Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

[owenstreet7]

They don't have a major park and there's a choice of 3 sensible major parks for them, being BPB, Mingo and Towers.

Towers even in this state is easily superior.

The only park Scotland still has is M&Ds which is in desperate need of rebranding and completely new ownership.

It used to have Loudoun Castle which had potential to grow.

 

[Dave]

To be honest I don’t think Towers rides go down more than others (excluding the big downtime we have seen on the old equipment), it’s that when they do go down they take longer to get back up and running again. What would be a 10 minute stoppage at Europa is a 40 min shut down at Towers.

Because of that the impact on the day is higher.

 

[jibbsie]

Don't plenty of other parks around the world have a similar set of "prototypes"? Disney, Universal, Europa, Efteling etc? The difference is they invest just as much in the maintenance of said rides.

A lot of those parks don't own many prototype rides:
Universal dosn't have many, the only one I can think of is hulk with its drive tire launch, but the main ride is the same as a b and m sit down but they have also got reletivly new rides (if a rollercoaster is arround 15-20 years they replace it) but they can have poor avalibility for example in 2019 with hagrids.

Europa: They are owned by their manurfacture, and mack have typically been pretty reliable.

Disney: They are also owned by most of their manurfacture (test track, and a lot of rides are made by imagineering) but even vecoma they often play it safe with non prototype rides, the only one that comes to mind is areosmyth which don't have good avalibility and will go down for like 3 months unsceduled at least once a year.

Eftling: They alsop don't have many prototype rides, the only one I can think of is the flying duchman, which I recall had quite a few problems before opening.

The problem with early ride models is that problems may not have been hashed out which are a redesign of components, These problems aren't serious but can cause reliability issues and quite often the alternative is replace large parts of the ride, which is expensive and not too standard.

Your own argument defeats you. If I maintain my car well, it’s far less likely to break down than if I never change the oil, never get it serviced and run it into the ground. If, as your argument suggests, breakdowns are inevitable, then they would inevitably occur at similar distributions and occurrences at parks across the world. That, as a matter of fact, is not the case.

I do enjoy your optimism of 1000 trains being dispatched a day. I can’t wait to see 2-3 trains per minute being dispatched from Nemesis.

I don't understand, you are saying my argument sudgest that breakdowns are inevitable for a cause, but I am not arguing that they will happen for the same reason just other reasons, no matter what you do you can still get a flat tire, in addition parts wear out even with a perfectly serviced car parts will need to be replaced over time, maf sensors go, lambda sensors can go. wheel bearings can go and so much more.

If you don't like 1000 dispaches per day (I chose it to make the number nice) for 500 dispaches per day at 0.1% failure the chance is 40% of at least one failure.

To be honest I don’t think Towers rides go down more than others (excluding the big downtime we have seen on the old equipment), it’s that when they do go down they take longer to get back up and running again. What would be a 10 minute stoppage at Europa is a 40 min shut down at Towers.

I do agree and I think this potentially a problem caused by the size and layout of alton (it is like a big horse shoe so can be difficult to go from rita to nemesis)

 

[Bowser]

Eftling: They alsop don't have many prototype rides, the only one I can think of is the flying duchman, which I recall had quite a few problems before opening.

Just to be somewhat pedantic, Villa Volta was also a prototype (still running almost 365 30 years later) and the imminent Danse Macabre is too. Having problems at opening and having problems across most of your attractions for years are different beasts. Could list examples for the others too but the point was more that AT is not unique in having a handful of prototypes. Whether the park is owned by the manufacturer or not is moot, if you build it then you have the responsibility to your customers to maintain it imo.

 

[jibbsie]

Just to be somewhat pedantic, Villa Volta was also a prototype (still running almost 365 30 years later) and the imminent Danse Macabre is too. Having problems at opening and having problems across most of your attractions for years are different beasts. Could list examples for the others too but the point was more that AT is not unique in having a handful of prototypes. Whether the park is owned by the manufacturer or not is moot, if you build it then you have the responsibility to your customers to maintain it imo.

yeah I understand, but at alton has more with more than 50% (4) of the big 7 being prototype rides (their main line up) and intamin hydraulic accelerators (rita) aren't know for their reliability so arround 5 of the 7 main rides at alton are prototype/problematic rides.

Also interms of prototype rides not being reliable I would argue a lot of altons rides are "extreme" prototypes with many parts never being done before. I turn back to areosmyth a prototype lsm launched ride (with a cach car) that often goes down for months of unsceduled "sceduled" maitanence (or refurbishment)

 

[GooseOnTheLoose]

and the imminent Danse Macabre is too

I think it's rather disingenuous to use a ride which hasn't opened yet, as an example of a park having a prototype and it running exceedingly well for 20+ years.

Could list examples for the others too but the point was more that AT is not unique in having a handful of prototypes.

Not many parks have almost half of their coaster stock as prototypes, make of that what you will.

Whether the park is owned by the manufacturer or not is moot,

I feel like this is also unfair. Mack Rides is 8 km from Europa Park. If something goes absolutely catastrophically wrong, a la Hyperia, the entire manufacturing company is an 9 minute drive away. Of course this absolutely has an impact on maintenance and repair work.

 

[Bowser]

yeah I understand, but at alton has more with more than 50% (4) of the big 7 being prototype rides (their main line up) and intamin hydraulic accelerators (rita) aren't know for their reliability so arround 5 of the 7 main rides at alton are prototype/problematic rides.

Also interms of prototype rides not being reliable I would argue a lot of altons rides are "extreme" prototypes with many parts never being done before. I turn back to areosmyth a prototype lsm launched ride (with a cach car) that often goes down for months of unsceduled "sceduled" maitanence (or refurbishment)

Sure but again if the park have chosen to repeatedly purchase "extreme" prototypes in order to gain a competitive edge then they have the responsibility to maintain them imo. It isn't just those rides causing problems anyway.

