JohnD

How does that compare with what it should it be getting these days? Tomb Blaster has always struck me as being a ride that gets far lower throughput than it looks like it should be capable of.

The stations operate separately, they just send the next train as soon as it's ready - there's no benefit in holding up a train that's ready to go just to keep the stations in sync. It all depends on how efficient the staff are and whether or not any seats have to be rechecked. If everything is running smoothly there should always be a significant gap between trains being dispatched and the next train entering the station (on both sides) - there should never be a train waiting outside the station. The difference in queue speed isn't quite that significant as once you've got that far fastrack users aren't cutting ahead of you any more. The disabled access is a bit of a nightmare though - the disabled queue only goes to the far station, but when running 3 trains they then arrive on the right hand side so wheelchair users can't get out without crossing the track and leaving the way they came in. They should probably have put a lift in somewhere.

I believe Air's theoretical capacity is 52 craft per hour = 1456, so 1500 isn't actually possible. That said, Air is one of the highest throughput coasters in the UK in terms of what it actually achieves - realistically only Nemesis can beat it, or occasionally Oblivion on a really good day. As a result the queues really haven't been too bad for it recently, I don't think I've seen it with a queue of more than 20 minutes on any of my trips so far this year, and that includes a day with over 18000 people on park.

Smiler is unpredictable - it's not as simple as there being good trains and bad trains as there's a lot of variation between rows too. It's not a "hands up" coaster though - you will want to brace, at least until you know the ride well enough to know when you do and don't need to (much like Colossus in that respect). Rita isn't too bad by any means. It vibrates a bit, but at least there's no headbanging.

Weekends at Scarefest can be busier than fireworks, especially towards the end of the event. The first weekend usually isn't too bad and during the first week (not half term) it's pretty quiet. On fireworks days everything from Thirteen all the way round to Spinball will close for the show. As they have to get all guests out of these areas the queues will start to close mid-afternoon - expect The Smiler to close very early! The show is at 7pm, with rides reopening at around 7.45ish - as soon as they've been checked for any stray fireworks. Rides between Mutiny Bay and Forbidden Valley stay open throughout. Note that to get to X sector or Dark Forest after the show you will be forced to use the path near Spinball as the path on the other side doesn't open straight away. As a result this route is always very congested - the paths to Forbidden Valley are busy too but far more manageable. During both Scarefest and fireworks a small number of rides close at dusk due to lack of lighting, this includes the Flume and Skyride. At the beginning of Scarefest, this won't be until around 4.30-5pm, but by the end of Fireworks it'll be around 3.30-4pm

I was at Alton Towers yesterday with a few TST people, but they were running late so I used SRQs until they arrived. I used SRQs on Nemesis, Air, Oblivion, Rita, Thirteen and The Smiler. SRQ seems to work well on The Smiler. The batching host is able to allocate single riders to the rows before the gates open. To minimise the risk of SRQ abuse, the merge host needs to ensure that there are as few people in the station SRQ as possible and keep the majority of the queue before merge. This would remove the incentive for SRQ users to cut into the main queue on the stairs, especially if main queue beyond merge is full. Oblivion's SRQ is a bit of a mess. Hosts were struggling to keep track of the number of people waiting for each row. With smarter batching they could all but eliminate the need for SRQ anyway - there should never be more than 1 space per train if odd-numbered groups are paired up. Air's SRQ demonstrated the problem of poor communication between staff and guests. When I got to the front of the SRQ there were 3 single seats on the next train, and the ride host sent us down to rows 6, 4 and 2. As I was first I went to the furthest one, but the other two people hadn't understood and just followed me. One of them quickly realised that there were 6 people in the bay and realised they should have gone to row 2 or 4, but the other person followed me through the loading gate. I think they found the right seat eventually though. On a more positive note, the policy of sending all odd-numbered groups to the left station means that even though the SRQ only serves that side the number of empty seats is minimised. Rita's SRQ is a nightmare. On my first ride there was only 1 person in front of me so it was fine, by the time I'd got off the SRQ was half way down the steps, and has as many people in it as the main queue. A group of 4 had just joined it, clearly oblivious to this. They ended up jumping the fence as the main queue wasn't even enough to fill a train. Rita's SRQ is almost always massive these days, and often far longer than the main queue. Thirteen had no-one in the SRQ when I arrived, but when it's busy they should hold the queue before the merge point as much as possible. If main queue is kept full and the indoor SRQ nearly empty there is no incentive for single riders to cut into the main queue as it won't be any quicker. The SRQ on Nemesis seems to work better than it has any right to. Staff communication is key to ensure the person running the SRQ knows where the spaces are before the gates open - they seemed to manage this pretty well yesterday and the SRQ wasn't holding things up despite its terrible design.

