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The Smiler - General Discussion

pluk said:
Why? Plenty of rides have done much much worse and continued to operate once whatever had failed has been made safe.
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It's been difficult to judge in the last 12 months but I think the popularity of the Smiler has increased in the last 2 or 3 years. It may even be more popular than before the incident. Would be interested to see any official statistics if Towers were ever to release them - which they wouldn't of course!
 
Ian said:
It does a pretty good job of tearing itself apart anyway.
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Its interesting that majority of enthusiasts think the ride is in a right state. Personally I don't think its too bad. The queue drainage is the main problem, yes the queue and ride should get a bit of a clean but its not that bad
 
After the accident the Smiler and Saw ride were probably one of the safest rides in the UK, they improved the safety measures on it and all staff had more training as well as changes in the operation of it.

Whilst it was a terrible accident, it allowed better safety around rides
 
Tibble said:
After the accident the Smiler and Saw ride were probably one of the safest rides in the UK, they improved the safety measures on it and all staff had more training as well as changes in the operation of it.

Whilst it was a terrible accident, it allowed better safety around rides
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Just in the same way the 737 Max is now the safest plane in the skies now it has been certified to fly again.
 
Steve74 said:
It's been difficult to judge in the last 12 months but I think the popularity of the Smiler has increased in the last 2 or 3 years. It may even be more popular than before the incident. Would be interested to see any official statistics if Towers were ever to release them - which they wouldn't of course!
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Apart from last season where the ride hit capacity at an hour and wasn't allowed to get any busier. Ik queue times doesn't determine popularity but it does in my mind!
 
If everything was forced to close permanently after an accident we wouldn't have any motorways, or any roads at all really.
 
Steve74 said:
It's been difficult to judge in the last 12 months but I think the popularity of the Smiler has increased in the last 2 or 3 years. It may even be more popular than before the incident. Would be interested to see any official statistics if Towers were ever to release them - which they wouldn't of course!
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I think it's more a case of the throughput getting worse than the ride getting more popular.

In the last few years The Smiler has lost its bag room, the fifth train and its staffing has been cut. All of these amount to slower dispatches.

If you think back when it opened, a 'good' dispatch was a train clearing Lift 1 just as the one before it was going vertical on Lift 2. These days seeing even both trains leave the top of each lift at the same time is a rarity.
 
Even accounting for lower throughput it's still clearly one of the most popular rides in the park. The best evidence of this is the stampede towards it after the fireworks shows - very few people in the crowd on the right hand path break off to Spinball, Rita, Oblivion or Thirteen.
 
From what I’ve seen the lack of 5 trains only has a tiny effect on dispatch times, in fact there’s only been once since it went down to 4 that I’ve seen a train come straight into the station when using all 4.
 
5th train was nice as it allows 4 and rotation on maintenance but I can see why they didn't bother.

The ride is in a horrendous state. Peeling, rusty, filthy horrible pen queue, effects broken, trains with square wheels. IF they could stop the supports moving (I'm not sure how much they're moving for now) it could do with a slight reprofile in the knot, a repaint and effects fix plus a rerouted and slightly raised queue line plus the return of the bag drop. All of these will never happen though.
 
Bag drop should be replaced with lockers to allow it to work with fewer staff.

The queue position was an awful idea, but I don't have many other solutions other than get rid of Enterprise and put the queue over there? Maybe something could be done to give proper drainage but I think the ground level is too low for drainage to really work properly.
 
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