JoshC.

I felt like backwards seating was addressed by him saying "It wouldn't be comfortable". Equally, we know anything is possible. And during Swarm's construction, they explicitly said there would never be a backwards row, so it became a bit of a long-standing joke. So by not out right saying no, it covers the slim possibility it will happen. As for Project Exodus being considered up to 500ft... I'd imagine 500ft was sort of thrown around in a brainstorming sort of phase. Like: "What if we wanted to build the WORLD'S tallest roller coaster?" "Well, the tallest at the moment is 456ft. So we'd have to beat that...what if we went up to 500ft?" "Saudi Arabia are looking at building the tallest/fastest/longer coaster and that's going to be above 500ft" "Hmmm yeah, this sounds a bit much" Realistically I doubt they ever considered anything anywhere close to 500ft, but it's a cool number to throw around for the wider audience. Also, in terms of practicalities, it's just not. I'd love to know what their early brainstorms were like though. I wouldn't be surprised if they did genuinely table ideas of "Tallest non-launched coaster in the world" (ie beating Fury 325) or "Europe's tallest hyper coaster" (ie: what Hyperion was marketed as at opening). The latter isn't too crazy to consider either: Hyperion is only 17ft taller. Presumably, budget, space, engineering considerations, impact to the local area (noise) and more would be what stopped that happening.

Unsurprising given the make up of the park at the moment, but in a recent "roller coaster day week" video from Merlin, there's a little suggestion that a new coaster could go on the island behind Swarm. For what it's worth, there have been ideas for coasters to go there in the past, with loose proposals for a 2015, 2020 and 2024 coaster.

Not great. In the past, when Thorpe ran Fright Nights consecutively for most of October, they would only be open until 8pm on off peak days, and that was with mazes opening at 4pm. And, to be fair, it worked well then, although was ultimately cut because it wasn't worthwhile. The difference here is that we are seeing a real time cut in hours with the week before half term, in that they are open one hour less. You have to wonder too, given Towers' location, how worthwhile and appealing those hours are for staff, and how much of an impact that hour lost has on them. One does have to wonder why there's these cuts. What's the reason for them? The park seems lively enough with visitors. When I went at the end of July, a day which was reduced from 6pm to 5pm, the park was more than busy enough to justify at 6pm close. Presumably it is to do with staffing. If that's the case, reducing opening hours makes it less appealing to would-be, and existing, staff surely? But then, how do they attract and keep staff? A vicious circle.

*raises a hand to cut the music á la Simon Cowell* It's gonna be a no from me. Don't quit your day job Parm Pap.

@pluk has posted on TPM again?! We've missed you!!

Thorpe Park is 2.5 miles away from me as the crow flies, 4.8 miles travel distance. How often do I visit? Ehhhh, more than enough. Usually once every couple of weeks on average I'd guess, sometimes a bit more. More recently, I've been spurred to visit slightly more regularly as I can pop in for a couple of hours, get some rides on Hyperia via SRQ, and then go home.

