Mark9

She's been mine since she opened so good luck with that

hmm.. at Fright Nights, Thorpe Park's busiest days of the year....

Lol.. he''s actually looking at the right place. When dispatching a car, it's best to watch the car, the staff and the people in the car, rather then watch Car 5 going through trim break 2/safety break 3 Haha no, I wasn't working that day now. Just saw you in the report and thought "hey I know that guy." Although I did notice that you were pressing Fury's dispatch buttons to early and they aren't flashing... but anyway

I think they are planning to restrict numbers. During last years Fright Nites, the park lost Stealth and Slammer for the majority of the event which made queuing for anything else an absolute nightmare. By reducing numbers they are reducing complaints.

It's a reduced queuing time, not immediate access to a ride. And it does seem to be faster then using the main queue..

James operates Fury!Welcome to my Chessington experience for the last 3 years

It's easily my favourite ride to operate at Chessington. The Interactiveness of the ride and the way you control every aspect of it (speed, amount of circuits etc) just makes it fun... hours fly by at it.

All of these are from ChessingtonCarouselToadies Crazy CarsOld Fury Control panelRunaway Train (the control panel is in the picture )

Younger Mark used to stay on Tidal Wave 5 times in a row during Fright Nights. It was nice knowing whilst everyone else was queuing up to.. well 3 hours for a maze or a minimum of 45 minutes for all other rides, I was just going round and round on Tidal Wave.Unfortunately Older Mark wouldn't dare doing that again, I've become a bit more sensible and.. less fun in my old age.

I haven't done Fright Nights for a few years so my memory may be lying, but if I remember rightly, people start to wait for Assylum about an hour before it actually opens. So you may have to wait at least an hour for it regardless.

Intamin rollercoasters aren't exactly cheap..

1. Yep, both of the flinging out of seat incidents on the Superman rides.2. I'm not just referring to Hydro's accident, I'm also talking about the Perilous Plunge incident. Ignoring the perilous boat coming off the ride circuit, both of their supersoakers killing people does make me wonder just how safe these Intamin rides are.3. Intamin may be passing the same safety tests that the B&M's are but then the B&M's aren't injuring/killing people. Are we seriously saying that so many parks are running their Intamin rides badly and on that note that all parks with B&M rides are running their rides properly.You tell me..

Obviously....

With the case of people flung out of seats, regardless of parks dodgy operations, that should never have happened. On Superman, how did a system let a guy who according to the rides own safety restriction, able to be dispatched. How have both of the Intamin super-soakers managed to kill people and yet all other manfacturers (Mack, Zamperla, Hopkins) have never had a single death on their large water rides. How were these rides able to be dispatched and considered safe.B&M Hyper coasters have their minimal restraint systems and have never caused a single death (at least.. so far after 13 years of them). Intamin on the other hand have had to over-compensate for their minimal restraint systems on every ride since Storm Runner. I think that says a lot more about the company then the high amount of incidents/accidents they have had in the last ten years.

Maybe that's the problem... they are that retarded.

But that isn't to put any of our themed rides down, Germans do their parks on completely different scales to us.

I love Hex but I hate riding it. I just hate riding it with loads of other people (and as a ride that takes a lot of people it's rather hard not to ride with 79 other people) because they tend to ruin the story building parts, particularly in the first and second room.I want to be engaged with the story and I can't so given the choice, I normally don't bother going on it.

I to a degree, totally agree with that. When operators are just doing it to their platformers to entertain themselves, it does put me off riding a ride sometimes as really their main attention should be to the riders.But I am completely against all rides just being pre-recorded as I think it makes a ride incredibly sterile and samey. The Runaway Mine Train lady at Alton Towers who does the Choo Choo thing is an absolute master class in entertaining the guests consistently. It's the same with an older member of staff on Twirling Toadstool and some rides on Detonator have been awesome, when the op has teased the guests.I myself much prefer operating rides like Black Buccaneer and Runaway Train at Chessington, where I'm able to make each ride different just by getting guests to sing, do little YMCA dances, Mexican Waves, things that make the ride a little bit more personal and for them.With rides like Vampire, I totally agree with the ride having some kind of Pre-records. Some of the ops do go a little OTT with their own voices.

Right, well the original post by James (I believe) said he wished there was single rider on other rides, not just Stealth and Saw, hence why I mentioned the fact that on other rides it creates stress and pressure and can hinder the ride more then help it.I'm not saying it's hard for the ride team at all because in theory it shouldn't be. But guests are notoriously difficult to work with. You'd think after queuing however long for a ride they would be all ready and speedy but no, they never are whether it's down to ignorance, fear or whatever.Working at a theme park isn't necessarily fun. It's a very repetitive job, it can be in very loud conditions, and if you are an operator you could be by yourself all day with no guest contact. Maybe you need to work at a theme park to really understand that it isn't all fun and games, tea-parties on the ceiling and riding rides all day long. It's long, physical work with very many guests never appreciative of the hard work the teams put in for up to 12 hours a day.

Don't be so naive and don't be so patronizing. Tell me, Stealth888, have you ever had to run a single rider queue line before? Chances are no. Thankfully, I am not just talking out of my backside as I frequently ran the single rider queue line at Dragons Fury and it was a complete nightmare trying to get single riders into the cars and keep the ride moving. Besides, you say it's sending people up stairs, no it's not. On Stealth, you have to batch onto the ride, Main queue and Fastrack. They have a 60 second window to do this and trying to get single riders onto the ride with the previous in mind can add a lot of stress onto what is already a very stressful position.When you are 16/18, I'd like to see you do a batch position that deals with a single rider queue line, and then tell me it's just sending people up some stairs.

Oh my god.. CAR ONE FROM FURY. I haven't seen that running for years, I had heard from the engineers that a car was being refurbed but I thought it was just car 2. ..I'm glad you had a good time on that day, sounds like you learnt a lot from the day.

Maybe not extra cost, but most definitely at extra stress and pressure for the staff member trying to run a ride and a single rider queue line....

Well it is confusing for guests, hence the reason the trial hasn't become a permanent addition at the park.

They trialled selected ride opening last year and it didn't work out as it just ends up confusing guests on what is actually available and what isn't.

Ooh definitely not! I'd say Chessington is the only park of the 3 old Tussauds where queues die massively, the only rides that keep their queues are Vampire and Dragons Fury. Many a time I operated Runaway Train from 3-6, between 3 and 5:30 the queue would be at 45 minutes, then after 5:30 the ride became walk on again. It happens at many rides at Chessie because the kids aren't able to keep themselves going for over 8 hours. You will see it at halloween this October, whereas Thorpe and Alton stay busy up till closing time, many rides at Chessington are walk on or at minimal queues. I spent many a time at Tiny Truckers waiting for anyone to ride between 5-8.