Mccy

This. The checks halfway through the day are to check the boom for cracks (which is obviously a danger with the forces exerted on it during operation, as has been seen in previous years) and the slow cycles are just slow staff members. To be fair to the staff, each staff member is doing the job of 2 or 3 people on any other ride: batching, loading, checking bars, checking exit gates, sending the ride. However, there are quite a few staff members who are just not very good at batching or ensuring that people are wearing shoes/put bags in the box etc before locking the bars. Some staff members just stand to one side and let guests batch themselves which of course leads to too many people in a row/people sitting in seats that have Do Not Use straps on, unbalanced sides etc. There are several times I found while working on it that I was ready to check the bars while the other attendant was still batching people into the gates. I do think this has happened because of the huge amount of downtime the ride has had in previous years, there are very few of us who were experienced and knew the quickest ways to do things. I imagine throughputs will increase before the end of season (if the ride survives that long)

The downtime was due to the ride getting stuck at the top during a power failure. With no system in place to get the ride down without power, the park didn't want to open the ride until a system was created. The engineers created the system towards the end of last season but due to it having to be approved by the manufacturers, external safety auditing companies and various legal departments, it wasn't fully implemented until a few months into this season. Essentially the ride wasn't broken at all last year, it just wasn't open to avoid any legal repercussions that would happen if people got stuck upside down with no way to get them back...

Perhaps the 40 minutes of shadowing that was required had finished ;-)

If there are multiple people in a console (like in this case) it is because they are not yet trained to work on the ride as they have to complete a certain amount of hours of shadowing before being able to work alone. The staff members obviously can't leave the consoles while the ride is in motion as it may require to be emergency stopped etc. As for waiting behind the air gates for a while, there may be issues balancing the ride (but neither this nor locking the restraints should take much time). With an experienced team, it's quite easy to send a cycle every 8 or so minutes but due to the amount of downtime Slammer has had over the last few years, there aren't that many experienced people left...

The smoke effect on Stealth is linked to the ride itself and will go off every time it's launched as long as it's still filled up, the ride staff have no control over it. Unfortunately it's up to engineering to refill it and they're understandably more concerned with getting the ride open on time and it being safe to run, rather than the effects that happen (with the exceptions of Saw and Swarm where ensuring themeing is working is part of their opening checks).

To clear things up about who updates queuetimes: The ride operator or rides managers/team leaders are the only people who update queuetimes. To do so, they must phone through to "Control" who then update their system that then IN THEORY updates the board outside the ride. However, the boards seem to have a habit of not updating. If a queuetime board is vastly off it's either because 1) the board isn't updating properly or 2) the operator hasn't changed it. Retail and Sales do not update the queuetimes and the times are not increased to try to sell more fast-track.

It's a different issue to the one that happened last year but will take a while before Health & Safety are happy for it to reopen. Currently ETA is operational in two weeks time.

The weight restriction is there because in theory it could unbalance the ride but in reality it doesn't. I think it's more there because the restraints can come up quite small on some people, but there aren't any scales and staff members would never ask you for your weight...

Don't get your hopes up... Engineers were working on it all day today and will be tomorrow too to hopefully get it open ASAP...

The old end of day music is back now, I think they realised that a siren on a 30 second loop is not a nice sound. Fingers crossed it stays this way.

That song still plays on the banana ride and slowly drives anyone working in that area insane ;-)

In case anyone wanted the opinion from someone who works on park (as far as I am aware this doesn't break my confidentiality agreement): Last time I spoke to engineers on park, while it may make sense for it to be removed due to the amount of maintenance which is constantly required, there are currently no plans to remove the ride for the time being. However, I (like many other people here) would not be surprised if it will go in a season or so based on how the ride performs this year. Each ride has a set budget per season, if it's found that a ride is exceeding it's maintenance budget by a large amount, the park will consider if the ride has enough appeal to the public to warrant a budget increase. Hope this clears things up.

Supposedly, Dome Fastrack is going to be moved to where Depth Change photos used to be.

Rumours I've heard recently are X No Way Out will be forwards this season and the back two rows of Swarm will be backwards.

Possibly like they did with the flying fish? They can say "oh it's back by popular demand" and not have to worry about investing a load of money in a new ride. While with Fish, they did replace the track but other than putting in a bit of themeing and cleaning up the bears, I don't see what else they can do...

I've heard a rumor that a certain train ride that was removed last year will be making a return for 2013. Haven't heard anything about a retheme or refurbishment yet.

If it's relevant to anyone's interests, I hear the Rides areas next year will be split into 6 different areas, each with around 4 or 5 rides. I'm assuming this is in a hope to have the staff more dedicated to making their ride look cleaner and to make management, training and staff-ride allocations easier.

Recently when I end up finding that fast track has been oversold (especially on the larger rides), I'll ring up the Sales department and ask them to stop selling. I know I'm not the only operator to do this, I've seen others do it too. What I've also noticed recently is that the sales department have sold fast-track for a time period that has already expired. I don't think they quite realise the effect that over-selling has on both the main queueline and fast-track. Staff also feel a need to bias the guests allowed in to fast-track otherwise guest services ends up giving out more priority passes and fast-track just to deal with complaints. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone.

The park's legal capacity is around 22,000 but it has never reached that. Normally the park closes the gates and puts out the capacity sign on the main road if the gate figure hits 17,001 to avoid risking exceeding capacity.

This can't be right. The ride requires 3 people to run, 1 operator based in the console at all times, one remote attendant (X:NWO side) to check bars and send the ride from the console and an exit attendant to check the bars on the main side, check the exit gates are locked and then press the dispatch on the exit side. The ride can't be sent without all 3 dispatch buttons being pressed at the same time.

I believe the one in the car park is a demo unit for staff members to get a preview of what it'll be like next year.

The source being I drove past it earlier. Didn't get a photo though.

The first of the Snoozebox hotel sections arrived in the staff car park today

The parts for slammer arrived today along with samurai and both rides should hopefully be operational in the next 7 to 10 days if everything goes to plan

The parts for samurai and slammer arrived today so will hopefully be back in operation in the next 7 to 10 days