I can only confirm my experiences at Thorpe, but can hazard a guess as to what would happen at other parks. At Thorpe, the Rides Department is split into different areas, and each area has several rides. The idea is that, at first, you would be trained on 1 or 2 rides as a host, before maybe being trained further on more rides, or being trained to be an operator. Each area has a selection of smaller and bigger rides. What rides you were trained to host on didn't matter. However, the usual procedure for being trained as an operator would be you'd be trained to operate a smaller ride first, before eventually being given a bigger ride. You would also need to know how to host that ride too. If a ride is closed for an extended period of time, and the park know this, the staff would be used in a variety of ways. One or two might be expected to stand at the ride's entrance to speak with guests (yes, even if the ride is closed for several weeks). Some may be asked to do extra cleaning of the queue line (as this is ride staff responsibility). Others may be trained on new rides. The other thing is: ride hosts are paid minimum wage, operators not much more. You will find, especially in the UK, there's a high turnaround of staff, and it can be tight to staff everything without having to get Rides Team Leaders / Managers to run rides. Just one or two staff absences can throw plans out the window. So having a ride closed can mean that they just get used as sick cover too. I'd expect it is very similar at Alton Towers. Whilst it is about 15ish people as a minimum who need to be trained on Wicker Man for it to run daily, there would be more people who would be trained on it (in case of absences, etc), who would also be working on other rides, and vice versa. I wouldn't say hours are cut, but I knew of times when people were asked if they wanted to go home early (and obviously getting paid less). At Thorpe, given the average age of rides staff is quiet young, there would be people who would willingly take that, since they might prefer a few hours extra off over working and it doesn't impact them as much financially. It would be very unlikely for staff to go into other departments since you would need department training, etc. I know Towers have permanent roles for Hosts where you're trained in several departments, so you might be put into your other department if you were in this situation, but that's not really a displacement. I guess sometimes staff might be asked to litter pick around the park too. Now this is an interesting one. If there's an expectation that the ride could reopen, there's expectation that the ride team should be available. If engineering say "Oh, it will take us about 3 hours to fix this", you don't want to displace the ride team for that ride for exactly 3 hours. Ideally, you wouldn't do it at all, in case it only take 30 minutes. So, pretty much, staff are just hanging around, waiting. You should have someone at the entrance to give the standard line "It's closed, we don't know how long for", etc. But everyone else? They might be asked/expected to do a bit of cleaning of the queue line, but aside from that, it's a case of standing around waiting. Weather delays at Thorpe are the worst for this. You'll get the weather alert on the system telling you to stop operating the ride. And then you just have to wait. It could be hours before you can go again. I have not-so fond memories of standing in Swarm's stations for hours in pouring rain and heavy wind, knowing the ride won't reopen any time soon, but having nothing else to do.

Perfect example from Benin there. And (again, as Benin said) if they need new parts from abroad, it will take time. It's not a major thing, presumably, because the structural integrity of the affected area hasn't come into the question. But work still needs to be done.

Fake news. It's Gerstlauer doing the spike.

I do wonder how much of a difference it makes. I'm certainly not against it (themed/stylised pre-recorded messages telling you what to do is a win in my eyes). But do people take it in? Do people listen? Do they even notice? Who knows. As I say, I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, but I do wonder if it makes any difference. On that note, I wonder if a themed one at Hyperia would have the same effect. Having someone tell you it, a voice which you haven't heard in the queue or elsewhere, which is less polished, makes people pay slightly more attention I think. Adds to the sense of "you need to do this". Again, no harm in a themed one being made, but would it have the same effect, if any? Obviously these are broader questions for the industry in general, just something I'm thinking out loud about.

Fine. It's just like any other ride, but bigger.

RAP is no longer one go, it's just like any other ride

I think once Fastrack is in full effect, the main queue will hold roughly 90-120mins worth of queueing. That's not too dissimilar to their aims for other rides. The challenge comes in a few years when it's not the big shiny new thing, and ensuring it still runs the best it can. I think once it settles it will be fine. But it will be interesting to see if they end up having to "do a Taron". Taron had a main queue originally capable of only holding about 40 minutes of waiting time. That's why Phantasialand had to add the extension of Doom, which was originally unthemed.

To be fair, Summer Nights was a paid-for extra, and had the advertising hook of "no queues for the coasters". Which was true at first, then when people cottoned on, it got too popular and meant there were queues... This is the big thing. For the UK market, just being able to stay longer isn't enough. It means more rides, sure, but in the public's eyes, that means more queueing, which people are usually fed up with by 5-6pm anyways. It's why, despite the extra queueing, Fright Nights does work with late opening, because there's something extra to fill your day. Hyperia evening rides might entice a few hundred more people to stay. But realistically they should offer more. Or, failing that, an evening ticket (5-9pm maybe?) might get a few more paying guests in through the door? On that note, it will be interesting to see how Universal operates if it does indeed come to the UK. Will the name and (presumed) quality = and associated cost - be enough to get people to stay longer? Will their non-ride offering (shows, dining, etc) encourage people to stay? Or will they equally be a "close by 6-7pm because the Brits like to go home early" park?

Likely to be a battery pack, phone, vape or similar which was in someone's pocket, flew out and became damaged on impact, hence the smoke. That section of track is away from all smoke machines and similar. It is literally just track. So the only way it could have been a malfunction of the ride is if there were excessive sparks that flew between wheels and track which led to the wood catching fire, which is extremely unlikely. An unfortunate situation, but hopefully one which doesn't need much work.

