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Ride Availability/Operations 2022-26

Squiggs said:
Oblivion has made it onto the ride availability page.:
ride-availability210326.png



Though weirdly, Bugbie-Go-Round still hasn't despite it being closed all year so far.
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Customer services email addresses
Trip advisor
Google reviews

They need to hear how unacceptable this remains.

Sadly I’m not sure if it would make much difference.
 
On the other hand, from my experience yesterday (on a different point), the ride team are really trying to speed things up as much as is in their control. The girl who was showing people to their rows in the station was asking people that only one person in their group take bags etc to the cages as to speed things up that tiny bit more. Actually my interactions with (and observations of) staff on the ground floor were really good in general.
 
Matt N said:
I wonder if it would be a good idea for the park to do what some European and American parks have started doing and buy one extra train for each coaster compared to what it could run. That way, the park can run things at maximum capacity even if one train is having issues.
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As much as this would make lots of sense in lots of ways, I'm not sure it would solve their issue. They don't have the staff to get what they've got ready, so I'm not sure they'd be able to have enough staff to get the other trains signed off. Also they don't have any operating budget as is, I'm not sure where they would find the cash to buy more trains for aging rides. Perhaps when they build a new coaster they could get a spare train?
 
Some of those "28 main" would have been from the FT queue though, so it's not quite that simple. We also don't know the relative numbers of RAP & FT users in the new combined queue, if it's more FT than RAP then going back to the old arrangement would make little difference. The queue is certainly slower than it used to be, but a big chunk of that is caused by how much lower the overall throughput is these days. It used to be rare for the trains to stack, now it happens almost every cycle and often for an extended time. If they could run it at 40+ trains per hour like they used to then we wouldn't need to talk about ratios as the queue would still shift.

On a more positive note, the Smiler team were excellent yesterday - they were consistently getting trains out before one stacked behind the station. Trains were clearing lift 1 with a train barely onto the vertical lift.
 
Alton after dark is always popular, and the weather has been uncharacteristically good. But assuming the fuel crisis doesn't bite hard it definitely doesn't look like it will be any quieter than last year (possibly good if you want the park to survive in the long term).
 
Currently sat in the Alton towers hotel, which is running on 1 lift operational today. Today was busy… very busy. In fact I would say it’s the busiest I’ve seen it in a long time. I’ll start with some positives, towers street seems cleaner, had a nice coat of paint. Some work done on pathways etc and the water was filled up around the galleons today so no more floating shark.

Then went to check out the Bluey coaster, I can confirm “Bluey the ride is experiencing technical difficulties” is voiced by Bluey’s mother, as they were testing the announcements at 10am or so in the queue line speakers.

From there options were limited, 13 didn’t open till the afternoon, nemesis was late, Oblivion didn’t open. Chose smiler, found it hard to be immersed in it with constant announcements about queue jumping, single rider though took around 25 minutes so that was a score. Spinball was being fairly efficient with throughput, hex was running well. By this time thirteen was open so joined the 2 hour queue for that which seemed to be moving steady. Rita seemed to be struggling however with noticeable delays in between trains flying over the 13 queue line. I was second back row on 13 with the back row out of operation, I did notice one of the 3 plugs linking the trains was unplugged as well likely resulting in the back row out of action. Wickerman next which was running 2 trains with row 5 I think being blocked off on both trains.

I know this does sound negative so far but I’ve actually enjoyed the day, went inside the chapel for the first time today and wow, that ceiling has been so well done. Also my 7 year old wants to become a YouTuber, so being the good dad I am I was recording her do things which broke the day up a bit and kept her happy. I did feel like a right idiot mind and I have no idea how those bloggers manage it all the time.
 
The Lynch Effect said:
Currently sat in the Alton towers hotel, which is running on 1 lift operational today. Today was busy… very busy. In fact I would say it’s the busiest I’ve seen it in a long time. I’ll start with some positives, towers street seems cleaner, had a nice coat of paint. Some work done on pathways etc and the water was filled up around the galleons today so no more floating shark.

Then went to check out the Bluey coaster, I can confirm “Bluey the ride is experiencing technical difficulties” is voiced by Bluey’s mother, as they were testing the announcements at 10am or so in the queue line speakers.

From there options were limited, 13 didn’t open till the afternoon, nemesis was late, Oblivion didn’t open. Chose smiler, found it hard to be immersed in it with constant announcements about queue jumping, single rider though took around 25 minutes so that was a score. Spinball was being fairly efficient with throughput, hex was running well. By this time thirteen was open so joined the 2 hour queue for that which seemed to be moving steady. Rita seemed to be struggling however with noticeable delays in between trains flying over the 13 queue line. I was second back row on 13 with the back row out of operation, I did notice one of the 3 plugs linking the trains was unplugged as well likely resulting in the back row out of action. Wickerman next which was running 2 trains with row 5 I think being blocked off on both trains.

I know this does sound negative so far but I’ve actually enjoyed the day, went inside the chapel for the first time today and wow, that ceiling has been so well done. Also my 7 year old wants to become a YouTuber, so being the good dad I am I was recording her do things which broke the day up a bit and kept her happy. I did feel like a right idiot mind and I have no idea how those bloggers manage it all the time.
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"By this time thirteen was open so joined the 2 hour queue for that which seemed to be moving steady".

Hopefully this was sprinkled somewhat with satire, otherwise some of our earliest amusement park originators would be attempting to spin in their graves if that's even possible. I would guess that even our later and current friends such as John Wardley et al wouldn't be comfortable with people waiting 2 hours for a ride that wasn't even brand new and wasn't being presented on an opening day (or week). The cheap passes really seem to be doing the trick of getting people in and filling the queuelines.

Your review was entertaining and didn't come across as negative. Great to hear how you went along with your budding vlogger. Have fun :)
 
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