• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Single Rider Queues

Removal of SRQ from Smiler and Thirteen was a practical consideration, without baggage there was nowhere for SRQ to go (or indeed the RAP queue in the case of Smiler). Smiler should have kept merge where it was leaving space for SRQ rather than the terrible self-merging system they actually went with. For Spinball they seemingly wanted a longer fastrack queue as it regularly spilled into the exit path, though they could have just swapped SRQ and fastrack. Oblivion's was removed for no obvious reason.

I've long thought automated systems could work on certain rides, it always seems to work smoothly on Hex for example and if Towers still had any other flat rides it might have worked on those too (pre batching on Ripsaw might have been helpful?). For coasters I'm not so sure - several Italian parks have turnstiles on all rides (or did back in 2012). On some rides it sort of worked and on others it was a bit of a mess.
 
Mikw said:
I usually go on my own, and went back this year for the first time in ages. The removal of the SRQ's came at the wrong time for me. Queuing for ages on your own isn't much fun
Click to expand...

Me too. Also going on my own tomorrow as my wife has an exam for her work on Friday.

Waiting alone only bothers me if it's longer than 30mins usually although I did wait 3hrs for WM on soft opening day but the people in the queue next to me were chatty so it helped.
 
Benjsh said:
Me too. Also going on my own tomorrow as my wife has an exam for her work on Friday.

Waiting alone only bothers me if it's longer than 30mins usually although I did wait 3hrs for WM on soft opening day but the people in the queue next to me were chatty so it helped.
Click to expand...
Similar experience to you on Wicker Man soft opening day, it wasn't so bad.

I went back over the Easter Holidays. really nice day but not a good day to go, it was rammed. Oblvion was advertised as 50 minutes. I bailed out after the queue had barely moved after an hour. Dispatch was slow and Every ride was full of fasttrackers.

Better experience on Thirteen, it was advertised as 70, and a much better ratio of non fastrackers filling the trains, got on that after an hour.

Really missed the SRQ on Oblivion, although better ride operations would have helped i guess
 
Mikw said:
I usually go on my own, and went back this year for the first time in ages. The removal of the SRQ's came at the wrong time for me. Queuing for ages on your own isn't much fun
Click to expand...

I'm a single rider due to my wife can't ride the ride due to her condition. Also because she is vulnerable, I don't like leaving her for any length of time on her own. So for me to get on and off rides quickly was important. Both the removal of the SRQ and the staggard and late opening times has made our visit more impractical.

SRQ worked for me when the queues were moderate, never really worked when the park was busy as large groups would join them as a mean to use as a free fast track making the SRQ just as long as the main.

John said:
Removal of SRQ from Smiler and Thirteen was a practical consideration, without baggage there was nowhere for SRQ to go (or indeed the RAP queue in the case of Smiler). Smiler should have kept merge where it was leaving space for SRQ rather than the terrible self-merging system they actually went with. For Spinball they seemingly wanted a longer fastrack queue as it regularly spilled into the exit path, though they could have just swapped SRQ and fastrack. Oblivion's was removed for no obvious reason.
Click to expand...

The RAP merge is still there on the Smiler, it just means that the RAP have to merge themselves with the main queue and pray that they don't get abuse for doing so.

John said:
I've long thought automated systems could work on certain rides, it always seems to work smoothly on Hex for example and if Towers still had any other flat rides it might have worked on those too (pre batching on Ripsaw might have been helpful?). For coasters I'm not so sure - several Italian parks have turnstiles on all rides (or did back in 2012). On some rides it sort of worked and on others it was a bit of a mess.
Click to expand...

