Marc
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Posts posted by Marc
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Running alot better over past couple days - Only rides not open for 10 this morning was Rocky Express and Samurai. (And Slammer of course!)
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All coasters (Apart from Stealth) are open.. I'm a Celeb opens at 11. Just rocky express..
Significant improvement on the past few days.
- TPMSam and Stuntman707
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Professional as ever
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They banned you from their Facebook for commenting on the name? What did you say?!
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Not a great name...
Going to be an interesting year next year- whilst I've no doubt it will be the best new coaster for 2018 towers will ultimately triumph with their marketing - seeing this just reaffirms that for me.
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31 minutes ago, Martin.C said:
Not every guest will see those boards upon entering the park and the one at the entrance doesn't show any of this information as soon as the gates open. I don't remember Saw or Colossus being on those screens but I do remember their entrance boards saying they open at 11am the other day. That's the inconsistency and unreliable information I am talking about.
I'm not saying that all guests should know the full details as to why a ride is run at a limited capacity, I never stated that. What I said was if a ride is being run at a reduced capacity creating unnecessarily long queues, why does this only happen on what is considered as quiet days? Why not do the sensible thing and run everything at full capacity, you know, like all the other parks do if the queue isn't walk on? Too many times I've seen queues of up to 60 minutes for Inferno or Colossus on weekdays in the middle of March/May/September because of this stupid decision the park has been making for a few years now. That's what I'm criticising here.All I can say to Inferno running just one train in the morning and then adding the second one on later when the queue reaches an hour is this is not the first time I've seen this. This is probably the 4th time in the last two years I've seen it happen. Again, you hardly ever see other parks like Alton or Chessington add another train to the track half-way through the day do you? Why is it specifically Thorpe doing this?
Are you telling me you are happy to see the park run this way and see everything run at half capacity for pretty much half of the year?No not all guests will see - but they are making it as clear as they possibly can using the equipment they have available- I can't think of any ways the park could communicate that to guests any better.
As for the 1/2 train debate it's one what's been on-going for years - of course I wish the rides were all on maximum capacity all of the the time - but sometimes that's not positive for reasons way beyond any of our knowledge - Thorpe being as compact as it is it's always been more noticeable - last year I went to towers queued for an hour for galatica running one station before they opened the 2nd and added the additional train.
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12 minutes ago, Martin.C said:
If that's the case and it is only just those 3 rides that are scheduled to open later, where can the average guest know about this before trekking half the park to find it closed at the ride entrance? Whilst opening Storm Surge later is not something to fuss about, it would be helpful if guests knew this as they entered the park after the gates open between 10-11am so they know what's open and closed for the first hour. I didn't even know this until now, so how the heck the normal guest would I have no idea.
The only reason I am questioning which rides are scheduled to open at 11am is because a few days ago, Saw and Colossus's entrance boards stated the ride opens at 11am, not 10am. In addition, the park advertised it was opening the gates at 10am. It's inconsistent and unpredictable right now.
As I said in my previous post, I accept and acknowledge that in some instances there are exceptions to opening rides at half capacity or later in the day due to work still taking place on them. But the problem I'm saying is that on quiet days, the park operate virtually all of their coasters except for Saw and X on just 1 train all day, creating unnecessary long and slow queues for guests potentially paying up to £58.50 for admission. So how am I supposed to know now when I see a ride running at half capacity if it is deliberate or not?
An example of this is when the last meet was at Thorpe on the 25th March a couple of weeks ago, I distinctly remember seeing and hearing an announcement through Inferno's 60 minute queue announcing that the ride temporarily ceased operation whilst they were adding the 2nd train onto the track... on a Saturday.... at midday...... Well done lads.
What logic is there in this approach and why is this the normal way of operating rides at the park now? It's absolutely inexcusable that a park this large and popular can get away with such shoddy operations like this.The big screen in the dome, the 2 big queue boards and the ride boards at the rides in question all state the rides which are opening at 11 - how can they make it any clearer?
As a guest your not expected to know the reasons behind ride capacity- why would you?
As for inferno and it's 2nd train - see above - we don't know why it was having the 2nd train added at 12, maybe there was a fault, maybe it opened on 2 but needed to be reduced - its upto the park to manage that and when things are not working up to them to remedy it and or take the flack - I can assure you rides closed will bother management at the park much more than it does you or I.
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3 minutes ago, Coaster said:
None of those are "good" though and I don't see an extension to 6:30pm as a positive either.
These ridiculous situations occur too often at Thorpe, and any positive out of the past few days was "reactive" rather than "proactive" which is not how it should be. Proper planning would avoid this.
The fact they removed their reviews section at Fright Nights speaks volumes about how little they value guest experience or feedback.
I agree it was reactive - but they reacted in the best way they could given the situation they were in - and most big rides actually remained open till 7 - got out of ghost train about 7:30.
As for the reviews section I don't think towers has this on either - up to them how they utilise social media - they are generally quite good at responding to comments on there negative or positive.
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None of us really know the answer to that - nor do we know that's the reason behind the closures - certianly yesterday rides opened as they were tested, so they clearly had staff available!
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It was not a necessity- I'm sure those in the know will have known exactly what was going on and when things would open - and when things did open the park was pretty quiet - probably a fair bit quieter than it would have been.
