BenBowser said:
As for Th13teen only being completed the night before opening, surely that shows how good they were at the job, managing to complete it on time even though it was delayed.
Th13teen opened quite literally by the skin of its teeth. Opening morning parts of the queueline still weren't finished, and part of the reason they held everyone back before going up to the ride was because they were still getting the JCBs and construction team off the site! To me it still feels very incomplete in terms of theming, and I think you can tell it was a rush job (There's no way there was originally going to be that much scaffolding concealing the structure. Some perhaps, but not the whole front of the building!).
As for Air, yes, many issues were system related, but even that had some project management issues. It opened barely finished, and when it did there were still groundwork issues which went unnoticed. One of the supports on the inline twist used to clang whenever the train passed over. When it came to closed season it turned out this was because the footer was too small fo the support, and the sound was it bouncing up and down on the ground when the train put weight on it!
Then there was the whole issue with the station pulling itself apart, when the lifting boom snapped due to the rows on the craft lifting unevenly. Apparently B&Ms response was "Impossible", followed by "Oh. Yeah, we thought that might happen." when they actually saw it! Yes, this is more of a system bug, like Smiler with its stalling due to the trims and weight being miscalculated, but issues such as these, like Th13teen with its overspeed, or SAW and the blocking issues too, should have been picked up during testing and been rectified, but it always seems to be a case that they rush through these things in order to have the ride open, resulting in them either going undetected, or other elements such as theming being sacrificed whilst attention is diverted.
Now I know there are some problems which can only ever be detected during normal operation, which is fair enough (Air I've been told has an unusual one where every now and then it'll throw up an error, always on the same row and seat, for no apparent reason, and no one seems to know what triggers it!), but with enough time for thorough testing the majority should be spotted somewhere and rectified to reduce the downtime or number of problems it causes during day to day running with paying guests wishing to ride.
With Sub-Terra, it was perhaps project management at its worse! The brief for the ride was completely misunderstood, resulting in Alton singing from one hymn sheet with the marketing and promotion (Which was actually quite promising I thought), and the ride doing something very different. Anyone who was there and rode it opening day I'm sure will agree, that it simply wasn't the attraction which was being sold to us, and was completely unsuitable. Guests were leaving the attraction with a "WTF?!" expression, and "Is that it?" feeling. They knew they were in trouble as soon as that reporter published his review of the ride, more or less ripping it to shreds. Then, when management got a chance to try it I understand one of them described it as "A f***ing embarrassment", and another telling them to "get it sorted".
The result? Well eventually we got a half decent ride out of it, but ultimately, the changes that were made were actually pretty simple to implement. Had they known sooner how dire V.1 was they could have quite easily had these changes in place for opening day. They didn't need guests to tell them that. They knew before they even opened the ride gates what was going to happen, but by that point it was too late. Adding a dark shipping container maze, and resequencing the show wouldn't take that long. It could have probably been done more or less overnight! Instead, the night and morning before the ride opened, the techies were apparently working through it as one of the drop towers decided to go for a ratchet. Had they planned the time better it could have probably been quite different on opening day, and saved itself a lot of grief. You only need to stand by the exit for 5 minutes to tell that it now does it's job properly, especially when compared to opening day.
My point is, although The Smiler has been perhaps one of the most obviously problematic projects Alton and Merlin have had, it isn't anything that out of the ordinary for them. They frequently have these problems with their projects. Mutiny Bay, and Cloud Cuckoo Land have been mentioned somewhere. Well I'm just thankful they managed to kind of get those right! If they couldn't even carry out a simple retheme properly I would really be worried! They finally seem to have acknowledged this with CBeebies Land, and are cutting themselves some slack at last, although really we won't be able to truely see if it has worked until opening day. However, they have a lot more to loose here, as they've not just got the guests to answer to, but the BBC. If this goes belly up it could be a disaster for the park and company, so touch wood it's a success. Hopefully they will take what they learn from this, and apply it to their future projects. I guess only time will tell.
The bottom line is, we probably shouldn't have been too surprised really, as projects will most likely have problems at Towers looking at their history, but it's good to see they are actually going back to try and fix them now. As I said previously, I'd like to think that as a result of this major work from next season the ride will start anew, and we'll finally be rid of the troublesome issues
