JoshC.

When you said "to ease with issues with guests, especially when this is Angry Birds after all...", I thought you were saying there was some families who thought the dodgems didn't look totally safe. I don't particularly see a problem with it, given the differences in target markets. Yes, Thorpe are catering for families, but they're catering for a different 'sort' of family than Chessington, for example. Just how I see it at least.

Perhaps the idea is to improve throughput? Angry Birds Land is aimed at 7-13 year olds primarily if memory serves me correctly, and I'm pretty sure most 7 year olds are at least 1.1m tall. It's in line with Thorpe's target market too, who are aiming more to families with slightly older children (I think I read somewhere 8 years and above?). I haven't seen the restraints in person or know what the general reception to them is, but they don't look particularly insecure and I doubt many people think they're unsafe?

-I'm a bit confused as to how it would work with giving people a choice? Are you suggesting that during the trial, there should be a physical queue as normal, as well as a RnR system, which would allow people to virtually queue, then get straight on the ride? So essentially just making RnR a free Fastrack service? (Not criticising or anything, just curious ) -I think with Fastrack, the thing is, it's never going to be scrapped in its current form. Yeah, parks coped fine without it, but these days, it's just a profit scheme. Yes, it's disappointing, yes, it shouldn't be like that, but that's how it is. Fastrack, at any park where it's now a paid-for system, is here to stay. I think some people sometimes overlook that, and I think that's what Marc is getting at. Fastrack definitely needs improvements, and maybe a RnR system could be those improvements, but it's a slightly different issue I think. -Agree with you here, pretty much. However, there's a difference between criticising the park for doing things wrong and saying that they 'hope the park fail'. I think many here see that the system could work in one way or another and, similarly, most think that a queue-less park is not feasible. But when some (and by no means all) people say that they hope this completely fails, you have to question if they're really someone who wants to see the park at it's best. One thing which I'm confused by with this is why Thorpe are trialling this now. June is a relatively busy period for the park, school trips are starting it, some students have finished for the year, etc. Now seems like a bad time to trial a system which is so ambitious and has potential to go badly wrong. They trialled it last year during August too; another very busy period. Talk about jumping in at the deep end ey? I just don't get why Thorpe would be so willing to try such an ambitious (and no doubt, technologically complicated) system when the park is busy. This sort of thing should be trialled during in the likes of March, early May or mid-September (on weekdays), so if it doesn't work, it causes minimum impact. I think in general, Thorpe have been very ambitious with this. Probably too ambitious. And that's my biggest criticism of the idea of RnR really. It's ambitious, and I fear the park are being too ambitious, too quick with it all!

Meeting in the middle isn't always a good thing...

10/10 - would ride. Is there a C.cret element on The Josher?

According to TS, Smiler only has a throughput of 1000 (linky - http://www.towersstreet.com/theme-park/ride/the-smiler/), and since they're quite reliable, that's where I got that number from. Certainly feels less than that when queueing for it though! The thing is, whilst the cinema was already there, it wasn't been open for a couple of years, so it's still going to get a lot of people through (and I bet it'll be more popular than Time Voyagers too). Think it's a valid thing to take into account. Whilst length of a ride doesn't necessarily affect throughput, my point with Swarm is that they wouldn't have the space to make it have a higher throughput. Oblivion is a very short ride, can handle dual loading/offloading and has lots of cars. That makes it easier to get a higher throughput compared to many other rides. With Swarm, you've got a full length coaster, they didn't really have enough space to hold three trains, and they would have struggled to create an interesting layout which could deal with running three trains, in my opinion at least. Regardless, Swarm still stands as one of the highest throughputs on park, so I don't think having it at a couple of hundred extra pph would make matters any better.

Good point; though I do expect most of Thorpe's visitors use the internet - very few people in the country don't (and even less who would be inclined to visit the park)! However, I expect that more people than not will keep track via social media or the park's website. Given this day and age, it's only natural to expect that. I also think that Thorpe will have done a bit of research into how best to keep guests updated about future visits, especially to ensure guest satisfaction.

