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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

Ethan said:
Think we’re being a bit dramatic there. Sure operations haven’t been the best but I’m fortunate to go a lot and haven’t seen that many issues so I’m either lucky or the app just makes it look worse than it is. End of the day you can only go on 1 ride at a time so some rides being shut on the other side of the park won’t matter
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Somebody has taken over our Ethan's brain...that is two posts supporting the crap operations at the Towers in as many days.
It is when the closed rides are on your side of the park, with no skyride, and fewer non coaster attractions, that it becomes a real pain...
Which is exactly where we are.
 
rob666 said:
Somebody has taken over our Ethan's brain...that is two posts supporting the crap operations at the Towers in as many days.
It is when the closed rides are on your side of the park, with no skyride, and fewer non coaster attractions, that it becomes a real pain...
Which is exactly where we are.
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That is a good point. Due to the sheer size of the park two different groups can experience the same day in completely different ways.
 
Ethan said:
Ride availability is a pretty easy fix. They need to get in more engineers and they need it sorted for the start of next season. Maintainence needs to be heavy loading this winter. By the time the park opens mid March they need the big 7 on max trains and they need enough engineers covering all 7 of those rides. The coasters are designed to be crowd eaters but that only works if they’re being operated to their potential and not on reduced capacity
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That is if you believe the rides close only for mechanical reasons, I certainly don't. I know rides take a battering but they are not as unreliable as this. If you go to Towers a lot there are timing patterns of when rides close then re-open again, particularly around lunchtime. Usually after lunch and up to an hour before closing generally things appear more reliable so I'm sure it is also done for staffing reasons too. We know they are staggering opening times for staffing reasons so can easily close them when there is a shift change. Something is very wrong behind the scenes and they are most certainly (pardon the pun) coasting until the end of the season. We last went on Friday the 18th and Nemesis was on one train most of the day, around 2-3pm it went onto two trains before returning to one train on the Saturday by the sounds of things. That is just odd.

I've also said it before but the planned maintenance page is just a free pass for them to just close rides out of convenience and blame the customer for not checking before visiting because they don't want to pay their staff to fix issues outside of the park's operating hours, saw this at Thorpe park too with the valleyed train earlier this month. You buy a ticket to a theme park you expect everything to be open.
 
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badaz52 said:
That is if you believe the rides close only for mechanical reasons, I certainly don't. I know rides take a battering but they are not as unreliable as this. If you go to Towers a lot there are timing patterns of when rides close then re-open again, particularly around lunchtime. Usually after lunch and up to an hour before closing generally things appear more reliable so I'm sure it is also done for staffing reasons too. We know they are staggering opening times for staffing reasons so can easily close them when there is a shift change. Something is very wrong behind the scenes and they are most certainly (pardon the pun) coasting until the end of the season. We last went on Friday the 18th and Nemesis was on one train most of the day, around 2-3pm it went onto two trains before returning to one train on the Saturday by the sounds of things. That is just odd.

I've also said it before but the planned maintenance page is just a free pass for them to just close rides out of convenience and blame the customer for not checking before visiting because they don't want to pay their staff to fix issues outside of the park's operating hours, saw this at Thorpe park too with the valleyed train earlier this month. You buy a ticket to a theme park you expect everything to be open.
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To be fair, I do not think they are closing rides in the middle of the day due to staffing/shift changes etc. The majority of the poor availability at Alton Towers this season is down to a very stretched technical services team who just cannot keep on top of everything. It's also the primary reason for the staggered openings; tech services just cannot get everything ready for 10am.

Not that it is an excuse, as that simply is not good enough. It is yet another example of a problem that has manifested over a long period of time and it is not one that they're going to be able to remedy overnight. If it was as simple as hiring more engineers then that would have been done.
 
