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Wicker Man - General Discussion - Part Two

Could it be due to the length of the lift hill? A longer lift hill means the train in the brakes has more time to clear through before the one on the lift approaches the top, so you could dispatch earlier.
 
Honestly block sections could play a massive part in this, I rides theoretical throughput depends on how often you can send a train, if a block takes a long time to transverse then that limits the overall capacity
 
The last few rides I've had on WM, they don't seem to open the air gates until almost everyone is on the exit platform with some well outside the exit gate. I remember this not being the case on Oblivion not so long ago where you could often get to a seat and find a departing passenger still struggling to undo their seat belt. I've seen this on Nemesis recently too. But on WM, most people seem to be well clear of the train before they open the "pens".

On Wodan, the gates are open pretty much as soon as the retraints are released. Also seems to be less faff with restraints as well but I stand corrected if I'm wrong. Loads of fluffing around with restraints on WM.

WM also seems to have an extremely slow parking issue that I know we've discussed before. For someone who rode it a few times on opening day, it's very noticeable now. It seems to take forever to park.

But ultimately it's not that important. WM's throughput is enough for the park it's situated in. The problem of the slow moving queue and 60 mins + waits are to do with Fastrack and poorly controlled RAP rather than the actual amount of people it turns over. Most times I've ridden it this season it's been operated pretty well to be honest. Above issues aside of course, but EP is a high benchmark to reach and I'd prefer they chased other things EP does much better rather than WM/Wodan operation comparisons.
 
For clarity, I wasn’t suggesting that there was any issue with WM’s throughput or operations; I think they’re phenomenal! Last time I visited, the queue moved very rapidly!

I was merely interested in how much of a difference there was between it and Wodan, as I couldn’t work out what would cause Wodan to be 25% higher than WM.
 
It’s mostly block size, top of the lift hill to the end of the break run is shorter in time on Wodan to Wicker. After that EP operations make use of every second of time to maximise throughput. As John said Wodan rarely stacks, wicker does a lot.
 
Dave said:
It’s mostly block size, top of the lift hill to the end of the break run is shorter in time on Wodan to Wicker. After that EP operations make use of every second of time to maximise throughput. As John said Wodan rarely stacks, wicker does a lot.
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Bear in mind that WM has a pre-show, and Wodan does not. The latter sometimes has to wait in the station for the pre-show to finish in order to get a full train.
 
Yeah the pre-show is great but they didn’t add enough post show queue. In some ways they would be better adding platform bag storage and use the bag hold space to extend the post show queue.
 
Skyscraper said:
Bear in mind that WM has a pre-show, and Wodan does not. The latter sometimes has to wait in the station for the pre-show to finish in order to get a full train.
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Yes but this is only a "problem" when the ride is dead. In which case it's not a problem at all. There's still enough room in the station for a good 2 to 3 trains worth of people. The problem is the station is so small on the onboard side that it requires a lot of crowd management.
 
WM was struggling to get guests into the station fast enough yesterday. They were *just* keeping pace. At points, the train was parking before half the bays were full.

I do think it impacts. What also impacts is the slightly more restrictive nature of the seats vs. Wodan. A test seat could have partly remedied this.

Wodan has one.

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I still don't understand why they made the queue after the pre-show so short. If they'd given enough room to loop that queue back on itself just one time I think that would have been enough.
 
I think a simple solution would just be to make 2 lines in the baggage hold area. One for people that want to watch the pre-show and one that just wants to walk straight through to the station. That way u could just alternate and always have a full station.
I love the pre-show, they did a great job with it. But it does get tiresome being forced to watch it when u r on ride 4/5 of the day etc.
 
Wicker Man is one of the most effective and least offensively presented pre-shows on any coaster I can think of.

There have been a few rides with unavoidable pre-shows that were pretty heinous. Terminator and Led Zeppelin are probably the most well known. As much as I like Zep, a documentary about the band each time I rode ... No thanks.

