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2017 Season General Discussion


Marc

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7 hours ago, Coaster said:

Grand National opens at 11am :) 

 

They're operating so amazingly better than Thorpe.  And their operations aren't even good...

 

 

Sorry guys; I disagree. When you advertise the park to open at 10am, I don't expect to walk in the gate and then find rides advertised to open at 10:30am, 11am, and onwards. I don't really see how BPB are operating any better (or worse) than Thorpe; I'd say they really aren't worth comparing as one being better than the other, as like I've said, both and all parks have good points and bad points. Anyway, I believe you'll find theres specific Blackpool forums for licking their backsides for ;)

 

Anyway, back to Thorpe and such... 

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To be fair Blackpool 10am opening is more like ERT as just a few rides open until 11am where most other rides open.

 

When I went to Paultons park if off peak day Last year there operations were terrible. Some area like the new Dino land did not open till 11 and some 12. There was only two gift shops opens. No photo points and only two food places everything else was closed! 

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20 hours ago, Flipper said:

 

Sorry guys; I disagree. When you advertise the park to open at 10am, I don't expect to walk in the gate and then find rides advertised to open at 10:30am, 11am, and onwards. I don't really see how BPB are operating any better (or worse) than Thorpe; I'd say they really aren't worth comparing as one being better than the other, as like I've said, both and all parks have good points and bad points. Anyway, I believe you'll find theres specific Blackpool forums for licking their backsides for ;)

 

Anyway, back to Thorpe and such... 

You clearly didn't read the signs/website then ;)

 

Thorpe staggers openings more than Pleasure Beach these days, Rumba was on a 12 noon opening a few weekends ago and several other rides over an hour late - at least BPB make it clear which rides open when and it feels like a well planned procedure rather than the disorganisation at Thorpe of not knowing which rides are meant to be open and unadvertised late openings becoming more and more common.

 

I've had occasional days at Thorpe where operations are great but usually they are very slack, rides opening late on low capacity and then stacking when they finally go up to two trains.  Not saying this doesn't happen at Pleasure Beach either as their operations are far from perfect, only that I find them better than Thorpe's.

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Rumba is scheduled to open at 11am on busy days, and 12pm on off peak days.  That's the same with Storm Surge and Samurai (and Tug Boat and Lumber Jump before the silly rotational operation) in my experience / according to the boards at the front of rides.  All other rides are meant to open when the park opens.  It's not a case of disorganisation in terms of not knowing what is meant to be open and what's not, it's more a case that there are rides which open late because they haven't completed morning checks, not because they were planned to open late.  

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On 7/19/2017 at 0:16 AM, Flipper said:

 

Knowing you're not thick, I believe you're meaning 'reach' capacity and not exceed. Legal stuff, and all that. :)

I believe they have a licencing based 'legal' capacity which they can not exceed, and they also have a considerably lower self imposed 'operation' capacity which they stick to for day to day opening, but they can (and do) exceed if they fancy. Hopefully with the staffing in place to cope with it...

 

Either way, imagine most of this week is some sort of hell to be avoided at all costs.

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Sorry I know this is a bit off topic but I just wanted to mention how bad operations were yesterday.

 

before I rant I've got to say the batching on saw was really good as they weren't letting in big groups every 5-10 minutes, instead they were letting in 10-15 people every 45-60 seconds which kept the queue moving really quickly.

 

samurai operations were dyer, there was only 2 cycles in front of us and we queued for over half an hour.

 

quantum only had 2 rows on each side open.

 

vortex and zodiac were shut all day.

 

rush took at least 10 minutes to actually get the lap bars down every cycle, meaning that an almost empty queue line still meant waiting 15-20 minutes.

 

due to rumbas new 'you can only ride with an over 18' rule meant that it was chaos on the loading platform, there was at least 5 groups of teens all running around the rotating platform and screaming and shouting, the 2 staff members were extremely bad at controlling it, in the end they just shut off the queue and rode it themselves with he groups until they had al been on and then re-opened the queue.

 

nemmy, stealth and swarm were all the same as usual but they felt extremely fast after waiting for the other rides.

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Inferno has aged brilliantly, which is something so many people forget.  It has a nice setting, some really forceful pops and a decent enough layout.

 

I prefer Swarm, and that is also aging well (yay for B&M quality), but it's not surprising to see so many people loving Inferno.  Just a shame it always feels like the middle child of the coasters.

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24 minutes ago, MattyMoo said:

I've grown to love Inferno too. It looks particularly good after a bit of TLC over closed season when they make sure mist, red lights, coloured wood chips etc. are all present and correct <3

 

Agreed, towards the end of last season I noticed the mist effects rarely operating, but this season it looks better than ever.

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Nemesis Inferno is by far the best coaster at Thorpe and it just keeps riding better and better every year.

 

1) Nemesis Inferno

2) Colossus - From a coaster that I actually stopped riding it got so brutal, to a must ride every visit, come back of the century.

3) SAW - The more Eurofighters I have the misfortune of riding, the more I think Saw has one of the best layouts out there.

4) Stealth - Meh

5) Swarm - I get more excitement out of my computer desk chair.

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23 hours ago, BaronC. said:

Inferno has aged brilliantly, which is something so many people forget.  It has a nice setting, some really forceful pops and a decent enough layout.

 Just a shame it always feels like the middle child of the coasters.

 

I'e noticed this in a lot of parks, the B&M inverter always seems to become the support coaster. Whilst the newer rollercoasters grab all the headlines and long queues, rides like Nemesis, Inferno, Montu, Mamba just do what do they do best. :wub:

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I went on a school trip to Thorpe 2 Monday's ago, and thought I'd share some stuff..

 

Firstly, operations were awful. I've never seen slower dispatches in a theme park. The Swarm staff had no urgency and were chatting to colleagues all the time - so much so that on one occasion it took 2 minutes for new guests to board the ride after the train entered the station.

 

Secondly, I began to queue for flying fish, but didn't get to ride, because the queue moved so slowly. Bizarrely, quests would only be allowed onto the train once departing riders had completely left the exit path. This was made worse as no one was stationed in the loading bay. What's the point in a loading bay/point if we are held behind a holding point and only allowed to progress when previous riders have completely left the exit? The most inefficient loading procedure I've ever seen on a ride (Although, I'm not a regular Fish rider, so this may just be the protocol.)

 

Finally, KFC. As you can imagine, the amount of school trips correlates with the busyness of KFC - which on this case, was heaving. KFC seemed terribly over staffed, yet understaffed of people who actually new what they were doing. There was one guy who was just standing around, getting in people's way, hindering everything. Too many cooks spoil the broth, eh?! Furthermore, The woman who served me gave me a notably grumpy look when I have her £10 for a meal that cost £5.79. Her grumpiness was presumably because of her apparent inability to work out my change, which I ended up helping her calculate.

 

Bloomin' heck! It wouldn't take a lot for operations and service to be made significantly better. A bit of training is all that's needed, incentives for staff and numbers to reach. No staff member I had contact with seemed to want to get things done quickly - there was no sense that the park were pushing the staff to do this either.

 

Really appalling.

 

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