No, not at all. The premise I was working from was your own frustrations with using a phone based system.
Alton Towers and Thorpe Park do have good coverage, you can get 5G/4G services in both places (3G is being switched off, so we'll park that). What they do suffer from though is cell access. If you've ever been during an event, especially Fireworks, you'll notice that although you've got full reception, you can't load anything. This is because the infrastructure (which they don't control) can't cope. You're all connected to the same tower, but it can only give access to so many devices at the same time. It's only a few occasions throughout the year, but cell access isn't reliable, as any Glastonbury / festival veteran will tell you. Then there are those with limited data plans too.
WiFi is entirely possible, but you do have to sign in and grant permission for your email address to be used for marketing purposes. Given we're talking about accessibility here, and making accommodations for everyone, this isn't the way forward either. There will be some people who feel uncomfortable with giving over their information, or may just not want to, why should they face this trade off for something which is supposed to ease accessibility?
Not everyone has a smartphone. Children under 13 are not allowed to use the park's WiFi, for GDPR consent reasons. There will be children who qualify for RAP who either visit without their parents (on a school trip) or go around on their own. Not every child has a smart phone, and certainly not one which could allow the kids to install apps unchecked without permission. Given that RAP is about making sure that everyone has the same level of access, this is problematic too.
The paper system is terribly implemented, but theoretically it should work very well. The problem you've got is staff at the beginning of the ride, as we all know, that kind of screws up the system.
In an ideal world, if you REALLY wanted to go down the smartphone route, Apple would be forced to open up RFID access on the iPhone. Every modern smart phone has an RFID/NFC chip in it, used for Apple Pay / Google Wallet, these (on Android) can be utilised to share information between devices, wirelessly, and without the internet. You waddle on up to the end of a RAP entrance, hold your phone to an RFID contact point, the Alton Towers app will then give you a time to come back at (like the old VQ system). Your phone can go buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz when you need to return and you'll get straight on. The benefit of this system is that your phone does not need an active/persistent internet connection to be able to validate your pass and inform you of your place in the queue (the processing is done locally on the device). The downside is that you need a phone, and as discussed before this isn't the most accessible.
You presently have to queue for a piece of paper, so I'm not sure about the concern here, to return it you just drop it off (think 3D glasses) at a designated point. You could easily have a bank of beeper type devices at the entrance, or near guest services points, where you scan your RAP pre-book and a device gets released (no need to have a staff member, no need to have long queues).
The queues exist because there are humans to argue with, there are humans to manipulate and who don't have the initiative, or desire, to enforce the rules. If you give someone a two hour cool down on a RAP, you're going to get a lot of horrible abuse. If you're then the person to enforce that on another ride, you're going to get the abuse too. The system is corrupt, but not from nefarious staff, it's corrupted through ineptitude.
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