Wonderful news. I know they've been talking about it behind the scenes for a while, so good to see it's come to fruition. I know some people will say the park should be open that later regardless over summer, but it has always been the case that the demand isn't there. Trialling it / doing it on select days helps test the waters. Hopefully this can be a step to later summer closing, and maybe even the park testing 10pm Fright Nights closes again.

I can give insight here. A few years ago (well, more than a few years now...8 years ago...I'm old), I had a job at Thorpe which was focusing primarily on 'looking after queue times', if you will. I had to update queue times that would appear on the boards, along with some other things. At the time when I joined, it was simply a glance and estimate. It was a two-way operation: the ride operator was required to contact the 'queue person' (ie: me) via phone once an hour (at a minimum), saying what they thought the queue time was. The queue person would also walk around the park, visually looking at all queues and updating the queue times. How is it physically done? All updates were done via a secure webpage. The queue person walked around with an iPad and could update directly all queue times from said webpage. Other people (park managers, etc) had access and ability to as well (will get onto this later). How would ride operators know what the queue time is? This was done by looking at the length of the queue, which for many rides, they could only see through via the ride's security cameras. The security cameras ride operators have access to focus primarily on ride areas (making sure no one is entering them), meaning coverage was mixed. Ride operators would sometimes not see much of the queue. Note: Queue lines are still covered by CCTV cameras, but ride operators won't have access to them all necessarily. The ride operator job is to run the ride safely. And that's a key point, the ride operator is there to run the ride safely, look after the ride hosts, etc. Updating queue times can go quite low on the list of priorities. Also, ride operators generally didn't have much knowledge of queue times. It would all be based on own experiences, either from when they might have visited the park and queued themselves, other operators, what guests say, etc. Generally they would get good ballpark figures, but when you hit busy periods, that experiential data is less helpful. How would the Queue Person know what the queue time is? Same idea. They would walk around, see the queue time, and update it. The advantage they had is they could see the whole queue, and have knowledge of what else is going on around the park. Eg: Colossus operator might not be aware that Saw closed down recently, meaning more people might flock there if they're nearby and want to ride a coaster. Queue Person would know this, and could keep a closer eye as a result. So it was all guesswork? Going onto my experience of working in this position as the queue man. I noted straight away there was very minimal written down information about how the physical length of a queue translates to a queue time. Of course, everyone was aware that this is a very muddled science: it depends on operations, number of trains, number of Fastrack / RAP users, delays, etc etc. Many of those things ride operators will not be aware of explicitly. Some of those things are out of a singular person's control. However, there is a way of turning it into a science. "Queueing theory" is a very rich area of maths, for example, which gives us many lessons we can learn. There's a lot of social science studies into how people will fill up a given space with strangers. There is access to lots of data about the rides; their uptime, their throughput/utilisation, so on and so on. You can combine all of those factors together to give a better estimate for queue times, one which relies on data, rather than just guesswork. Taking the Guessing out of the Guesswork I'll chuck in a bit of the numbers and theory here. Feel free to skip over. When thrown into a barriered queue, you'll find people spread out in similar ways. Except in extreme scenarios (very wide or very narrow queue lines), about 11 people will fill up 3m of space. This is to do with how groups of people will huddle together, groups will leave a space, etc. That data comes from a published research paper back in 2014/15 I believe and focused on UK audiences. Would be interesting to see if that's changed post-Covid, or is different in other countries. Anyways. If we know that, we can work out how many people a physical queue line holds. For example, if the Colossus queue line was 300m long, it would hold roughly 1100 people. And you can split that up; if the queue line from the airgates to the tunnel of Colossus' queue was 90m long, the number of people between the queue line and boarding is 330. (NB: Lengths made up). Now, we know what Colossus' theoretical throughput is. Internally, there is also a target throughput. But even better, parks track their throughputs for each ride. So you can see what they're actually achieving. If, over the course of last week, Colossus got a throughput of 550pph, and it had a full, 300m long queue line, you could see that it should be a 2 hour queue. Obviously that ignores Fastrack and RAP users. But again, you know the number of RAP and Fastrack users each day. You can take those into account, in some way. You don't know when they're going to use, but you can take it into account. For example, if there were 700 Colossus Fastrack tickets sold for an 8 hour park day, and 500 RAP users expected, you can account for that. If Colossus was getting a throughput of 550ph, over 8 hours it would get 4400 riders. But 1200/4400 of those riders came from Fastrack or RAP. So that means only 73% of riders are coming through the main queue, or rather the throughput of the main queue is 73% of 550, which is 400pph. Now if that 300m long queue of Colossus is filled with 1100 people, and you know 400pph are going through that queue, you can advertise the queue at 2h45min, rather than 4 hours. (Again, all numbers are fake here) On top of that, you can also take into account the chance of a shutdown. If Colossus has an uptime of 95%, then that means its closed 5% of the time. Of course, this is unlikely to spread evenly across the day, and usually occurs in a chunk, but if you add on that extra, you create a buffer which allows for a 'chance of shutdown', or just anything going wrong (slower operations, etc). I'll take this chance here to say: ride staff do not artificially inflate queue times to sell Fastrack tickets. I've no doubt it happens whereby a queue is advertised much longer than it is, and people have ended up buying Fastrack. But the queue time is not inflated to drive Fastrack sales. In saying that, I think it's better to advertise a queue time which might be 5-10 minutes longer since it will: 1) Create a buffer in case of issues and 2) Create happy guests - "Oh, the queue was advertised as 50 minutes, but we actually queued 40...result!" So, the way that I planned to calculate (note the word calculate, not estimate/guess) queue times would be: (N*(1+D))/(T*(1-(F/R))), where: N is