it could be a small sign of if attendance will improve much this year........
 
Guys I still haven't had an explanation why the headline ride the smiler has been closed? Problems again? Can anyone enlighten us?????

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Whatever the official answer is, it's a safe bet that the root cause is "Because they didn't want to spend money".
 
I've heard it won't be open before Thursday, so that would make sense. hopefully be up before the weekend. :)
 
I noticed Rob said there was no chaos. So can I ask did he not see the hour and a half queues just to get into the park? Did he not see the box office mile long queue during the day? What about the sky lift being stuck for an hour. Oh and FV just running on blade for a while during the day. Oh and the wonderful trip adviser reviews that merlin love to bang on about. Great to see people flocking to the park after the last few years I'm just wondering now if we have got adequate infrastructure to support this crowd. Other wise safety concerns won't be the issue just that there's nothing to do as everything keeps breaking down or is not as advertised (world's first rollercoaster fully dedicated to VR with no VR ;-) )

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While opening day was not chaos as such - if opening day is a predictor for this year, then I would seriously stay away from the place in the peak summer months.
 
RE. The Smiler, they are indeed awaiting delivery of a part which unfortunately had been delayed.

themeparkfan said:
I noticed Rob said there was no chaos. So can I ask did he not see the hour and a half queues just to get into the park? Did he not see the box office mile long queue during the day? What about the sky lift being stuck for an hour. Oh and FV just running on blade for a while during the day. Oh and the wonderful trip adviser reviews that merlin love to bang on about. Great to see people flocking to the park after the last few years I'm just wondering now if we have got adequate infrastructure to support this crowd. Other wise safety concerns won't be the issue just that there's nothing to do as everything keeps breaking down or is not as advertised (world's first rollercoaster fully dedicated to VR with no VR ;-) )
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I did not say there was no chaos. I said that I personally did not notice any chaos during my day. No I did not notice the hour and a half queue to get into the park - I entered in 30 seconds. Yes I noticed long Box Office queues but this is standard for Towers, no idea how long the queue was as I did not use the Box Office. Okay the Skyride broke, thankfully you can use the pathways in the park instead (we didn't use the Skyride once on Saturday). And I did not see Nemesis go down, although I admit the downtime on Galactica was a disappointment (however chaos did not ensue whilst I was in the area).

During my very enjoyable day at Alton Towers I did not notice anything chaotic, although it is evident that things did not go smoothly and our group managed to get fairly lucky with our day. You make a very good point about how the park might cope this season with limited rides/infrastructure yet potentially more guests. I think it is going to be a very big problem and we'll see what chaos really is on these peak days.

On a slightly seperate note, it was great to see the park so much busier this opening day compared to opening day 2016. It must have been at least 100% busier, probably more!

:)
 
I was there yesterday and things seemed to run smoothly. Although we didn't manage to get there until 11:30am, we were bored by 4pm anyway with little choice of rides to go on and no queues. Rita, Thirteen, Nemesis, Air (as it was no Galactica without VR), Oblivion were all open and we got straight on them.

However there's nothing else really to go on. I couldn't find my way to River Rapids as they've changed the pathway. We had a walk through the gardens and it was a bit of a mess with branches having been chopped off here there and everywhere with the gardens..looking nothing like gardens in places.

Staff were very friendly and chatty which was a good positive. They need some flat rides brought back in, as much as I love the roller coasters I'd love to ride some flats. Theres just nothing there to fill in full day if you're just riding roller coasters and walking miles from area to area.
 
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