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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

ChrisX20 said:
Been here since 9am done a total of 2 that’s TWO rides, travelled hours for this, never again till this is sorted. Shambolic, Rita opening for a total of 3 guest rides before going down again just sums it up, shocking
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This was similar to our experience on Monday. We were at the park from 12pm to 8:30pm and got 3 rides during that period.

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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I can counter the Fastrack. After our dismal day on Monday, we bought Fastrack on Tuesday (forgive us). All Fastrack queues were very long. Th13teen, we queued for 60 minutes in the Fastrack queue. In some queues, we let ambulant RAP users bypass us, given there were long waits for all guests. Lots of Fastrack and RAP users unhappy with wait times.
 
John said:
I arrived at 6pm and have managed Spinball, Smiler, Hex and Thirteen so far. Admittedly 3 of those were via SRQ but it's safe to say ignoring the first 8 hours hrs of the day was the way to do it.
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Which single queue took the longest out of interest
 
James said:
In some queues, we let ambulant RAP users bypass us, given there were long waits for all guests.
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I don't understand this...

James said:
Th13teen, we queued for 60 minutes in the Fastrack queue.
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This is depressing though. One of the only reasons we are going this weekend is because we have a few Fast Track tickets as compensation from our last awful trip but we can only use them on Thirteen and RMT so sounds like they're going to be unusable for us if that's any reflection of how things are atm.
 
Ethan said:
Which single queue took the longest out of interest
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Smiler at 40min or so. Spinball was 15, Thirteen walk-on.

Didn't see any breakdowns this evening, I've now also done Rita, Burial Grounds and Nemesis for a final count of 7. Even after queue close Nemesis is a misery to wait for on 1 train - 1hr from the far turnaround behind the shipping container Moved faster than Rita's though.
 
Bowser said:
I don't understand this...



This is depressing though. One of the only reasons we are going this weekend is because we have a few Fast Track tickets as compensation from our last awful trip but we can only use them on Thirteen and RMT so sounds like they're going to be unusable for us if that's any reflection of how things are atm.
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Chances are they were allowing people to use thirteen multiple times (or another ride) since Smiler, Oblivion and Rita were down which would have inflated the FT queues on the open rides.

If the availabilty on the day you go is okay it wouldn’t be half as bad.
 
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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It's entirely fair to judge her for being completely invisible (to guests at least) while all this is kicking off tho, save for 1 reply on Instagram basically saying the customer was wrong or overly harsh to point out a ride's poor reliability. She is the public face of a business which is taking tens of millions in revenue from customers this week and giving them a terrible experience in return.

A good manager would absorb the tension and take the heat out when times are tough so their staff can deal with getting things stable again. There's any number of ways they might do that but saying nothing and/or pretending everything is super are not valid options.

I have no doubt a good amount of what's going on is not Ms. Sammut's fault directly, but this is her job. Accountability is not the same as blame.
 
I was there yesterday and it really was terrible.
WillPS said:
It's entirely fair to judge her for being completely invisible (to guests at least) while all this is kicking off tho, save for 1 reply on Instagram basically saying the customer was wrong or overly harsh to point out a ride's poor reliability. She is the public face of a business which is taking tens of millions in revenue from customers this week and giving them a terrible experience in return.

A good manager would absorb the tension and take the heat out when times are tough so their staff can deal with getting things stable again. There's any number of ways they might do that but saying nothing and/or pretending everything is super are not valid options.

I have no doubt a good amount of what's going on is not Ms. Sammut's fault directly, but this is her job. Accountability is not the same as blame.
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I half agree with this, half dont. She has, in a way, made herself the face of the resort (albeit to a very niche audience) by doing the interviews, Instagram, glossy promo videos etc. In that sense, it is understandable that when things go wrong people come out with the pitchforks for her. But at the same time, there are many, many reasons that we have no idea about that could be contributing to all the issues. In real terms she is not accountable to us, she is accountable to her employer. Perhaps this is one of the reasons Towers have historically been quite secretive, and it may well be that this new more transparent approach will be reigned back in once again.

Case in point, openly advertising that Nemesis is on reduced capacity is for the most part a good thing, but if you look at the reviews online people are using it as a negative.

All this being said, it could be viewed as slightly questionable to put yourself front and centre in flashy advertisements, and then hide away when things go wrong.
 
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Alton Towers is at its lowest ebb.

The park has rapidly gone from merely 'having issues caused by long term poor decision making' to being a total car crash, lacking in nearly every way.

It's currently the worst major park in Europe to visit.

To say this park was once in a loose club that included Europa-Park, Efteling, Parc Astérix and Liseberg.

It's actually upsetting what has happened.
 
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