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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

owenstreet7 said:
There's people who might not know any different including enthusiasts and vloggers as they may not have experienced some of the more efficient parks in Europe.
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I think as enthusiasts we often forgot how much we overanalyse and overthink every aspect. As with any hobby, there's often a turning point where you move from casual consumer to follower and i know personally as a very recent enthusiast and addition to this community i can recall several decades of theme park visits where they were simply an annual (or less) day out and nothing more.

For example, I remember visiting Six Flags Over Georgia about 20 years ago and getting on about 3 or 4 rides but having a great day still. I could look back and analyse the park with my new found knowledge of ride operations etc but at the time something breaking down was just one of those things. If anything it was probably a moment of excitement in itself and something for us all to talk about as we queued for the next attempted ride!

Basically, i think for a lot of people the poor availability can be chalked down to "one of those things" and a year or so later they'll have completely forgotten about it, perhaps swayed by advertising for a new ride.

I suppose the difference now is the social media element. I also do think they have somewhat crossed a line this week between an average experience that wouldn't stand out for most people and one so poor that people want a refund. But most of all, they've created a new type of customer with their MAP culture and we're seeing the results of that. Increasingly it does seem that people WILL tolerate poor service in exchange for a cheap subscription model of theme park. If MAP didn't exist i very much doubt the park would operate in this manner.
 
BigShadowtinytree said:
I must say I’m getting tired of Passholders on various social media groups justifying this whole fiasco by basically saying “it’s ok because we can just come again so people should stop moaning and being negative”. Just because we can come back another day doesn’t mean we have to put up with what Alton are currently serving us. Coming back again doesn’t make the product good, no matter which way you look at it, it isn’t good enough. It’s also the classic “I’m alright jack” attitude with no consideration for those who have paid a lot of money for day tickets only to be met with closure after closure and long queues. This mentality allows businesses to get away with providing a substandard service because they know they can rely on the repeat custom from ‘loyal’ customers who will continue to pay for their passes and turn up no matter what. They are part of the problem at this point.

People are making very valid points about why they didn’t enjoy their day only to get shut down by self righteous Passholders who refuse to accept any bad word said against Merlin.

Some of these passholders have never been to a non merlin park, in or outside of the uk and it really shows.
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I couldn't agree more on this ☝🏻👏🏻

That is normalising Merlin Mediocrity and it's part of the problem.

People really need to put their foot down and support the other parks until Alton Towers can get their act together.

mo237 said:
I can't wait to see how/if the park will defend the availability as of late. It's a 2.5hr drive for me, and requires me booking time off work, finding somewhere to stay, a full tank of petrol - but honestly, if I arrived to see these ridiculous queues and only two coasters open, I'd just go home. Insane.
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This is honestly my debate on whether to go to Towers.

I'd honestly rather go to Blackpool Pleasure Beach right now which has Valhalla.

Bowser said:
I think as enthusiasts we often forgot how much we overanalyse and overthink every aspect. As with any hobby, there's often a turning point where you move from casual consumer to follower and i know personally as a very recent enthusiast and addition to this community i can recall several decades of theme park visits where they were simply an annual (or less) day out and nothing more.

For example, I remember visiting Six Flags Over Georgia about 20 years ago and getting on about 3 or 4 rides but having a great day still. I could look back and analyse the park with my new found knowledge of ride operations etc but at the time something breaking down was just one of those things. If anything it was probably a moment of excitement in itself and something for us all to talk about as we queued for the next attempted ride!

Basically, i think for a lot of people the poor availability can be chalked down to "one of those things" and a year or so later they'll have completely forgotten about it, perhaps swayed by advertising for a new ride.

I suppose the difference now is the social media element. I also do think they have somewhat crossed a line this week between an average experience that wouldn't stand out for most people and one so poor that people want a refund. But most of all, they've created a new type of customer with their MAP culture and we're seeing the results of that. Increasingly it does seem that people WILL tolerate poor service in exchange for a cheap subscription model of theme park. If MAP didn't exist i very much doubt the park would operate in this manner.
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That's very true, I have an enthusiast for a while however have become more active over the last 18 months or so with regular trips, travelling to Europe, going to coaster group events, giving advice on social media groups and taking part in discussions on the theme park forum like this one.

