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Single Rider Queues at Alton Towers; could more return?

Matt N

Matt N

TS Member
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Mako (SeaWorld Orlando)
Hi guys. In the fallout of the Smiler crash, one thing that were widely cut are single rider queues. Many major rides used to have them, but after 2015, the amount of these were whittled down considerably across Alton Towers and the wider Merlin group.

However, we are starting to see a resurgence in single rider queues across the group. The Smiler had its single rider queue resurrected a few years back. Thorpe Park is also implementing a fairly wide resurrection of single rider queues for the 2023 season, with Saw, The Walking Dead and Stealth all due to have SRQs by the end of this year. With this in mind, my question is; do we think that more Single Rider Queues could return to Alton Towers? Which Single Rider Queues could possibly be the most feasible candidates for reinstatement, and which rides do you think would most benefit from one?

Personally, I reckon that we could possibly see some return in the future.

As for which ones I think would be most feasible to reinstate; I reckon that Thirteen could have one reinstated quite easily, as there’s an entire spare queue line leading to the station after the baggage hold that currently goes unused, as well as a spare queue line alongside Fastrack before it, I believe. I also think that Thirteen would highly benefit from one; with its alleged weight limit, you’d surely want trains to be full.

I also reckon that Oblivion would benefit from one, and with all those empty queue lines it has, I also reckon it would be quite easy to implement. An SRQ would also help it as they seem to struggle with filling the rows on it on occasion, particularly when it goes through those odd spells of not using the end seat in each row…

I’m not really sure about any of the others… what do you guys think?
 
Sadly the space for SRQ on Thirteen has gone. They still have an unused queue line after merge/baggage but there's no way for single riders to get to it - the 3rd path to merge is now the main exit, with the original exit now a (longer) RAP queue.

The ride really should have a SRQ though, odd numbered groups can cause major delays if the batcher isn't paying attention.

Spinball would be my top pick for SRQ return, possibly using the old FT queue on the exit side. During wet weather operation Spinball's SRQ was always one of the best
 
I'd love them to reintroduce single rider to Air again. It'd definitely help the rides througput since it's probably the slowest moving queue of the Secret Weapons in the park.
 
No room on Galactica either - the former SRQ is now the RAP entrance. That said SRQ on Air relied on the merge host sending all odd-numbered groups to the right. Nowadays there always seems to be at least 1 seat out of use which makes trying to run a SRQ even less practical. The station staff have to keep track of where the empty seats are and batch accordingly, unsurprisingly the ride has not been operated well in the past few years even when running 3 trains
 
Trooper Looper said:
Oh, I thought the RAP queue is now located by the roller coaster restaurants entrance, correct me if im wrong.
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I think that's the non-ambulant RAP entrance (for people such as wheelchair users), whereas the ambulant RAP entrance (for people such as neurodiverse guests) enters through the same entrance as Fastrack and diverges further on.

Even so, I can't imagine how you'd properly implement one on Galactica; the ride has two stations, so unless you had the SRQ going to only one station and ensured that all odd-numbered groups went to that station as @John suggested, how would you fill all empty seats?

It's a shame to hear about Thirteen's no longer being accessible; I thought that one would be an easy addition.

Are there any rides at Alton Towers that a Single Rider Queue could feasibly be reinstated on? Are there any where an empty SRQ line is going unused on the batching side and the reinstatement of an SRQ could easily be pulled off without affecting anything else (like what happened with The Smiler)?

Out of interest, where were the SRQs actually located before the big purge? On some rides, I'm struggling to visualise where they would actually have been...
 
Trooper Looper said:
Oh, I thought the RAP queue is now located by the roller coaster restaurants entrance, correct me if im wrong.
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That's for wheelchairs, the ambulant RAP entrance is the old SRQ.

@Matt N Nemesis could be one, they'd just have to move the baggage racks. The stairs are still there I think, although obviously we don't know what will have changed when it reopens.
 
