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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

Matt N said:
This is interesting to consider, but both rides have the same height restriction, so in theory, a similar demographic would be riding both
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Just on this point, i think because the majority of rides at Thorpe Park are big thrill 1.4m rides whereas Alton Towers has a plethora of family/lower restriction rides i think the overall demographics are different. Somewhat like comparing Six Flags and Disneyland.
 
One thing which might make a little difference, on Rita now a days they won’t send the train from offload to onload until all guests have cleared the platform and the gate has been closed. Years back this wasn’t the case. They did move the gate last year so it’s before baggage, so in theory whilst people faff getting their bag they can dispatch. The exit on Rita with baggage is also a bit of a bottle neck.

But on stealth I don’t know if that is a rule, or if they send it with guests in the platform. Certainly until this season I don’t think there was even a gate at the exit of stealth, I know this year they have added one, but this doesn’t lock. Baggage is also well away from the offload so guests are cleared much quicker than Rita.
 
Ethan said:
Stealth being a 10 second ride probably plays a big part in it. The shorter the ride the more dispatches can be achieved
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But if the train takes longer than that to load, check and dispatch (which it almost certainly does on Stealth and Rita), then that doesn’t really make any difference.

On both Stealth and Rita, the rides are short enough that by the time a train has reached the offload station, the train behind is still in the process of being loaded and checked. With that in mind, I don’t see ride duration making much difference.
djtruefitt said:
One thing which might make a little difference, on Rita now a days they won’t send the train from offload to onload until all guests have cleared the platform and the gate has been closed. Years back this wasn’t the case. They did move the gate last year so it’s before baggage, so in theory whilst people faff getting their bag they can dispatch. The exit on Rita with baggage is also a bit of a bottle neck.

But on stealth I don’t know if that is a rule, or if they send it with guests in the platform. Certainly until this season I don’t think there was even a gate at the exit of stealth, I know this year they have added one, but this doesn’t lock. Baggage is also well away from the offload so guests are cleared much quicker than Rita.
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That’s an interesting thought, and that could make a difference. That probably makes a difference if the throughput bottleneck on those Accelerator Coasters is folks leaving the offload platform rather than the loading and checking of the train in offload. I’m not sure which is more likely to be the bottleneck, though; someone who visits more often may have a clearer view of this than me.
 
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djtruefitt said:
But on stealth I don’t know if that is a rule, or if they send it with guests in the platform. Certainly until this season I don’t think there was even a gate at the exit of stealth, I know this year they have added one, but this doesn’t lock. Baggage is also well away from the offload so guests are cleared much quicker than Rita.
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If you're talking about Stealth's exit platform then there was definitely a gate last season.
 
Skyscraper said:
If you're talking about Stealth's exit platform then there was definitely a gate last season.
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There’s a gate, but I don’t think it gets locked, it’s just closes on its own. Their offload platform is also a lot wider compared to towers, where the staff member had to physically lock the gate which was added a few seasons ago.
 
Hoping operations are good on opening day this year. Ideally Nemesis on 2 trains and Wicker Th13teen and Galactica on at least 2 as well. Smiler I imagine will be on 3 but 4 would be great
 
There is always some downtime in the first week but I would expect all the coasters would be on maximum operations (no reason Smiler shouldn’t run in 4).
 
Ethan said:
Hoping operations are good on opening day this year. Ideally Nemesis on 2 trains and Wicker Th13teen and Galactica on at least 2 as well. Smiler I imagine will be on 3 but 4 would be great
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Wicker, Th13teen & Galactica should be on 3 trains minimum at the weekends.

We've already seen Nemesis testing with 2 trains so I should hope they'll be running both come opening day :tearsofjoy:
 
I've long maintained that, if running flat out, Galactica could theoretically benefit from running 4 trains but I'm not expecting to see it happen any time soon!

(I have no technical knowledge of how the ride control system works, this assumes you can have 2 trains on the brakes which may not be true)
 
John said:
I've long maintained that, if running flat out, Galactica could theoretically benefit from running 4 trains but I'm not expecting to see it happen any time soon!

(I have no technical knowledge of how the ride control system works, this assumes you can have 2 trains on the brakes which may not be true)
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Certainly enough space on the brakes, stops pretty much dead on the 1st set during an E stop
 
John said:
I've long maintained that, if running flat out, Galactica could theoretically benefit from running 4 trains but I'm not expecting to see it happen any time soon!

(I have no technical knowledge of how the ride control system works, this assumes you can have 2 trains on the brakes which may not be true)
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It wouldn't make any sence, if running flat out then the train would get stopped on the lift hill, it happens with 3 trains when they are running it well quite often, ideally the train in the course would clear the final brake block just before the previous one leaves the lift hill, they wouldn't beable to increase the rate of train dispatches because they are alread at the minimum time with 3. Although it would be benificial to allow for more time running 3 train operations.

also these trains are EXPENSIVE and masively complex apparently each costing well over £1 million with aproximatly 1 mile of wiring and 256 proximity sensors and each seat has a motor (where they sometimes put the key and turn if it dosn't detect it is locked)
 
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I would argue that a reconditioning or retrofit of galacticas computers and electrical systems (mainly in focusing arround the trains) would be much more benificial as a lot of the time during dispatch is them making sure the train can leave as the sensors are not picking up on the seat locks properly (it is the 4 - 2, 7-1 etc you hear when boarding it is the operations calling out the seats not being detected as locked and require re checking, to note it is perfectly safe and is just an added layer of saftey as the computer has to ensure all the seats are locked before allowing it to leave, if the sensor fails or dosn't pick up on the seat it will just refuce to send the train.

although it would probably cost a lot of money to do considering the trains and electrical complexity.
 
jibbsie said:
I would argue that a reconditioning or retrofit of galacticas computers and electrical systems (mainly in focusing arround the trains) would be much more benificial as a lot of the time during dispatch is them making sure the train can leave as the sensors are not picking up on the seat locks properly (it is the 4 - 2, 7-1 etc you hear when boarding it is the operations calling out the seats not being detected as locked and require re checking, to note it is perfectly safe and is just an added layer of saftey as the computer has to ensure all the seats are locked before allowing it to leave, if the sensor fails or dosn't pick up on the seat it will just refuce to send the train.

although it would probably cost a lot of money to do considering the trains and electrical complexity.
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I think to do that they would need to purchase new trains as my understanding is B&M re-designed a lot of the under the bonnet workings of the flyers not long after Air was built (to deal with all of the issues they discovered with Air and Superman the 1st two flyers).
 
Dave said:
I think to do that they would need to purchase new trains as my understanding is B&M re-designed a lot of the under the bonnet workings of the flyers not long after Air was built (to deal with all of the issues they discovered with Air and Superman the 1st two flyers).
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ah right, probably not going to happen then, would probably be £3million + unless a retrack happens similar to nemesis.
 
Ethan said:
I’ve missed asking this so what are operations looking like on park today?
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Based on the snapshot I took on queue-times.com a few minutes ago (due to Alton sadly now forbidding us from viewing queue times outside the park), I’d take a stab at it either being rammed on a level not seen in years or an absolute calamity in terms of throughputs:
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The fact that multiple coasters are on queues of well over an hour, despite Nemesis Reborn boasting an alleged 275 minute queue itself, would certainly point that way, anyway…
 
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