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Colossus


Adam J

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12 hours ago, pluk said:

Laziness and lack of care?

 

Sorry to be pedantic, but surely no coaster can exceed it's theoretical throughput?! If it can, it's theoretical throughput has been calculated incorrectly!

 

5 hours ago, pluk said:

Mildly off topic pedantry on my part continues, but whatever!

 

Surely the theoretical throughput is a constant; what the hardware can do at it's peak running without interruption, regardless of whatever process and faff is put in the way of ops? Targets on the other hand, are set according to how the park chooses to run/maintain/resource the ride in its current state.

 

Colossus, for example, would still have a theoretical throughput of a full train leaving the top of the lift hill the moment the other train clears the blocks at the end of the ride. Thorpe have let it deteriorate to that never being possible on two trains because of lifthill motor speed/stall issues, and at the moment single train issues, meaning their target now will be about a third of that theoretical throughput. But that theoretical throughput could be strived for again if Thorpe brought it all back up to opening spec.

 

I guess this is more a bit of confusion about how we call certain things.

 

What you're calling the theoretical throughput is what I'd call the maximum throughput.  That would be, like you say, the hardware running flawless with no faff from staff or guests and in no way achievable.  These are usually numbers you see advertised on manufacturers' websites as well.

 

Theoretical throughput is what is quoted to the park's by the manufacturer when the ride is built.  This would take in some factors, such as any extra safety precautions the manufacturer has put in place at the request of the park / to comply with certain country's H&S laws, and consider how long it'd take to check bars in the best possible scenario.  Some of these are hard to measure accurately or precisely, so are normally just guesses when first quoted.  But this is why it is possible for some rides to exceed their 'theoretical throughput'.

 

Saw does it regularly as (I think?) it's one of the few rides which hasn't really lost any staff compared to its first season, safety checks on the restraints haven't changed and there's no seatbelts.  So with a good team who are used to it, it's possible to go above the theoretical target.  The likes of Swarm and Th13teen have also exceeded their theoretical targets; usually in their first season when they were new, had more staff and more motivated staff.  

 

Some rides have their maximum and theoretical throughputs as the same (Rush springs to mind), which means that they aren't usually reached.  At first, Ghost Train had it's theoretical throughput set as it's maximum throughput, which is hilariously high but also wildly achievable since that doesn't include time to get guests on the train and wearing the headsets.. 

 

Thorpe (and presumably most parks) use the theoretical throughputs as target ones as well, but these can rarely be achieved at Thorpe / Merlin parks right now, especially with their minimum staff operating and self-imposed safety precautions.  The theoretical throughputs are rarely adjusted following these.  I believe Colossus' maximum throughput is advertised as 1300pph, theoretical was around 1000-1100, but at the moment 700-800 is about all that's realistic.

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1 hour ago, BaronC. said:

 

 

I guess this is more a bit of confusion about how we call certain things.

 

What you're calling the theoretical throughput is what I'd call the maximum throughput.  That would be, like you say, the hardware running flawless with no faff from staff or guests and in no way achievable.  These are usually numbers you see advertised on manufacturers' websites as well.

 

Theoretical throughput is what is quoted to the park's by the manufacturer when the ride is built.  This would take in some factors, such as any extra safety precautions the manufacturer has put in place at the request of the park / to comply with certain country's H&S laws, and consider how long it'd take to check bars in the best possible scenario.  Some of these are hard to measure accurately or precisely, so are normally just guesses when first quoted.  But this is why it is possible for some rides to exceed their 'theoretical throughput'.

 

Saw does it regularly as (I think?) it's one of the few rides which hasn't really lost any staff compared to its first season, safety checks on the restraints haven't changed and there's no seatbelts.  So with a good team who are used to it, it's possible to go above the theoretical target.  The likes of Swarm and Th13teen have also exceeded their theoretical targets; usually in their first season when they were new, had more staff and more motivated staff.  

 

Some rides have their maximum and theoretical throughputs as the same (Rush springs to mind), which means that they aren't usually reached.  At first, Ghost Train had it's theoretical throughput set as it's maximum throughput, which is hilariously high but also wildly achievable since that doesn't include time to get guests on the train and wearing the headsets.. 

 

Thorpe (and presumably most parks) use the theoretical throughputs as target ones as well, but these can rarely be achieved at Thorpe / Merlin parks right now, especially with their minimum staff operating and self-imposed safety precautions.  The theoretical throughputs are rarely adjusted following these.  I believe Colossus' maximum throughput is advertised as 1300pph, theoretical was around 1000-1100, but at the moment 700-800 is about all that's realistic.

700-800ph lol thats 2 train op ......

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Yeah but Blackpool has a silly excuse in my eyes. Having 3 trains but they all have a different set of weather wheels on when they could just change the proxy sensors and run the faster trains, or do what Thorpe and others do and change the wheels on both trains as the seasons change. Notice Swarm has fresh wheels again as they'll be the colder running wheels till the end of season.