I do agree with you. At this stage, I think keeping it on just the major coasters is probably the most sensible thing (even if a bit ambitious), as the park just don't have enough other things to cope (as you say). And, in all honesty, they won't have enough to cope for a good 4-5 years, unless they invest in the likes of multiple shows, attractions and other non-rides in a single, extremely expensive year. I totally get people's concerns with the system, and do share some of those concerns, but I do think that, if the technology works flawlessly, it has the potential to work.

The system may not be planned as a Fastrack replacement; who really knows! But I personally could see it working as a Fastrack replacement, since it's similar to QBot (I think?). What you've got to remember is that most people won't think 'Let's got today so that we can get loads and loads of rerides'. Many people who choose to go today will choose to go because they expect it to be quieter / it's the only day they could go. Not everyone will have those intentions. Thorpe also mentioned this in advance, so it's not like it should be a surprise to anyone visiting today. Smiler has a poor maximal throughput - somewhere in the region of 1000 I believe? Swarm has one of the best throughputs on park I think, with on Inferno and possibly the likes of Rumba and Loggers being better. Given Thorpe's restriction on the coaster, it'd be a struggle to get a ride with higher throughput too I reckon, unless you just stuck an eight row on. Remember that Thorpe is very different to American parks, and even Alton Towers. You can't go comparing Thorpe to them for the addition of their rides. I agree that more, high-throughput rides are needed on park though. I find it interesting it say a new flat with even 500pph would help, yet don't count Storm Surge, when I think that can get through about 400-500pph (someone do correct me if I'm wrong though!). Dodgems, no clue what they're throughput will be. I imagine that the 4D cinema will soak through a fair number of guests though and, in my opinion, is a better option than just bunging in another flat ride (since it breaks up the day, varies what's available, etc.). Thorpe do need a couple more high-throughput rides; a dark ride that can eat through the queues, a high-throughput family coaster and a suitable flat ride (if there is one out there) would all be good choices for the park.

There will of course be all the non-major coasters to ride whilst you're waiting for your time slot. If the plan is to roll this out as a replacement for queueing, then there's lots Thorpe need to do. Shows, side attractions, etc. Not something that will happen overnight. Maybe this trial is ready for a Thorpe Park of the future, not necessarily a Thorpe Park of tomorrow. Of course, if Thorpe are planning this to be a Fastrack replacement, once all the techy-issues are sorted out, I see nothing wrong with. Also, Thorpe should try and focus on a total experience more - create queues that don't feel like queues. Things like Hex's pre show, NST's pre show. Create a total experience so, even though you're queueing for the main ride, it doesn't feel like it.

To be fair, Colossus' second train was something that was looked into during closed season, but took longer than the time there was available during closed season. It's not good, but they did use closed season for Colossus' trains (and, no doubt, for all of Stealth's trains). They'll of course aim to get it on two trains as quickly as possible. It mostly seems unfortunate in this case that Stealth is down onto one train at the moment - their schedule puts one out of action, and then something happens to another train. It's not good, but I feel blaming the park for an accident that's happened - which is quite possibly out of their control - is unfair.

Presumably one train is in the middle of some (pretty big) maintenance, and the the other train recently broke / was damaged, and it will be a while before it's fixed?

I've been under the impression that they rotate the trains and do some maintenance on the 3rd train whilst it's not in use. It could be a case of the 2nd train simply died at the wrong time. Unfortunate.

Just might be worth saying, tomorrow's trial of RnR has been cancelled, so that they can "tweak" the system (and it stopped today after 3pm by the sounds of it). Bare in mind this is likely a complicated system and there could possibly be some faults with the technology behind it (indeed, that happened early on in the trial last year when they were just using Swarm), so it's probably something that could not have been predicted until it happened in practice. The next trial will be Friday.

