Inferno

Love this. So glad ride to happiness redeemed itself in the end, as it would have been a long trip for it if it hadn’t!

It is an interesting one - because all the investment amounts to nothing genuinely “new”. It’s all just maintenance of what’s been there for years - or decades. Nemesis isn’t new. Skyride isn’t new (if it ever gets here) Hex isn’t new Alton Manor isn’t really new And Ripsaw-on-a-plinth isn’t new. Really despite all the money being spent, nothing is really happening in terms of driving it forward is it? And yet even so, it’s on its knees.

Does anyone have any thoughts on why this constant poor availability might be happening at Towers? To an extent I feel sorry for them as they have had a run of bad luck with Rita’s downtime, and the brand new Nemesis being on one train must be purely rotten luck as they’ve spent millions on trying to bring that up to date - however the relentless downtime of everything else all at once just seems too consistent to be down to “some really bad luck”. Could it be that the rides themselves have just had it, similar to what happened to Hex and Skyride - they became so bad that there was no choice but to completely overhaul them. This seems like a likely reason because cutbacks and money saving have been rife for years. Or could this perhaps be an issue with the engineering department somehow? Short staffed, or overwhelmed with too high a workload? Again down to cuts and short term thinking I would assume. I’d be really interested to know what the wider issue actually is, because this situation is unprecedented really, even internationally, especially as it’s seemingly peaking at the most critical time of the season.

I find this all quite sad to be honest. I know it’s only a theme park, but Alton Towers genuinely is such a special place to so many people, and even for those who aren’t so sentimental, there’s no denying that it’s a wonderful and truly unique place. … But it’s been utterly run in to the ground thanks to corporate greed. I don’t even take issue with the current management - there has been a lot of money spent to overhaul clapped-out attractions lately - but it feels like too little too late. It feels like EVERYTHING needs replacing at this point. I know I’m like a broken record saying this, but I am so hopeful that Universal’s announcement about the Bedford Park finally happens in the coming weeks. The UK so badly needs a shake up. I don’t want Alton Towers to die, but I also don’t want it to keep going on like this either. I really do think Merlin might be in some serious trouble if Universal opens, and actually I’ve come to be ok with that. Things need to change if they want to compete. That can only be a good thing for customers.

Yes it’s not looking good at towers is it… Between all the staffing issues, reliability, cuts to hours, price increases and rides closed all season, it’s been another tough year. To be honest I don’t think Towers has ever quite been the same since the Smiler crash. I know cutbacks were rife before then, but since the low attendance following that it’s been worse than ever. I wonder if it’s all down to the absolute absence of any form of long to medium term planning when it comes to maintenance and longevity of everything. It feels like for over a decade the place has run on quick fixes to get them through the foreseeable future… now it’s all coming to a head, with loads of money needing to me spent, and low attendance meaning that isn’t easily achieved at the moment. Towers has had quite the fall from grace over the last decade or so.

I know it sucks, but really is it that bad? It’s just a bit of the facade over the door that’s been bent and come off. 🤷‍♂️ Hopefully it’s a quick fix to that wire that been broken and that’ll be it done.

Oh that’s great news! It’s always been weird that the spinning always lined up so that the same seats got the top of the swing throughout the entire cycle. Glad that’s been changed!

Oh dear…… The website now says it will re-open on Tuesday, so hopefully it’s all ok. Looks to just be a bit of facade to hide the door rail?

Agreed - it definitely shouldn’t need that. Thing is, I can’t imagine much can be done now. In planet coaster you’d take a couple of ft off the high point, either that or speed up the lift hill! ….. Speaking of which I’ve seen a couple of reels on instagram this week showing the lift motor speed up when the testing train reaches the top of the hill - perhaps this is a workaround? Fling it it over the top and hope for the best! In other news - as of today, Hyperia is now back to running 2 trains 🚂

I was wondering what people’s thoughts of the new branding were, now that it’s had nearly a year to settle in, and now that we have all seen it actually in use at the park? Personally I think for me it’s definitely an improvement, especially when you’re actually inside the park and you can see it on all the signage, banners, advertising, uniforms, flags etc. it all works quite well when it’s large and used on physical things. The big signage at the front of the park looks great - and going in to the dome with the large logo to the right and nice branded video playing on the big screen before heading outside again really does work. the music also goes very nicely with it, and does work well I think for the park. It really does work well in person and has honestly made a positive impact on the park in my opinion at least. The staff uniforms look much more professional as well, not to mention more practical. I think where it falls down slightly is when the logo is used in isolation online - for example the logo on its own on social media avatars doesn’t look great, and even the logo when used on things like bags of chocolate in the supermarket just fades away and is so missable compared to the bold orange and blue infinity that everyone instantly recognised. I’m no graphic designer, but I think these need to be changed somehow to liven it up a bit - I mean come on, look at this screenshot from instagram. I also think the website is a missed opportunity. They seem to have kept the existing website and just replaced the old logo with the new one (actually even on some of the tickets actually the old logo still shows!) this is a shame, because such effort has gone in to rebranding the physical park, and no effort in to the website it seems, where the new colours, patterns and lovely squiggly animation things could have really come to life. Overall though, I think it’s actually quite nice, and although I miss the infinity logo, there’s no denying it was old fashioned and a little scruffy. The new and striking Bold, bright, colourful, but not ott branding is a good look for Thorpe I think.