number of people in queue D is percentage downtime T is throughput F is number of Fastrack and RAP users expected R is total ridership expected for the day Those 4 last variables would be based off numbers from how the ride has run over a period of several days / weeks prior, giving it a good outlook at how it should operate in practice. It wouldn't be perfect, but it does the job. And of course, number of people in a queue is again estimated, but can be done reasonably well. Of course, this isn't something that can be done in your head or anything, but can all be programmed to be done automatically, so long as you say the number of people in the queue roughly. When I trialled this system, it worked well, with overall accuracy of queue times improved, and less complaints about inaccurate queue times, which also saw a reduction in complaints about queue times altogether for a short period of time. (Those two might not be linked, but I'm gonna claim it's because of me). I'm a Celebrity was one which hugely benefitted, in part down to the huge buy in from the Entertainments Team running it. The issue here is, simply put, getting buy in from others. I required a bit more help setting up the automation and implementing it on a broader scale. Some people are opposed to change, some people are opposed to change where they don't understand every detail, some are just happy with the way things are. Some of Matt's analysis here is exactly the sort of thing which would be excellent for the operations teams at Merlin theme parks to see, so they can have more detailed data to help them determine how they're performing and the reflection on advertised queue times. But from my past experience within the parks, you would find yourself encountering people who: -Don't understand the analysis behind this, so immediately disregard it, -Would love the bottom line, but wouldn't use the data to help improve it, -Disregard everything and say everything is fine, -Agree with everything, but don't have the time/resources to action upon anything that would help. Obviously, with shifts in Merlin, this may be different now. But it's such a difficult thing to achieve. There are (naturally) some excellent data-driven minds who work in Merlin, who would love this stuff too, but they are used in other roles, usually outside of day-to-day operation / outside of attractions entirely. So Merlin know the importance of these things, it just hasn't trickled down to operational success. My time within the queue person job ended back in 2017, and this isn't the place to discuss that. But ultimately, the system devolved into operators phoning a central figure in an office to update queue times, with managers also chipping it. Likely with zero consistency. I don't know how things are this season admittedly, and I've been impressed with the accuracy being better than it has in the past. So maybe they've got something a bit better now. FAQ Do all parks do this guesswork? Within Merlin, I believe so yes. I think Towers have staff at rides update queue times, and Chessington was similar. Why did Thorpe need a central figure to update queue times? Couldn't it just be done by each ride through the website? The issue with the website and multiple users would be the constant need to refresh. If, say, there were 2 people on the website, and Person A updates Colossus' queue time from 10 minutes to 50 minutes, the site according to Person B would still have Colossus' queue time listed as 10 minutes, even though it was displaying on boards as 50. Then, if Person B updated Swarm's queue time from 30min to 20min, without refreshing the website, they would also update Colossus' queue time back to 10 minutes. So yeah, clunky system. I don't know if they've updated this. *This park* advertises queue times super accurately, how do they do it? I don't know. I would love to know how parks like Efteling, Europa, etc do it. Why can't parks just count the number of people going into a queue and going on a ride, using barriers, infrared, whatever? These work nicely in theory, but are open to abuse (people spinning barriers) and prone to error. The Alton Towers app had some Bluetooth tracking tech a while back, where it could see where guests were spending more of their time, etc. I don't know if they still do that, but I believe attractions.io (the company that does the Merlin apps and more) have loads of cool backend features. With Saw though, they had a very cool (rather complicated) piece of software they trialled. The name escapes me, but I'm sure I'll find it sooner or later. Basically though, it would track people in all queue lines, to see how long people were spending in the queues, and use it to give accurate queue times. It would update regularly, and give to the minute readings (eg, 47 minutes). This software was just installed to work with existing CCTV cameras. And, it worked well. Very well. Queue times were accurate. The system wasn't prone to error or breaking. It just worked, so you could leave it. In saying that, there were operational issues: -If you ever needed to over-ride it, you had to reset all the cameras to get the system back -It would never display a queue time lower than 10 minutes -It didn't work when the queue became external (ie out of the main queue) -People were weirded out by the exact numbers The middle two are the bigger issues here, but again, not huge in the grand scheme of things. There were bigger, more damning issues: -It was expensive. I don't know how much, but given every other queue time system is free pretty much, spending money on one is an issue. Spending lots of money is a bigger issue. -It required static CCTV cameras on the entire queue line. Whilst the entirety of Thorpe Park is covered by CCTV, many of these have the ability to change angle, which can help in a security situation. If you needed static CCTV cameras for the queue lines, it meant having to buy, set up, operate and maintain more new ones. And for some queue lines, this would require an awful lot (Colossus would be nightmare, with its sprawling queue line, going through tunnels, foliage, etc). Ultimately, whilst it gave accurate queue times, the initial outlay cost, and ongoing maintenance costs, weren't justifiable. Do accurate queue time really matter? Just to round off on this very long, tangential post (sorry Matt!). How important are accurate queue times? At the low level, yes, it's handy to know if a queue is 5 minutes or 10-15 minutes. At an extreme level, it's good to know if a queue is 1 hour or 2 hours. But beyond that? Does it matter if a queue is 30 minutes or 35 minutes? 110 minutes or 130 minutes? I think sometimes there's an overpush on queue time accuracy: if a queue is advertised at 110mins and I queue 130mins, I've still queued about 2 hours for a ride, with added annoyance that I've queued an extra 20 minutes than I was told. It might be better if there's ranges that are advertised (0-10, 10-20, etc, 90-120, 120-150, etc). It buckles you up for the length of the queue, tempers expectations, but gives leeway for a park too. You can have the most accurate queue times in the world, but if they're long and / or slow, that's all people will care or remember about.