I before becoming active, going to Thorpe Park was a once or twice a year thing for me and friends. It is a different experience being a regular compared to a once a year visitor.

I feel really sorry for those visiting this week to Alton Towers with the massive issues with crowds, queues and breakdowns. To the general public, people will forget a breakdown but will remember only going on 2 rides.

I do agree that the Merlin Annual Passes have opened the floodgates to a bigger group of people where it's not just theme park enthusiasts but families looking for the best value on their days outs. It has also made the theme park enthusiast community more accessible along with theme park creators.

With the social media aspect, there is a lot of people that seem to defend Merlin. I have also seen a few theme park creators that appear to only create content about Merlin, most do cover a variety of parks however there does seem to be a Merlin niche for theme park enthusiasts that seems to defend the shenanigans of Alton Towers which will mean Merlin will keep going as they are. 🤔
 
I don’t think we should under or over estimate the influence of specific vlogs, feedback, experiences, reviews, word of mouth or social media comments on perceptions of the park. They will all combine to influence the overall perception of the park. Any one person or group of people can have a brilliant or appalling individual day, but the collective weight and direction of opinion is clearly heading one way at the moment.
 
I think the telling thing about the TPWW vlog is that he doesn’t start it out as a negative thing but what he sees leaves him no choice but to go on the attack. Positive vid praising scarefest almost as night descends switches into an attack on how pathetic the park is currently, the optics of that video for the park are horrendous, whether it actually reaches far and wide though I don’t know.
 
Somehow Peter rabbit and Rita (advertised as closed) are the only rides down (until they usher families out of cbeebies land at 5pm) keep this up and people might be mistaken that this is a functional theme park!.
 
If people think a MAP classifies as "affordable for families" these days they'd be shocked at the cost of them back under Tussauds when first released.

Though the push on them wasn't as ridiculous as now.

The "we can revisit cos of MAP" is also shared by some of the parks. It was the response I got on our first trip to Thorpe this year when Hyperia died. Little wonder it gets parroted by the fan groups.

I'd also say people kept going to Thorpe year on year with their disastrous reliability. Don't think it'll make too much difference to Towers come next year. Short memories and people being all talk and all that.

I think it feels worse for Towers because it's pretty much unheard of to be this bad without extenuating circumstances (I.e. powercuts) being the cause. And as a result the general flaws of the park have come right to the foreground because it can barely cope with the current line up as it is. Especially on busy days.

I look forward to the Fireworks responses.
 
I think Towers is the odd one out of Merlin's portfolio and doesn't really fit the MAP. The London Parks and lower operating costs of the mid-ways make sense on MAP. Even with Universal, they can compete because they will be the more affordable option with their membership offering. I suspect the hope is people tag a Merlin day or two because they 'might as well' being in the UK.

Towers is such a big park and should be the premium offering in the portfolio. However, it's in the middle of nowhere with no public transport. Merlin's issue is, 'How do you price it'. Remove the MAP. You risk losing recurring revenue unless you only make platinum MAP, including towers. While MAP is an excellent way of doing recurring business, it also traps them at the same. M

I suspect they hope with MAP, people would buy the overpriced food and drinks, but everyone just seems to bring a lunch box since they went a bit too mad on the price/quality of food/drink.
 
Vloggers skew the experience sometimes. As much as Sandbrooke appears to be pretty impartial you have others without naming them, dressing up for scarefest and stating how fantastic the experience was and how great the park is.

I guess it also matters what they and you go to Alton for. If you go for rides then you are in trouble. If you go for some scare mazes and a walk round the gardens you probably wouldn’t see the wood for the Earl’s trees.

At the moment, fan or not, vlogger or not, the rides are broken, poorly maintained sometimes not operating at all.
 
To preface this- I’m no mechanic just thinking how I would solve these problems in work situation.

If I were tech services I would be compiling the list of reasons why there has been breakdowns - ie restraint issue, sensor issue etc and then seeing if there’s a common theme across certain rides and then looking into these issues over the closed season. A lovely spreadsheet would be great for this!!

I’m guessing as well one of the issues is the work they may usually do after normal ride close is not able to happen due to later closures.

