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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

Matt N said:
Isn’t Schweizer Bobbahn also well over 20 years old, if I’m not mistaken?
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Try 40. And it feels like it as well. There’s a good reason it has the nickname Schießer Bobbahn.

The state of queue times yesterday was diabolical. I opened it out of curiosity (while a bit bored) and was just in shock at how much was shut.
 
TPWW have done an entire video about the poor ride availability.

Interesting note was they no longer seem to have staff at the entrance to rides when they're closed which apparently previously was policy.

I noticed pretty much every major attraction at Efteling (*swoon*) had a staff member at the ride entrance all day long.
 
This would be impossible to validate, but with park data so visible these days in terms of live queue times, live ride availability and fairly detailed analytics, could part of all this simply be because park data is so readily available in a way that it wasn’t in the late 90s / very early 2000s? (Which I consider the golden years).

I’d be a liar to say that I haven’t searched for queue times and live availability at Alton Towers whilst I’ve been hours away from the park at work. Seeing 3 rides down on your phone looks severe, but when you’re on park roaming around it’s never felt, to me at least, quite as severe.

I remember as a kid walking around the park finding my favourite rides closed during the 90s, but I do feel somewhat that surfacing so much park data has led to us being over critical.

I’m not condoning a lack of ride availability here, I’m merely saying that the advancement of data available to us on our mobile devices these days can somewhat distort the reality of actually being on park and just finding something else to do.

Perhaps this thought is better placed in the controversial opinions thread.
 
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s_g_k said:
I’m not condoning a lack of ride availability here, I’m merely saying that the advancement of data available to us on our mobile devices these days can somewhat distort the reality of actually being on park and just finding something else to do.

Perhaps this thought is better placed in the controversial opinions thread.
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Not really controversial you are in a way correct. However, the exposure that Towers get online these days about their poor ride availability should surely be motivation to sort it out. TPW gets thousands of views on his Towers videos so him posting about how poor things have been recently is far from ideal for the park. They want Shawn to be giving them positive exposure not negative
 
Ethan said:
Not really controversial you are in a way correct. However, the exposure that Towers get online these days about their poor ride availability should surely be motivation to sort it out. TPW gets thousands of views on his Towers videos so him posting about how poor things have been recently is far from ideal for the park. They want Shawn to be giving them positive exposure not negative
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True, I’ve just watched that. Not great publicity!
 
Dave said:
That wasn’t his point, earlier in the thread people where saying Thorpe was doing better, which it clearly isn’t.
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I would argue from my experience and when I've randomly checked the queues at home thorpe is certainly doing better I know hyperia had teething issues but out of my 38 rides on it I've genuinely had about 15-20 minutes down time in total.

Thorpe I'm sure has issues with ride availability but as a whole I really think towers has been struggling a lot more and this isn't coming from bias as there's no park in the world I care more about than Alton towers.
 
AT86 said:
Seems Thorpe are at it too, with arguably more headline rides than Towers.

Is this a new Merlin wide initiative? Close rides off peak for maintenance to reduce the workload over the winter and get by with less mechanics than would otherwise be needed?
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It’s not just getting by with less mechanics over the winter, these widespread ride closures this month must save a hell of a lot of money on both staff wages and ride running costs whilst these attractions are shut.

I visited Chessington today and Zufari, Tiger Rock, and Rattlesnake were all closed and are scheduled to be for many more days then they’ll be open this month. Temple Of Mayhem has closed for the season and Rumba Rapids at Thorpe will be joining it soon. When you add to that ask the random days that rides will be down (such as Spinball closing to have a SRQ fitted) that’s a hell of a lot of hours saved this month from the staff wages budget across the park for Merlin.

LLW looks like it’s ride availability is being absolutely decimated in September.

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This is a slightly concerning trend… whether it’s lots of rides suddenly needing maintenance in September or a cost-saving measure of some description, they’ve never done it before and they’ve never decimated the ride availability to such a degree in off-peak periods. The fact that it seems to be Merlin-wide and not just confined to one park is concerning, as well; that would suggest to me that it’s some sort of policy that they’ve implemented centrally.

If I were to be optimistic, could it be some new way of ensuring that ride availability is good during peak periods? If they do rolling maintenance during off-peak periods, then that should keep on top of any issues and keep things tickety-boo during peak periods, shouldn’t it? That’s a similar sort of principle to how year-round parks like the Florida parks do it.
 
Ethan said:
This is why manufacturers shouldn’t go for single car vehicles. First thing you should consider when building an attraction is surely reaching 900+ an hour capacity
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Why not? It is all about giving choice to the consumers, aka the Theme Parks. Many parks around the world do not want or need throughput machines as they are small parks. Sure, do big capacity rides but there is nothing wrong with smaller capacity rides either.

The issue is not the manufactures, but parks themselves selecting the wrong ride type for their park and the requirements the park needs in terms of capacity,
 
DiogoJ42 said:
This is quite clearly a cost cutting measure. Multiple rides in all their parks suddenly needing to close early for the season? Nah. Not buying it.
The fact that they have the balls to try and claim it's for maintenance is insulting.
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Dungeons isn’t being closed for Scarefest…

I’m calling it.

IMO I bet a Scarefest attraction has been cut

Can you imagine that people will be paying full price for these experiences?! It’s disgusting.
 
s_g_k said:
...Seeing 3 rides down on your phone looks severe, but when you’re on park roaming around it’s never felt, to me at least, quite as severe.
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That all depends on your level of mobility doesn't it?
Half the population are not fully mobile, and have real issues with repeated closure of rides when there is no functioning internal transport system.
For two whole years.
Mucky, discriminatory Merlin.
Good one Shawn.
 
I suspect these closures are a bit of both. Save some money in September and give the tech teams a long run up on maintenance before the busy end of season.

Either way it’s still bad.
 
Shaggy_Dog_ said:
LLW looks like it’s ride availability is being absolutely decimated in September.
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I can give Lego a bit more leeway when it comes to mid season closures due to the fact it operates as an (almost) year-round park with a very short closed season, so there’s less time to do maintenance work.

Chessington’s ride closures OTOH are just cost cutting.
 
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