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The Queen dies, aged 96. The future of the monarchy

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Interestingly at this point it’s only LLW that have announced this. I’ve got tickets booked for CWOA on that Monday so I did a live chat with them on their website to ask them if they would also be closed but they replied that the park is planned to be open that day. Hopefully that’s good news for anyone also going to Thorpe on the 19th if LLW will be the only Merlin park closing (though I do feel sorry for anyone that was booked in for their hotel on that day as it’s also closed along with the park itself).

Paulton’s have also confirmed that they will be shut on that day.
 
GaryH said:
Lots of angry people out there who have booked stays in the hotel. Understandably for some the day of closure means they will have the one night with no accommodation.

Others have tried to move their hotel stays to future days only to be hit with additional charges as the price is higher. That’s not on.
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I’m not surprised that some people are fuming about the hotels being closed for two nights. I totally understand why the parks are shut and that’s fine, but closing the hotels at short notice is going to absolutely screw a lot of people over. Guests that are visiting on the Sunday and we’re planning on staying over before a long journey home for example. People that have lost their hotel room at Towers might be able to find some accommodation in the wider area of the region but I feel sorry for anyone who was banking on a hotel stay at one of the Southern parks as part of a longer trip, they may struggle to find and reasonably priced accommodation anywhere given the amount of people that will be coming in to London that Sunday and Monday. And for the Merlin parks to be hitting people with higher prices for moving their stay is totally not on, they should wave additional fees in this instance and honour the original price paid for people that need to change their dates. This isn’t going to look good for them at all.


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Really bad that they’re making people pay the difference for moving hotel stays. Then again I can’t say I’m surprised, DLP did the same to me when I had to move our trip due to the pandemic kicking off couple of years back, we got a great rate originally too so that was frustrating. Seems to be normal practice even when it’s due to events beyond the customers control, doesn’t mean it’s good customer service though and doesn’t paint the business in a good light imo.

Edit; Maybe because it’s only been announced today, staff aren’t fully informed of the process to follow yet and there’s some confusion. I saw some people on one of the merlin pass Facebook groups say that when they contacted chessington about the hotel closure, I assume shortly after it was announced, the staff they spoke to said they had no idea about it. Wouldn’t be the first time customer service staff are the last to know.
 
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I just hope that hotels people are using outside of towers will be reasonable and let people be flexible with their bookings on that date (eg premier inn, travel lodge etc)
 
It's even worse when you consider a number of people staying at Towers and Thorpe would've booked hotels so they could make the most of an evening at Oktoberfest.

Surely they could've announced the parks closed on the Monday but kept the hotels open that Sunday night and rota'd in staff who were happy work a shift until people had checked out on the Monday morning.
 
Shaggy_Dog_ said:
That’s some queue line. I wonder what the operations and throughput are like? [mention]Matt N [/mention]
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It was hard to get an overly accurate reading because:
A) BBC News kept changing the camera angle every few seconds or so, therefore I couldn’t maintain a fixed point for very long.
B) People moving in a free flow fashion are a lot more variable than theme park rides.

But I had a good crack!

I managed 6 readings, and across those 6 readings, the throughput averaged 1,524mph (mourners per hour), or a person roughly every 2.4 seconds on average.

If 20,000 people are in the queue, then the queue will be approximately 787 minutes long, or approximately 13h 7m long.

That is one long queue! They reckon it could hit 30 hours when she’s in London…
 
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Great work Matt, to add my own findings:

For starters 20,000 people is more than the capacity of most parks in the UK. With only LEGOLAND and Alton Towers occasionally exceeding it on really busy days.

Now let's switch her majesty out with a few of our favourite coasters to see how they fair. Nemesis can supposedly get through 1,400pph. Great by coaster standards. Shockingly bad when dealing with this queue. Over 14 hours to console 20,000 people. Silver Stars, a throughput machine at 1,750pph, would still take 11 and a half hours. Doable in an extended day for the devoted mourner, but they might leave a little underwhelmed.

Overall I'd rate this a pretty efficency queue. Makes you proud to be British!
 
Tim said:
Great work Matt to add my own findings:

For starters 20,000 people is more than the capacity of most parks in the UK. With only LEGOLAND and Alton Towers occasionally exceeding it on really busy days.

Now let's switch her majesty out with a few of our favourite coasters to see how they fair. Nemesis can supposedly get through 1,400pph. Great by coaster standards. Shockingly bad when dealing with this queue. Over 14 hours to console 20,000 people. Silver Stars, a throughput machine at 1,750pph. Would still take 11 and a half hours. Doable in an extended day for the the devoted mourner, but they might leave a little underwhelmed.

Overall I'd rate this a pretty efficency queue. Makes you proud to be British!
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That would make sense given that they estimate 30 hour queues when she’s in Westminster Hall… let’s hope that Westminster Hall is slightly more of a queue muncher than St Giles’ Cathedral!

Assuming my throughput figure was applied, that would reckon that about 45,720 people would be in the queue to see her at once… The Telegraph reckons that Whitehall is estimating that 750,000 visitors will see the Queen in Westminster, and that the figure could exceed 1 million. That’s across only 109.5 hours (from 17:00 on 14th September to 06:30 on 19th September). Yikes…
 
Tim said:
I would recommend they switch to a batching method. Groups of 10 mourners each getting 5s at a time. 120 mourners a minute. 7,200pph.
Should move that queue at a much more reasonable rate.
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Perhaps they’re already planning something similar… the government’s working estimate of 750,000 mourners across 109.5 hours would equate to a throughput of roughly 6,849mph!

If the number does exceed 1 million as the government suggests could potentially happen… then I’d hope their batching is good, because they will need to process at least 9,132mph!
 
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