Ian-S

Haven't bought a paper since the last century.

OFCOM are not investigating at the moment, they are assessing the situation, which is technical speak for we are waiting for the twenty day window to close before deciding what to do.

Yesh that's probably just a damage limitation exercise at present. Has it caused a merchandise vacuum though? Is Smiler/big6 stuff turning up on eBay at vastly inflated prices?

Saw that too, the car has water people in it, I wonder whether it is genuine testing/training, or whether H&S are assessing the operaional procedures? You would think that when the ride re-opens, given how Merlin have acted so far, that they would only do it with the 'blessing' of the families, although reading the article above, it would seem one of those families isn't very reciprocal at the moment to their offers of help.

Yup I should have said I hadn't been for a few weeks so it might have changed since I was last there, I stand corrected. I find it a little odd that they seem more focused on operational procedure that wasn't, we assume, to be at faut, instead of focusing on the evac/reset procedure which is where the problem seemed to occur.

Oh dear, I hope the system is improved. James, when I was playing with the system earlier, the software presented to you a qr code that you have to show to 'a member of staff' to be scanned into the system, it recommended doing this in the dome. I didn't get past that obviously but you have to signup to the system with and email and password before you get to that stage, so I suggest doing this part at home to save some time. Having said that, I wonder what the queue is going to be like for rnr activations in the dome on a busy day, could be stood in that for an hour befor even getting to a ride... I would hope they'd have people at the turn styles to activate you as you entered the park on busy days, they seem to always have a ton of staff standing around there anyway.

That's how they've been running Vampire at Cheesy all year, my understanding is the second train can and should be dispatched once the first train has cleared the second lift hill, not once it's returned the station entrance. This has resulted in queues of 90+ minutes even on off-peak days. I dread to think what the queues are going to be like on rides such as Fury and Rattlesnake if they employ this method of dispatch.

Then I tend to agree with you, to get a true indication of how the system works, you need to remove the standby queue completely and have everybody using the ticket/booking system. All the time you have a standby queue, it's just increasing the length of both queues. Maybe just make it one or two rides on each day. Or have they tried that already? I can understand the theory on a very busy day where queues might be 90 minutes plus, under those circumstances it makes sense.

LOL no, it'd take longer to walk over to a flat, queue for it, ride it, and walk back to the main ride, then it would stand in the standby queue for 10 minutes. If you want to do that, please, be my guest, it'll mean less people in the standby queue. I hate to agree with LC, but this system has more holes in it than a lump of swiss cheese.

Not quiet. I thought the idea of the system was that it allowed you to 'virtually' queue for your ride, so for the system to work fairly if the standby queue was 50 minutes, then the rnr queue should be 50 minutes (or anything up to that), but nothing over that. As soon as the rnr queue becomes longer than the main queue it defeats the object of the system since you can get on the ride quicker by physically queuing, than you can by virtually queuing.

You hate the system right? So I thought you'd be pleased that the standby queue is aparantly shorter than the reserve'n'ride one. I forgot the pink text, sorry.

At the time of writing: Colossus standby: 75 minutes Colossus reserve'n'ride: 15 minutes. Swarm standby: 10 minutes Swarm reserve'n'ride: 15 minutes. LC will be happy

OK, I'm thinking about the Swarm, it has two queue lines (ft & normal) that merge at the counter. Imagine on a busy day the standby queue is a hour, you get your rnr slot, so is the guy scanning the qr codes on the queue entrance, or the merge point? I know I'm not making it too clear lol, I'm trying to ask if the standby queue is an hour, and you have an rnr slot giving you access at the time you go up to the queue line, how do you jump the standby queue if you don't use the fast track entrance? Isn't the whole idea that you skip the standby queue, so in that case, how do you get to the merge point, if the end of the standby queue is a hundred yards before it? I guess I'm asking, surely they haven't built dedicated rnr entrances, or have they?

It's a shame that they can't build a second identical maze (or better still, just design them that way) as it would instantly double throughput.

So what happens when you get you slot, do you walk up the fastrack queue?

How does the scanning the ticket activation work for annual pass holders then? Do we scan our passes instead?

There's slightly amusing irony in that photo, the smiler logo's on the walls indicate what was originally there, and the merchandise that's been put in it's place to replace it, is for a ride still closed (because of it's location).

Or front row riding, will the forum approve?

It's like they're testing different paint compounds for longevity and wear.

Merlin are no Thomas Cook that's for sure.

Seems strange they're doing it in patches rather than starting at a point and continuing around. I bet these rides are like the Forth Bridge, by the time they've finished they'll have to start again

urgh that's not what I said.

Yes I do.

That's not what I'm saying, what I said was I hope those around her support and encourage her and don't dwell on the negatives too much, a person's recovery both physically and mentally can be massively affected by the attitude of those around them. I'm most certainly not telling her to 'suck it up', just saying it could have been worse.

Don't know not on park, but the standby queue times were short, off memory the longest I've seen is 40 mins for X, and the reserve'n'ride times are mostly 0, so either the system is having a his sy fit and not working, not working full stop, or working as desired.