SAW: The Ride

[planenut]

As Josh said, SRQ cannot work with some rides but a few years back, Nemessis Inferno allowed singles to join from the exit side but this became complicated with increase in all the other pass holders.

Swarm is not easy as Fastracks will attest to when joining with at least six train loads still ahead.

Colossus again became complicated with the additional passholders waiting around the exit.

Difficult for staff on many occasions having to deal with various passholders when under pressure to maintain throughput.

[Cal]

I can't see it working on Colossus, Inferno and Swarm.  I can see it working on Saw and Stealth, my only concern is Saw doesn't always have a batcher so it would require an extra member of staff unless they just close the queue if they don't have a batcher on a particular day? 

 

I can also see it working on some of the flats. I used to use the SRQ for Samurai and Vortex quite often and they worked quite well.

 

Stealth would work the best. There's always someone batching and they have a spare queue to use. I'm unsure of the reason it was removed? 

[Inferno]

5 hours ago, Mark9 said:

I feel like I'm living in the past.

😂 It is funny how the same things seem to go round and round isn’t it.

 

I’m sure the same discussion has happened on here several times over the last 20 years.

 

I agree though - if they want to actually make single rider work, they need to make some real changes to the queues and stations.
 

Every time this gets trialled, it’s well received but ultimately fails because it’s too chaotic without the appropriate fencing / queues etc.

 

Hopefully this time will be different and they’ll spent a little money on it.

 

Merlin’s whiplash management isn’t really suited to this sort of thing though, because give it a few months and someone will ask “why are we spending money on batchers”, and away the position will go, along with single rider again…

Similarly to what happened with the Detonator photo kiosk, and the Inferno queue line shop for example 🙄

[Matt N]

Something very interesting was happening on Saw today that I've never actually seen before on any of my previous Thorpe visits.

 

The ride appeared to be running on substantially reduced capacity; only 5 cars appeared to be running, and the throughput was around 350pph (363pph across 10 readings, to be exact; my usual timing of Saw tends to be around 700-750pph, for some idea), with the interval between dual dispatches averaging just over 2.5 minutes across 10 readings. The park were even announcing over the intercom that the ride was on "reduced capacity", and Saw's queue time loitered in the 90-120 minute for most of the day.

 

The interesting thing was, however, that while there were cars occupying both onload stations (I did wonder whether "reduced capacity" meant one station operation like Oblivion at Alton Towers sometimes runs, but this was not the case), the offload area was always completely empty for a period of 2 minutes or more... despite there always being a car filled with riders waiting to get off stacking immediately prior to it. Even though there was a car waiting behind it to offload people, it wasn't allowed to move into the offload area for a pretty long period of time, instead being stacked there for 2 minutes or more until another car came in behind it. This left the offload area completely empty for a good 2 minutes or so.

 

I also noticed that there was a wait of more than a minute to open the airgates even once both cars had arrived into the onload area, and once guests were loaded and restraints were checked, staff were also having to wait a bit before being able to dispatch a dual dispatch. The staff were as prompt at checking restraints as ever, but there seemed to be a fair amount of waiting before they could open the airgates and another extra bit of waiting before they could dispatch.

 

Does anyone know why this is, out of interest? I've never seen this happen before on any of my prior visits to Thorpe, and even on slightly reduced capacity, I wouldn't normally expect those types of operating procedures on Saw.

 

[RobF]

Its to regulate the service on reduced ride cars ….. saw is a duel unload, so cant unload 1 car at a time, on 5 cars every 6th dispatch will result in an extended wait to enable the unload.

 

why its on so few cars who knows, off peak strip downs ?

[Inferno]

Interesting!

 

I’ve only ever really seen this sort of thing happening on Slammer, where I believe they had to wait for the air pressure to build each time enough before it could dispatch - resulting in quite a lot of standing around and time wasting during the loading!

There was also all the faff trying to balance each side of the arm with the other 🙄 nightmare.

 

Clearly that isn’t the reason for Saw, but would love to know what that was about.

 

out of interest, how many cars does Saw have, and how many usually run?

[Matt N]

5 minutes ago, Inferno said:

out of interest, how many cars does Saw have, and how many usually run?

I could be wrong here, but I think that it has 8 in total and usually runs 7. That's definitely a number I remember hearing somewhere.

[JoshC.]

