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Wicker Man - General Discussion - Part Two

Alsty said:
WM is unusual because all hosts have an enabling button. That's not true for other coasters at the park.

However I'm surprised they don't need to do a thumbs up because if there were three people on the platform, how do you know they're all ready and in a safe location? This is not an unusual scenario. It would happen when training new hosts, for instance.
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I heard that they have the buttons on WM because the ride op wouldn't be able to see the thumbs up in the dim light and smoke haze. Personally I think the buttons were put in mainly for extra safety in light of the Smiler incident rather than this idea but there is logic to it though.
 
Mikw said:
I was talking to one of the Smiler staff last week. She said the soundtrack makes her go insane withing a few minutes of starting work.
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I think Oblivion's soundtrack would sent me nuts before The Smiler's. It used to be stupid loud in the station. They seemed to have the volume turned down last time I visited, Nemesis was quite quiet too.
 
It seems like the ride hosts tend to wear ear plugs these days so at least the music won't drive them as mad. That never used to be the case.

I have to wonder if that could impact on safety if they don't hear signals from other hosts though...
 
I watched a video showing the preshow and noticed for the first time that there's runic letters around the side of the preshow room. Presumably it says something... has anybody worked out what?
 
Alsty said:
It seems like the ride hosts tend to wear ear plugs these days so at least the music won't drive them as mad. That never used to be the case.

I have to wonder if that could impact on safety if they don't hear signals from other hosts though...
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The ear plugs will reduce the decibels by around 23db I reckon to an average of about 68db. They don't completely block out the sound (I'm guessing at the db range above but it gives you an idea). They'd still be able to hear sounds etc, but get the wrong earplugs and the sound is reduced too much, blocking out the real world sounds they need to hear.

The times I've seen them wearing the ear plugs, I'd say a vast majority of them don't wear them properly either as they don't go right in the lug hole. Them choice of ear plugs aren't the best and if you have to wear them all day they tend to hurt, never mind wearing them for week on end at work. They should look to reduce the music at certain times or points, it doesn't need to be that loud all of the time, this would then (probably) reduce the daily/weekly exposure on the operators. There's got to be better things to achieve a good balance for the guests experience and the ride operators exposure.
 
A few points regarding Wicker Man yesterday.

  • Annoyingly it didn't open until 10am.
  • The ride system was running very efficiently, with the train on the brake run passing the one on the lift on most dispatches - great to see!
  • In the queue from 4 - 5pm, I saw three trains go round empty; I can only assume that the pre-show is holding things up? If so, it's terrible that they allow a pre-show to have an adverse effect on the throughput of the ride.
  • Staff didn't let us skip the pre-show, and then proceeded to hold us in the batching area for around 10 - 15 minutes? Extremely frustrating considering we wanted to run back round and get in the queue before 5pm, however we missed it by a few minutes due to the pre-show.

5pm was also much too early to close yesterday, Wicker Man's queue closed at 5 yet was into the extended queue, Nemesis was very busy, and there were huge crowds leaving when the park closed.
 
Most likely they had too many people in the station. When I rode today they had 3 trains worth in the bays as we exited the preshow, and not enough space for us all.
 
We found them very accommodating in July. Asked to skip the pre-show, no problem. Asked for back row, again no problem. Guess it depends who you get on the day and what mood they're in.
 
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