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The Smiler - General Discussion

I am slowly falling in love with this ride. Each time I ride, and my head gets used to the dizziness and I can brace for the poor bits of track construction, thus I can take in more enjoyment.

It broke down yesterday, usual evac stuff, people stuck on the ride, mentioned by my very good friend Amy in the "downtime" topic already. It did though open later, and whilst being told the queue (clearly overestimated) was 1:45/2 hours we were actually on in about 40 minutes or so.

Why?

I'll tell you why, each one of those ride hosts should have been wearing their pants/knickers/bloomers/thongs etc over their trousers, because OMG they were MULLERING the queue!!!

It just did not stop still, it felt most of the time like you were keeping up with it! I have never know it to move that quick, they were absolutely flinging those cars around the track, and when a particular host asked me "how long is the queue behind you", I suggested 20 mins (based on previous experiences less trains/staff getting used to it etc), I could not believe that by the time I went round, got to the toilet block after not shopping, they had pretty much finished!!

That team last night were absolutely magnificent. They were cheerful, organised, determined, friendly - and even though that last couple of inversions are probably some of the roughest on park (which is ludicrous for a new coaster, but I still doubt it is the coasters fault!) this ride is really gaining charm.

Never to be able to be ridden as often, as smoothly, as sublimely as that classy bitch Nemesis, it is her rough, hardcore, dirty cousin/sister and I just cannot resist sneaking off for a bit of filth!

Problem is, the more I ride her, the more I'm falling for her...
 
Apparently The Smiler is being featured on the One Show on BBC 1 tomorrow (Tuesday). They are filming on it tomorrow afternoon and interviewing John Wardley.
 
I finally got around to riding The Smiler today , and thought it was fantastic ! We got off to a rocky start , being informed the SRQ was unavailable and we'd have to wait in the 2 hour queue. Mustn't grumble , so we soldiered on. 5 minutes later we arrived at the entrance marquee , with a good stretch of temporary queue ahead of us , to see a single rider pass through next to us ! After asking the guy working at the queue entrance let us squeeze through into the single rider lane .

15 minutes later we were on, despite being told that the SRQ could be longer than the main queue line (and in my opinion this was all down to an attempt to encourage people to buy fastrack tickets, with sales people roaming the temporary queue extension at £7 a pop)

The ride itself , the two of us ended up sat together front row , and what a phenomenal ride! I had read about the roughness but in reality this was a non-issue , in fact I suffered a whopping bruise on AIR back row, and came off The Smiler bruise free! Just goes to show how opinion can be distorted as an enthusiast, as personally I think the ride is very smooth, and really dears, calm down ;)
 
I found only a few jolty moments on The Smiler, but only because I was looking for them.

In my opinion, the ride was pretty smooth. :)
 
It is slowly getting better and less noisey. It is also flying around in the sun. I was genuinely scared at one point after realising just how fast it was thrashing around the track. Im sad to say this, but I'd rather ride this than Nemesis at the moment.
 
There is certainly a difference in the trains on the Smiler, on Saturday I did it first thing and it was fine, then did SRQ and got on the front row, and the whole ride felt completly different, and very jolty the whole way round. I think its the train that rattles a lot!

There is the two bits right near the end of the right that jolt on all the trains due to the track, but the rest is fairly smooth.
 
The Smiler is very hit and miss when it comes to roughness and jolts. Out of my 11 rides on it so far, I've had one really rough and painful ride which I struggled to enjoy, one uncomfortable ride and the rest have been between very smooth and acceptably comfortable. The only jolt that I've had on every ride without fail is exciting the cobra roll. I'd imagine the variation is to do with a few things, and I do think one of those things is down to which train you end up on. Some are definitely smoother and others.

Also, as the restraints tighten they do dig into your shoulders which isn't too nice and they do leave marks. Some padding underneath the top of the restraints where they rest on the shoulder like they have on the sides would be great!

:)
 
I may sound crazy here, but I quite enjoy the jolt on the exit of the cobra roll. The positive g-force on the bottom of the exit is phenomenal!
 
The positive G's aren't the problem, it's the badly profiled track that creates a sideways jolt.
 
Rob said:
Also, as the restraints tighten they do dig into your shoulders which isn't too nice and they do leave marks. Some padding underneath the top of the restraints where they rest on the shoulder like they have on the sides would be great!

