• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

AstroDan said:
I'm really not sure what's been going on with tech services over winter this year.

Deadlines seem to have been missed all over the park. It's Easter holidays for goodness' sake.

Increased queueing times and unavailable attractions affectsthe park's success and reputation.
Click to expand...
Doesn't seem it's just Alton Towers - Thrope/Chessington have both had reliability issues.

Chessington looks a state today.

Staffing issues maybe?
 
It’s not good enough. Other parks operate throughout the year without a 4 month break and they manage far better than the merlin parks seem to. There were next to no breakdowns during my 3 days at Efteling over Christmas.

Alton Towers becoming a year round park at some point seems like a bit of a joke at the moment. They can’t even cope on a seasonal schedule.
 
BigShadowtinytree said:
Alton Towers becoming a year round park at some point seems like a bit of a joke at the moment. They can’t even cope on a seasonal schedule.
Click to expand...
I wholeheartedly agree with you here, and this is why I wouldn't want the park to become 365. Year after year, rides open late and are consistently unreliable - imagine how much worse it'd be if they didn't have chance to try and rectify these issues? Of course, there'd be rolling maintenance like Efteling, where a ride is shut for a month or so to have it's scheduled work - but with the ride lineup hilariously low, that'd just add another layer of frustration to visiting.
 
They have your season pass money, why bother operating to a decent standard?
They have a virtual monopoly on large theme parks in this fine nation of ours, and it is really beginning to show.
 
I'm going to hazard a guess that due to the terms and conditions of their employment contracts, Towers don't retain experienced Tech staff as much as they used to. I'm basing this assumption on the fact that the rates of pay and conditions they offer elsewhere across the resort are not very competitive and if anything have become worse over the years. If the Tech staff lack experience and (maybe) motivation then you're less likely to get as many jobs completed properly and in good time. Total conjecture on my part, so apologies if I'm wrong, but this is the impression that comes across.
 
Having staff with knowledge of the specific rides is vital. Less so the technical knowledge from manufacturer but the quirks in specific installs. If you can have a damn good guess at something being off, most of the time you'll be right. Today for an off park example, we had an issue on a site and between myself and in house tech support, nailed it in under 10 mins by skipping a load of guess work and hedging our bets it was a certain issue, which it turned out to be.

The loss Merlin group probably have had in terms of experience will be underestimated but felt dramatically. If a tech can walk up to Galactica and go for the most likely fault, a 30 min breakdown might become a 10 minute instead.
 
Out of pure interest, what sort of qualifications does an engineering role at Alton Towers require?

Do they require you to have a degree in Mechanical Engineering or similar? Or is it a job that you can do without a degree provided you show enough practical aptitude?
 
Matt N said:
Out of pure interest, what sort of qualifications does an engineering role at Alton Towers require?

Do they require you to have a degree in Mechanical Engineering or similar? Or is it a job that you can do without a degree provided you show enough practical aptitude?
Click to expand...
Believe Merlin's standard requirement is: An ONC, NVQ level 3 or BTEC equivalent gained through an Apprenticeship or college route in engineering.

Never seen a degree mentioned on a job advert.
 
Spinball testing this afternoon. Was a tough day today not helped with a poor start rides never really recovered. Was in the queue for run away when it went down. 13 queue advertised as 60 was 120 yes its an estimate but they need to do better.
 
zeock said:
If they simply added head-counting software as you entered the queue like SAW: The Ride, it would not need to be an estimate.
Click to expand...
Is that actually a thing?! Wow I never knew that. In that case then towers definitely need it. Divide the number of people in the queue by the hourly throughput and boom you have an accurate queue time. Not sure why towers don't have this software if the other merlin park does
 
That only works if you:

1) know what the current hourly throughput is
2) know how many of those riders used the main queue

I suspect that they're not accurately tracking either of those things in real time.

In the case of Thirteen (and possibly several other rides) it seems they're failing to accurately account for the ride running reduced capacity and the significant increase in RAP allocation.
 
I don't know how these systems work but I have worked with a system that counted total in and total out (admittedly, there was no RAP, only a limited FT equivalent).

With those numbers you could understand how many people were in the queue and what your throughput was which gave you a pretty accurate wait time.
 
Tbh a year round maintenance schedule would put less stress overall on tech services, as its spread out over the year, rather than every ride at once, to work it would need tech services budgets to be increased to have operational techs and overhaul techs on duty as tech services will be required to card the rides and do the routine checks, breakdowns and maintenance, whilst the over works through the planned closure overhauls.
 
Weird query that might be answered elsewhere - but how do towers calculate queue times? Never really thought about how it was calculated before, because usually the estimates have been accurate when I'm at towers.
 
LivOctober said:
Weird query that might be answered elsewhere - but how do towers calculate queue times? Never really thought about how it was calculated before, because usually the estimates have been accurate when I'm at towers.
Click to expand...
Probably based on where the queue starts. Think that's why Thirteen has been inaccurate recently as they seem to be not taking into account its on reduced capacity
 
Ops very mixed today. Got in 13s queue with queue time stating an hour, ended up taking us 2hrs20min to get to the front. Lack of trains didn’t help with poor management of flow of fast track queue into main queue. They did have baggage hold on but that didn’t seem to help.

Smiler on the other hand was running beautifully with a baggage hold and srq - very fast moving queue.

I think one of the big issues at the moment is less people spread across rides on park- with no Nemesis chewing up throughput there’s more people in the queues for the other big rides. I know it’s the Easter holidays, but usually queues seemed a little smaller on average on a rainy Easter break day.
 
AstroDan said:
I'm really not sure what's been going on with tech services over winter this year.

Deadlines seem to have been missed all over the park. It's Easter holidays for goodness' sake.

Increased queueing times and unavailable attractions affectsthe park's success and reputation.
Click to expand...

This is a guess and only a guess but based on some of the issues we are having with parts for medical equipment I wonder if they can’t get parts for Galactica so are having to harvest from one craft to keep two crafts going.

I could easily be very wrong on that though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top