Yeah, I think this is the main thing. The park said they were going to do an announcement about the group after Hyperia's opening day, but then the issues started with Hyperia and it took a backseat. The group was primarily focused on sharing updates that the wider audience wouldn't be interested in with those who would be. It works during the winter. It worked during Hyperia's construction. But now, there's nothing to share really. The group also was a way to get feedback from Passholders, which was also a mixed bag. I imagine the issue is that now the park post operational updates (ie when Victory Plaza opened) or asking for speculation (eg about Fright Nights), and these invariably lead to complaints. I imagine it gets tiresome to hear the same complaints a lot, especially when they didn't plan for it to be like that...even if those complaints are fair. People also became a bit rude at times. When the people running the group were literally running it at any and all hours, it probably was a bit much The group has served its purpose for now. They're not deleting it, it just won't be active any more. It's a shame as there's a loss of direct contact to the marketing team, who are actually in a position to action certain issues that guest services can't, but it's time to stop it. Would be good to see it return each winter though

My concern with the use of the Black Mirror spot is that it's not overly large. One of the key positives about Survival Games and Stitches is that they do have good lengths to them, which help justify the upcharge. All mazes which have gone in the BML spot have utilised the space well, but have never been particularly long. As such, I hope we get a more "special" / "gimmick" maze in that location.

As Stealth has 3 trains, the park rotate which one of them goes under annual maintenance. This means at any given time, one train is always in the maintenance area, deconstructed, having its parts checked, cleaned, inspected, serviced, replaced and whatever else is required. This takes the pressure off having to do it all over winter (when such things would normally happen). The maintenance area has room for all three trains to be stored. It will be up to the engineers on the day which train(s) they want to being in there after park close.