Saw has 8 cars. It used to run all 8 until a few years back (my memory is hazy...I want to say like 2018/9, but could be wrong there). I believe there was some operational reasoning behind it; the throughput on 8 isn't substantially greater than on 7 for the additional maintenance and engineering costs sounds plausible enough, but I could be pulling that out of my backside.

 

5 is the bare minimum that Saw runs on. To run it on that on a Saturday is...interesting. It would be very unusual for the park to actively choose to run it on 5 on a weekend imo, especially when the park have been largely very good at running rides on a suitable capacity the last couple of years in particular. But equally, it would be unusual for at least 2 cars to be out of order (depending on if the 8th car is also receiving maintenance as part of a cycle).

 

So yeah, unusual.

[Cal]

Anyone thats been recently, how has Saws single rider been running? Is it still there? 

[coasterverse]

1 hour ago, ThorpeAddict said:

Anyone thats been recently, how has Saws single rider been running? Is it still there? 

 

I was there yesterday and I must admit I didn't see anything advertising it. It could've just been me not paying attention, but there were no signs outside of the queueline that stated such.

 

But then again, yesterday it was running on reduced capacity and the main queue were directed up the fast track side of the staircase and the main left side was totally unused for whatever reason, so perhaps Fast Track/Single Rider just wasn't in operation yesterday but that's anyone's guess.

[Cal]

Thanks! That's interesting. The Single Rider queue would be using the right side of the stairs so sounds like they've ditched it already which is a shame

[john45]

yeah 

[Jack29]

Operations were really struggling today with only 5 cars. Winter maintenance must have over run on the remaining 3 cars, hope this is sorted asap as throughput isn't great at the best of times.

 

[MattyMoo]

Just a note to say don't wear your Mardi Gras beads on SAW as I lost both of my sets in one of the final dip before the break run entering the station. Saw them rise up in front of my very eyes and then they were gone 😆

 

Also, I would rate our ride on SAW as "OK" which really is high praise. Leaning forwards in the restraint definitely helps, and maybe looking over to the Exodus construction site maybe distracted me from what was happening also.

[coasterverse]

9 hours ago, MattyMoo said:

Leaning forwards in the restraint definitely helps

 

Maybe this is why I’ve never found it massively uncomfortable? By habit I always lean forward on rollercoasters so maybe that’s why it’s perfectly bearable for me 🤣

[Glitch]

Is SAW the best IP Merlin have got? Who would have thought we'd still be here releasing Saw Movies..... Whoever decided to pick this IP should be held at the same level of respect as John Wardley.

 

[tactic]

It broke…

 

In all seriousness I wonder what they are doing there. Looks like they are screwing part of the track where 2 pieces intersect, could this be a possible issue, I don’t know much about how rollercoaster maintenance works.

[MattyMoo]

Why oh why oh why would you post this - scheduled or otherwise - when the ride is still closed?

[jimbeam4]

Do we know how long its been closed for and when it will re open? I havn't seen much news on it 

[MattyMoo]

Just to advise you can now play a game again because SAW: THE RIDE is now OPEN.

[Parm Pap]

Always, I wanna be with you, and have the theme with you, and run in harmony harmony oh well, cut the cable

[MattyMoo]

 

4 hours ago, Parm Pap said:

Always, I wanna be with you, and have the theme with you, and run in harmony harmony oh well, cut the cable

 

 

The E in your avatar evidently stands for Erasure!

[planenut]

Due to me being forced during a break in Stealth operation, I ventured over to Saw. I used the SRQ but the whole operation was extremely slow taking at least thirty minutes. There seemed to be people all over the place but not progressing anywhere. Turns out it would have been quicker to use the normal queue, but baggage and loading queues seemed to be constantly vying with each other. Several times, trains partially empty were sat waiting.

[Cal]

Funnily enough, I noticed the exact same on my last visit on 24th. 

 

Was in the SRQ and just assumed that the batcher couldn't keep up as noticed trains sitting there at points waiting for riders. As I got closer though, I noticed it wasn't the batcher but it was the baggage hold that couldn't keep up causing a delay in getting people through. 

 

Never seen that happen on SAW before in all my years of visiting so was a strange one. 

[Inferno]

I think the the baggage holds were always a bit daft on Saw, and it was the same with Stealth. They're too close to the batching area, meaning all of a sudden everyone has to get to the bag window then immediately be batched. It is always too much of a rush and too much going on at once.

 

on the likes of Swarm and Wickerman they were built in a better place, because there's plenty of time between bag faff and station faff. So it could all get delayed at the bag window, but there wouldn't be any effect on the station.