Project LC

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 say 3 hours because in the trails for the swarm last year on multiple occasions the swarm wait time was 4 hours.

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.

so the Monday one went so well Tuesdays was cancelled. I'm assuming that the problem was a tec side fault.

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 rather similar site apart from TP is much harder to navigate and illogically arranged, so well done Blackpool.

I know that merlin wont be guiding the park to the letter but I'm sure that if they wanted to they could.

Your telling me that the company that owns and operates the park have no say in how the park operates. That sounds stupid and yet highly plausible.

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.

Well 1 whole day is pretty good.

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.

merlin should adopt the american culture with its parks of go large or go home.

Dive coaster track is normally a much wider gauge. Although isn't it supposed to be the horrible much smaller type of dive machine with 6 seats wide.

Surely they can strip down more than 1 at a time. Rides like maverick have 6 trains and TTD has 5 trains that need stripping down at a time. Surely Thorpe can do 3 at a time.

I think Thorpe needs to be designed so that someone with an IQ of 5 can use it. In all fairness its not the easiest entrance to a ride to use. Often there is someone confused in which queue to join.

I understand where you and Thorpe are coming from. Thorpe will cater towards the masses as that's where the money is but as usual they have overlooked things of which something swill be impossible to fix. This system will create 5000 people just wandering and they wont shop or eat at restaurants they will go to ride rides as that is what they do at theme parks. I have yet to come across a person who has gone to a theme park for its shops. All this system will do is move queues and prevent me from doing what I want to do. I know that Thorpe park read this and I doubt they will take on board what I have to say but its worth a try. Surely someone at the park must have seen disney tried a similar system and that failed for many different reasons. If Thorpe have set out to improve that system and make it work then the best of luck with that but I highly doubt that Thorpe have the resources and the knowhow to do it. Uk theme parks are years behind the US ( in a certain sense, they sort of are and aren't but maybe that belongs in a different thread) so my question is that if this is so revolutionary why isn't there any other park doing this?

I was there on one of their trails and it really was that bad that I have taken up this absolute no stance against them. It turned what should have been a good day into a waste of 9 hours. I know they value the people who go there as a one off more as there more likely to spend meanwhile people which go there 5-20 times a year get pushed to the side and expected to spend huge amounts of money on each visit. I for one wont stand for that and I would like to think that when I go there I can re-ride the rides that I want to rather than book for rides and be expected to go shopping or ride their useless flats. I go there for stealth and swarm and that's it. I'm not running between the dome and those 2 rides each time I want to ride one. This entire reseve and ride has made me really quite angry knowing that the fun I used to have there may no longer be allowed by this stupid decision which Disney tried and failed at. If Disney failed I can sure dam tell that merlin will fail.