Oblivion doesn't come close to 1900/hour and even 1500 would be pretty exceptional nowadays. A lot of the time it achieves less than Nemesis and Air, which is why I included them. For Oblivion to get 1900 they'd need to be dispatching as soon as the lift is clear, but usually it won't be until all shuttles are on the brake run. Rita used to consistently get over 1000, but that was back in 2007 - it doesn't come close now, in fact I wouldn't be surprised if Spinball (~750/hr) beats it from time to time. I used to say that Rita got higher throughput than Stealth based on my visits between 2007-9, but now I wouldn't queue for it if they're using any extensions as it's a complete misery. Regarding Stealth, if you mean dispatching the train within 45 seconds of it arriving in the station, then fair enough - that sounds feasible.

There's absolutely no way stealth will get anywhere near 1600/hr, in fact there's not a single coaster in the UK that will anymore (some rides at Blackpool could in the past). AFAIK the only UK coasters that can even get 1400 are Nemesis, Air and Oblivion - and only when running flat out. A train every 70 seconds or so on Stealth should be achievable providing the accumulators can recharge in time, giving a max throughput of around 1100. That's the sort of figure Rita used to be able to get when it was fairly new, presumably Stealth is capable of similar. As for Saw, 800-900/hour seems more typical in my experience. I believe 960 is (or was) the target, but based on the timers in the station it rarely gets near that whenever I'm there.

The Smiler queue moves a lot faster after ride close, but it's not entirely due to fastrack, the closure of the disabled entrances makes a difference too. It's going to get much worse once more VIP passes come into use - it seems they just have to show their passes to gain fastrack entry, which means no-one is monitoring how many of them are in the park. This could cause problems at peak times like fright nights/scarefest/fireworks when it's likely a relatively large number of VIP pass holders will be there.

The way I see it, the physical queues are an essential way to manage guest flow round the park. If you've got over 15000 guests then you need somewhere for them to go, and normally a huge chunk of them would be in queues for the main 5 coasters as they're amongst the highest capacity and most popular rides. They can have far more people queuing for a given waiting time and people are willing to wait longer for them anyway, this helps to moderate queues elsewhere and prevents the paths from getting too overcrowded. If you're eliminating the option of a standard queue from each of the big 5 coasters then on the busiest you've talking about 5000 or so guests displaced onto other rides and attractions - that's going to have a catastrophic effect on lower capacity rides, and make the park feel much busier than it is. Reserve and ride could work well as a paid system as a fastrack replacement, but as a free system all it will do is move the problem.

LWV rides don't get anywhere near as much use as the same ride would at Towers or Thorpe - they have a much shorter season and don't have to operate the rides as efficiently as the Merlin parks do as they very rarely get long queues. If Eagle's Claw had been built at Towers it would probably be in a similar condition to Vortex by now. I certainly wouldn't be complaining if Towers were to get another Breakdance and I'd love to see a Polyp in a UK park, but I can't see AT going down that route nowadays - they see spin & spew rides as beneath them.

Seatbelts add a lot more to loading times than you might think - Europa Park requested that Wodan should not have seatbelts for this exact reason. In addition to the inevitable faff, problems will arise from people forgetting to do the seatbelt before closing the restraint as it won't be possible to do it afterwards and the restraints would have to be re-opened. If they feel it's not possible for staff to adequately check the seatbelts once the restraints are closed they may even have to use the same system as on Expedition Ge Force which involves checking all the seatbelts before locking the lapbars. This two-stage process is extremely slow as the entire train has to be checked twice. I can't see Silver Star getting seatbelts unless B&M make it mandatory - Europa Park simply wouldn't stand for such a strict H&S policy. Hopefully it's just a Cedar Fair thing - this is the same chain that added belts to a Vekoma Jr coaster, but only made them big enough for 2 kids or 1 (small) adult, resulting in loads of kids getting turned away as their accompanying adult couldn't close the belt.

There is a gate right at the start of the new extended queue that closes it off and there appears to be another gate part way round to close off the switchback section at the far end. I've ridden the Smiler 3 times via the main queue so far this season and thankfully not had to use new bit yet. I'd estimate the queue time with all extensions full to be around 150min.

Have you visited recently? In the past 5 years or so they've put a lot of effort into modernising and cleaning up the park, and now it's one of the best presented parks in the UK - certainly far less run down than Towers or Chessington.

Answering a 6 year old question that never got answered, did you mean Knightmare? I loved that! Going by the description, I think it's more likely to be Incredible Games on CBBC, specifically the Dark Knight game (see below - I could only find the celeb special). Incredible Games was one of a whole load of shows trying to cash in on the massive success of the Crystal Maze. Speaking of Crystal Maze, when it was first shown I was never happy with Ed Tudor Pole as a replacement for Richard O'Brien, but watching repeats on Challenge I've become much more impressed with his style. He also had much better games during his series than in the earlier episodes.

I can pretty much guarantee that it hasn't. If you were to drop the train from a height of 235ft in a total vacuum it wouldn't be doing 85mph when it hit the ground.

