Coaster Posted April 22, 2015 Report Share Posted April 22, 2015 Thorpe are becoming one of the worst operated parks in the country. The amount of downtime this year is horrific, I've never seen anything quite like it before - whilst they've never been the best with ride availability, I haven't ever seen such a poor first few months of a season (we are now nearing May and rides are still not open) and, in my opinion they are declining rapidly in terms of guest experience. Constantly saying "we have passed your comments onto the relevant department" and "rides are subject availability" doesn't cover the fact that something is not right. TraX and Project LC 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPJames Posted April 22, 2015 Report Share Posted April 22, 2015 It's at a point where visiting on an off peak day just doesn't seem worth it anymore; on an average Sunday the queues are relatively similar or only a tiny bit longer than an off peak day due to two train operation opposed to one train on off peak days. Plus, on a Sunday you get the extra hour of ride time at the end of the day when the park is completely dead. At the end of the day, the park should be running full capacity on all rides regardless of whether it's peak or off peak as there is always enough demand for full capacity on the rollercoasters nowadays. The park has reached a point where it's busy enough on off peak days for two train operation as if they operate on one train, there is no longer the distinction needed between weekdays and weekends. The ONLY excuse which should be accepted is due to a technical fault, thorpe park and merlin earn more than enough money to be running full capacity on rides, it's only greedy to operate on one train, especially when there are long queues(30mins+) as thorpe park will earn plenty of money regardless of whether they are running full capacity on the rollercoasters or not. I'm wondering if it's something to do with Merlin's budget cuts; Chessington has the whole of Wild Asia closed off until 11am and the whole of Mystic East and Land of the dragons(bar fury) closed until 12pm on off peak days). Alton towers has ridiculously staggered openings this year on major rides on both peak and off peak days and thorpe's operations and ride reliability are going increasingly downhill. It's certainly not a great start to the year for merlin, the investments as a whole this year have been pretty poor as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted April 22, 2015 Report Share Posted April 22, 2015 People saying it's the worst they've ever seen clearly never went between 2005-2009... JoshC., AstroDan and TraX 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian-S Posted April 22, 2015 Report Share Posted April 22, 2015 What was it like back then? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coaster Posted April 22, 2015 Report Share Posted April 22, 2015 People saying it's the worst they've ever seen clearly never went between 2005-2009...I did, but not as often as I do now and I think I was lucky most of the time apart from Saw's opening weekend (which had all coasters down at one point if I remember correctly!)I'm sure that running one train on quiet days is a way to artificially inflate queue times to sell Fastrack, and to save on maintenence costs etc. It's not on and they don't have any reason to do this, they make millions already! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TraX Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 What was it like back then? Rush and Slammer in 2005 were a disaster. Rush closed almost straight away after 2 or so rides, and the S&S handover was literally right before. Slammer well.. hit the press for it's inability to know exactly which way it's balanced, as long as it was balanced. Then came Stealth and the park trying to get their heads around how to deal with the constant rollbacks.. The websites from 2005 also had a ride downtime section, which pretty much always had something in, until the park realized that wasn't the way forward advertising their downtime, it's much better to get the paying guests in the park first. There were high hopes across the park, as engineering got the huge new workshop built, that the downtime would end. Sadly Thorpe just seem to suffer from it. Again you'd think someone would look for the reason. Of course there is, and has been a lot of good too. It certainly has gotten better and IMO their main issue now is they got lazy. Everyone is aware of Thorpe Parks reputation for downtime, as they are of Chessington's current dreadful state, but from my experience there are way to many micro-managers passing the buck, slapping ridiculous rules and regulations everywhere, or H&S knee jerk reactions, which often contradict themselves. I'm still baffled that such an excellent, reliable B&M addition can't even get a water skim effect working, when so many coasters around the world have this no problem. Sloppy. I hate to rant, or be negative on the subject, but someone needs to step in. JoshC., Altitude, TPJames and 2 others 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshC. Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 One thing I absolutely hate about the one train operation at the moment is how on social media, they say they will add second trains "when there's demand". In most cases, there is always demand - anything above a 15-20 minute queue, and they really should start whacking out a second train. It surely must be a smokescreen behind the actual reason (they can't be serious in saying a ride with an hour long queue doesn't have enough demand, for example?), but it makes matters seem worse to be honest.. In fairness though, when I've visited this year, the number of trains has rarely been a problem (on the one weekend I went, all coasters except Saw were on maximum capacity I believe). So it does happen, just not enough as it should. