Well Rita was a complete disaster today 45 mins, I did not bother, they have extra fencing up, you can't walk under the ride when it launches, it was also taken off of the ERT and the ride did not launch as often as it normally does.

*Please don't do the same to Stealth*

Talk about ridiculous. It has been operating seven and a half years and only happened once and suddenly you cannot walk under the track during launch.

Next they will probably move the now unused level crossing barriers from CCR and close them every time it launches.

Stealth reopened today, albeit for about 5 minutes before having a shut down and not reopening but the ride did open. The ropes where changed and it should of been open the next day following it's early closure Wednesday. However there was a slight hitch in the delivered product, which meant that the switch from old to new was postponed due to the old ropes already being removed (the old ropes are cut into smaller to be taken off so there wasn't a chance of putting them back on).

I'm guessing Stealth is back in operation as the ticker has been removed from the TP website.

Was still down today. at least for the first 2/3. Isn't it a bit of a waste as there were like 5-6 staff members just hanging round telling people to stay out of the stealth area. I think they could be less people or at least do something more prodctive

They are usually the staff who will work on the ride if it re-opens..

Whilst I understand that, I do agree with c1hirsin.

Simply put, if you have 5 or 6 staff members hanging around a closed ride (which may not reopen for many hours), chatting amongst themselves and telling people 'Sorry, it's closed, we don't know how long for', or words to that effect, it doesn't exactly look good. Not having a go here at staff, as it basically is what they have been told to say / do, but in the eyes of a bog standard guest, it just doesn't look good, especially if they feel that other areas of the park are lacking staff / needs attention by staff...

From a guess theres a number of reasons behind it, firstly it looks better to guests to have staff on hand (especially a popular ride like stealth) to close the area off and stop people entering instead of just putting up a fence and leaving it, secondly I guess it means the ride can reopen as soon as possible after its been fixed by the engineers instead of waiting for staff who are now tied up in other positions around the park.

I guess you can say there's good and bad things around it.

You say it looks better to guests to have staff to hand, but are 5-6 staff members, even for a popular ride like Stealth, necessary? Especially when they're bound to end up grouping together, so they're not just standing around aimlessly waiting to be spoken to. Personally, I just think it's a bit pointless, especially if it's known the ride will be down for a few hours.

Whichever way you look at it, however it's handled, there's positives and negatives. For a large and popular ride like Stealth, if it was to have a long period of downtime, I'd think it best to fence the area off and have a couple of staff there to make sure people don't go in / inform guests what's going.

Marc is completely right in this situation, Staff are never sent away from a ride to help out other rides due to the fact the ride could reopen at any moment. If there isn't any staff available they have extended downtime whilst they await the staff return or even worse prolong the downtime if they need help testing the ride. Stealth was open first thing today but only lasted a single launch which didn't complete the circuit ( didn't even make it the length of the launch track) it did open for a short while in the afternoon and after having a minor technical difficulty it was reopened again due to plagued by yet another situation which brought the ride down for the remainder of the day.

I'm with Josh on this one, it is pointless having staff hanging around.

If a ride is ready to re-open and there are no staff there then downtime is increased. Increased downtime = unhappy guests which leads to lower attendance and profits. If anything it would look worse if there were no staff there as it would appear that there is no chance of the ride opening again.

Maybe the staff could replace the "0-80 in 2.3 seconds" sign and update it?

S

Maybe the staff could replace the "0-80 in 2.3 seconds" sign and update it?

So agree with this - why advertise something worse than it actually is, since the upgrade changing the sigh to 1.8 or less than 2 seconds would be great

Am I right in thinking the ride was never actually 'tweaked', but simply they changed how they measured the time?

But yeah, would be nice if it was to change..

(As for the staffing thing, just to reiterate my view: IF it's KNOWN that the ride is to be down for a long period of time, I see no point in keeping 5-6 staff there, only bout 2-3. From a guest perspective, it makes more sense, even if it means guests are waiting an extra 5 or so minutes for the ride to open, which surely they wouldn't realise anyway? If, however, it's NOT known how long the ride will be down / that it's going to be down for a short period of time, then yes, having a full staff line up there makes sense..)

