Ricky

Last I knew, one of them had a large crack in the pipe and other was being worked on because Picsolve decided to put a camera in the way.

The ride specific effects are all run of timers, if they aren't triggered in a set amount of time, I think it is around 20 minutes, they "time-out" and have to be manually restarted. However if the ride area needs to be accessed or for other reasons, the "show stop" needs to be triggered which cuts all of the effects. Sometimes engineering forget to switch them back on, as their main concern is to get the ride operational again.

What would be the point in an effects team, when the park runs off very little on effects. I will think you'll find the engineering team that look after the rides work on the effects also. The Swarm engineers spend lots of time on the Swarms effects, a lot more than you think.

I share the same pessimism as everybody else here, Infernos mist has the worst track record for being fixed for a matter of days and then disappearing for several months.

I imagine sooner rather than later, it depends how much ground work is needed.

What I am enjoying, but at the same time not enjoying. Is the fact that as the area is being cleared, we are getting a bigger picture of just how grand the project really is. I never paid much attention to it, but the arena without the hill is huge, and with carousel now deceased, the arena is very big!

And now would you be able to back up your statement with the full maintenance diary from Chessingtons engineering diary. For gods sake, YOU do NOT know what they plan, how they have planned and how they are executing these plans. Stop acting like you know their schedule inside and out. I'm sick to death of people acting like they know every minor and major detail, and accusing a company which has huge amounts of experience in planning, of not knowing how to plan things.

How can you prevent something potentially unpreventable. Engineering have very clear communication with the operations department. They would have known in advance what is going on, why it is going on and when it will be rectified. Management do not, and will not take action unless there is a clear disregard for protocol, or something happens which could have been prevented. Engineering will not get a bollocking for identifying faults. They are there to IDENTIFY the faults, and address them. They have clearly identified faults in rides, and are in the process of rectifying them. The only instance which something could have been prevented, is upgrades. If Vampire is being upgraded, they should have had a clear deadline for the completion. But even still, delays due to weather, or faults being found, can delay things. But nobody gets a bollocking for it, they just feel the heat of pressure instead.

I do love the way you feel as though you know everything about a company inside and out. This may not be about responsibility, there are FAR too many variables in situations which makes these things occur and unless you are inside the group of people who know what is going on through and through, it is very hard to comment on things such as engineering schedules. I have absolutely no doubt that the engineering team at both Chessington and Thorpe Park, worked tirelessly throughout the winter months to get the rides ready. I think many of are choosing to jump the gun, and jump on the bandwagon to score points against Merlin. You really need to look at the bigger picture, and realise things in the real world never go 100% to plan. For example, a new Waitrose just opened in my town, and it was expected to be busy from the get go. Myself working for Tesco, was expecting to lose a large proportion of customers to the new Waitrose, but in fact, since opening, Tesco has gained clientèle, and the Waitrose has had a steady flow of customers. That isn't poor planning, Nobody needs to get sacked for that decision, that is just how the cookie crumbled. I am in no doubt also, that the Engineering teams at both locations, are working tirelessly, and stressing in order to get the attractions open in a timely manner. All of the engineering team have vast amounts of experience in what they do, and will only open a ride if they feel it is safe to do so. What many of you do not realise, if a ride opens and a accident was to happen, Engineering are thrown in the limelight, and can be prosecuted for corporate manslaughter. Do you really think they would rather a ride was open, and knowing it could potentially have an accident, or wait until the ride is ready and be able to sleep at night knowing they haven't killed anyone and wont be jailed for a long time. As with opening new rides, when rides have been dormant for a period of time, they can take a bit of persuading to work.

Wouldn't be difficult, I think the ents department at Lidl even overtakes TP, and they don't even have one!

I do agree Mark, and as I said I see the points everybody is making. However what I am getting at is sometimes things can't be helped. From a business perspective (not just Merlin) things aren't always readily available, such as new parts and need to be ordered several months in advance. For example if one of Stealths accumulators was to break beyond repair, stealth would remain closed for a minimum of 13 months due to having a 12 month manufacturing period and needing to be custom built. I do agree, they do need to give up on both Samurai and Slammer.

Doesn't all of forbidden valley open at 12pm?