-Do you manage to get on everything because you know the park so well though? Or because you visit on quieter days? One enthusiast being able to get on everything during their visit won't be representative... -Surely trialling the system out on quiet days is best? That way, if it doesn't work, then it affects less people? Just because some people aren't going to be able to ride rides 6-7 times in a day, should that mean they shouldn't trial it out? Also, being June, the park will still be semi busy on quieter days! -Bringing back SRQ isn't easy though. You need to have proper queues put in place, and have the space. Thorpe don't have that with most of their rides. It's a shame, but I'd rather no SRQ than a bad one! To be honest, I don't think RnR is a system that could work on the large scale. It requires a lot of attractions/things to do outside the rides (or at the very least, high throughput rides not on RnR), so something which Thorpe simply doesn't have. However, I'd love to be proven wrong and think that the system should at least be given a chance. If it doesn't work on the full scale, it would be a good Fastrack replacement.

Yay, the Fastrack debate has come up again! It's a complicated one. In theory, Fastrack is a great idea - you create a queue for those who are willing to pay extra to queue for a shorter period of time. But then, of course, that also can increase the queue time of those in the ordinary queue. You want to create a good balance, whereby those who want to pay extra can, but so that it doesn't negatively affect the experience of those who do not. That is very difficult to achieve though. To be honest, I'm not against the idea of Fastrack at any parks - if it's done properly. The number of Fastrack tickets needs to be restricted, preferably into time slots too so that Fastrack queues don't get 'busy' at popular times, and it should be done evenly so that the ratio of Fastrack to 'Normal' guests is the same all the time. But then you've got the added complications of Unlimited Fastracks, Disabled Guests and whatnot which just make such things harder to control. Does anyone know how the actual Fastrack system works at the Merlin parks these days - do you just buy a Fastrack ticket and use it whenever? Or are you given a strict time slot to keep to? Or what? So yeah, that's my quick reckons on all of this. I did a long, rambling, possibly nonsensical blog post a while back about this - http://forum.maniahub.com/blog/10/entry-349-how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-fastrack/ (love how topics on TPM always circle back eventually), which may help put some of my thoughts in a bit more of clear view...

Anyone up for doing a World Cup one? Done via a different website to the Premier League one, but sign up is free and simple - https://www.dreamteamfc.com/. Just make a team, then sign up and put in these League details: League Pin - 8096931 Password - AngryBirds Have funs!

Anyways, double post alert, but I'm actually going to contribute to the thread this time! When the Guinness Book of World Records presented Alton with the official certificate and all that, they didn't look quite as happy as they could have. I've corrected that: Also, I think the ride could have done with more sheep, because, y'know, they make you smile and stuff. Finally, I don't think Smiler goes upside down enough times, so I think there's one final secret weapon to improve the ride... A washing machine!!

I well and truly asked for that, didn't I? How could that face not improve Smiler though!?

I would improve this thread by fixing the picture in the original post.

In theory, having Fastrack does not affect the throughput of a ride. It can do if the merge point is placed stupidly and creates loads of faff when people are boarding, but for the most part, it won't affect throughput at all. Anyone who doesn't use Fastrack would love to see it gone, but it just ain't gonna happen, unfortunately. It's basically a foolproof way to make money (and that's for any park!).

A sauce appeared - http://www.badische-zeitung.de/europa-park-arbeiter-erliegt-seinen-verletzungen With thanks to Google Translate. By the sounds of it, it hasn't been ruled out the accident occurred due to either no safety call or that the workers ignored / didn't hear the call. Hard to tell from translations I guess. This is a big shame; roller coaster construction is normally a safe thing and it's very rare for something like this to happen. Thoughts can only go out to the worker's family - it's a tragedy however you look at it. We can only hope that the Park themselves were not at any fault and that (assuming that's the case) they don't get too much bad press over this.

I see the Merlin fetish of 'Let's stick a world first element in our new attractions wherever possible' is still present (as seen in the Press Event video). Shame. But yeah, Jason seems like a great guy and knows what he's doing with marketing. It was obvious that last year they were trying different things when it came to marketing, which things worked (family-friendly, optimising digital media, etc.), which things did not work (the Thorpe Park memes for example), and this year we're seeing the positive outcome of this. Customer experience is seeming to a big thing this year too, which is a good thing. Glad to see!

At 850pph, that probably puts it as one of the highest throughput rides on park!

Or they could reuse the 'Fou14teen' sign which they put up on Friday the 13th in 2010 to signify the ride's new top speed?