That would sort of line up though to be fair wouldn’t it? I can’t imagine another major coaster until then realistically. Hopefully there will be a flat ride of some sort in the meantime - that would go well I think. The beach is interesting. It would be really nice to make the most of the front of the park there, because Thorpe really does have a lovely skyline from there. alongside whatever’s happening there, I wonder if there are plans to finally sort out the entrance plaza and security area pretty soon too. It’s so dated now, and the temp queues for security are just terrible. Thorpe have really levelled up pretty much all of the “non-ride-related stuff” in recent years. All the toilets, shops, branding, planting, restaurants etc are actually really very good now. The entrance is one of the last “non ride” things that is still crap. As much as I love new rides of course, and would love to see another one asap, a new well designed entrance with a modern and much faster security check point honestly would make SO much difference to the whole experience, especially if that new swish experience continued over the bridge and out to “the beach”.

I wonder what’s going on with inferno? On my last visit it was similar - there seemed to be a long pause between everyone sitting down and the restraints being checked. The staff didn’t seem to be doing anything as such, just sort of waiting 🤷‍♂️ Felt a bit like the long awkward waits there used to be for Slammer to sort itself out before anyone was let out of the air gates 🙄 It’s a shame this is happening with Inferno, because it’s normally quite a good one for capacity.

Is it even worth the “savings” to open those rides 30 - 60 mins later, given all the disappointment and confusion it will cause? Also why on earth is Hex of all things opening at 11? I thought that would be quite popular given it’s been closed for all this time. I wonder if this is all down to working time for engineers? I can only assume there simply aren’t enough of them to properly spread across the whole day - so some would be on early to open the rides up, and others on later in the day/evening, leaving not enough to get everything open without having them start ridiculously early?? Cebeebies land closing so early is also surprising. I wonder if this is again out of desperation for staff? They have been advertising for staff surprisingly recently, so perhaps they’re having to re-assign staff from here to elsewhere to run the event? 🤷‍♂️ All very odd, and disappointing given how much money they charge for Scarefest now. I do wonder if an event like this is just requiring more staff than they can recruit these days? All guesswork - but I’m just trying to think why this could all be (other than corporate greed)

It must be an absolute nightmare for the staff to have to haul all those dummies around every time it needs to test .

Well end up with the people mover at this rate… Trains for everyone!

I deeply regret this throw away comment 😂 For what it’s worth, as someone who can barely run a bath, let alone a theme park, I think Thorpe are handling this really well and they’ve been smashing it this season, and nothing I would do would be any better. However, why they can’t just dust off that spare XNWO train and get it on Hyperia as train 3 is beyond me

Good to hear different points of view Hopefully they can sort these operations issues out, as this seems to be an issue year in year out. The lighting across the entire park looks to be absolutely incredible this year.

There are plenty of similar scale rides around the world with MCBRs running 3 trains, and even some without which have 3 trains - one of which is about 200 meters away from Hyperia. In fact when the plans were released there was some small degree of disappointment for some that it didn't have an MCBR. There's no denying that building an expensive flagship ride of this scale with built-in resilience for unforeseen things like this (and regular planned maintenance) would be a good thing - 2 trains running on a layout that can support 3 is better than 1 on a layout that can support 2. I do agree, 2 is fair enough for Hyperia, and there's little point paying so much more for an extra one - but given the height of Hyperia, support for a 3 train operation through a slightly longer layout and a MCBR would have been fantastic, and would almost completely eliminate the impact of things like this, not to mention the drastically reduced queue times ("queueing ruined my day" KPI anyone?)

Is it? I've seen a few similar 'reviews'. I've just looked at prices for me and my wife for Saturday (Not going, but just out of interest) - it's £160 for both of us - for those prices people expect something special to be honest, and I think anything less than "very good" is not going to get a good reaction out of many people. Have the maze prices dropped a little? They are coming up for me at £8 a maze - I thought they were £10? It's interesting to see in that video that the queues for the mazes were fairly short. I wonder if they have backpedaled on price a bit? I'm interested to hear the views of others on here who have been to FN this year so far.

To be fair I can understand why they would go with 2 trains - as good as 3 would have been, I can’t think of many companies that would spend more money on something than they absolutely have to. This situation is also totally out of their control really, so one train for a short period of time isn’t too bad realistically. it sucks, but it’s understandable. What annoys me is that Fastrack is still being sold during this time… on the busiest days of the season, with one train on the new coaster….. come on. There should be a total stop to fastrack sales for Hyperia until it’s back on 2 trains. When things happen outside of your control, fine. but they can control Fastrack sales, and have chosen not to bother. That’s poor.

Oh interesting.... I wonder how things will develop during the event.

That’s incredible - well done Thorpe 👏

Agreed - if they can get it open and can limp through tonight on one train, there’s no reason they can’t do the same tomorrow - all the staff etc will be there anyway I assume, there’s no reason not to run it, until the time comes to cycle the other train round to test. I do feel for everyone working at Thorpe though. There’s nothing they could have done about this, and clearly they’re working bloody hard to try to keep things going. I'm seeing ads for “Hyperia in the dark” on instagram today - it sucks for everyone involved that this is happening. With surprise things like this, I imagine it involves people working overtime etc? I can’t imagine there’s a lot of time for things like this as part of the BAU! I’m sure they’ll have it back up very quickly.

Great news. Realistically I can’t imagine it would take that long to get the stricken train back on track in the maintenance shed - of course I know 0 about the subject, but I would hope it’s just a case of getting it back on and running the necessary tests. A bit of a panic job I imagine given the busiest time of year starts in a minute. I wish it had a third train 🙄

I really hope so. Having to muck about with water dummies every time it tests for years to come wont be good!