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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-24

Relife said:
The lack of supporting rides is really hurting the park. If a ride goes down then a good flat ride can take some slack and keep people in the area
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It's not even just support rides. Other than Coasters, what does Towers have nowadays? During Fireworks, Scarefest and Pirates they manage to offer entertainment. You would thing the cheapest, easiest and quickest way to add capacity and wet weather experiences to the park would be to put on a show.
 
At the lowest hanging fruit area of availability, heave ho was also up and down like a yo-yo yesterday. At one point we were in the queue and it made a huge grinding noise and got stuck halfway around, ride op having to give it a hard shove to get it back into a position to get the riders off.

They really, really needed some queue eaters like the river rapids open. When all the big rides were closed even Alton manor had a queue full to the point of leaving the queue line.

I get that bad days happen but I really do think they need to have a long hard think about whether jettisoning the retrosquad rides before having replacements was such a good idea. Like them or not they filled a gap
 
NuttySquirrel said:
Really? The parks I visited in Madrid earlier this month are routinely open until midnight, or up to 9pm on off-peak days. There are plenty of dark hours the park could use, if they could shift their heads out of the "5pm and home for tea" model!
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Think the problem with that is that to do those later nights need a bigger cultural change.

Short termism would mean any late night openings that result in zero crowds make it not worth the expense. Though the park isn't really set up for such things currently anyway with lack of eateries etc.
 
Let’s make this clear tho that Galactica and Th13teen weren’t closed due to wind issues. They operated during the windy periods however it took the park until the afternoon to get them both open. In fact in the 8 days of operation so far Galactica has failed to open on time every day. Th13teen also was down all day Friday and opened even later than Galactica yesterday. This isn’t new news either, these 2 coasters have been unreliable for quite some time and to me they need to sort them out asap or they need to go
 
Ethan said:
Let’s make this clear tho that Galactica and Th13teen weren’t closed due to wind issues. They operated during the windy periods
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I didn't realise that you were now a ride mechanic, congratulations! 🎉

Th13teen didn't open yesterday until around 4pm, and then it went down pretty quickly. It did not operate in windy periods.

I had a wonderful view of Galactica not operating, from the Nemesis Reborn queue when someone didn't secure a loose item, whilst getting bashed and battered by very strong and cold gusts of wind. It did not operate during windy periods.
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
I didn't realise that you were now a ride mechanic, congratulations! 🎉

Th13teen didn't open yesterday until around 4pm, and then it went down pretty quickly. It did not operate in windy periods.

I had a wonderful view of Galactica not operating, from the Nemesis Reborn queue when someone didn't secure a loose item, whilst getting bashed and battered by very strong and cold gusts of wind. It did not operate during windy periods.
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Who cares the point is they have operational issues beyond inclement weather. On Friday when it wasn’t windy Galactica was shut for extensive time and Th13teen didn’t even open. They’re unreliable and have been for some time
 
There's no need to get nasty, Galactica has been extremely unreliable since season start, I don't think it has opened on time once this year. Thirteen has also had downtime when weather wasn't an issue. None of these issues are helping to park to stay afloat when weather is also a factor.
 
Can't help but think Alton is having a Mercedes F1 start to the new season up and down. Operations on the rides have been up and down all week and I can't help thinking they have left themselves sorting having focused on getting certain things ready for the new season. Also as it pains me to say getting rid of the retro squad before really having anything to replace them has hurt the park on days like yesterday when alot of rides could not operate in the weather conditions
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
Then say that. Don't lie, or make things up.
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Tbf I was given conflicting answers by staff on the state of Thirteen throughout the day, the reasons for closure and ultimately it was open about an hour before WickerMan (before closing again of course).

Thirteen and Galactica also weren’t listed on the app as a closure due to weather, unlike Wicker, Smiler and Oblivion, for whatever that is worth.
 
Reasons for ride downtime is often speculative. Sometimes it's possible to attribute downtime to guest issues (lost items etc), other times it's purely a guess. As we've discussed plenty of times before, staff will often give a generic reason for downtime and isn't often the real reason too.

I'm sure we're all capable of discussing the issues of downtime civilly, it's an annoyance when you're on park after paying a fair chunk of money to get there.

If you're able to clarify reasons for downtime, then feel free to do so. However, let's try and do it without the sniping at eachother. Thanks!
 
I was there Yesterday and no question ride availability was poor but bad weather can't be helped and the fact they've offered free return tickets is a nice gesture. But what I wanted to praise the park on was for the first time attending theme parks I actually saw a group evicted from a queue line. It happened on Nemesis Reborn, the usual trick of my friends are up ahead! What I loved best was security were waiting for them just before the station. The cheers from the patiently waiting guests was a highlight of a very poor day.
 
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Again, the weather wasn't actually that bad, typical English wet and windy.
Large outdoor theme parks should be able to open the majority of the rides in usual weather.
It can be helped, it can be planned for, utilising the buildings already in place.
Wet and windy hasn't always been such a problem at the Towers, bring back that steaming humid queue for the Black Hole, always twice as long when the rain started.
 
The problem is that they've changed their procedures without changing anything else. Ten years ago the weather the park saw yesterday would barely affect operations at all. Low capacity and unreliability would have still caused problems but to nowhere near the same degree
 
I agree back when I went on school trips when air opened every time I went towers the weather was horrendous and you could still que and get on most rides without major problems. Although there were more flats to pick up the slack
 
coastinginlife said:
I was there Yesterday and no question ride availability was poor but bad weather can't be helped and the fact they've offered free return tickets is a nice gesture. But what I wanted to praise the park on was for the first time attending theme parks I actually saw a group evicted from a queue line. It happened on Nemesis Reborn, the usual trick of my friends are up ahead! What I loved best was security were waited for them just before the station. The cheers from the patiently waiting guests was a highlight of a very poor day.
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I think the new queueing reporting feature is definitely a positive addition. We reported a group in front of us last weekend vaping and vandalising in the Smiler queue. Shortly after an announcement came from the op to tell people to stop vaping and they vaping inside the indoor queueline is actually illegal!

Sounded like a shocking day yesterday! Definitely think Towers needs more filler things to do- don’t think it be too hard to throw together a pop singing show to put on the main stage they’ve got on the lawns. Just something for people to do when the rides are working other than go and stand in the guest services queue!
 
VerticalLoop123 said:
Sounded like a shocking day yesterday! Definitely think Towers needs more filler things to do- don’t think it be too hard to throw together a pop singing show to put on the main stage they’ve got on the lawns. Just something for people to do when the rides are working other than go and stand in the guest services queue!
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Except if the weather is the reason for lots of closures then people aren’t going to want to watch an outdoor show on a soggy lawn.

They need indoor show venues.
 
Yesterday was appalling from an operations point of view be it poor capacity, weather or other.

I understand capacity and availability should be vastly improved for Easter weekend.
 
Galactica and Thirteen have been unreliable attractions from day 1 of their respective operations.

Unfortunately I would say that years of under investment in the upkeep department have the chickens all coming home to roost right now.
 
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