 

A broken train that Intamin take so long to fix is out of Thorpe's hands. Not an excuse, but the reason.

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10 minutes ago, Mitchada04 said:

Yeah but Blackpool has a silly excuse in my eyes. Having 3 trains but they all have a different set of weather wheels on when they could just change the proxy sensors and run the faster trains, or do what Thorpe and others do and change the wheels on both trains as the seasons change. Notice Swarm has fresh wheels again as they'll be the colder running wheels till the end of season.

 

A broken train that Intamin take so long to fix is out of Thorpe's hands. Not an excuse, but the reason.

Wind wasn't the reason for one train in February, it was that the lift chain had been replaced and needed running in before it was put under the strain of running two trains.

 

Also, I'd suggest that tampering with a 23-year-old ride system when the manufacturer doesn't exist anymore wouldn't be the best idea.  If it was as easy as "just changing the proxy sensors" they'd have done it by now, why would they want huge queues and guests complaining?

 

They do change the wheels on PMBO to match the weather they're expecting, but it's a huge struggle to keep the ride open when the wind is at 30/40 mph (watching the train struggle over the hills on a windy day is enough to tell you that!) so I'm just thankful they push to keep it operating at all.

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Just now, Mitchada04 said:

If they were that fussed then they'd change the wheels based on the season. But I'm not trying to dig at Blackpool here, just stating you can't dig Colossus either as it's not in Thorpe's hands.

They do, but the winds at Blackpool are all over the place - even on a hot summer's day it could be blowing an absolute gale and they can't change the wheels daily!

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39 minutes ago, Mitchada04 said:

If they were that fussed then they'd change the wheels based on the season. But I'm not trying to dig at Blackpool here, just stating you can't dig Colossus either as it's not in Thorpe's hands.

 

Thorpe has been plagued with Colossus train problems since day one. At this point, shouldn't Intamin be a little bit more aware of what the problems are or is it a case that the ride itself is causing issues to the trains and no amount of fixing will ever solve the problem.

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3 hours ago, Mitchada04 said:

they could just change the proxy sensors

There's a lot more to it than just changing the track sensors and every step of the way you'd run into the issue of the manufacturer of the ride not being by your side. Would be a beast of a job and will never happen, not that I think it should either. Pleasure Beach don't have the best record with tampering with their rides either, if it ain't broken, don't fix it, has never been truer.

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  • 4 weeks later...

If the queue was 2 hours before but adding a second train doubled throughput and the queue is now only an hour then there would be the same number of people in line. (An example not saying that is what has happened)

 

I suspect now it's on 2 trains again there are actually more people in the queue as people were willing to wait 90 minutes before (an example). So now they are still willing to wait 90 minutes but the ride is able to deal with way more people in a 90 minute queue. 

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20 hours ago, Project LC said:

If the queue was 2 hours before but adding a second train doubled throughput and the queue is now only an hour then there would be the same number of people in line. (An example not saying that is what has happened)

 

I suspect now it's on 2 trains again there are actually more people in the queue as people were willing to wait 90 minutes before (an example). So now they are still willing to wait 90 minutes but the ride is able to deal with way more people in a 90 minute queue. 

Exactly this.

 

You tend to see trends of how long people are willing to wait for certain rides.  So with something like Colossus, which is very popular and doesn't have an amazingly high throughput on full capacity anyway, it'll always reach a natural maximum queue time before people go 'nah, I don't want to wait that long, let's try again later'.  Funnily enough, on 'busy' days, 90 minutes is probably the natural maximum.  Though on crazy busy days (ie schools week and Fright Nights half term when the park is basically at capacity), people are prepared to wait longer anyway, and 3 hours is about that natural max.  If the capacity was doubled, you'd still see it get long queues (if/when the demand was there).  

 

Rush is a good example to show this at the other end of the scale.  On 2 swings, the queue will rarely exceed 45-50 minutes on 'busy' days, but if it was on 1 swing, the queue would go up to 70-80 minutes and stay there.  That'd be the natural maximum, but on 2 swings it'll very rarely hit that because there's essentially not enough demand.

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42 minutes ago, Zappomatic said:

Rode Colossus last night (walked straight in to an empty station and went for the front row - very confusing!) and I'm guessing I had the train that's been out of action because it felt unusually smooth. New wheels, maybe?

I think both the trains have had some work - have ridden both of them over the last couple of weeks and am sure it is noticeably smoother and a lot quieter too.

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  • 5 months later...

Colossus is usually considerably smoother at the very front. 

 

From previous rides, the further back you go, the rougher it seems to be. However I have found odd numbered rows slightly smoother than even ones.

 

I am yet to do Colossus this season, but I think the park have done a fair amount of work on the ride this year, such as repainting supports and work on the trains. 

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