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnD Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 Thorpe has always had poor reliability, in about 10 visits between 2007-09 I only had one day with all rides open. I think there were only 27 days without at least one ride closed in the entire 2007 season. Things got a little better for a while, but I don't think their maintenance team has ever really had sufficient resources to cope with the number of problematic rides they have. The result is frequent downtime and the inability to get all rides open on full capacity. Keeping rides on 1 train despite long queues is another issue entirely, and is absolutely infuriating. I'm yet to visit Thorpe this season, but I'm not really enthusiastic about getting there if there's going to be several rides closed and long queues on the coasters, regardless of what day I visit. AstroDan 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Altitude Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 On Tuesday this week, Swarm was on one train with a 25 minute queue. They had hardly any staff on the ride either, so little that they couldn't open the baggage booth! We had to leave our belongings on display in the station next to the gates, which I really didn't feel comfortable with as you can reach over the gates easily. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Tuckwell Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 And while there is no one that can be held to account for this appalling management, this will continue. It's not like they're even quick to respond or defend the position. I mean, if they just held their hands up and said "do you know what guys and gals, we need to run with 1 train operations to save money and turn a profit, otherwise we would go under and the park wouldn't exist for you enjoy at all - this is the lesser of the 2 evils", I for one would have so much more respect than them hiding behind the smokescreens of middle management, incompetence, poor training and poor commercial practices. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TPJames Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 On Tuesday this week, Swarm was on one train with a 25 minute queue. They had hardly any staff on the ride either, so little that they couldn't open the baggage booth! We had to leave our belongings on display in the station next to the gates, which I really didn't feel comfortable with as you can reach over the gates easily.When it was 65minutes on monday, the baggage booth was also closed. Maybe the reason the 2nd train wasn't on was due to not enough staff to open the baggage booth? If so, it's appalling thorpe don't hire enough staff incase a second train was needed.On one train operation, the baggage hold is always closed, so what you experienced is regular to a normal occurance. It's yet another way the park try to save money by cutting down on staff(as does chessington e.g one man op on monkey swinger) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian-S Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 And yet today, the longest queue I saw all day on queue times was 20 minutes for Colossus, admittedly I wasn't camped out on the site watching it 24/7, just occassinally dropping in at relevant times, but it begs the question, what changed or was it just a blip? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coaster Posted April 23, 2015 Report Share Posted April 23, 2015 And yet today, the longest queue I saw all day on queue times was 20 minutes for Colossus, admittedly I wasn't camped out on the site watching it 24/7, just occassinally dropping in at relevant times, but it begs the question, what changed or was it just a blip? The park was probably just quieter, unless they were actually running coasters on two! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian-S Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 Probably the former, just now 2 hours for Colossus, over and hour for everything else. On an overcast, chilly, miserable April day. Have the queues ever hit 5 hours in the Summer before? LOL. Get your **** together Merlin otherwise people won't return. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kerfuffle Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 LOL. Get your **** together Merlin otherwise people won't return. I really wish people would stop blaming everything on Merlin. Why the heck in so many threads does it have to be "Merlin did this...Merlin did that...Merlin suck at this...Merlin suck at everything"? As a Merlin employee, I can clearly see the GOOD the company are doing for us - to entertain, amuse, baffle, intimidate and give others a good time and provide long-lasting memories. Seriously. To anyone who go out of their way on this forum to throw never ending negativity at Merlin...grow a pair and just let this company do what they have to do, because whatever it is, I'm sure they know what they're doing. J.S217 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deleted Users Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 Yeah good on Merlin for even having 1 train running! #feelingblessed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian-S Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 Merlin operate the parks, so the buck stops with them. You'll notice nobody really blames the employees, ride operators etc. because most people with half a brain cell know they are only doing the best they can within the budgets/constraints set by Merlin. We even understand when rides run on reduced capacity for genuine reasons. If nobody makes Merlin aware of their grievences, then how will Merlin know their customers are not happy with the service they provide? If you are a Merlin employee, then I suggest you send the upper management links to sites such as this so they can read up on things, because the standard cut and paste team defending them on sites like trip advisor make it seem that complaints are not being passed up the food chain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshC. Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 I really wish people would stop blaming everything on Merlin. Why the heck in so many threads does it have to be "Merlin did this...Merlin did that...Merlin suck at this...Merlin suck at everything"? As a Merlin employee, I can clearly see the GOOD the company are doing for us - to entertain, amuse, baffle, intimidate and give others a good time and provide long-lasting memories. Seriously. To anyone who go out of their way on this forum to throw never ending negativity at Merlin...grow a pair and just let this company do what they have to do, because whatever it is, I'm sure they know what they're doing. You see, this sort of comment is one that swings to the complete other extreme. Yes, Merlin do good things, but it doesn't mean that they don't do bad things. Never ending negativity is silly, but so is never ending positivity (unless, of course, there are no real negatives, though unfortunately there are negatives with Merlin). Let's face it, regardless of how much good Merlin are doing, if queues are an hour long and they aren't adding on a second train to a coaster, that IS poor. With regards to the earlier comment about today's queues, maybe I'm just 'used' to long queue times at Thorpe, but an hour for the main rides and two hours for Colossus on reduced capacity (which would presumably be about an hour if it had two trains) isn't exactly unusual or ridiculously long for a Saturday outside of the holiday period... Even in the busiest periods, queues haven't even exceeded 3 hours in my experiences over the years, so to suggest anything over that is a ridiculous over-exaggeration in my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian-S Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 That's why I asked about queue lenghts during Summer, to me it seems slightly on the poor side given the time of year and weather today (I could understand a 2+ hour wait on the August bank holiday, but not an overcast April day), but I have nothing to compare it too, the only time I've been to a park during super-peak times was Paultons last Summer and the longest we waited for anything was 20 minutes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Project LC Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 For what thorpe park is all the throughputs are too low. The only ride that has what I would consider a decent throughput is The Swarm. The others are just way too low. They need rides in the 1500pph where as their highest is 1200pph. Saw and storm surge are just a joke. They knew they had problems with queues when they installed those so its just madness that they chose them. Ill just hope WC16 is a 1700pph + thing. That should help, however I suspect that it wont even be close to that. Ian-S 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroDan Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 The issue of trains running is more a Thorpe issue as it's not the case at Alton Towers. Surely Thorpe need technical service shifts to start earlier? I know Alton Towers have cuts of their own but today Nemesis throughput was over consistently high with minimal stacking on 2, Smiler consistently 1000pph+ on 4 trains, Oblivion running 6 shuttles with 1300+, Air 3 crafts 1200+ etc... The only low capacity at ATR today was Thirteen as they're without 1 train due to technical issues. No rides were closed... Yet at Thorpe... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coaster Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 It's not completely down to Merlin, but at the end of the day it's them who give the budgets for maintenence staff etc, and Thorpe are clearly struggling at the moment so I would have thought that more money would be allocated (if that's how it works, this is just guesswork). Furthermore, if I owned the park then I would want to know why there were so many rides closed as well as a high level of downtime, and would strive to get them open as quickly as possible. Without inside knowledge of the park it's impossible to know whether anything could be done, or if they are awaiting parts etc but to the public it just looks like the rides have been left without the park or company caring. I won't even begin to work out what the underlying problem with Thorpe's maintenence is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was down to not having enough money, which ultimately comes down to Merlin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitchada04 Posted April 25, 2015 Report Share Posted April 25, 2015 The only time the system has hit 140 minutes is at Fright Nights and not even all of them (and that's the parks busiest time). And even then it's not that they don't post anything over 140, they can't! The drop down box goes up in fives from 5 to 140 minutes. The old system couldn't show 3 digit numbers, I remember Colossus being 99 minutes lots of the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoshC. Posted April 26, 2015 Report Share Posted April 26, 2015 The issue of trains running is more a Thorpe issue as it's not the case at Alton Towers. Surely Thorpe need technical service shifts to start earlier?. Last season, technical service shifts were starting at 6am (and we still had similar issues of one train service, etc.). Maybe it's a case of they just need more people on? Whatever it is, it does seem like it simply does boil down to not enough funds being pumped into maintenance.. Also Thorpe never posts any waits above 2hours and twenty minutes, I expect they have gone well above this on busy summer days. Not saying that they haven't gone above that, but I genuinely can't remember seen / heard / experienced queues of over 140 minutes in summer, despite going on really busy days. The only times I remember queues reaching that length are around the openings of rides or during busy Fright Nights* dates (and even then, that's only been for one attraction, not all the attractions). *I'm ignoring last year's Fright Nights with quoted 3-4 hour standby queues during Reserve n Ride. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AstroDan Posted April 26, 2015 Report Share Posted April 26, 2015 Perhaps Thorpe choose to save money by having a less than ideal technical team whilst Alton Towers choose to close at 5pm most of the time. Either way it's irritating. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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