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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

Usually, the quick stroll to dark forest gets at least one "walk on" hit, with the other a very short queue if open.
Rarely do both not open, but it has been known at times.
Then I usually walk down to the smiler for a single rider walk on.
Success last time with front seat Rita and walk on smiler in the first half hour...with thirteen opening late.
 
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Up until this year I was adamant that heading to The Smiler first was the best choice, but the last 3 times I’ve done this it hadn’t opened until about 1045, at which point the queues have built up on the other coasters.

Dark Forest is a good choice to start with, as I have done on my previous two visits. Rita at 10am, Thirteen at 10:10, Rita again at 10:30 and then join Smiler SRQ. 4 rides/3 coasters done by 11am.
 
Often if they know a ride won’t be open straight away they’ll have a staff member stood outside. But of course that depends when they know it won’t open.

Personally I always head to the dark forest as most will go to wicker or smiler first.
 
Aside from Wicker Man, Spinball Whizzer is closed today as well for “essential maintenance” apparently
 
Danscott22 said:
Aside from Wicker Man, Spinball Whizzer is closed today as well for “essential maintenance” apparently
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I believe a crane is needed for Spinball Whizzer, understandably that'll need to happen after park close.

Edit: yep it must be really damned

Screenshot_20240727_140424_Alton_Towers.png
 
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For those interested, I was able to get some throughput timings during my visit to Alton Towers today. The readings I was able to get were as follows:
  • Galactica (Theoretical: 1,500pph on 3 trains/2 stations): 863pph (3 trains/2 stations, average of 4, 28th July 2024)
  • Nemesis Reborn (Theoretical: 1,400pph on 2 trains): 954pph (2 trains, average of 7, 28th July 2024)
  • Oblivion (Theoretical: 1,900pph on 7 shuttles/2 stations): 997pph (6 shuttles/2 stations, average of 9, 28th July 2024)
  • Rita (Theoretical: 1,150pph on 2 trains): 758pph (2 trains, average of 8, 28th July 2024)
  • The Smiler (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 4 trains): 755pph (4 trains, baggage hold open, average of 7, 28th July 2024)
  • Thirteen (Theoretical: 1,100pph on 3 trains): 1,102pph (3 trains, baggage hold open, average of 6, 28th July 2024)
In terms of a few other general insights:
  • Operations on Nemesis generally seem to be notably worse post-retrack. I’m not entirely sure why, but before, you’d often get dispatch intervals of close to 90s, whereas it now seems like dispatch intervals of more like 2 minutes are more par for the course.
  • Galactica’s dispatch intervals varied between very quick (~80s) and very slow (multiple minutes). I’m assuming that this is down to the dual stations?
  • On The Smiler, I noticed that they seemed to be struggling to get enough people from the main queue up into the station quickly enough to match the ride dispatches at times. I also noticed that the merge host was heavily prioritising Fastrack and RAP over the main queue and single rider. Single rider in particular was abandoned for quite a few minutes at a time, although I accept that this may be something to do with them wanting to stagger the number of single riders in the station and using the baggage hold.
 
Smiler SRQ can only move when they've cleared the queue for bag drop, so given the choice between the ride running entirely empty or trains going out with a few single seats empty they always choose the latter. SRQ is horrible to wait in since they re-routed it past merge.

Pretty poor ops across the board aside from Thirteen. That'll have a significant effect on the number of rides it's possible to get on during a day.
 
So we can say that even in the school holidays, Alton runs on about 2/3 of capacity, sometimes less.
Poor.

For the fussy Matt, I guess you presume every seat is filled in your calculations, so they remain a little optimistic in real world terms?
 
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rob666 said:
For the fussy Matt, I guess you presume every seat is filled in your calculations, so they remain a little optimistic in real world terms?
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That is true, yes.

I should say that the park didn’t seem overly busy for a summer Sunday, and queues on the likes of Nemesis and Oblivion were advertised under 30 minutes for much of the day. Admittedly, there were some longer queues at points (Thirteen hit 80 at one point), but I didn’t think the queues were that long overall, for the most part.

One thing I will say is that general ride availability was far from perfect. It was better than my visit in March, and I only personally encountered one extended breakdown, on Galactica, but from looking at the app, there were numerous points in the day where one or multiple major coasters were closed at once (excluding Wicker Man, which we already knew would be closed all day). It wasn’t awful by any stretch, and I personally was still able to get 12 rides in, but this could be more down to luck or a good working knowledge of the park on my part. For example, when I had four consecutive rerides on Oblivion on a short queue, Galactica, Rita and Thirteen were all closed.
 
