Saves wear and tear on wheels which in turn saves money.I may be missing something here so someone please explain to me, but why have towers decided on quieter days to run smiler on 2 trains instead of 3. Seems a bit weird to me as if it's a quiet 4pm midweek day, why make queues longer than necessary
Saves wear and tear on wheels which in turn saves money.
If the ride is getting less than a 15 minute wait there is no need to add the third.
Would you happily pay extra for that? Maybe for example paying the same price for entry as a peak day instead of the off-peak price?I disagree with this.
If a ride is running on reduced capacity then I expect to wait, at most, for the duration of one of the trains running around the circuit. 15 minutes wouldn't be acceptable, especially stood still in The Smiler's manky "optical procedure" room.
I may be missing something here so someone please explain to me, but why have towers decided on quieter days to run smiler on 2 trains instead of 3. Seems a bit weird to me as if it's a quiet 4pm midweek day, why make queues longer than necessary
I was there on Thursday and people were actually using fast tracks! Couldn’t believe it. I thought to myself ‘imagine having so much money that u r happy to spend £10 to turn a 10 minute wait into a 2 minute one’. LolGotta sell those fastracks somehow.
The capacity discussion (ie number of trains/ cars running) is one which has always really interested me.
As I’ve grown older and seen the operations at a greater number of parks, I now think that there’s more grey areas in this discussion.
If guests visit a park on a day when it’s absolutely dead, and everything is walk-on, they’ll have been on every ride by lunch time. Enthusiasts would love that and see it as a great opportunity to whore the coasters, but your average guests don’t think like that.
Most guests will just want to go on each ride once, and maybe have one re-ride on a handful of their favourite rides, but certainly not whore the coasters in the way that enthusiasts would.
If every coaster is run to full capacity and they’ve got on everything by lunch time, they’ll leave the park early feeling that they didn’t get good value for money because it wasn’t a full day experience, despite the obvious irony that they got on more rides than they would have done if they’d visited on a day when they needed to queue.
In other words, the public don’t care about ride counts, they want a full day experience.
I’d say that it’s in the parks’ best interest to have their coasters with queue times of around 15-30 minutes. This is the perfect balance of it not being so dead that everyone leaves early, but also not so busy that people are moaning about long queues.
So yeah, the older, wiser me has now changed his mind, and I’d say that in the situation I’ve just described, running coasters on less trains than full capacity can be a good thing to do in some circumstanes.
And the queues. Don't forget the queues!I'm not sure it's as binary as what you make out in terms of ride count.
Read any review by anyone on any site and, arguably, the number one factor individuals and groups cite is how many rides and rerides they were able to accrue during the course of the day. Enthusiasts' and the general populace alike.
Then, of-course, you have the rides spread out on a sprawling park which takes time to navigate and find your way around. Particularly for people who do not visit regularly.
Then there's stopping off for lunch.
And then there's the sprawling gardens and castle ruins. Not ride count but it gives added value and rounds off the day, particularly for individuals who are there for their grandchildren, nephews, nieces etc.
I think that’s a big difference between parks, because of the walking involved at AT, although it is possible to do everything in a few hours with almost no queues, you need to walk at quite a fast pace. Whereas at Thorpe I’ve done the whole park including the re-rides I wanted by 3pm on a quiet day and then gone home, which plays to the earlier point of it not feeling good value as you had a short day. Also the fact Thorpe is mainly thrills means I don’t want to re-ride as much, at Chessington I can spend time watching animals, at AT there is Sea Life and a couple of lower paced rides like Duel.I'm not sure it's as binary as what you make out in terms of ride count.
Read any review by anyone on any site and, arguably, the number one factor individuals and groups cite is how many rides and rerides they were able to accrue during the course of the day. Enthusiasts' and the general populace alike.
Then, of-course, you have the rides spread out on a sprawling park which takes time to navigate and find your way around. Particularly for people who do not visit regularly.
Then there's stopping off for lunch.
And then there's the sprawling gardens and castle ruins. Not ride count but it gives added value and rounds off the day, particularly for individuals who are there for their grandchildren, nephews, nieces etc.
I think that’s a big difference between parks, because of the walking involved at AT, although it is possible to do everything in a few hours with almost no queues, you need to walk at quite a fast pace. Whereas at Thorpe I’ve done the whole park including the re-rides I wanted by 3pm on a quiet day and then gone home, which plays to the earlier point of it not feeling good value as you had a short day. Also the fact Thorpe is mainly thrills means I don’t want to re-ride as much, at Chessington I can spend time watching animals, at AT there is Sea Life and a couple of lower paced rides like Duel.