I would say that the shift in marketing came late in the season, around mid august. So to have that huge change in people is a bit odd. Look at CWOA, they also did very little and they increased by 15%.
However I feel we are going a bit off topic.
swarm backwards and x were only minor, when you look at how the smiler increased AT gate figures by 4.2% I would say that what Thorpe did was next to nothing.
Maybe they should learn from their gate figures and do nothing to make them increase, that way they wont have to introduce the system I have come to despise.
I guess it belongs here but looks like Thorpe did rather well last year for attendance figures. They had a rise of 11.1% bringing their numbers to 2 million. Alton didn't do so well despite the smiler they only rose by 4.2%.
Well you say that but those guests in the park would have wasted time by riding flats (or if they are mad and do what Thorpe said, shopping) while they thought they were queuing virtually to find that they hadn't been queuing and have just wasted an hour of their day. I know that this trail it was called off pretty quickly and the park stayed open longer but if this happened in late July and you thought you were queuing for 3 hours virtually then the park isn't going to staying open an extra 3 hours because of their mishap.
I like to think that "changes" is someone at management smashing their head against a table crying. There is just so many things I dislike about this I want it gone.
Has anyone been to the recent trials yet, it would be good to hear what actaully happened at them especially considering if on the Monday they stopped by 11am.
That is a good point. Have Thorpe considered break downs in this stupid system. There is just so much in this system that can go wrong and will go wrong it would take years and millions of pounds to solve.
well any 9 digit number sounds like a good system. Also the smiler can and did run 5 trains for a bit which is why its theoretical throughput was just under 1300, however under normal operations its theoretical is around 1000. Thats only a theoretical value so the real value must be much lower.
Fair enough if the cost included groundwork as I'm quite sure making an island isnt cheap. Does anyone know the cost of whatever this dive machine is called.
Really it being on 1 train is to add to the very long list of things merlin do wrong. If the sole purpose for the 3rd train is to have a train always in strip down seems very odd and raises questions in why not just make more room. Really I'm making a lot of fuss over nothing I'm just fed up of 2nd best all the time.
They should find room or make room. Its typical merlin not thinking stuff through and trying to do it on the cheap. If they want to be world beating as they say its about time they start acting like it. The more and more I look at Merlin the more and more I despise them. And I know someone is going to say stealth was built by tussauds but merlin have had long enough to correct their mistakes and to be honest they haven't. All they do is serve up second best because they are a monopoly with very little competition.
Cedar point may be closed for longer but the train to month scheduled is still smaller.
I cant help feel that merlin get a bit ripped off in their rides. For example Gatekeeper cost £15m while the swarm cost £18m. Yes a lot of that went on themeing but personally I think that at the end of the day the ride is what should come first. Really I just want to see a proper dive machine.
I'm not moaning about operation procedures, I couldn't care less if stealth has 2 or 5 trains I'm more saying that a team of 2 can do their annual strip down on 6 trains in 5 months so why cant Thorpe do their strip down on 3 trains in 5 months.
I would like to see the system cope with a Saturday in august with 15,000 people all in the morning clicking the swarm. All the guests would be in the same place all trying to use it at the same time. That will have to be one very good WiFi hub to live that sort of demand. Then of course it will run into problems like the later trails where the ride becomes fully booked before lunch so anyone who turns up late cant use it.
I don't think the park has massive hurdles to cover they have an infinite amount of colossal hurdles. I'm quite sure it will become a thing where they solve 1 problem and create 2 more.