Furthermore, it's part of the experience and the queue. In theory you shouldn't be able to get on the ride any quicker by skipping it, although I appreciate the execution doesn't make that entirely accurate, but allowing people to skip still causes headaches.

If someone wants to skip the pre-show (to stand in a queue for the length of the pre-show), that doesn't feel like a win.

They should remove the lift hill, that's always fairly tedious.

It's a minute and ten seconds long, suck it up kids.
 
For me, the pre-show is a double edged sword.

I love the show itself; I think it’s brilliant. It’s very compelling, has some brilliant effects and also some brilliant little touches that you might not notice on your first watch of it! It’s not overly long, either, so it hardly gets on my nerves, even on repeat rides; it beats spending the equivalent amount of time queueing, for sure!

However, the way it’s implemented means that I personally find it a somewhat unpleasant experience overall. Last year, I found being crowded into the room and practically touching shoulders with people rather uncomfortable (the feeling of overcrowding is a lot more overbearing on Wicker Man than it is on something like Hex, for some reason), and I also felt anxious during the big scrum to get into the station after the show ended; even though I tried to hang back to avoid the main scrum, I still found it rather anxiety-inducing trying to get into the station. I had a few times where the door even tried to shut me back in the pre-show room as I was trying to enter the station, which was mildly nerve-wracking.
 
Tommy85 said:
I think a simple solution would just be to make 2 lines in the baggage hold area. One for people that want to watch the pre-show and one that just wants to walk straight through to the station. That way u could just alternate and always have a full station.
I love the pre-show, they did a great job with it. But it does get tiresome being forced to watch it when u r on ride 4/5 of the day etc.
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The best way to have a "I don't want to watch the preshow" option is to do what I've seen them do this year - a mother and her 2 young girls were held at the front of the batching room and when the show in front finished, they were allowed straight through to the station, then the rest of us went into the preshow room as normal. Presumably the kids didn't want to watch it as they were scared because when we caught them up at the station, the ride host was talking to the girls telling them it's not scary but fun. They went on it (BACK ROW!) and I wish I'd seen their reactions when they got back into the station afterwards!

But even then, it should be the exception, not the rule that you can jump the preshow.
 
Rick said:
Wicker Man is one of the most effective and least offensively presented pre-shows on any coaster I can think of.
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Couldn't agree more. It's been argued on here a number of times over the last 4 years that you "should be able to skip the pre-show". The only slight unpleasantness is the crowding to get out, but I'm sure for those that have ridden enough times that they don't wish to do the pre-show again, they know where to stand and squeeze past to allow themselves into a more open space and to try and be the first out.

I find the tapestry room in the Voletarium queue utterly tedious and dull. You have to go through it every time you ride, I mean, CHRIST! I'd rather wait outside for those 2 minutes you spend in there frankly.




/s
 
I never have a problem in the pre show room. There's still plenty of room in there even when they fill it, it's the fact people are slow to move forward that makes it feel congested at the back.

Avoiding the so called "scrum" as it's being called is easy, just avoid it like you would in any other scenario in life. Wait for the suckers to pass you and clamber over each other to get into the station in a pointless frenzy and just follow them from behind.

There's no more room in the station without a redesign so it just needs managing. Full immersive experiences are what most of us want more of at Tower's and WM delivers this. WM has ample capacity for a Towers coaster and turns over more guests than many other coasters at Towers do these days so I don't really see much of a problem. If anyone is concerned about the throughput of WM, we should be focusing on oversold FT and RAP abuse rather pre- show skipping lines.
 
Yesterday, there was far less emphasis in squeezing people into the preshow. It's more efficient to load it quickly, rather than spend ages filling it to capacity for the sake of 5-10 more people.

The main issue is often that the guests in the preshow won't all fit in the last bit of queue line, so they cannot close the door quick enough to get the next lot in.
 
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