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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

Today doesn’t seem all that much better than yesterday. Just looking at queue times on a whim:

Oblivion closed
Rita closed (gets a reprieve in fairness as it’s having significant issues)
Spinball closed
Smiler closed
Nemesis 2.5 hours as it’s still on 1
Remaining coasters a minimum of 110 minutes (except RMT which is “only” an hour)

It really is diabolical. End of the season can’t come soon enough…
 
We are pre booked in this Friday. My son has watched Shawn’s video and looking online via live queues. I’ve seen the posts on here and we are not going bother go. The place is a shambles.

We were booked in when my lad had an inset day mid September. If I remember right there were issues then. We cancelled our pre book then and I drive the two of us down to Thorpe for the day. We had a great day. Long and tiring from Stoke. But Towers is that bad we can’t even be bothered travel 35 mins to go lately.

Sad days, we had friends go Monday and they also said the atmosphere onsite was not great as most were complaining and fed up.
We planned on staying over Friday night too, so glad we didn’t bother. She can have her hair done after all!!!!

Passes expire at the end of the year. The first time we are really questioning to renew or not. I don’t think we will.

We went to Germany in spring half term and did Europa Park and Phantasialand. We are thinking just put the money towards another mini break to Europa or even trying Energielandia as a new park
 
venny said:
I’m not sure I’d want to test that argument in court - “we’ve opened the gates and have your £50, so please refer to our T&Cs”.
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Considering that it would be a civil matter, and would inevitably cost you many times over your ticket entry, it's unlikely that it would be tested in court.
venny said:
There’s a reasonable assumption that people will be able to ride the attractions advertised. Yes, some may break down, within reason. I’d suggest that having half of your major rides broken at any one time is not what one would reasonably expect.
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In this scenario you'd have to prove that the lack of provision for the attractions advertised was due to neglect, instead of a mechanical fault or an "act of god". If rides are going up and down, that demonstrates that the park intends to run a normal service, but that there may be some technical issues.
venny said:
It could perhaps be argued that the park have not delivered its service with reasonable skill and care, and there may be other contraventions of the Consumer Rights Act.
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If you're going down the argument for "delivering a service with reasonable skill and care", then the park as a legal minimum have to:
  • Either redo the element of the service that's inadequate, or perform the whole service again at no extra cost to you, within a reasonable time and without causing you significant inconvenience.
Pre-empting the "significant inconvenience" argument. If you've already visited a theme park once, it is not automatically considered to be a significant inconvenience to visit it again, within a reasonable time frame for a repeat visit. In such a scenario where you've driven a long way, for example, the park may offer you additional discounts, or vouchers, as a form of compensation. If the return visit, and additional vouchers, can't be used within a reasonable time frame, or without significant inconvenience, then the park is obligated to give you a price reduction.
  • in circumstances where the repeat performance is impossible, or can’t be done within a reasonable time or without causing significant inconvenience, you can claim a price reduction. Depending on how severe the failings are, this could be up to 100% of the cost, and the trader should refund you within 14 days of agreeing that you're entitled to a refund.
 
Danny said:
Given Bianca is quite active on Instagram, I was hoping ride reliability was a burning trend in her comments. It appears not to be the case, but she did respond to the one comment she had with this:

1000031979.jpg
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Bet she has someone running that account for her to be honest. I'm still unsure what her job actually entails, if it involves any kind of day to day running of the park then she should consider a change of career. Because at the moment it looks like they've got one guy who goes around sprinkling glitter on old rides and her pretending everything is ok.
 
Danny said:
Given Bianca is quite active on Instagram, I was hoping ride reliability was a burning trend in her comments. It appears not to be the case, but she did respond to the one comment she had with this:

1000031979.jpg
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Wicker is running at about 81% availability this year - this is classed as excellent 🤔 ?! Where I work, anything less than 99.98% is poor and school children have a 94% attendance target.
We have been 4x to AT this year, and it's been closed all day for 3 of those trips. The first time we got to ride it was last Friday.

Looks like today at AT has been a complete failure, most of the rides closed, with 130+ mins queue times for the open ones.
Also looks like people were forced to leave queues often as rides closed down through the day.

Bad times for AT, feel sorry for the people there today, many people complaining on Twitter (X)
 
RIPCorky said:
Bet she has someone running that account for her to be honest. I'm still unsure what her job actually entails, if it involves any kind of day to day running of the park then she should consider a change of career. Because at the moment it looks like they've got one guy who goes around sprinkling glitter on old rides and her pretending everything is ok.
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I very much doubt she has anyone running her account, and her job has very little to do with the day to day running of the park.
 
BigShadowtinytree said:
All comments I’ve seen from people who didn’t have a terrible time at Alton this week are from people who either bought fast track, used RAP or are sycophantic MAP holders. Says it all really.
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We are Gold Merlin Pass holders but don't buy Fast Passes, due to being able to go anytime.

Last Friday we were very lucky, basically being near-by rides that were re-opening and jumping in the smaller queue.
Yesterday at Thorpe Park the queue's were long, mostly 100+ mins, with Hyperia over 150mins all day.

My son (13) has loved all of the scare mazes at AT and Thorpe. Even the childs Amigos maze was fun :)
 
RIPCorky said:
Tell me what her job is then, because I've no idea?
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She is the Divisional Director, so is responsible for all aspect of Alton Towers; the park, the hotels, the waterpark, strategic planning etc. The day to day operations of the park will be the responsibility of the operations manager/director or equivalent role (I am not familiar with the management structure and roles they have these days).

That is not to say that she's not accountable though, the Divisional Director absolutely is. I am sure Alton Towers management are acutely aware that this week in particular is nowhere near good enough.

For it to be nearly 5pm and for both Oblivion and Spinball to have not opened, along with Rita and The Smiler being down for the majority of the day so far, is wholly unacceptable.
 
RIPCorky said:
Tell me what her job is then, because I've no idea?
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Basically act as the responsible officer.

There is a head of tech services and an operational director who manage those aspects directly.

It’s why it’s oversimplified to blame the person at the top with short term issues as you don’t know what it is they are dealing with underneath them.

Not saying Bianca’s decision making is not the cause, not saying their decision making is the cause but outside of football you really don’t sack the top manager after 1 season unless you have evidence they are the cause of the problem. And people on this forum don’t know what internal issues are occurring.

This is why it always strikes me as odd when people attack Bianca at the moment. If the same is occurring next season then yeah maybe but for all we know 40% of tech services left in June and another 30% are off sick (I’m not saying that’s occurred), in such a scenario even the best manager wouldn’t be able to quickly fix the issue.

We sometimes forget we don’t have a clue on these forums what is actually occurring. We can and should comment on how bad things are but going after the divisional director who has only been in the job a year just seems off to me. I really doubt she reads these forums (I wouldn’t if I did that job) but she is still a human.
 
Dave said:
We sometimes forget we don’t have a clue on these forums what is actually occurring. We can and should comment on how bad things are but going after the divisional director who has only been in the job a year just seems off to me. I really doubt she reads these forums (I wouldn’t if I did that job) but she is still a human.
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I would very much echo this. It’s incredibly easy to cite Bianca when talking about the state of the park, and as I said before she is of course accountable (to her bosses at Merlin mind, not us). But it is not fair to blame one person when in reality what we are seeing is a culmination of bad decisions over a long period of time at Alton Towers and Merlin.

No theme park director would want the park to be like it is at the moment. But it takes more than one theme park director to solve long standing problems.

It’s probably best for discussion to stick to the demise of the park itself rather than discussing individuals, which to be fair, has been the case for the majority of discussion in this thread.
 
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