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John said:
Smiler SRQ can only move when they've cleared the queue for bag drop, so given the choice between the ride running entirely empty or trains going out with a few single seats empty they always choose the latter. SRQ is horrible to wait in since they re-routed it past merge.
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Was there any reason why they bothered changing the single route? I’ve been told it’s because those in single queue can now put their bags in baggage hold meaning that dispatches will be quicker, however it is now the norm to see empty seats on the ride when this wasn’t the case prior. Single rider is designed to fill empty gaps and right now it’s not doing that efficiently
 
Ethan said:
Was there any reason why they bothered changing the single route? I’ve been told it’s because those in single queue can now put their bags in baggage hold meaning that dispatches will be quicker, however it is now the norm to see empty seats on the ride when this wasn’t the case prior. Single rider is designed to fill empty gaps and right now it’s not doing that efficiently
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People were entering the single rider queue and then, when the ops were distracted, jumping the fence to the main queue side and running up the stairs. Or they'd just walk through the fire escape and up the main queue.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
People were entering the single rider queue and then, when the ops were distracted, jumping the fence to the main queue side and running up the stairs. Or they'd just walk through the fire escape and up the main queue.
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The other week there were 2 people in front of me in the single queue and the op hadn’t checked the stairs at any point so the people in front gave up and went up the main queue bit. I followed them and was on the ride in about a minute with no one on the stairs on the left. It shows that the op working on the 4 queues is too overwhelmed and has too many different queues to manage
 
Ethan said:
The other week there were 2 people in front of me in the single queue and the op hadn’t checked the stairs at any point so the people in front gave up and went up the main queue bit. I followed them and was on the ride in about a minute with no one on the stairs on the left. It shows that the op working on the 4 queues is too overwhelmed and has too many different queues to manage
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How did you manage this? I'm trying to work out the logistics, as the gate is designed so that this isn't possible.

It's full height, so you can't jump over it and blocks off the main staircase. Did you run past the merge point queue staff member? I'm sure others might have said something if you did. Did you jump the fences in the merge point? Or did you run really fast out of the single rider queue, all the way back through the main queue and get on the ride straight away (if so why then did you even use single rider in the first place)?
 
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GooseOnTheLoose said:
How did you manage this? I'm trying to work out the logistics, as the gate is designed so that this isn't possible.

It's full height, so you can't jump over it and blocks off the main staircase. Did you run past the merge point queue staff member? I'm sure others might have said something if you did. Did you jump the fences in the merge point? Or did you run really fast out of the single rider queue, all the way back through the main queue and get on the ride straight away (if so why then did you even use single rider in the first place)?
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We were at the merge point and the op guy left us waiting there in that boiling correction block for 20 mins so the people in front had enough and just walked up the right stairs while the op was checking fastrack and rap. I wasn’t going to follow them but I thought you know what this guy isn’t doing his job properly so sod it. Bear in mind as I was entering the building 20 mins prior I could see empty seats on the trains so this op hadn’t sent anyone up the stairs that whole time. It was as if the single queue didn’t exist. Not acceptable really
 
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Ethan said:
We were at the merge point and the op guy left is waiting there in that boiling correction block for 20 mins so the people in front had enough and just walked up the right stairs while the op was checking fastrack and rap
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So the people in front of you undid the queue's holding chain and you all ran up the stairs, queue jumping and completely unchallenged? The merge point op didn't notice that their single rider queue, which had apparently had people in it for 20 mins, was now empty and that the chain had been undone? No one in the RAP, Fastrack, or main queue who would have seen you do this mentioned anything?

I only ask because I find your entitlement to do such a thing a little unbelievable and disappointing, if at all true.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
So the people in front of you undid the queue's holding chain and you all ran up the stairs, queue jumping and completely unchallenged? The merge point op didn't notice that their single rider queue, which had apparently had people in it for 20 mins, was now empty and that the chain had been undone? No one in the RAP, Fastrack, or main queue who would have seen you do this mentioned anything?

I only ask because I find your entitlement to do such a thing a little unbelievable and disappointing, if at all true.
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I will point out that the chain was already down and hadn’t been touched by anyone in the single queue. I also had nothing to do with the couple in front of me I didn’t tell them to do anything they just walked up by their own accord. Now was I right to follow them probably not. However, when the main queue is constantly moving and you’re just stood there waiting for the op to let you up the stairs and he hasn’t even once considered the single queue, then people are bound to get frustrated. I don’t think there was any entitlement intended in that couples actions I think it was just a decision made due to the very poor management from that op. But as far as the chain is concerned that was down already for whatever reason, maybe the single queue was empty at the time he let people through so forgot to put it back up again
 
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