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Why the Smiler re-opening will fail...

Tom said:
There is no fair comparison, Alton Towers' fame in the UK propelled the impact of the incident into the stratosphere. Its popularity will literally be decimated when it reopens. Nonetheless, once it is open a rebuilding process commences but it will take years to recover if it remains named as The Smiler.
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I see what you mean, but I haven't really heard about many accidents. I was just wondering how long it took people to forget about things like BTM, black hole, hydro... not that you can actually compare as the smiler had the help of social media.
 
What amazes me is how an incident in America where people die causes minimal impact on park attendance whereas in the UK, an incident that thankfully caused no deaths has a huge impact on attendance. I mostly blame it on the media and their actions, I mean the reporting from the tabloids and even broadsheets is pretty much a textbook example of biased, unfair and inaccurate reporting. Remember the headlines when the Sonic cars nudged at walking pace? "Alton Towers ride crash weeks after people injured in Smiler smash". :mad:

Anyway, rant over. I hope the reopening is successful, so fingers crossed.
 
I'll be straight on it without any second thoughts. I'm very happy with the new protocols in place. Also in regards to safety, the ride has always worked exactly as it was designed to.
 
The opening wont fail. If they have a problem on the planned opening day, they wont open it That day (the reason they haven't confirmed it opening on opening day next year I think).
 
PraiseWardley said:
What amazes me is how an incident in America where people die causes minimal impact on park attendance whereas in the UK, an incident that thankfully caused no deaths has a huge impact on attendance. I mostly blame it on the media and their actions, I mean the reporting from the tabloids and even broadsheets is pretty much a textbook example of biased, unfair and inaccurate reporting. Remember the headlines when the Sonic cars nudged at walking pace? "Alton Towers ride crash weeks after people injured in Smiler smash". :mad:

Anyway, rant over. I hope the reopening is successful, so fingers crossed.
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I think we all over state the impact of the tabloid newspapers. The headlines and sensationalist reporting may have upset us but do you know many people who actually use print media as a primary news source? The "Terror Park" headlines are what they use to get attention for people to buy in to their out dated products. Print media is more of a specialist thing these days, its customers want to enjoy their read and sometimes want sensationalism rather than the the facts.

I think it's far simpler than all that. If you're constantly being bombarded with thousands of news stories, you only get the jist of it if it's something you don't take time to read into. If, amongst your daily bombardment of information from various sources you browse over the words "Smiler - Crash - Roller Coaster - Alton Towers - amputations", what impression would that put in your head?

That's why I hate phrases like "idiot/stupid general public". How many of us have looked in to every story we read about motorways for instance? We often hear the words "Motorway - death -Crash - congestion - queues - pollution - environment" and we don't build them any more because they have such a negative image. But if you were on a road enthusiast forum right now (they do exist!), they'd be having similar conversations like us and reiterating the fact that motorways are actually the highest capacity, safest, fastest moving and most environmentally friendly roads in the country.

I don't think we can blame people for not knowing enough. Only time now will heal and shine the facts through and I have faith that it will.
 
PraiseWardley said:
What amazes me is how an incident in America where people die causes minimal impact on park attendance whereas in the UK, an incident that thankfully caused no deaths has a huge impact on attendance. I mostly blame it on the media and their actions, I mean the reporting from the tabloids and even broadsheets is pretty much a textbook example of biased, unfair and inaccurate reporting. Remember the headlines when the Sonic cars nudged at walking pace? "Alton Towers ride crash weeks after people injured in Smiler smash". :mad:

Anyway, rant over. I hope the reopening is successful, so fingers crossed.
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This is a good point, however,the US is a much larger country, and there are FAR more amusement parks than in the UK. (Heck, the entirety of the UK fits inside the state of Texas) Anyway, when something really big (like when someone died on the New Texas Giant), it is always heard about on national news, and its always a big thing, but since there are so many parks, there are also a lot of urban legends, and incidents turn into legends a lot quicker here than in the UK due to the sheer number of roller coasters. (does anyone remember when someone got their feet chopped off on Drop Tower at Kings Island? Yes? Of course you do, because it happened on the Hellavator at Kentucky Kingdom, and now because of that, most freefall rides in the states have a bad rep from the GP because of the now nonexistent Hellavator. ) (Does anyone remember when 5 people died on Son of Beast? What? You do? thats funny because nobody died. There were just a couple of back injuries. Anyway, things just become urban legends faster, and suddenly 'more people died on any ride in the US than on any ride in the US.' (This can draw attention away from specific parks, and throw the urban legend on 'every single drop tower ever' instead of just Hellavator, thus sometimes big things don't get that much attention) For example, a lot of people blamed RMC and the woman who died for the New Texas Giant accident, but when the Smiler crashed, how many members of the media blamed Gerstlauer? (not very many, because it was 'definatley AT's fault' (which it actually turned out to be human error, ironically)) But smaller incidents still get a lot of attention as well. For example, when the raft flipped on Shoot the Rapids last year (last year? or 2014?) (2014 im pretty sure) it got a lot of attention, even though nobody died, and it was under maintenance for a LONG time, but they soft opened it, and nobody batted an eye, and it was soon forgotten, even though it was almost as bad as the Smiler crash. (its probably an urban legend now that an entire raft flipped and somehow brutally killed every one of the vast amounts 6 passengers to death when in reality they just crawled out from under the boat and the media made a big deal about it) So to kind of awkwardly stick my opinion about the re-opening into the end of this excruciatingly long, parenthetical, wordy rant, I think that the Smiler's re-opening will go pretty well, as long as they soft open it on a day that is not opening day. Also they have to make sure that NOTHING happens during the first few days (even if someone were to throw up, thus putting operations on standby while they clean up for 5 minutes extra, the media would throw some extra juiciness onto that story and call it a HORROR INCIDENT AFTER SATANIC CRASH and then go and film them cleaning up the vomit and say that some viewers might want to look away so as not to see the human remains left after this horrifying tragedy (protein spill). [/end rant]
 