If anyone has some insight into common reasons why rides breakdown loved to know- just your average arm chair RCT mechanic here!
 
VerticalLoop123 said:
To preface this- I’m no mechanic just thinking how I would solve these problems in work situation.

If I were tech services I would be compiling the list of reasons why there has been breakdowns - ie restraint issue, sensor issue etc and then seeing if there’s a common theme across certain rides and then looking into these issues over the closed season. A lovely spreadsheet would be great for this!!
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This is already pretty much a thing, the data is monitored, but sadly it doesn’t always translate to remedial budgets or staffing availability out of season.

TS pay rates are good, not great. So asking folk to be away from their kids for 40 hours a week on a good-not-great salary is one thing, but those 40 hour weeks regularly turn into 45-50 hours, we know that, it’s the nature of the beast.

Now imagine when you’re due to clock off at 7pm that you’ve just completed a call on Nemmy, you’re not in your car you’re in a site van because it’s got all your bits in it. So now at 7ish you have to work your way back to MHQ where your car is parked, that’s 7:15. Then it’s busy leaving resort because you have to queue all the way down the main drive just to get to the staff gate. Then it’s 30-40mins home.

Do that 5 days a week and your 45-50hr week for good-not-great pay turns into a 50-60hr week once you factor in all the travel time that you’re not paid for and the math just stops adding up.
 
VerticalLoop123 said:
To preface this- I’m no mechanic just thinking how I would solve these problems in work situation.

If I were tech services I would be compiling the list of reasons why there has been breakdowns - ie restraint issue, sensor issue etc and then seeing if there’s a common theme across certain rides and then looking into these issues over the closed season. A lovely spreadsheet would be great for this!!

I’m guessing as well one of the issues is the work they may usually do after normal ride close is not able to happen due to later closures.

If anyone has some insight into common reasons why rides breakdown loved to know- just your average arm chair RCT mechanic here!
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They’ll know their rides as well as they can, but from the outside looking in it simply seems to be staffing issues. Seems they are fighting a losing battle, have too many fires to put out with not enough water. The park has always been in a remote location so as much as a challenge that might be they’ve managed to overcome it in the past, and with competitive pay and incentives they could easily do so again. They seems to be on a pretty big recruitment drive for tech services, and offering apprenticeships is another positive (yet I’m unsure about pay being offered). But Merlin have forced this downfall, that’s one thing that is true.
 
Blackhole_Sun said:
I guess it also matters what they and you go to Alton for. If you go for rides then you are in trouble. If you go for some scare mazes and a walk round the gardens you probably wouldn’t see the wood for the Earl’s trees.
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And therein lies the problem.

Someone mentioned earlier how it’s a bit of a grey area wether they can class thier availability policy in the t&cs as a legal standing for not providing refunds.

If you were going this week purely for coasters you’d be dissapointed. The availabilty of them has been shocking.

However, Alton isn’t just coasters. They offer a big range of other rides which quite often have little downtime.

If you don’t want to ride them, that’s cool, but they’re part of the service you pay for and it’s your choice if you don’t ride them. They’re available and open when the coasters are down. You’ve paid for them just as much as you’ve paid for Oblivion etc.
 
I'll write more when I have time. I visited Towers with my brother for the last two days.

In all my years of visiting Towers, today and yesterday have been the worst days we have ever experienced in the park.

Yesterday was a day spent walking from broken-down ride to broken-down ride. At one point, Nemesis was the only operating coaster. I've never seen anything like it.

Today wasn’t much better, but in the evening the queues eased (and all coasters bar Rita were open), so we had a good run for night rides. However, that has been shrouded by the whole experience the last two days.

The atmosphere around the park has been miserable. Both yesterday and today, anywhere you walk, there are lots of angry people moaning about the state of the place.
 
BigShadowtinytree said:
Where? In cbeebies land?

I certainly wouldn’t call what is on offer in the main park a ‘big range’ of rides. They have some rides, but certainly not enough to offset the crowds when the main coasters go down like they have been recently.
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CBeebies, Mutiny Bay, Walliams World, the Gardens, Sealife etc. they’re all part of the attraction line up that you pay for.

I wasn’t saying the other rides offset the crowds. I was commenting regarding thier availability clause that you agree to when purchasing a ticket.
 
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