Coaster

I agree with most of what's been said about Merlin's way of handling things by people on here. Anyone who has seen my posts on theme park forums will know that I am usually the first to kick up a fuss when things aren't done right by Merlin, and I have for many years criticised a lot of their decisions. But, they way they are handling this terrible situation is very, very respectable, especially considering the amount of trash they are having hurled at them by the media and insensitive individuals like that so-called "interviewer" on Sky News. Nick Varney in particular has kept his cool despite the amount of rubbish he is having to deal with from them when he needs to be focused on the recovery of people and investigations. This incident is very serious, but the complete nonsense posted in newspapers suggests a lack of research, and to post lies on national news is just wrong.

This look amazing! I am struggling to find an inversion though.

I'm not surprised, she seems like a vile woman going from that interview.

The interviewer on Sky News is absolutely clueless. Absolutely horrible woman, think how much stress Nick Varney is in at the moment, he doesn't need some stupid woman who thinks she knows more than him about rides. Absolutely disgusting attitude.

Sadly I think this might be true. At times it's obvious the ride ops aren't confident about the ride, the amount of checks they have to do before they start the ride suggests this, as it never used to take that long to load up and send the ride. However, since it's not a coaster with multiple trains I'm not sure if they will be considering it at the moment, but after they have sorted everything else out it may well come under scrutiny.

Something I don't understand is why security were phoned to make the call. Surely in a situation such as this, alerting the emergency services as quickly as possible should be a priority over following what is presumably a rule over staff calling 999?

I understand your point, but at the moment Merlin are probably absolutely terrified about running any of their coasters, and I fully support them in their decision to close Saw at the moment.I can see people's points about the fact that Saw has been running fine, but until a few days ago the same could have been said for The Smiler (yes it has had issues before but nothing like this). I imagine that once they find out what happened on The Smiler they will have better knowledge of whether Saw has the same defect (if it's even to do with a problem in the ride system - nobody knows at this stage) and it will be able to run again. I can understand the precaution of closing the ride though, even though it is very unlikely to have the same problem.

I don't think that anyone apart from the Alton Towers management is in a position to dictate when the ride will run again, if at all. I think the biggest deciding factor behind whether the ride will run again is if they can pinpoint exactly what went wrong or not. I have every confidence that they will do, and that the ride still has a future at the park but I don't think that people can make statements such as "it won't run again" or "it will run again" at this stage. Furthermore, the priority should still be the health of those affected and investigations into what happened IMO.

I can totally understand this. Until they know what caused the incident on The Smiler, the ride system on Saw cannot be trusted on more than one car, which would be absolute chaos.

Article from one of the victims of the crash: http://www.walsalladvertiser.co.uk/Walsall-victim-Alton-Towers-rollercoaster-crash/story-26636665-detail/story.html

I can't believe the complete tripe that some of these newspapers are publishing. Ride stopped on the inversion and then carried on? Surely even someone who knows nothing about rides would know that such a thing wasn't possible? Then there's the horrible thing of making it sound as bad as possible. It's a terrible thing to happen, and needs reporting, but get your bloody facts right! I expected better of BBC news it has to be said, some of the others are well known for publishing rubbish.

Oh right that's understandable if it was closed, giving out incorrect information on Twitter isn't very good though.

It's probably (and this is just a guess) because Oakwood only ever run Speed on one car anyway unless you are very lucky, sometimes you end up waiting two hours there on one car operation. Therefore, I can only assume that they were running the ride on one car so that there wasn't any potential danger of a similar incident. They tweeted someone yesterday saying that it would be open, did this change?

Does anyone know if Gerstlauer themselves have been at the park today? I'd be surprised (and appalled) if they haven't to be honest.

Yeah agreed, I'm aware that it has stalled there several times, the "clank" has probably got no relation to it (in fact, that ride "clanks" a lot usually, if it was a first time rider it may have been nothing out of the ordinary). Just thought it was worth posting the article.

Not sure if this has any credibility, but someone is claiming that they heard a "clank" on three of the ride's inversions three hours before the incident. If the train was missing a component or damaged in any way then this could possibly explain why it stalled. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/alton-towers-rollercoaster-crash-passenger-5818351?ICID=FB_mirror_main

My thoughts are with the people still in hospital, I really hope that they recover as best as possible. With regards to what caused the incident, I've been doing some thinking - this is a purely hypothetical view, I do not know much about the operation of rides but I am just trying to make sense of what has gone wrong. Suppose that the ride was loaded with people and, by mistake, the train dispatched with the ride still in maintenance mode. This has already been discussed as a possibility by people on forums. Then, maybe it stopped on the lifthill because the ride sensed something was wrong? Surely even in maintenance mode it would register that the train was heavier than the others? If the ride was then put back into the normal mode for operating with guests in, would it register the stalled train? Considering that it isn't actually on a block, and the ride would have effectively been reset, would the ride's computer systems actually be able to detect it? Therefore, could it be possible that the lifthill started up again automatically? I don't know much about the operation of rides, but for those who do, could this possibly be what happened?

You would certainly hope so.

The CEO of Merlin, Nick Varney is about to make a statement on Sky News.

According to BBC news, some people have suffered "life changing injuries".

I see that they have posted on Facebook that they want to get into contact with you, so at least they have responded. If you have an issue then tell them about it directly rather than posting it on every social media page possible.

I wouldn't be surprised if the ride is closed for the rest of the season. Horrible thing to happen.

Sensible decision to close the park IMO.

Was just about to post this - the rescue and recovery of the people on the ride is important, not the reputation of AT.

Was just about to post this. The rescue and recovery of the people on the ride is important right now, not the reputation of AT.