Fred Posted March 30, 2014 Report Share Posted March 30, 2014 They had kids on the ride 10yrs ago. They managed to load and dispatch without killing or injuring anyone within 45 seconds. Oh how things have changed for the worst on here. CharlieN 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmgpannal Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 They had kids on the ride 10yrs ago. They managed to load and dispatch without killing or injuring anyone within 45 seconds. Oh how things have changed for the worst on here. Not even 10 years ago. I remember 4 years ago, they'd rush through checks and would even announce that they had 45 seconds to dispatch the train. Not the 3m45s dispatch times I witnessed last week! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 Yep, the quality of the ride staff is the issue... I stand in that queue seething with rage everytime I visit these days... Especially when the bays spend most of their empty because the outside batcher is rubbish... It's so bad... So so bad... BigBobJones 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomglazed Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 I don't understand how it can get so bad. Is there not any form of performance monitoring in place so management can see which team member perform best? Coupled with any kind of incentive scheme for teams who perform best I.e. achieve the best throughput? Or am I in a make believe land of clouds and fairy dust? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 They don't have anything like that at present, as everythings about customer service rather than throughputs. However, I believe they're constrained by the rules governed by their predecessor of rides manager. The rules he's put in place (and probably will be hard to fight to show that reducing/removing these won't affect safety) basically disallow any sort of decent throughputs. Think one exit stairs in use, think not opening gates until everyones left etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coaster Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 Today, Vampire was just ridiculous in my opinion. I've never had the satisfaction of seeing a three-train service and I'm fully aware that I never will, although it is nice to see a third train back together since it was left last year without any seating on it in the transfer... Today the queue was consistently 45 minutes whenever I looked; and I only did it because me and Rich got a priority / fastrack pass for Dragon's Fury breaking down on us (might I add, when we got to Vampire that too broke down). But, and I said it to Rich today, I do not understand why Vampire is so slow moving. We saw about six trains go and every time the train before had returned and hit the brakes at the end. Now, Vampire is roughly a two minute ride, roughly, based off the length of YouTube POVs. So I do not understand why it takes them two minutes to load a train. Rich argued it's because of small kids with it being a 1.1m ride - but that aside, the staff should be helping to get kids into the ride wherever possible to help speed up operation. But today they just didn't seem to care in my opinion. I mean, even with kids - most of which are in a one adult to one child ratio; still shouldn't take them that long to load. If parks like Thorpe and Towers can load and send Nemesis trains within a minute (despite having more seats to check, more people with bags etc.) I don't understand why Vampire can't run to a similar standard. People moan when rides stack at Thorpe, but I think that the difference in ride length between a Thorpe coaster and Vampire is enough for them to sort Vampire's operation out - and in my opinion I don't see why they can't have the trains dispatching roughly when the other train goes through the photo-point tunnel like it did back in 2012. Was an incredibly poor team on Vampire today. I agree, it's absoloutely dire (based off last year) and it's why I haven't bothered visiting Chessington yet this year. For the park's signature coaster, it should be belting out trains by the double, yet it's sat there rotting away achieving about 300 people per hour. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomglazed Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 They don't have anything like that at present, as everythings about customer service rather than throughputs. However, I believe they're constrained by the rules governed by their predecessor of rides manager. The rules he's put in place (and probably will be hard to fight to show that reducing/removing these won't affect safety) basically disallow any sort of decent throughputs. Think one exit stairs in use, think not opening gates until everyones left etc. But emphasis on the pre bit, he is no longer the manager so can't his rules be tweaked? Unless he still works there... I get customer service but surely you can balance customer service with acceptable throughput? I mean what better customer service can you provide than working as efficiently as possible to reduce people's queue time yet still maintaining a level of guest interactivity to keep them informed and entertained? BigBobJones 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flipper Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 All I'm going to say is I used to work for an old Chessington manager in another park, and he introduced recording throughputs to this other park; but always highlighted that it was to record performance, and not to have targets; and that Chessington don't operate targets to achieve with throughput but merely record what the rides do every hour. Whereas Thorpe do have targets and expectations of their rides; and do (or at least did) operate reward schemes for teams whom run a ride well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 Working at Chessington we did have targets. Probably not as much as we should have done but I recall trying to beat the Fury throughput score all the time Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 There were targets, but more guidelines than actual targets... Tom 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flipper Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 There were targets, but more guidelines than actual targets... Oh okay, maybe this person was comparing it to Thorpe's "throughputs are the shizz!" approach then, or maybe I just misunderstood him. Apologies! Cal 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GladiatorFanKyle Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 Jesus the operation of vampire is terrible now. Last year they were fairly quick. Why can't they be like Thorpe. I mean when