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The Smiler - General Discussion

When the ride was constructed there were numerous images of the indoor section without the surrounding building having been constructed that were edited to cover said section.

Is it possible to now see these images without this obstruction?
 
They will be kicking about somewhere, but the only thing that was covered up was the indoor inversion. Towers were so precious over this as it would give away the "14th world first" inversion. God knows why. Like anybody with a brain couldn't work out the indoor section had an inversion, especially being a Gerst.

It wasn't edited out to protect anything sensitive, rather it was done via ultimatum from Towers marketing to create hype, and false hopes of something spectacular.
 
I know what the media having been reporting is mostly total crap, but is it true The Smiler only gets through 1,000 people per hour?
 
PeteB said:
I know what the media having been reporting is mostly total crap, but is it true The Smiler only gets through 1,000 people per hour?
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No, it can reach 1,200pph according to Gerstlauer's own stats. However the media have been drawing their stats from Wikipedia.

Jfl6PAp.png
 
Hmm ok. It just occurred to me how if The Smiler was running for 8 hours a day and the park regularly reaches 15-20,000 people over the summer months, less than half of guests would get a chance to ride it. But that goes for most of the low capacity rides too. o_O
 
PeteB said:
Hmm ok. It just occurred to me how if The Smiler was running for 8 hours a day and the park regularly reaches 15-20,000 people over the summer months, less than half of guests would get a chance to ride it. But that goes for most of the low capacity rides too. o_O
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That's the same for pretty much any coaster in most parks though... Guest numbers are made up of different ages and people who want to ride different things. I don't think throughput has been as much of an issue as people first thought it would be.
 
PeteB said:
Hmm ok. It just occurred to me how if The Smiler was running for 8 hours a day and the park regularly reaches 15-20,000 people over the summer months, less than half of guests would get a chance to ride it. But that goes for most of the low capacity rides too. o_O
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As far as I know, The Smiler usually runs closer to 1000pph than to 1200. It's the same for any coaster though, the highest capacity reached in the park on a coaster is on Nemesis nowadays, at 1400pph. Even then, over 8 hours excluding any breakdowns/delays, only around 11k people could get on it.
 
Alastair said:
As far as I know, The Smiler usually runs closer to 1000pph than to 1200. It's the same for any coaster though, the highest capacity reached in the park on a coaster is on Nemesis nowadays, at 1400pph. Even then, over 8 hours excluding any breakdowns/delays, only around 11k people could get on it.
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Yeah. Seems like rides built during the 90's there was a much bigger effort to build high capacity rides. Nemesis, Oblivion, Duel etc.

I wish they'd start considering that again, although Th13teen blasting through 1300-1400pph is quite amazing for a family ride. I think that happened by sheer accident though.
 
PeteB said:
Yeah. Seems like rides built during the 90's there was a much bigger effort to build high capacity rides. Nemesis, Oblivion, Duel etc.

I wish they'd start considering that again, although Th13teen blasting through 1300-1400pph is quite amazing for a family ride. I think that happened by sheer accident though.
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I am guessing that the more rides you have, the less that ride throughput is an issue. People will be spread around more rides. When Nemesis was built, there weren't as many 'big ticket' coasters to soak up the remaining guests. Now there are more attractions to share the strain.

The park could do with one or two more indoor 'dark rides' though, just for the inclement weather. Or even an indoor coaster.
 
I'm pretty sure overall they actually had more rides and attractions back then lol.
 
There ain't many coasters in the world that go above 1200 an hour. Ideally to me if your wanting to run a FT system you should aim for at least 1300 though.

There where certainly more rides back in the day but most where low capacity ones.
 
Towers has more coasters now than at any other point in it's history, and in general the main ones get much better throughput than the ones that have come and gone. They don't have as many support rides now but they have much less appeal on the whole so queues tend to be shorter now than they were in the 80s/90s with an equivalent number of guests.
 
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This isn't directly related to The Smiler but thought this was the best place for it. As we all know the marketing for The Smiler was nothing short of brilliant and it is the best brand Alton Towers have created since Oblivion. The man behind this was Towers' then new to the job marketing director, Justin Platt.

Not long after the completion of The Smiler, Platt was promoted to the director of marketing for Merlin's Resort Theme Parks division. And in the last few weeks he has received another promotion; he is now the managing director of Merlin's Resort Theme Parks division

Quite a journey for a man who Wardley said of; "if anyone can market a wooden coaster at Towers, he can!"

:)
 
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I know that the Smiler holds the record for the number of inversions at 14, but which coaster holds the record for number of inversions in a single block-section?
 
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