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Ride Access Pass and Disabled Access - 2024 Discussion

Bowser said:
But again why is this an issue exclusively at AT and TP when so many other parks are using it?
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As mentioned previously, and at risk of repeating myself, you can get great reception at Alton Towers, but you're not always guaranteed to have an active cell connection. Each transmitter has X amount of limited capacity, the moment that a device makes an active request to that tower capacity is reduced. Alton Towers is in a rural area, so there aren't lots of redundant capacity transmitters around. Given that the park is seasonal this is expected.

Football stadiums, arenas, even Hyde Park (slap bang in the centre of London) suffer from the same cell tower connection issue when events are on. Your reception will show as full, your connection won't be active. These are in highly densely populated areas too, where it's easy to get planning permission to build transmitters and it's financially acceptable with a commercial interest for the mobile network operators. Throw in, of course, that not all of the mobile network operators have transmitter sharing agreements with each other and you start to see why it's not as robust as it seems.

Anecdotally, I can get full 5G reception on my Pixel 7 Pro at Thorpe Park, but my connection is never active. I can't load anything, I can't send anything, without a timeout (happens if I switch to just a 4G network too). The coverage is there, the connectivity capacity is not.

WiFi is possible, but again the size of Alton Towers is its own worst enemy here. Most commercial WiFi access points can handle 255 devices at one point. The range of a WiFi access point is a little complicated to pin down, there are many different variables which can affect signal strength, range and speed. Frequency, line of sight, obstructions, signal noise, the list is quite long. To effectively cover a queue line, with guaranteed access, you're going to need a lot of access points operating on your mesh network.

The current WiFi set up at Merlin's parks relies on it not being at capacity and not being in use. It works (kind of), presently, because people don't need to rely on it. Then are the additional third party and GDPR issues, as previously discussed, with an open and "free" WiFi network. If you don't want to share your personal information with the company operating the WiFi network, you can't use it.
 
Apologies if this has been covered and my search skills have let me down. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how RAP will be handled on Hyperia when it first opens? With Legoland and Chessington having different systems and being able to limit turns to one per visit on new rides, I was wondering how Thorpe Park would implement a similar system, if they are going to do that at all.
 
TPick said:
Apologies if this has been covered and my search skills have let me down. Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how RAP will be handled on Hyperia when it first opens? With Legoland and Chessington having different systems and being able to limit turns to one per visit on new rides, I was wondering how Thorpe Park would implement a similar system, if they are going to do that at all.
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RAP only get one ride on Hyperia per day. The time card will have a Hyperia section on the back which will be hole punched (no time out).
 
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