Ethan said:
Think we’re being a bit dramatic there. Sure operations haven’t been the best but I’m fortunate to go a lot and haven’t seen that many issues so I’m either lucky or the app just makes it look worse than it is. End of the day you can only go on 1 ride at a time so some rides being shut on the other side of the park won’t matter
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But that's the issue. You are fortunate to go a lot, so if a ride is closed for day or even for a couple weeks chances are you'll get to ride it next time so it may not stand out to you a lot. For a lot of people in the UK Alton Towers is something they may do once a year if that and if they get there and half the big attractions are closed for half the day it's pretty terrible, speaking from personal experience who lives basically 4 hours away.
 

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The Beach did their best to hide it for a while...
They had ten attractions closed today, a lot of them all day.
Though their queues were around ten to twenty minutes...
 
I’m sure ride availability isn’t “just” down to inadequate tech staff, but it’s certainly a big component. It’s also a component they have had a long time to fix and have failed to do so. The failure to address staffing is only going to effect morale for the current staff and also make it less attractive to prospective new staff.

I’m sure someone can come up with a competitor, but ride availability has gotten to such a bad state that I struggle to name a park with the level of unavailability Towers now have.
 
Bowser said:
You can check queue times at any point and are almost guaranteed at least one major attraction is down. That's absurd and it's no wonder they're the only UK theme park hiding queue data.
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To be fair although not the UK, Phantasialand hide it too - a few times when I was there last month when my phone had briefly lost 5G and/or location, the app flashed up that I had to be in the park to view queue times.
 
Steve74 said:
To be fair although not the UK, Phantasialand hide it too - a few times when I was there last month when my phone had briefly lost 5G and/or location, the app flashed up that I had to be in the park to view queue times.
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Europa hide theirs too but I don’t think either park has a reputation for poor ride ops/availability (quite the opposite) so presuming their reasons differ…
 
Rob said:
To be fair, I do not think they are closing rides in the middle of the day due to staffing/shift changes etc. The majority of the poor availability at Alton Towers this season is down to a very stretched technical services team who just cannot keep on top of everything. It's also the primary reason for the staggered openings; tech services just cannot get everything ready for 10am.

Not that it is an excuse, as that simply is not good enough. It is yet another example of a problem that has manifested over a long period of time and it is not one that they're going to be able to remedy overnight. If it was as simple as hiring more engineers then that would have been done.
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I remember at the start of the season when the rapids was closed for ‘maintenance’ being assured by someone on here that it was down to legitimate maintenance works and not because it was quite cold and not that busy.

My view on that was I’d guarantee it would open for the Easter weekend; which it did.

It’s now closed again for the cold end of the season.

Of course it could all be for legitimate reasons but it does absolutely smack of them shutting it when they think they can get away with doing so as it’s expensive to run.
 
It takes an awful lot of dirty energy to run those pumps on the rapids, pretty sure it takes a great deal more power than any of the coasters, including Rita.
They have to run non stop.
If there are few riders because of the temperature, I can actually understand the closure...think of the help in reducing climate change!
When global warming kicks in more, they will surely run the rapids year round.
 
Josh555 said:
I remember at the start of the season when the rapids was closed for ‘maintenance’ being assured by someone on here that it was down to legitimate maintenance works and not because it was quite cold and not that busy.

My view on that was I’d guarantee it would open for the Easter weekend; which it did.

It’s now closed again for the cold end of the season.

Of course it could all be for legitimate reasons but it does absolutely smack of them shutting it when they think they can get away with doing so as it’s expensive to run.
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The early season closure was technical, I am almost certain the end of season closure is budget/ tech services capacity.
 
Josh555 said:
I remember at the start of the season when the rapids was closed for ‘maintenance’ being assured by someone on here that it was down to legitimate maintenance works and not because it was quite cold and not that busy.

My view on that was I’d guarantee it would open for the Easter weekend; which it did.

It’s now closed again for the cold end of the season.

Of course it could all be for legitimate reasons but it does absolutely smack of them shutting it when they think they can get away with doing so as it’s expensive to run.
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Oh I have no doubt that the Rapids being closed is a cost saving measure, if they wanted to open it they could. But they are not closing rides in the middle of the stay whilst staff are changing over/on break, as was alluded to.
 
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