:)
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They dig into my thighs not my shoulders. Even if you manage to retain a gap at the beginning, the force of the ride pushes the restraint down into your legs so that by halfway you're fully stapled in.
 
Alastair said:
Rob said:
Also, as the restraints tighten they do dig into your shoulders which isn't too nice and they do leave marks. Some padding underneath the top of the restraints where they rest on the shoulder like they have on the sides would be great!

:)
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They dig into my thighs not my shoulders. Even if you manage to retain a gap at the beginning, the force of the ride pushes the restraint down into your legs so that by halfway you're fully stapled in.
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This is my problem too. I leave the station with room to move. By half way my legs are pinned in so much it hurts. By the end I can't move them.
 
Y'all are clearly too skinny. Us large types seem to not have these problems. :p
 
I think with all coasters and restraints, body size and shape does come into it. The restraints have never dug into my thighs but they have dug into my shoulders a fair few times. I have quite a long upper body which is probably one of the reasons for that!

:)
 
BigDave said:
It is slowly getting better and less noisey. It is also flying around in the sun. I was genuinely scared at one point after realising just how fast it was thrashing around the track. Im sad to say this, but I'd rather ride this than Nemesis at the moment.
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Difference I think is though, The Smiler is a two/maybe three times a day coaster, but you must be made of solid steel bricks and pure MAN to be able to ride it as many times as you can ride Nemesis/Oblivion etc just because the quality isn't on a par in terms of the smoothness.

You could arguably ride Nemesis for hours, there is just no way you could do that with The Smiler. That's something I feel is a great shame because it ruins the experience somewhat.

I went on last time with a gent and his daughter for their first ride on it and he liked it but his words were to the affect of

"That was very rough though, I am p****d off now!"

Plenty of people are finding it rough, if they could smooth those issues out somehow, it really will be quite spectacular.

Oh and I am a Vekoma Boomerang apologist, and love woodies too etc, so it isn't like I sit in the every coaster must be glass smooth brigade - far from it.
 
GaryH said:
Plenty of people are finding it rough, if they could smooth those issues out somehow, it really will be quite spectacular.
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Add shock absorbers to the wheels!!!
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You can't polish a turd though, most of the major jolting roughness is caused by the track fabrication.
 
I rode it on opening weekend, once only, but found it to be extremely smooth? I also loved the seats and restraints, like the lap pinning :)
 
I spent quite a bit of time around Smiler today (due to it breaking no end throughout the day! I must have heard the breakdown and open messages 10 times!), one or two of the trains really don't sound healthy! One sounds like its scrapping and rattling around a lot, I think this is the rough train, and seems like some bolts are loose or something.

Another thing they really need to sort out soon, is how they do the testing in the morning, for example today we were right near the front of the queue at 9am, however they didnt start adding the test dummies till about 9.30, then they have to fill them all up. In the end the queue line opened at about 10.15, you then have to wait just outside the queue building while they empty every water dummy, one by one, which floods the whole queue line outside the station, and I would imagine wont be doing the LED screen, speakers or any other electrics much good, being covered in galleons of water every morning! (most probably why the tv screen there was not on today).

Once that was over we then got in the inside queue and waited a further 5 minutes. By the time we got on the ride it was getting towards 10.35am.

I really can't understand with it being their new ride, why they can't get the staff/techies to start earlier to get all this testing done, rather than leaving it last minute, I imagine if they came across any problems the ride would really struggle to open on time. They also need to sort the water dummies out, either empty them elsewhere, or sort some kind of roof above the queue line, so that it doesn't floor the queue line, and delays the rides opening.

As for the new tempoary fence, it looks worse than ever, it does now have the nice Alton Towers logos on them, but by the end of the day the fences are just all over the place and look a complete mess. Its also really confusing where you join the queue and where single rider/fastrack now join the queue.
 
djtruefitt said:
have to wait just outside the queue building while they empty every water dummy, one by one, which floods the whole queue line outside the station, and I would imagine wont be doing the LED screen, speakers or any other electrics much good, being covered in galleons of water every morning!
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you would of thought that they would of fitted a drain line in for the dummy water. but then again drainage is an issue all over the ride.
 
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