I'm less hopeful. Perhaps I've been naive with Thorpe's logic. Or possibly just stupid. But I've realised what their thinking is with maze tickets. The park are offering a Fearsome Four bundle, which costs £34 for the early slot (3-7pm), or £38 for the late slot (5-9pm). One shot maze tickets remain at £8 for the early slot (choosing a 1 hour time slot of either 3-4pm, 4-5pm or 5-6pm) or £10 for the later slot (choosing a 1 hour time slot of either 6-7pm, 7-8pm or 8-9pm). So that means the Fearsome Four early slot bundle is effectively more expensive than buying four early one shot maze tickets. I clarified this with Thorpe (via their Facebook Passholder group), and they said it is correct because "Based on giving a four hour window, it would be 3 Afternoon slots and 1 evening, hence the price". So, that means if you (say) book a One Shot for 3-4pm, the park aren't saying you can choose any time between 3-4pm to visit that maze, they are saying that you should be dedicating the whole 3-4pm slot for that one maze (in both queueing for and experiencing it). That is how they are organising it, and that is how their numbers work. But this is not clear at all, in my opinion. At the very least, I have only just realised this from Thorpe directly saying this, despite the fact it has always been like this since they introduced the ticketing procedure: "Since introducing ticketing it has always been hourly timeslots for one shots, and then an hour per maze in a package, so this has not changed." So herein lies in the issue. People think they can rock up at any time in their time slot for a maze. So if, say, more than half the people for the 3-4pm slot rock up after half 3 (which is a natural reaction as people will think "Everyone will go at 3pm"), then it spills into the 4-5pm slot. Same thing happens for the 4-5pm slot, and that further spills into the 5-6pm slot. Rinse and repeat, and then you've got a horrible overflow of people in the later slots. Bluntly put, too, there have been too many instants I've seen - and experienced - where the queue line for mazes exceeds 1 hour since the paid-for tickets were introduced. Reasons for that will be varied and complicated, and in some cases, unavoidable. But it's been a consistent issue, and one I don't think they will have put any real effort into solving (although please prove me wrong Thorpe). I don't want to come across as harsh or dismissive. But simply put, it does not seem like Thorpe know or understand how they are advertising or selling the timed ticket system of their mazes, and how the public view and use them. Operationally, the park have shown themselves to be incapable of running the mazes in a way which matches the timed ticket system, and I don't think this will change this year. I fully expect that whatever the new maze is will be to a good quality. Stitches will return and be a hit again. Survival Games will remain well-received thanks to its split up technique (but be less impactful due to focuses being elsewhere). And Trailers will again be fine, but show both its age, and how it was the first maze to be built under this new, budget-heavy, Fright Nights direction. Again, perhaps I've been naive / stupid and this has been glaringly obvious to everyone else. But if this is how Thorpe have operated, and continue to operate, the paid-for / timed-ticket mazes, it will have the same issues it has every year.

The issue with the train crash sequence (and why it was removed for the 2018 season) was that it just didn't work. Completely temperamental, had a mind of its own, and they just couldn't get it right. As cool as it was, it was also another effect that made it a "one and done" type ride. And, given its temperamental nature, when it didn't work, anyone who was expecting was more disappointed. I maintain my original standpoint with this version of Ghost Train: the concept is the best they could have done with what they had to work with. There's issues (transition to crypt, the shop exit, etc), but given the hand they were dealt, it's not bad.

Temple is no great loss right now as it has like 10 balls throughout the whole attraction anyway.

The idea is that the crypt is next to a train station. Perhaps could be communicated clearer, but I guess it's not too farfetched an idea. This is something I felt a bit on my most recent ride. Maybe not so much the crypt feeling like tube tunnels. But the transition from train station to crypt is very clunky, and that certainly feels like just a random tunnel (maybe that's what you were more getting at earlier) My memory is hazy on this, but I think that Angelis Mortis is meant to appear on the TV screens at the end of ride. Although I might be confusing that with the fake shop scene; I cannot remember. The delay patterns are effectively just listing off the station stops or just generally being creepy / causing chaos, depending on what point of the story the delay occurs.