I went on swarm the safety bars were checked really quite quickly and the ride was out of the station straight away. If there is dispatch times of 3 mins+ I really dread to think what the queues for vampire will be like in summer holidays when the park is at it's busiest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 Chessie does have target throughputs. You can see them through the windows of the ops cabins. Vampires, last time I saw which was 2 years ago, had 250 for one train and 550 for two trains. Awful considering you can get 700 or so on two trains if run properly. And, as I mentioned in the bit you spoke about, it takes time to argue against rules. They were put in there for apparent safety and it'll be difficult to fight against these now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chessiekid Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 Chessie does have target throughputs. You can see them through the windows of the ops cabins. These are never pushed though or checked. Ride ops can easily make up there throughput's if they want and a manager would be non the wiser. It's a shame but throughput's really are not pushed at all across the rides teams and a lot of staff don't seem to really care at all about how efficient they are as they don't see it as part of there job. It's mostly all geared towards being as safe and interactive as possible with ridiculous procedures being implemented on rides such as Vampire. Vampire struggles to reach 450pph the way its currently being operated. Flipper 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattgwise Posted March 31, 2014 Report Share Posted March 31, 2014 Jesus the operation of vampire is terrible now. Last year they were fairly quick.Really! IMO they were just as dire last year if not worse. I counted 4 mins 30 seconds on my phone for a train to be dispatched in august and on my visit about a week before in which I complained about numerous issues (see trip reports thread) I counted virtually 2 mins 30 seconds twice in a row. Truly shocking Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark9 Posted April 1, 2014 Report Share Posted April 1, 2014 All I'm going to say is I used to work for an old Chessington manager in another park, and he introduced recording throughputs to this other park; but always highlighted that it was to record performance, and not to have targets; and that Chessington don't operate targets to achieve with throughput but merely record what the rides do every hour. Whereas Thorpe do have targets and expectations of their rides; and do (or at least did) operate reward schemes for teams whom run a ride well. As a few people have said there did used to be targets at Chessington but it was rarely ever enforced. I can remember in my first season working at Chessington, there were quite a few park competitions. Fury used to compete with Spinball on an hourly throughput, same with the two Runaway Trains. Unfortunately it's all gone with the wind now, but it used to really get staff motivated to work efficiently. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted April 1, 2014 Report Share Posted April 1, 2014 There was one summer where there was park wide stuff going on I seem to recall... Then one day I got to ride it at the end of the day after being nominated as the best platformer... But then the focus was all customer interaction at the expense of throughputs... Even extending to Fury where the batcher was so engrossed in talking to guests he didn't load a car until it was at the dispatch point, and the fabled time the staff wouldn't send the car until we "Flapped our arms like a Dragon" and we point blank refused to after spending an hour in that queue... Customer interaction should never be at the expense of platforming a ride... I don't mind interaction at times, but it should just be those positions which have constant long points of interaction, like at the batch gates (especially now on Vampire since there is no constant stream of people going on every single train)... tomglazed 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nosferatu Posted April 24, 2014 Report Share Posted April 24, 2014 A friend who visited chessington recently has told me that the Vampire nows uses the internet version of the station theme. Can anyone confirm this? Please tell me they haven't done this....... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Posted April 24, 2014 Report Share Posted April 24, 2014 Yeah sounds like it. But it's proper good quality. In other news, their dispatch speeds were perfect today. Two trains, no stacking (well, stopped in brakes for 1 second on first ride). Yeaaahh. And they were loading both trains (not back 4 rows originally though, unsure why that was). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerfuffle Posted April 25, 2014 Report Share Posted April 25, 2014 Just hope music's sorted out soon... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark9 Posted May 3, 2014 Report Share Posted May 3, 2014 I really like Vampire. It's just so family friendly. Sure it was better in bat cars but it's still a great ride in its current form. Whiteknuckle, Cornflakes and HermanTheGerman 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerfuffle Posted May 3, 2014 Report Share Posted May 3, 2014 It was FASTER in bat cars too! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HermanTheGerman Posted May 3, 2014 Report Share Posted May 3, 2014 In my opinion, Vampire gets it just right. Its fast enough that kids will feel brave and get a proper thrill. But not too fast that it becomes intense. The ride is still really popular with teens as well though. Its short blast of speed in the tunnel make it cater really well for everyone! <3 Vampire! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pognoi Posted May 3, 2014 Report Share Posted May 3, 2014 Yeah it was running really thrillingly on last Sunday. The TPM group got a good couple circuits in my opinion. Quick, and swingy, without getting rough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paige Posted May 3, 2014 Report Share Posted May 3, 2014 Vampire did greatly exceed my expectations tbh (although I think it needs inversions). So if it wasn't a family coaster and it had inversions, it could beat Inferno as my favourite coaster. But I like that it's forceful and you get a pretty decent amount of air time too, although the second time we rode it on Sunday I found it pretty turbulent after the second lift hill, but in hindsight it's most probably as I braced myself at the wrong places. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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