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Queue Times Discussion 2024

Park seems to have been pretty quiet last few days. Got a friend there and said everything has been around 30 minutes or less with some big attractions walk-on.

Supposedly the outdoor area at the water park is back open (not sure if that includes the slides) too.... tentatively considering going :eek:
 
Bowser said:
Park seems to have been pretty quiet last few days. Got a friend there and said everything has been around 30 minutes or less with some big attractions walk-on.

Supposedly the outdoor area at the water park is back open (not sure if that includes the slides) too.... tentatively considering going :eek:
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First couple of weeks of the school holidays are always the quietest, so if you are wanting to schedule a trip over Summer now is the best time. It will be a different picture come mid-late August.

The opening times page seems to suggest the outdoor slides are back open in the Waterpark, but not seen anything that actually confirms that.
 
Looks like it’s absolutely dead on park today, even for Oktoberfest.

I know the weather isn’t great, but I swear that every Oktoberfest day last year saw much bigger queues than this.

I do worry that the overall poor product quality, awful F&B and shoddy accommodation offerings are beginning to shine through in visitor numbers.

IMG_4425.jpeg
 
rob666 said:
Shocking forecast for the day, and most of the week.
After last weeks very good weather, a quiet park is hardly surprising.
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yeah, it was supposed to be thunder or heavy heavy rain today but I went and didn't feel a drop of rain, has been cloudy but appart from that it was a perfect day literally no queue, everything was walk on

one thing of note was that the october fest area always had a crowd, something last year I didn't see that much I recall only seeing a couple people
 
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Themeparksandy1981 said:
Just checking what’s the queues been like on average for the coasters for Scarefest on a Sunday as I’m going tomorrow.
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Last Sunday was actually relatively quiet but it was raining all day iirc. Tomorrow is scheduled to be sunny all day and right in the middle of both half term periods so would anticipate it being very busy, especially with the current availability issues.
 
Ash said:
The park lacks capacity in both variety and high capacity rides.

Shows
Flat rides
High capacity boat rides
Cinemas (3D/4D/Flying)
Free attractions (Museums, walkthroughs etc)
Sit down restaurants

All missing from the line up
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Completely agree with this there! Closing Congo River Rapids seems to be a crazy decision this scarefest (same with Rumba Rapids at Thorpe).

There's quite a few mothballed or closed attractions that could cover some of this.

There's also spaces in the park that could be for the missing flat rides and flume/shoot the chute.

Alton Towers has become a coaster park which is rather disappointing and the queues are showing this as a consequence.
 
Ethan said:
Funny you say that because from what I’ve seen the queues are always worse at Thorpe
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I won't defend either park however I'd say I'm not so sure about this.

From my visits to Thorpe Park this season, it's been more organised, the operations have been reasonably fast and ride availability has been consistent.

I know on off peak days there's been delayed openings and planned closures which has been similar with Towers.

I have noticed with Fright Nights that standards have been slipping with Colossus having poor operations and the park appearing to struggle with the amount of people coming.

Towers, from what I've seen had ride availability issues resulting in larger queues across it's main coasters and these struggling to cope with demand. I'm not saying the experience is better or worse than Thorpe.

The point I will make is that the flat and water rides are a very good sponge for the main coasters and if those are not there, the coasters will struggle.

This year, Hyperia, whilst a coaster was a fantastic sponge for Thorpe Park which has helped make queues elsewhere more manageable (when it's not Fright Nights!).

I think Project Ocean will help spread crowds in Forbidden Valley a bit further helping with queues in that area.
 
I think FV (with or without ocean) is one of the more complete areas within the park, assuming galactica is on 2 stations an enemy on 2 trains, which is a great crowd eater. Ocean will only improve FV further.

But yeah outside of that and maybe mutiny bay, every area needs ‘sponges’ as said in the above post to alleviate the pressure from the rest of the headlining cast. Having multiple thrill coasters crammed into one area clearly doesn’t work when there are no other attractions nearby to disperse the crowds - which is why FV is usually the best operated/best area of the park.