Nemesis SRQ is not particularly useful for operations, being wrong side. The ride itself would do better with that becoming the RAP queue with a modified ramp access.
 
Matt N said:
Didn't Nemesis' actually end up reducing throughput, though? I seem to remember hearing that this is why it was removed, anyway.
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I remember one year we tried the SRQ for nemesis and in a lot of cases it was a longer wait than the general queue.
I also think it only makes sense to have an SRQ on rides with 4 or more seats per row. Rides with 2 seats are usually filled by 2 or more groups of 3 people, so empty seats for single riders are less common.
Oblivion would probably benefit most from an SRQ as there's almost always at least 1 empty seat per shuttle.
 
Poisson said:
Nemesis SRQ is not particularly useful for operations, being wrong side. The ride itself would do better with that becoming the RAP queue with a modified ramp access.
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Stuff the useful operations, we are talking desperate punters here.
If my wife is taking a quick pint of lager break, I get five goes on nemesis.
 
Towers were never fully on-board with the SRQ concept right from the start. I remember correspondence I had with Iain Gordon "Front of House Manager" about this some 20+ years ago. Back then he claimed that a SRQ would cause "religious or cultural offence" to some guests if they had to sit next to someone they did not know.

Hmm... Black Hole - definitely due to seating arrangement. Nemesis / Oblivion etc - where you sit adjacent to someone like on public transport, run that one past me again!
 
Hmmm, religious or cultural offence, ok.
So when I refused to have a young lady who I didn't know sit between my legs on the Flume, why was I considered to be an awkward customer?
That wasn't even a decade ago.
 
I did wonder why they brought Smilers single rider back but nothing else. I'd personally like to see one on the rides with the longest queues like wicker man, thirteen and spinball. Sometimes, like when I was there yesterday, I want to get on a ride but the queues are consistently long for it. This was the case with Wicker man, 40-60 mins every time I checked the app. As a regular visitor I'm not waiting nearly an hour for a ride I've been on countless times. Single rider really saves me on Smiler as the queue for that is always 40+ and that makes reriding it impossible. I waited just 15-20 mins on my 4 goes on it yesterday when the main queue sat at 40+ mins for most the day. It really does save a load of time and I wish I had the same luxury on Wicker man as I don't like missing it but at the same time I'm not queueing ages for it
 
when you mention Thorpe as an example of merlin bringing back SRQ’s, I don’t think it has any correlation with its other assets. I’d imagine the decision at Thorpe was taken internally more than a merlin instruction/decision. Maybe after their trial on saw last year there was enough evidence to present to merlin that they should bring them back/introduce them to other rides. Let’s just hope towers follow suit and maybe trial a SRQ this year, but there are limitations due to alterations to queue lines and some rides like Wicker Man that simply do not have the set up to implement it. We can only live in hope.
 
I do hope that future rides have SRQs built into them.

They are a really good feature, in my opinion, and pretty much everybody wins with a Single Rider Queue; the park can fill trains and get a greater throughput on rides, single riders win because their queue is often shorter, non-single riders win because the main queue is shorter without single riders in it.

All of this leads to better feedback, guests who are more likely to return and greater long term profits for the park, and if you have a batching host anyway, it doesn’t require any extra staff to implement (in theory), so who really loses out when a Single Rider Queue is implemented?
 
Matt N said:
I do hope that future rides have SRQs built into them.

They are a really good feature, in my opinion, and pretty much everybody wins with a Single Rider Queue; the park can fill trains and get a greater throughput on rides, single riders win because their queue is often shorter, non-single riders win because the main queue is shorter without single riders in it.

All of this leads to better feedback, guests who are more likely to return and greater long term profits for the park, and if you have a batching host anyway, it doesn’t require any extra staff to implement (in theory), so who really loses out when a Single Rider Queue is implemented?
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Well it doesn't look like Project Horizon with have a SRQ, just main, Fastrack and RAP.
 
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