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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

BarryZola said:
Well my locals have, and many others. Probably gone back to normal rota's and less staff in etc starting yesterday or today. They will be expecting it to be quieter.

'Two-tier-Towers'.
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Absolutely Mr Zola.
Back to termtime subservice very quickly this year.
Contracts ending august 31, students going off to do something better and more rewarding, and all the "emergency jobs" popping out of the woodwork.
I noticed most of the coasters were down soon after 5 on last nights 6pm "close"...there really wasn't much open in the last hour.
Curse you queuetimes.
 
Skyscraper said:
Possible re-theme, not confirmed though.
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Where have you heard this said rumour. Would that not be put on the attraction availability page if it was planned to close before the end of the season. Anyway I’ve seen that Smiler is yet to open and that closed early yesterday. Anyone on park today know what the ops are like for the open rides? Are Galactica and Oblivion on reduced capacity again
 
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I have long said that the situation at Alton Towers is not as grave as people on here often like to make out, but I have to admit that today’s ride availability was/is very concerning. Every park has its off days, and if today was an outlier, I’d be more inclined to shrug it off. But given that it’s not the first day of the season that’s been similar, I think it does evidence that ride availability is currently a significant problem at Alton Towers, more so than it has possibly ever been.

Of all the problems the park faces, I think this is the key one that needs solving pronto. People might gripe about flat rides and such, but variety of attractions is irrelevant if people can’t get on attractions in the first place, and Alton Towers clearly has issues with getting attractions open in the first place at present. Having things closed left, right and centre does not give off a very good impression. While I concede that the park can’t help ride availability to an extent, and that problems happen, the extent to which problems are happening is quite concerning at the moment. For it to be such a universal problem would suggest that things are going wrong at Alton somewhere down the line.
 
It feels like a three pronged problem:

- aging/flawed hardware
- lack of skilled engineers/technical staff
- general low staffing levels of ride ops etc

Not half as easy to solve as just plonking a new ride somewhere and requires a real plan and buy-in from both the park itself but also Merlin.
 
Relife said:
Good job Towers have loads of flat rides to take the strain when the coasters are down........
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I Get It Drums GIF by Mike Hitt
 
I’ll write a full report later but after an awful start this afternoon has been MUCH better. The Smiler has just opened and operations are the best I’ve ever seen on Wicker Man, Nemesis and Galactica and everyone today has been given a free return ticket.
 
lozzyhickers said:
And those who already have multi-day paid for, that live far away.
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rob666 said:
...which for the majority of customers (pass holders) is meaningless.
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You can raise a ticket with Guest Services, or speak to them at the resort, and they will offer alternative compensation for both of these cases. VAFF was activated at the start of the season, during one of our visits, and we were offered an alternative of 4 x one shot FastTrack vouchers, to be redeemed on a different day.
 
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GooseOnTheLoose said:
You can raise a ticket with Guest Services, or speak to them at the resort, and they will offer alternative compensation for both of these cases. VAFF was activated at the start of the season, during one of our visits, and we were offered an alternative of 4 x one shot FastTrack vouchers, to be redeemed on a different day.
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Good to know. Hopefully I won’t need to! But if it was a problem, the 8hr round trip will preclude me from another visit for at least another year unfortunately. I miss my uni days when I could go 10+ times a season!
 
There’s definitely an issue with ageing hardware, but that’s entirely the park’s fault and entirely within their control to fix. Other parks demonstrate that it’s entirely possible to maintain good ride availability with aged hardware if they’re are operated/maintained in the correct way.

The perpetual decline of ride availability at the park appears to me to be indicative of poorer operation/maintenance practices than parks with similarly aged hardware. The new management have had more than sufficient time to arrest the decline, if not reverse it. Unfortunately it actually appears to be heading in the opposite direction, which can only be an indictment of the current situation.
 
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