It seems very defeatist to adopt an attitude of "yeah it was nice that AT got some exclusive rides 20 years ago, now we have to settle for mediocrity as a result of that".

I'll take your word on the Aerosmith example as i don't know much about that but that sounds like an outlier at a Disney park if it's the case.

Ultimately it's just frustrating having seen and heard of parks elsewhere operating so much better. Obviously we are all here because we love (or loved) AT and want things to be better but it's off-putting when the baseline experience for a visit is so low currently.

 

[venny]

The prototype argument is a red herring. That’s bourne out by the fact that the availability of Alton’s very same rides years ago was much better.

I’m sure we can keep going around in circles in a vein attempt to excuse the failings of Merlin. We could mention ride age again or perhaps start saying it’s the weather again. None of it bears scrutiny when you compare to other parks or even the same park in past years.

Perhaps, just maybe, the poor ride availability is best explained by how Merlin operate the park…

 

[jibbsie]

Sure but again if the park have chosen to repeatedly purchase "extreme" prototypes in order to gain a competitive edge then they have the responsibility to maintain them imo. It isn't just those rides causing problems anyway.

The thing is though, what maitanence is required for them to stop the problems?
Like for galactica, the seat locking mechanism may have been updated with a newer system which is more reliable, the fix to replace it could entail replacing most if not all of the train (if it changes the chassis, may need new pivot, etc), if some of 13s down time is caused by the drop tower, but a new design would fix that should the rip out the entire dorp tower and replace it?

A lot of these options would be insanely expensive for little impact.

I'll take your word on the Aerosmith example as i don't know much about that but that sounds like an outlier at a Disney park if it's the case.

Every time it happens the disney park flood with roumours of areosmyth being replaced by quene, acdc etc.

 

[AltonLover123]

The prototype argument is a red herring. That’s bourne out by the fact that the availability of Alton’s very same rides years ago was much better.

But was it? Years ago we didn’t have on tap access to queue times and downtime from wherever in the world.

In 2024 someone could never set foot past the turnstiles yet every day compile the downtime data for every ride.

Choose a random day in the 2003 season and we simply wouldn’t have the data on it. Yet in 2024 we would.

 

[rob666]

To be honest I don’t think Towers rides go down more than others (excluding the big downtime we have seen on the old equipment), it’s that when they do go down they take longer to get back up and running again. What would be a 10 minute stoppage at Europa is a 40 min shut down at Towers.

Because of that the impact on the day is higher.

Sorry to bang the drum again...but what would have been a short term shut down at the Towers has become two full years for one particular attraction.
And "excluding big downtime we have seen on the old equipment" is just the point isn't it.
They have lots of old, questionably maintained equipment...whose fault is that exactly???
No exclusions...no excuses, operations have been very poor at the park recently...add in the skyride and Hex on top of routine poor ops and you have a bit of a shocker.

 

[Matt.GC]

It's how they operate their park. They choose to let their hardware age to the point where it needs significant work, and then are slow to commission and carry out said work. They choose to not deal with their tech and mech team shortages. They choose to run a park so hollowed out of attractions that downtime and extended closures are highly noticeable because the alternative attractions are few and far between.

 

[Dave]

Sorry to bang the drum again...but what would have been a short term shut down at the Towers has become two full years for one particular attraction.
And "excluding big downtime we have seen on the old equipment" is just the point isn't it.
They have lots of old, questionably maintained equipment...whose fault is that exactly???
No exclusions...no excuses, operations have been very poor at the park recently...add in the skyride and Hex on top of routine poor ops and you have a bit of a shocker.

One of my big frustrations with the world is folk over simplifying everything. Not a criticism it’s life and a natural human trait, but the job I do just makes my brain think the way it thinks, can’t help it. So broadly speaking if you want to pull everything into one big simple bundle then yes fine you can say the long term closures and the short term closures are all one big problem, bish bosh all sorted.

However, long term neglect and short term capacity have different if sometimes overlapping drivers/ causes and different solutions. My point was that I don’t think the rides at Towers that are operating are having a higher “error” rate than other parks within the scheme of the various rides ages. Just that when rides go down at Towers it takes 3 x longer to get the ride open again compared to a well run park with good maintenance capacity.

So what would be a 5 minute reset at EP or Disney is a 40 minute shut down at Merlin.

 

[Poisson]

Maintenance need staff with the ability to hand rides back without management required to attend. SLTs or Maints managers need the power to cut down on some of the waits.

 

[AltonLover123]

Maintenance need staff with the ability to hand rides back without management required to attend. SLTs or Maints managers need the power to cut down on some of the waits.

They don’t always require management to hand rides back over to the rides team. It depends entirely on what the issue is.

You just tend to see managers at a coasters breakdown because they’re far more popular than say, heave Ho for example.

 

[trotters98]

On park all day.

Rita didn’t open, Nemesis still on one train

 

[Bowser]

Nemesis still on one train

@Ethan

 

[Ethan]

@Ethan

At this point Alton towers needs a hero more than Gotham

 

[Mattie boy]

One assumes nemesis train 2 is still out then, this late in season will we will see it back on 2 ?

 

[James]

I usually avoid this thread, so it was surprising to see a few pages of actual discussion here.

I won't bother writing an essay since many good comments have been made. It seems clear that ride reliability is more linked to staffing issues in technical services (given the constant advertising of jobs all year). Hopefully, they can fix this somehow for next season. I agree with whoever mentioned an 11am opening for all rides instead of staggered openings, which will likely confuse or annoy guests.

It's interesting to hear of a restructure in Merlin. For the person who asked what's left to cut, they can still close rides under the guise of ‘refurbishments’.