Sorry to double post, but Shawn from TPW raised the possibility that Wicker Man might be getting more retracking work over this off-season in his latest Alton Towers vlog:
(Skip to 20:37)
He says that the ride is “riding pretty rough at the moment” in “the usual suspect places”. (I can only assume he means the s-bend drop?)
Interesting… I have a pretty low roughness tolerance (certainly lower than Shawn’s, from what I can gather), and I didn’t personally find Wicker Man overly rough at all last weekend. It must have deteriorated a fair bit in 5 days; I remember the train shaking a little bit on the s-bend drop, but I wouldn’t have called it a rough section per se (it certainly didn’t cause me any pain whatsoever), and I thought it always did that? In general, I’d probably have said the ride felt no rougher than on my June visit, perhaps even a touch smoother?
But what are your thoughts? Do you expect more significant retracking to take place over winter?