As I said - not defending what went on - but saying they "don't care" is wrong.
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Explain to me if they didn't "give a jot" about guest experience why would they have:
1. Stopped letting people in
2. Stop fastrack sales on coasters
3. Open all rides an additional 30 minutes, others for an hour after advertise close
4. Offer refunds / comp tickets to every guest in the park
5. Have staff working late replying to all guests online
Im all for criticism when necessary (and rightly so after a bad couple of days they are receiving this) but the park obviously do care about guest experience or none of them things would have happened.
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It's far from "normal" procedure.
I believe on off-peak days Rumba, Samurai, Storm Surge and AB4D open at 11.
Obviously something's going on the past few days for it to be like this - they will obviously be looking into the causes and remedys - not in their interest for this to be a regular occurrence!
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I'm pretty certain management will be looking into what happened today, why it happened and how to prevent it in the future.
In the end we had an ok day - ghost train and a few coasters were open till 7, all other rides what did open till 6:30, everyone was compensated on exit.
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Stealth was on 2 trains all day yesterday - but was having fair few issues throughout the day, closed all day today.
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Obviously been a bad day for the park - everyone's being issued comp tickets on exit and the parks remaining open till 6:30
On top of closing the gates at 11 they also didn't sell fastrack for the coasters - bit of a write of day but they did what they could and I'm sure lessons will be learnt!
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Just now, Owen said:
Well in that case all I can say is I remember what I remember - and this was that the headphones not only looked and felt different. No need to begin acting somewhat dismissive and causing issue over minor things!
I remember when ghost train first opened they didn't put the headphones in the little pouches which made it a lot better - either way as
you say the new headphones are such a massive improvement!
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They did keep the queue open till 6:30 - hopefully it's just teething issues and it will be ok further on!
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The ride was in top form tonight - there has been a tonne of improvements all over - from the new (very good quality and loud!) headphones - improved effects on the trains and new touches in scene 2 (train wasn't working this evening but the improvisions were pretty good (as thoss who watch the spoiler videos will see!
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1 hour ago, ThemeParkCrafter said:
My major issue with their audio is the unique sounds. For the smiler and helix, they work but they sound rather samey and worse than using orchestras for music.
I notice a lot of people mention how their music sounds samey - they did a interview with Cupcakes and Coasters here where they touch abit on that https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/cupcakes-coasters-11633643/cupcakes-coasters-meets-imascore-5525412451
Ive personally never found what they do very samey - the stuff they've done for Thorpe this year so far sounds quite a lot different to what I've heard from themi before.
The flat rides have very often changed their music back and forth, most of them weren't composed for those rides either. The Lost City music has been continually chopped up and spread around different areas. And used kind of inappropriately in some cases, there were spare speakers mounted on wooden posts down a bare pathway between some bushes last I went, playing very dramatic Lost City music close to your ear, it was like a technician's lunchtime project and such things seemed so forced. Music is much better when used by design, not for the sake of music.
We are going back years now surely? I remember when all the flats had lost city music - even eclipse would play it which didn't suit it atall - now it's all seems to work quite well - none of the flats other than Vortex use the lost city theme (other when there's no audio and the area theme cuts in) but they are all lost city.. as for the path then speakers were all signaled as part of The link back in 2006 I believe? Most of the time they played chart music so to play parts of the lost city theme is definitely a welcome upgrade!
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Didnt towers fireworks / entrance music involve a full orchestra too? Pretty sure it did!
I'm pretty sure Merlin / those responsible for the audio are hands on in what they want to ensure they get what's right for the ride / park.
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TBF I don't think we've seen a great deal of "fiddling" at Thorpe - much of the music on the rides is mostly what they opened with - a few changes here and there mind. Of course lots was changed when the park decided to go down the chart music route but thank god they've stared to go down the more themed music route again.
Maybe nostalgia was the wrong word - as I've said im a big fan of the themes at the park, as I was of the old entrance music - but I also think things can always be bettered too - for example the new stuff Imascore have done for the entrance / dome fits in very well with the new "island" theme.
I heard what I assume is a new end of day track today (attached some videos) actually reminds me of the old one in some ways. I'm personally a fan of imascore - I think they've created some very good tracks for the merlin parks and look forward to seeing what more they can do.
- Olistjj, ThrillSeekerMatt and Matt A
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Noticed yesterday the police car had been re-wired in - flashing lights and audio now work - first time since it's been relocated I believe
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Im not sure why you think the speakers are broken? They all seem to work fine - the main difference between the original inferno and its theme now is the safety warning as you dispatch and the ambiance played when it used to be silent between dispatches. If anything else has changed please feel free to correct me!
like I said - I agree with everyone the tracks are very good both on Colossus and Inferno - but refusing to evolve due to nostalgia is silly. Also complaining about something what hasn't happened (even though there are hints it may) without hearing the actual replacement is mad - imascore are clearly pros at what they do - the majority of people like what they do any if anyone was to be able to beat what we have now it would be imascore IMO.
Logger's Leap
in The Past
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If scaffolding had been put up that would mean a lot!
That said I'm sure that platforms veen there for a long time!