There are plenty of things within the ride area that can be done while there is downtime though. One or two max at the queue line to advise guests the rest can do something constructive without going anywhere, mostly things like cleaning. With the amount of downtime Thorpes rides have they should be spotless but many of them are filthy and hardly any seem to get even a wipe down mid season. When there's nothing else to do why aren't the Stealth lot fishing the piles of crap out the ponds in the queue lines?

Am I right in thinking the ride was never actually 'tweaked', but simply they changed how they measured the time?

But yeah, would be nice if it was to change..

I've heard that they either didn't tweak it and they just altered how they measured the time (cop out option), tweaking nitrogen boosters was how it was advertised but I'm not sure how true that is (if at all), I've also heard another thing they might have done was stripping excess weight off of the train.

Broken all day again today. Whole ride team stood outside for most of morning but by afternoon left 2 staff there to inform guests. Were shunting trains around in the last hour of the day. A couple of launches by mechanics on 1 train op in the final 30mins of day but never opened to guests.

is this back on yet as I'm going there tomorrow?

It is no longer on Thorpe Parks scroller on their website saying it's unavailable (there's no scroller at the moment anyways). When driving by today at around 3:30 a car went over the top hat but I couldn't make out if it had people on or not so there's a good chance it will be working but wouldn't like to jinx it.

It's open. Was riding it today.

They're there for staffing of the ride, that's it.

If you hate the idea of 5-6 staff members outside Stealth, you'll be physically sick to see 9-11 Air staff members creating a human wall outside the Air shop when that's down.

They're there for staffing of the ride, that's it.

Well they shouldn't be. That is a stupidly rigid remit and a daft way to run anything.

Reinforces my opinion (of a complete outsider who has no idea exactly how the staffing works) that from a management point of view Merlin are pretty hopeless. Across all the parks it always seems to me that things are not under the direct control of anyone, the presentation of specific areas of the park seems to be no one in particulars responsibility which allows standards to drop bellow what I consider acceptable.

It's not particularly daft - if the ride has any hope of opening, they'll have staff there. They won't move them to other rides, which may already be properly staffed, or the staff themselves are not trained on. It gives enough people to ensure that every guest is spoken to who approaches them, and ensures no guests goes into that area. Means that once a ride is available, they have the staff to do their checks and reopen as soon as possible, rather than having to try and find them, ensure that they can be taken off (they could be covering someones break), ensure the break pattern for that ride is correct, that you have appropriate staffing levels for them to run etc.

Presentation wise - there is not much they can do whilst rides down during the day. Clean trains (but that'll be in engineering, so that's a no go). Litterpick queueline (but that'll be done already). Other things they won't be trained on, or have specific depts - like Landscape, Park Presentations (or whatever they call their cleaners). They'll be busy elsewhere.

It might look a bit messy to the outsiders, but it is the easiest, simplest, and best way of going about things. Plus, it's not like the staff cost them a lot anyway.

It's not particularly daft - if the ride has any hope of opening, they'll have staff there.......

Agree with that, they should not be wandering off elsewhere - they need to be ready for ride reopening. But

ntation wise - there is not much they can do whilst rides down during the day. Clean trains (but that'll be in engineering, so that's a no go). Litterpick queueline (but that'll be done already). Other things they won't be trained on, or have specific depts - like Landscape, Park Presentations (or whatever they call their cleaners). They'll be busy elsewhere.

I disagree with that massively. This time last year you could write your name in the grime on Inferno's walls. Stealth's queueline greenery is always covered in crap. If the people safely launching me on these things aren't capable of being trained on the litter picker, j cloth and duster I'm quite concerned!

There is just a lack of overall pride in in presentation which should be driven by someone in each area.

Appear to have wandered off topic. Yay, Stealth is open!