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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-25

I know Rita is commonly seen by enthusiasts as the odd one out in Alton Towers’ coaster selection, but I actually happen to really like it and would be sad to see it go!

It’s not my favourite coaster on park, and I don’t deny that its integration or lack of is not ideal, but those hydraulic launches really are like nothing else, and the ride actually has some of Alton’s more decent airtime as well, with the two big hills providing some excellent ejector!

I’d certainly be upset to see it leave, and I hope it sticks around until at least the end of the decade (and to be honest, I think it probably will)!
 
spotweld said:
Wasn't Rita originally planned for a different park?
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I believe this is a rumour without confirmation - there was one I've heard of Rita originally being meant for Oakwood as Speed before Oakwood went for a Eurofighter instead and Rita ended up at Towers.

The other rumour was that Stealth at Thorpe Park was originally meant to be a Xcelerator clone. I did see something online with this being a plan but not sure if that was true or a placeholder. The rumour side of it was that the Rita (second) half of the layout was redesigned for Towers and the layout with the top hat was redesigned for Thorpe as a mini Kingda Ka/TTD.

Not sure how true either rumour is but definitely interesting to hear.
 
Something easy to add and more fitting with the area would be a dark tunnel full of smoke just after the launch run into the bend. I recall the one year they had a smoke machine at the end at Scarefest and riding it in the dark into the smoke and darkness was amazing.
 
owenstreet7 said:
I believe this is a rumour without confirmation - there was one I've heard of Rita originally being meant for Oakwood as Speed before Oakwood went for a Eurofighter instead and Rita ended up at Towers.

The other rumour was that Stealth at Thorpe Park was originally meant to be a Xcelerator clone. I did see something online with this being a plan but not sure if that was true or a placeholder. The rumour side of it was that the Rita (second) half of the layout was redesigned for Towers and the layout with the top hat was redesigned for Thorpe as a mini Kingda Ka/TTD.

Not sure how true either rumour is but definitely interesting to hear.
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Rita always felt too 'plonk and play' for a ride at Alton Towers, so thank you for clearing this up. And also, as an aside, the land originally cleared for Speed at Oakwood hugs the footprint of Rita like a glove. That's probably been spoken on before, though.
 
owenstreet7 said:
The other rumour was that Stealth at Thorpe Park was originally meant to be a Xcelerator clone. I did see something online with this being a plan but not sure if that was true or a placeholder. The rumour side of it was that the Rita (second) half of the layout was redesigned for Towers and the layout with the top hat was redesigned for Thorpe as a mini Kingda Ka/TTD.
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I am pretty sure this one stems from the original plans for Stealth using photos of Xcelerator purely to give a visual guide as to the type of attraction they were wanting to build, it wasn’t because the plans were for a clone. The Stealth layout was always planned as a top hat only as far as I know.

The confusion is where enthusiasts over the years have added 2 and 2 together and got 5.
 
Bert2theSpark said:
There’s nothing to indicate at the moment that the Accelerators sticking around are getting substantially more expensive to operate and it seems Rita’s issues this season just seems like normal extended downtime. The Stratas were only ripped out because they were exceptional in scale, something which Rita certainly isn’t.
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It’s not always about the cost of repairs, extended downtime causes even further losses which can be greater than the repair costs.

If the two strata’s were removed due to the scale, they wouldn’t have converted TTD. I’d imagine since the Six Flags/Cedar Fair merger, they realised they didn’t want two of those downtime nightmares as they were no longer two competing companies which may have meant KK staying longer if it weren’t for the merger.

The Hydraulic launches are a dying breed and some parks are willing to keep them going and others simply aren’t.
 
Slightly deviating from the topic, but I do find it interesting that no technology has been able to replicate the hydraulic launch, and the the launch on rides such as max force in a reliable way.

I guess manufacturers were simply a bit too over ambitious 20 odd years ago, and while LSM’s are getting better, a new technology that’s able to be as powerful as a hydraulic launch but still be reliable would be gamechanging, especially if rides like Rita and stealth could be retrofitted with them
 
All coasters were on maximum capacity, opened more or less on time and had minimal downtime today. With the exception of the already mentioned Rita, Sub-Terra the only ride that didn’t open. They looked staffed to capacity today, for example four people in the 13 baggage hold, three people checking Galactica trains to quicken the dispatches, pretty faultless ops.
 
I did notice that the queue times looked surprisingly short for a Sunday in July when I had a peek earlier today… this is encouraging to hear!
 
Galactica was turning right at the vending machines, no queue on the hill used. Nemesis barely queueing to the helicopter, 13 was running with 1 train unloaded until around 11 when it got enough of a queue to need them all in use, Wicker Man queueing to the lift shed. Oblivion was really the odd one out, queueing to the second tunnel and 1 station, 4 shuttles.
 
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