Thoe124 said:
This is a good point, however,the US is a much larger country, and there are FAR more amusement parks than in the UK. (Heck, the entirety of the UK fits inside the state of Texas) Anyway, when something really big (like when someone died on the New Texas Giant), it is always heard about on national news, and its always a big thing, but since there are so many parks, there are also a lot of urban legends, and incidents turn into legends a lot quicker here than in the UK due to the sheer number of roller coasters. (does anyone remember when someone got their feet chopped off on Drop Tower at Kings Island? Yes? Of course you do, because it happened on the Hellavator at Kentucky Kingdom, and now because of that, most freefall rides in the states have a bad rep from the GP because of the now nonexistent Hellavator. ) (Does anyone remember when 5 people died on Son of Beast? What? You do? thats funny because nobody died. There were just a couple of back injuries. Anyway, things just become urban legends faster, and suddenly 'more people died on any ride in the US than on any ride in the US.' (This can draw attention away from specific parks, and throw the urban legend on 'every single drop tower ever' instead of just Hellavator, thus sometimes big things don't get that much attention) For example, a lot of people blamed RMC and the woman who died for the New Texas Giant accident, but when the Smiler crashed, how many members of the media blamed Gerstlauer? (not very many, because it was 'definatley AT's fault' (which it actually turned out to be human error, ironically)) But smaller incidents still get a lot of attention as well. For example, when the raft flipped on Shoot the Rapids last year (last year? or 2014?) (2014 im pretty sure) it got a lot of attention, even though nobody died, and it was under maintenance for a LONG time, but they soft opened it, and nobody batted an eye, and it was soon forgotten, even though it was almost as bad as the Smiler crash. (its probably an urban legend now that an entire raft flipped and somehow brutally killed every one of the vast amounts 6 passengers to death when in reality they just crawled out from under the boat and the media made a big deal about it) So to kind of awkwardly stick my opinion about the re-opening into the end of this excruciatingly long, parenthetical, wordy rant, I think that the Smiler's re-opening will go pretty well, as long as they soft open it on a day that is not opening day. Also they have to make sure that NOTHING happens during the first few days (even if someone were to throw up, thus putting operations on standby while they clean up for 5 minutes extra, the media would throw some extra juiciness onto that story and call it a HORROR INCIDENT AFTER SATANIC CRASH and then go and film them cleaning up the vomit and say that some viewers might want to look away so as not to see the human remains left after this horrifying tragedy (protein spill). [/end rant]
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I definitely think that you are right about why the incidents in the US get less attention but because of how big a deal it is here they won't get away with a soft opening without people noticing. Also the smiler not breaking down in two days!!! When pigs fly! :eek::p
 
I think it will be a bit quieter at first but will still pick up and pull in the queues.

It never stopped PMBO being popular despite...

Twenty six people were injured in a collision in July 1994 less than a month after the 87mph ride first opened.
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A collision between two carriages on Europe's tallest rollercoaster, at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, last night left at least 20 people injured, two of them seriously.
Four people were trapped inside a crushed carriage after the crash on the Pepsi Max Big One rollercoaster, Lancashire ambulance service confirmed.
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Which also gained notoriety through the media backlash. This is the same for Big Dipper, which has crashed twice and the deaths on Space Invader never really put people off.
 
Spike said:
I think it will be a bit quieter at first but will still pick up and pull in the queues.

It never stopped PMBO being popular

Which also gained notoriety through the media backlash. This is the same for Big Dipper, which has crashed twice and the deaths on Space Invader never really put people off.
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I think the key difference in this instance is that the images of The Smiler crash have been plastered all over social media, tv and newspaper articles on a completely different scale to any other theme park incident.

I remember the PMBO accident being reported, as well as the deaths on Space Invaders and Hydro, but neither were reported in such a damning way.

The biggest obstacle for Alton Towers now is how to alleviate all the negative stigma attached to the rides brand and image, something that will probably take years to overcome.
 
The previously mentioned accidents all happened in an era where the media weren't so desperate to throw the most horrifying adjectives imaginable together to form scaremongering, hence why the reporting was much more fact and common sense driven than any of the drivel we had the misfortune to read surrounding The Smiler accident.
 
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