Sure the automatic gates works well on Hex as they are controlling a group of people in a batch and the door only closes when the whole group has passed. Trying to use automatic gates to separate groups is going to be more tricky. Imaging the doors about to close in front of you, someone is going to try and squeeze through them, just like cars do when they jump a red light. And what if you are part of a group and the automatic doors closes spitting your group up? It's going to be tricky to implement
 
Exactly, which meant on peak days you'd have the RAP queue back to the corner and the fastrack queue stretching down the ramp too, so there wasn't much in the way of an actual exit from the ride. It was far from ideal, but it could have worked as the SRQ entrance as no-one would ever be willing to wait that long in SRQ anyway.

EDIT: Disregard this, I completely misread the previous post.
 
Last edited:
They will not bring back srq's...I imagine the majority of single riders will resort to one of the lower fasttrack passages...it is not a money saving technique, it is a money making scheme.
Merlin, ever creative in finding new ways of emptying your pockets.
 
rob666 said:
They will not bring back srq's...I imagine the majority of single riders will resort to one of the lower fasttrack passages...it is not a money saving technique, it is a money making scheme.
Merlin, ever creative in finding new ways of emptying your pockets.
Click to expand...
I have to agree with that. Rides running full capacity all the time with minimal queues doesn't sell fast passes.

With no SRQ and lower capacity on rides due to baggage cages I can see main queues being a lot longer than advertised on very busy days like Scarefest with the increased sales of fast passes.
 
I'm new here and had considered visiting Alton Towers some time ago... but I checked again at TripAdvisor, and many complain not only about long queues and fast track annoyance, but also about trains running partially empty. Single Rider is supposed to be a fill-up queue, not necessarily, but often faster than the regular queue. This is really not a good development.

Personally, I strongly dislike those extra pay fast/express/quick/speed/whatever lanes, which, unfortunately, exist in most parks today. Some parks try to reduce their impact on the average visitor's experience, while others make the regular visit tedious, in order to push people towards an "upgrade". One of their implications is an incentive for parks, to reduce ride capacity, to generate queues artificially. Removal of single rider queues, together with aggressive promotion of paid "upgrades", is a clear sign to me. I keep checking back, but what I recently read sounds like Alton Towers has become much less fun this season.
 
Can only agree, big part of my decision not to get the fifty quid pass.
Merlin have had my first twenty five quid, for an early taste of Mr Whicker, but the only cash they will get now will be a bronze pass on my Sun tickets, all other funds available will be spent on speedypass for Icon, generally a cheaper and better scheme for me personally.
 
rob666 said:
They will not bring back srq's...I imagine the majority of single riders will resort to one of the lower fasttrack passages...it is not a money saving technique, it is a money making scheme.
Merlin, ever creative in finding new ways of emptying your pockets.
Click to expand...
Being a single rider due to me being a billy no mates, its the reason I was forced into buying a VIP pass :eek: and now Im even more of a billy no mates because of it..
Dam you Merlin and your dastardly plans ! :mad:
 
Loss of SR is a huge pain, especially for families with young ones where one of the parents would fancy a quick ride on something bigger while the child and other parent wait for a few minutes. SR on Oblivion for example usually saw you get a seat very quickly
 
I'm still at a loss as to how it was abused, you joined the single ride q either alone or as a group but were prepared to sit alone to fill any empty seats.
that is the definition of single rider.
How was it abused?
If the ride hosts decided to allow 2 or more single riders to sit together then that is an Alton Towers issue and fault.
 
With the smiler srq, I think the abuse was more due to single riders switching to the main queue on the stairs...not that I did it, oh no, not me, not ever.
 
SRQ abuse on Smiler must have been absolutely insignificant, and easy for the batching host to control by minimising the number of people let past merge - if the pre-merge queue is 30 minutes and there's practically no queue after then going into the wrong lane doesn't benefit you. At any rate it was nowhere near as open to abuse as the utterly pointless 2nd entrance Swarm got for brave it backwards, which turned out to be so unpopular that it effectively became a free fastrack entrance (admittedly that was closed before brave it backwards was put out of it's misery).

Then you've got rides like Oblivion where I can't see a single benefit to the park in removing SRQ.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top