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The Smiler - General Discussion

Something similar has happened to me a few times in the past, they say the queue is say 90mins as we enter just before close yet we are off the ride within 30-40mins.
 
Yeah. Queue times were all over so we initially didn't trust her.

The pit however was full with the queue being at the bottom of the stairs so we suspected what she said to be true.

Still a tad rude though...!
 
Yeah certainly, they shouldn't be lying to guests and putting them off joining the queue however close to ride close it is. I just say that's fine and join the queue as normally you can tell how long it is by the quantity of people in the pit.
 
I am quite sure this isn't supposed to happen. I would be quite categorical in my belief that the guest management would be perturbed to hear of such things taking place.
 
Exactly. And considering it was only an hour before ride close then it did seem suspect.

Ah well. Luckily it was an attempt of the 2nd ride of the day so...xD.
 
TheMan said:
I am quite sure this isn't supposed to happen. I would be quite categorical in my belief that the guest management would be perturbed to hear of such things taking place.
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Decided to leave it till morning. See what can be done.
 
Matt said:
Something similar has happened to me a few times in the past, they say the queue is say 90mins as we enter just before close yet we are off the ride within 30-40mins.
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No more fastrack and disabled groups will be joining the line after ride close so the queue would move significantly quicker.

A queue at the 90 minute point would be 90 in the day but significantly shorter after ride close.
 
Wilsy said:
No more fastrack and disabled groups will be joining the line after ride close so the queue would move significantly quicker.

A queue at the 90 minute point would be 90 in the day but significantly shorter after ride close.
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Ahhhhhh!! That also puzzled me a little why that happened!
 
My group queued for The Smiler the other day, and the screen said it was 90 mins, and the ride host told them it would be a 2 hour queue. (It was all the way up the queue line steps.) They were on in 1 hour 15. :p
 
There are a lot of varying factors (Such as staff efficiency, number of trains in service, disabled guests, single riders, and Fastrack sales), but as a general rule of thumb the main queue line holds a little over 60 minutes to the stairs I believe.
 
Ian said:
There are a lot of varying factors (Such as staff efficiency, number of trains in service, disabled guests, single riders, and Fastrack sales), but as a general rule of thumb the main queue line holds a little over 60 minutes to the stairs I believe.
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The at least one breakdown per ride queue has to be factored in though :p
 
spinba11 said:
On Monday the board said 45 mins at ride close (5) but the queue was empty by 5:30.
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Not far off then - which is good :) I'd say a 15 minute difference at ride close is pretty accurate when you consider there won't be any Fastrack after ride close.
 
The other week, we entered the queue at 4:50pm on a 5pm close. A few minutes later the ride broke down, they stopped people entering the queue at this point, at 5:30pm they eventually got it going again.......and reopened the queue for everyone! There was a 1hr wait at this point as well, it was about 6:15pm when we got off the ride and there were still people queuing. Goes to show, it's not everyone bring miserable! Excellent service everywhere we went that day!
 
It can sometimes be hard to compare coasters, there are so many different variables that can affect things. However I feel that comparisons can be drawn between The Smiler and Helix at Liseberg.

They are both long coasters. They both have lots of inversions (14 on The Smiler, 7 on Helix). They both have two lifts/launches. They both drop out of the station into an inversion. They both have airtime hills They were both the biggest ever investment for their respective parks. They were both built on tricky terrain. They both have a mobile phone game. They both have a soundtrack composed by IMAScore.

That's a lot of similarities. So in theory they should rate relatively equally. But do they? Well to put it simply, no.

Mack and Liseberg are the clear winners over Gerstlauer and Alton Towers. In my opinion the main reasons for this lie with the current mindsets of each park; what was each park trying to achieve with their brand new coaster? Of course they both wanted a great ride to pull in the guests, but it is deeper than that. Alton Towers and Merlin wanted something that was going to be dead easy to market, it had to have some form of worlds first element to it. It had to have that Merlin "killer image" and "compelling proposition" that Varney speaks of. Without any of this it would not have been built. Liseberg had a somewhat different mindset though which can be seen in this brilliant video from October 2012. Park president and CEO, Andreas Andersen, speaks about the legacy that Liseberg has in terms of world class attractions. He says how Lisebergbanan and Balder are both classic world class coasters, especially Lisebergbanan. With Helix they wanted to create a new classic, something that would get enthusiasts travelling from all around the world to ride.

It is those differing mindsets that set the president for each ride. Alton Towers went to Gerstlauer, known to produce more than their fair share of rough coasters, and decided to cram in as many inversions as possible into a small space. This resulted in a very visually impressive coaster, a coaster that made everyone want to visit the park. However with inversion and inversion after inversion there is little variation in the ride experience. And as we know the build quality was poor, it could be said they paid the price for taking that risk with Gerstlauer.

Liseberg on the other hand went to Mack. They had ridden Blue Fire at Europa Park and loved how fun, free and comfortable it was to ride. This is what they wanted, a fun yet thrill coaster. Helix inverts seven times yet it has so much more than that. The highlights of the ride, for me at least, are not even the inversions. You have the mind blowing airtime or that awesome transition into the helix. They went for Mack and as a result they have a smooth coaster with the best restraints in the industry for an inverting coaster. The build quality here is very high.

As I said earlier, both coasters were built on tricky terrain. One park got it so right, the other go it oh so very wrong. Alton Towers decided to dig out a hill and slap down a load of concrete to build their ride on. Yet it still did not result in a stable foundation. Liseberg managed to build their coaster using footers on a huge hillside intertwining with other rides, trees and rocks. It was a more challenging construction site yet they made it work.

The Smiler and Helix: two similar coasters that couldn't be more different.

:)
 
But, to be fair to The Smiler, it is restricted both by space and height, whereas Helix had a huge amount of space and could go as high as it wished. In terms of coaster design, The Smiler is the more impressive; it's a huge amount of coaster in a tiny space.
 
I disagree. At least with The Smiler they had a clear space to work with. Helix has been built on far more uneven terrain covered in trees and plants, amongst numerous other attractions. The huge difference in design time for each coaster also reflects this.

:)
 
A few things from my trip yesterday.
- Smiler currently only has 4 trains running, the 5th one is in the maintenance shed and it has been stripped down, all the seats have been removed and are all along the wall.
- The Marmaliser seems a bit broke, with the giggler, tickler and inoculator off, and the flasher is stuck on all the time and has 3 or 4 bulbs out.
- Smoke doesn't seem to be working in the station (or certainly not on my ride).
 
The smoke was working yesterday, for anyone not following TS on FB all the projectors were working when they went on the ride today.
 
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