Unfortunately, nor you or I know the maintenance budget that is set to the park. So nobody can comment on how the budget is incorporated with the ride availability. Just because a rides unavailable doesn't mean they cant afford to fix it, or haven't tried fixing it over a period of time. Yes, I agree it sucks that 6 rides are unavailable, but at the end of the day, these things happen. You really need to ask yourself "Would you prefer them to bodge-job it, and allow it to break over a busier time, or have the ride open a few days/weeks late whilst they ensure it has the highest amount of availability during the year as well as the future?"

So what you are saying, is that TP have no idea what they are doing? Like I said, problems can occur instantaneously. Samurai may have had a problem found whilst they where doing their maintenance, what does that mean? They have to address a situation they where not expecting, leaving them at a shortfall in getting it open on time. Slammer, they may have found a minor crack or problem whilst doing their maintenance, which again needs to be addressed before opening, delaying the rides opening. SAW The Ride - Pretty sure I saw picture of the ride running several weeks before opening, what does that tell you? The ride was more than ready to open several weeks later, but oh no... An error message came up the day before or even the same day which needs urgent maintenance which could be quite time-consuming. What does this mean? The ride will open a day or two later than they had hoped. Rumba Rapids, "Right, this season we had this problem, that problem and these problems, they all made the ride unavailable for days, even weeks at time. We need to do this, this and this, unfortunately as this was unexpected, this will delay the maintenance program that has been induced on the ride every year since its opening back 1987." Why do you even care that it's not open, it's hardly been the weather for a water ride. You cannot say it is 'unacceptable' It's a piece of complex machinery (mostly) that can and will suffer problems now and then. That is like me buying a car, and then complaining to the manufacturer because the battery went flat after 20 years of use. Things need upgrading, things need fixing when they suffer problems.

I can assure you, that is NOT the original vinyl. The original vinyl was not edge to edge(pardon the pun) but centralised with a large border around the edge.

They haven't scrubbed, it's a vinyl sticker, it would never come off. What they have done, is used the background of the original logo, stretched it and put a PNG logo of Stealth over the top, and somehow left the showdow background of the edge on. Probably an accident.

After reading over a weeks worth of posts, this has been a particularly good read. I understand the points, both good and bad. Rumba Rapids, experienced some it's worst technical difficultys in many, many years towards the end of 2014, thus forcing them to take much further action in regards to maintenance. After having endless days closed due to issues, it has required them to do an exceptional amount of work to ensure it doesn't happen again. Tidal Wave, again, experienced a very high percentage of downtime, a fair amount higher than usual. I can only guess they needed to do a bigger overhaul than usual. I read a couple of posts regarding SAW, and it's chain. It isn't unheard of to have issues with that chain. I'm sure many of you remember the days in 2009 whereby it had to close several times a day to have crack checks on the chain. And had several chain replacements. It's just unfortunate if they are having issues again. X is another one, you are all lucky it's open this side of April let alone to be ready for the first day of season. I'm not excusing the high amount of ride closures, but it's something, whether small or big, you have to be prepared to deal with when going to a theme park. No matter what park in the world it is, you do have to subconsciously expect closures. Unexpected issues can and will arise at some point on the calender, and it's just unfortunate that 6 rides had them simultaneously. For all we know, all 6 rides could have been ready to run back in January, but during testing issues arose forcing the closures. And all I have to say, don't blame TP for ride closures, at least they are attempting a 100% ride availability. I have been told Blade at Towers isn't going to operating this year and many of the areas are receiving staggered openeing. I think that's a poor decision.

I don't know if they did this last year, but I have just seen that Alton are offering lift hill walks and VIP treatment. Lift walks are available on: Oblivion, The Smiler, Nemesis & Air. Am I the only one who see's absolutely no point in the latter two? All that can be seen from the top of Air and Nemesis is a small segment of the ride, and trees... Who on earth would pay £50 to look at trees 30 feet off the ground? Fair enough if you could see large parts of the park, but seriously? I am now waiting for an exclusive launch walk on Rita.

I'm waiting for the "THORPE ALREADY HAS TOO MANY IP'S" argument to come up for this.

(I was talking about the music) They did have a vacuum, but only TL's and above where allowed to use it which made it pointless.

What is the point in having cleaning facilities after you've dunked your feet in bacteria ridden paradise? Water, as does bacteria, soaks into your skin faster than you think.

It broke.

Because it's quite unhygienic, don't know about you but I do not fancy getting Athletes foot, or a verruca.

To be fair, Merlin only have that excuse as of what 12-15 months ago?

Pretty sure Disney have a fairly big budget to make their rides presentable... (Not unlimited that was an exaggeration).