The thing that annoys me most about this is how the engineers and designers didn't take into account the buildings strength. Its a simple task which should have saved merlin a lot of trouble and as a result its a bit of a let down.

The way to cut off their oil/funding is by bombing it...

It's what Russia has been doing and I suspect that the UK will do something similar. They don't just drop bombs where they feel like.

if the ride had the exact same layout it would have been limited to 3 cars per train and only having 4/5 trains its throughput would have been poor.

Tesco Value version of coasters

Then what did you mean by that then?

Lots of rides have problems with stalling. That is not the ride manufactures fault that is the track layout. 

Interesting comment seeing as the ride operated as it should have. This was down to human error, not the ride. Gerst and intamin are the only really possible manufactures for the smiler anyway. Intamin would have had throughput issues so Gerst were pretty much the only option. 

Fair enough, why would you want a spinning car on a megacoaster though?

Well I thought brave it backwards was a gimmick it would seem you can go one better. It looks stupid and like it wouldn't add much to the ride.

I would quite like to engineer the static parts of the coaster. Like the station or even help with its construction. Being a project manager on a ride like the swarm would be a dream job for me. No idea how I would go about it but a degree in civil engineering seems a good start.

Saw, and the smiler did not have fastrack when they first opened. There were a couple of months when it ran with out it. 

I think the correct response is 

Hmm maybe its time for another RnR rant to make sure people know that the award should be mine. 

I guess its almost time to change my avatar. 

I like woodies that throw you around as I feel that is sort of the point. However with steel coasters I want a smooth ride. I despise rita for many reasons but a big factor is how rough it is. I suspect I will think the same of Baco. 

I meant bad ride as in few ride it, costs a lot to run and has low satisfaction. My personal opinion of it is far less than bad.

Alton want to minimise costs. So reducing the hours of NST is the obvious choice. To minimise the amount of people this disappoints you would close it at the hours where fewest ride it. The morning and an hour before park close.

Yeah the sort of people Thorpe, legoland and Cwoa employ.

Very few, if any head to NST in the last hour. Staggered openings on it is almost guaranteed and I would be surprised if it opened 7 days a week. It's a bad ride, no one rides it so closing it will have pretty much no impact to everyone's day.

Because 0 hour contracts are useful to employers and are quite often favoured by the people on them.

I suspect it will open at 12 and close an hour before the rest of the park. Doubt it will be open on weekdays as well. Too costly for an attraction very few people use. 

I though it was advertised as "The Worlds Most Awful Throughput"

Have you not been to chessington?

A rival in Blackpool would kill them both. Blackpool as a whole is in decline and having something take away more business from them would be disastrous. I'm with BPB on this one. A rival would damage the town in the long run.

The plans show fire escapes where one has a staircase and he rest don't. It strongly suggests 2 floors. However there few lateral beams in the building to support a floor.

£3m on the building, £5-15m on advertising. Remaining on theming and ride hardware. Now this is very likely to be screen based so that will take a large budget on animation/filming. So with all that the ride hardware comes to £10-20m. Now they are all rough estimates so I could be out by quite a lot. However an AGV for £30m would be a discount price.

Another point to consider is AGVs struggle with elevation change. This is over 2 floors.

AGV rides already exist. Also I did suggest this idea months ago. The problem with AGVs is that they are very expensive. The cost is coming down but the budget may not stretch that far.