Mark9

A helicopter is standard, you shouldn't let that upset you. After all, a helicopter was hovering over a Chinese cruise liner which sunk on the very same day as the Smiler incident. The difference is that the Cruise liner may have cost 500 lives, the Smiler incident only 16 and majority weren't life threatening injuries. It's interesting how when something is closer to home and within the realm of own experience, how much more affecting it can be. You have to bear in mind that at 19 you can get married, be a parent, drive a car, drink alcohol. And trust me driving a car on the M25 during rush hour is harder and more scary then pressing a dispatch button on The Smiler. The only ride I've ever come across that takes physical skill to operate correctly is Rattlesnake. I'm not saying a 19 year old is mature enough to deal with an emergency on this scale but when I think about it, I've also met 45 year olds who wouldn't have been able to deal with this situation. When it comes to it, would I go to Alton Towers and ride the Smiler again? In a shot. This is a freak accident and doesn't make me question whether Merlin (Or any park with the exception of Bakken) run their rides properly.

Thanks for that Stealthrider.

I know the GP have jumped to the worst conclusion. On here, we kind of know a bit about rides so I was hoping we wouldn't just throw blame at Alton's door. I want to throw something out there. When I operated Fury and Rattlesnake, rides with multiple cars, you wouldn't wait for each car to get back from an empty cycle before you start loading again. You'd wait for the first one to get back and then begin loading. As an operator you trust that the ride system will continue to keep cars out of the same block. Also with loading cars, it takes longer time then just sending out an empty train. On a ride like Nemesis you'd wait for the train to come back, that's obvious but with a ride that can run five trains it's not necessary to stack them all up before loading again. A few witnesses have said that a train was stuck on lift one for ten minutes before it finally made a move towards the crash. If thats true, why was the train able to continue towards the presumably vallied train.

We don't know that anything the park has done has let the people down. Lets not jump down the sensationalist route and automatically blame someone.

We don't know how many empty cars were sent out before they started loading again, all we have are eye witness accounts and some of these are very unreliable.

Shall we wait and see what is discovered and if any details are given into the public domain first. I don't have any doubts that The Smiler will open up again at some point in the future, maybe not this season but definitely in the next two years. I don't think we need to jump to conclusions about whether this was a Towers fault or a Gerstlauer fault. Merlin as a whole have a pretty exemplary record when it comes to ride incidents. I'm aware that things have happened but rarely ever down to the ride itself being at fault. We live in a world where no news is bad news and an incident like this may put a small minority off visiting. But for the rest of us, we'll still go. Think of all the rides around the world that have killed in the past, the rides in America ejecting riders or Big Thunder Mountain derailing in California. At this point, ten hours after the incident, the ride itself is secondary in my thoughts. Right now, I want to give my thoughts to the people involved, particularly the front row riders. I can't imagine the fear of heading towards that stationary train and being absolutely powerless to stop.

I wouldn't be surprised if Saw closes or a brief period, Spinball did the same during Fury's incident a few years back.

Had to mute that video. It's too distressing. Strange thing human nature, I knew what the video contained and yet couldn't resist looking.

Thoughts are with the people injured, lets hope they make a full recovery.

I loved those years. When the MTDP for Stealth and the 2009 coaster came out it was like nothing at Thorpe was impossible. That Inferno image is just

Post of the year confirmed.

I think in light of what happened at Tomb Blaster in 2012, the park would never hire anyone who they didn't 100% trust to do their jobs.

Shame you could't quite keep to this really LC12. Reserve and Ride really riles you doesn't it. Life's too short to be posting the same comments time and time again. It's not that I want you to stop posting about this but, lets face it, your opinion on RNR is a well travelled road now. Could you not just let it go because clearly Thorpe have no intention of dropping it.

More importantly for me, why aren't they using the dedicated Fastrack queue? Lack of staff/ Staff cuts?

I was generalising with four. But the point of your parents didn't own one until a few years ago, I'm presuming they do now. Which goes in line that smartphone technology and reach would have expanded since Josh's research quotes from 2013. Thats a taboo point. I don't know how people get through their whole batteries in less then eight hours. They must run every app on their phone and refreshing Facebook and whatsapp every few seconds..

Isn't the likelihood in a group of four people, for one to not have a smartphone, very low.

Was Guest Services on reduced capacity too!?

Phew, that wasn't so bad. Thank you for keeping it brief LC12.

I miss the optimistic AstroDan.

So what you're really saying is ITS GONNA BE AWESOME.

Some excellent BS right there. Something to do with money probably. In the same way Towers likes to close earlier then it should Thorpe likes to run less trains then it should and pretends it's for the guests own good.

I suppose for Florida it's pretty different to anything else there.

I'd describe Boomerangs as okay myself. I really liked the one at Discovery Kingdom but hated the Knotts Berry farm one.

Things like one staff member on those rides isn't a new occurrence, even 12/14 years ago, those rides had one staff member operating them. The difference is, take Buccaneer in particular, that ride use to take 20 seconds to unload/offload. Now with all the gating and seating rules, that process takes 5 or so minutes.