I think it’s okay to have certain areas that are targeted to specific audiences, but AT has relied too much on segregating their clientele by categorising areas based on how thrilling the rides are. It works for thorpe and legoland/Chessie because the entire park is focused on one demographic, so crowds evenly disperse.

Crowd congestion and guest experience would vastly improve if each area in the park offered a more diverse line up of attractions, ranging from thrills, family rides, and children’s rides. As I said earlier in this post, that’s why I think mutiny bay works well (bar the location being near the entrance), because it’s the only area in the entire park that has a ride for every possible audience.

Moving forward, the park needs to focus on attractions outside of the coasters to draw guests in, as it’s pretty blatant that the park relies too much on their big 7. Rides with mass appeal (curse, hex, water rides in the summer Etc) would be welcome, as they can appeal to all demographic groups, which would hopefully take less of a blow on the coasters queue lines as guests will want to explore non-coaster attractions.

Currently,
• CBeebies land is crammed with young children and their parents.
• X Sector is exclusively for thrill seekers, and what should be a capacity monster, isn’t being operated to the standard it should be.
• Unreliable Forest is also exclusively for thrill seekers, and like X sector, guests simply bounce from one attraction to the other, Increasing congestion once again.
• Walliams/Cloud Cuckoo just sits pretty much stagnant at the back of the park, and with no real incentive for guests outside the target demographic to enter. Of course, horizon will change this and help the situation.

All this isn’t the end of the world, but when rides in X sector and dark forest face frequent breakdowns, there are no supporting attractions to stop the area from falling apart.
 
Dhev123 said:
I think FV (with or without ocean) is one of the more complete areas within the park, assuming galactica is on 2 stations an enemy on 2 trains, which is a great crowd eater. Ocean will only improve FV further.

But yeah outside of that and maybe mutiny bay, every area needs ‘sponges’ as said in the above post to alleviate the pressure from the rest of the headlining cast. Having multiple thrill coasters crammed into one area clearly doesn’t work when there are no other attractions nearby to disperse the crowds - which is why FV is usually the best operated/best area of the park.

I think it’s okay to have certain areas that are targeted to specific audiences, but AT has relied too much on segregating their clientele by categorising areas based on how thrilling the rides are. It works for thorpe and legoland/Chessie because the entire park is focused on one demographic, so crowds evenly disperse.

Crowd congestion and guest experience would vastly improve if each area in the park offered a more diverse line up of attractions, ranging from thrills, family rides, and children’s rides. As I said earlier in this post, that’s why I think mutiny bay works well (bar the location being near the entrance), because it’s the only area in the entire park that has a ride for every possible audience.

Moving forward, the park needs to focus on attractions outside of the coasters to draw guests in, as it’s pretty blatant that the park relies too much on their big 7. Rides with mass appeal (curse, hex, water rides in the summer Etc) would be welcome, as they can appeal to all demographic groups, which would hopefully take less of a blow on the coasters queue lines as guests will want to explore non-coaster attractions.

Currently,
• CBeebies land is crammed with young children and their parents.
• X Sector is exclusively for thrill seekers, and what should be a capacity monster, isn’t being operated to the standard it should be.
• Unreliable Forest is also exclusively for thrill seekers, and like X sector, guests simply bounce from one attraction to the other, Increasing congestion once again.
• Walliams/Cloud Cuckoo just sits pretty much stagnant at the back of the park, and with no real incentive for guests outside the target demographic to enter. Of course, horizon will change this and help the situation.