The breakdown video posted above reminds me of something that's always puzzled me about RR: why was it designed so that the water level in the lake is below the running level of the ride? On most Intamin rapids rides water can flow between the lake and channel freely, whereas on RR they’re not really connected except for an overflow at the base of the lift.

Am I going through a different Asylum to everyone else? I've done it 4 or 5 times over the years and it does absolutely nothing for me. I find the strobes ineffective as there's enough light between flashes to see the actors move, unlike in TotT where they literally disappear into total darkness only to reappear right in your face. The maze has loads of opportunities for jump scares and holes in walls for actors to appear in, but they always seem to be in the rooms as you arrive and most of them just do something like slowly walk towards the group and touch someone at random. I also find the ending kills any sense of immersion, as I know I can't actually be harmed. I'd say that the only thing about the Asylum that I genuinely rate is the queue line music, which is great.

The Bat at King's Island had brakes under the car. Since then Arrow obviously realised that this was a terrible idea (along with several other design flaws that plagued the Bat) and changed to brakes on the track, a key advantage being that you don't have to align the trains before reaching the brakes and that a failed alignment won't cause a crash.

Some people are not aware of the impact it has on guests in the main queue, other people simply don't care. Regardless, just because people want something doesn't mean they should be offered it, as in this case it is massively detrimental to others. Sadly, the reason fastrack exists is not as a customer service - it's a massive revenue stream. We've now in a situation where queues are pretty much necessary to ensure that revenue is maximised. There is now a major financial disincentive towards building high capacity rides, and towards operating rides on high capacity on moderately busy days as an absence of queues represents a huge loss of potential income. The great tragedy of fastrack is that demand feeds demand - with more people using the system the main queues move ever slower and more people feel compelled to buy as a result. A lot of people seem to already be in the mindset that it is impossible to enjoy a day at Thorpe without fastrack, but if it wasn't there at all I suspect that the vast majority of the time this would not be the case. Fastrack is little more than a con, a self-fulfilling prophecy that has completely fooled a large proportion of guests - if you buy fastrack for one ride, the time you save on that ride is lost on other rides as people pay their way in front of you. The only winners are those rich enough to pay for the unlimited packages, and of course the park who rake in millions from our suffering.

You shouldn't be allowed to pay to queue jump - it's that simple.

The speed of construction is because the ride is simple to construct - it's on a flat plot of land and has a concrete base rather than individual footers meaning initial groundwork is pretty easy. The compact layout means the ride is quick to assemble too as it has fewer supports than a more spread out ride would have. It was obvious from the start that throughput would be terrible because it's at Flamingo Land - their other major coasters get less than 400/hr and I expect this to be the same.

I don't think an offload platform would make a lot of difference. The gates open very soon after the train comes to a stop, and loading is very quick thanks to the bag room. The problem with having dual loading would be that there's no space for the 2nd train to wait while the first goes round the indoor section and I'm not sure if you could hold another train before the lift either, so you'd probably have to wait for one train to clear the lift entirely before the 2nd could even leave the station. I suspect the best they could have done with the available space would have been to alternate between dual loading and single loading, using the front station as a block brake every other dispatch. It would have been far easier to get higher throughput if they'd just designed a longer train. Adding one more row would have boosted capacity to over 1200/hr, and the extra weight of the train could have reduced the chance of it stalling.

For a while last season they were checking all the restraints twice (2 hosts would check both rows on every shuttle), then this changed to giving a hand signal before checking the row. This didn't slow things down too much, but they’ve also been waiting for everyone to leave the station before opening the air gates, which obviously takes quite a long time as people crowd round the tiny bag cages trying to get their stuff. The impact on throughput has been massive – it means there are always 4 shuttles sat on the brakes for quite a long time before each dispatch. On my most recent it was much better as they weren't waiting for everyone to leave the station, but I've not been back in quite a while so I'm not sure if it's a permanent change.

That's all very well, but Rita, Oblivion and RMT have all been running well below their theoretical throughput this year - Rita seems to be because of slow staff, but Oblivion and RMT have both seen changes to operating procedure that reduce efficiency. Earlier this year Oblivion was getting less than 1000/hour - even if the fastrack allocation is based on a far more conservative 1200/hr it would still be more than 25% of the throughput they were actually getting. The allocations are only part of the overall picture too - there's also the priority passes they hand out whenever anything breaks down or anyone complains about pretty much anything, plus however many disabled guests there are. Then of course there's the problem of people naturally wanting to use fastrack during the busiest times of the day - tickets bought in the morning may be saved until the queues are longer, with few people using fastrack late in the day after queues start to shorten. A daily allocation of 25%/hour becomes around 40% at peak times. Going back to Oblivion as an example, during scarefest last year there were times when fastrack had exclusive use of bays B1-B4 (still with a wait of 20 minutes or more), whilst A1-A4 were shared between disabled guests and the main queue. This means that out of every 32 seat dispatch only 12-16 seats were filled from the main queue, which was advertised as 2 hours.