All this isn’t the end of the world, but when rides in X sector and dark forest face frequent breakdowns, there are no supporting attractions to stop the area from falling apart.
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I think this screenshot is proof that flat rides can only take you so far. The coaster queues are long and yet the flat ride queues are over an hour. Thorpe clearly can’t handle the crowds and let too many people in. I think Towers are better at limiting their numbers because we never see every coaster 100+ mins. Although Towers is the bigger park the crowds at Thorpe always seem to be worse so must mean that Towers are limiting their capacity somewhat
 

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Ethan said:
I think this screenshot is proof that flat rides can only take you so far. The coaster queues are long and yet the flat ride queues are over an hour. Thorpe clearly can’t handle the crowds and let too many people in. I think Towers are better at limiting their numbers because we never see every coaster 100+ mins. Although Towers is the bigger park the crowds at Thorpe always seem to be worse so must mean that Towers are limiting their capacity somewhat
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That’s based on a sample size of one look, though. You can’t dictate that that’s what it’s like all the time; you could have looked at a particularly poor moment.

I’d also mention that Fright Nights is always a particularly busy time of year at Thorpe Park; it’s not anywhere near that bad on a typical day. And I should add that I have been to Alton Towers and seen every operating coaster on 100+ minutes; when I visited back in March, both major coasters that were operating had queues of over 100 minutes at one point, and the 145 minutes I waited for Wicker Man (advertised 70) is longer than I’ve ever waited for a coaster at Thorpe Park.

Furthermore, I would be careful before saying that Thorpe Park “let too many people in” and Alton Towers limits the crowds better, as I would add that Alton Towers is a much more spread out park. This will inevitably make queues a bit better than at Thorpe, where things are more confined, as there are more people just walking around and spreading out around the park. Thorpe has less space for people to just walk around and spread out, which will make the queues worse.

Alton will naturally have an inherent advantage in that sense regardless of what they do with capacity; if the park was more confined, I imagine that the queues would probably be closer to those at Thorpe Park.
 
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Ethan said:
I think this screenshot is proof that flat rides can only take you so far. The coaster queues are long and yet the flat ride queues are over an hour. Thorpe clearly can’t handle the crowds and let too many people in. I think Towers are better at limiting their numbers because we never see every coaster 100+ mins. Although Towers is the bigger park the crowds at Thorpe always seem to be worse so must mean that Towers are limiting their capacity somewhat
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That’s true! I can’t speak for the other rides, but rush is running half capacity, which explains the longer than usual wait.

I think the main distinction though is that thorpe park, especially the past few years, have really upped their game in terms of efficiency and excellent dispatching - stealth and hyperia as prime examples of this. Of course by nature they both should have been made to support a higher hourly throughput for such a popular park, but the staff do not mess around and pretty much run these two rides as the manufacturer states, and within the theoretical margins.

Even colossus, the staff still work really hard to achieve a high hourly throughput - the trains hold it back, not the operations team.

When you have a park like Alton, which is so vastly spread, it makes the current and ongoing lack of ride availability all the more apparent. For instance,
- Nemesis breaks, everyone goes to galactica and the queue triples.
- Rita breaks, everyone goes to Th13teen.
Etc.
- No SkyRide to hop over to FV if both Th13teen and Rita are down

Whereas as thorpe, let’s say the swarm breaks down - it’s fine every other attraction is close by, which spreads the crowds and people will naturally go toward different attractions across the park, rather than the nearest.

It’s not the parks fault in the sense that they are limited to where they can build - but they are at fault somehow for not ensuring that their attractions can cope in the instance of ride downtime. Hence, the need for flats to sponge queues cannot be assumed to work the same for thorpe as they could for towers

Although I do agree that thorpe do oversell when it comes to their capacity - but of course this is due to merlin wanting more money. And I agree that thorpe isn’t perfect in this regard.
 
The bit I don’t think the parks realise is bringing the family to a park and seeing queues over an hour is miserable. It makes you angry. It makes you not want to return. It’s an awful experience. It has long term negative effects.

All the parks in the UK are big enough other than the absolute busiest days for this not to become the norm. They are failing by design
 
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