The Smiler

[JackR]

Finally got a chance to ride The Smiler yesterday. The queue was 2 hours during ERT before the park even opened so I had plenty of oppertunity to gaze at the ride whilst I was queuing. It's a majorly impressive ride and the curvature of the track actually had me in awe, so from an offride perspective I thought that The Smiler was incredible.

However, I actually found The Smiler incredibly rough. It might be due to the fact that my shoulders were wedged againts the OTSR (I'm 6'3) but I felt a jolt on almost ever inversion other than the inverted drops. I'm not even lying, my ride on Rita was less rough yesterday!

[Mark9]

Maximum number of dedicated fast tracks sold currently have been 40 per hour not 200.

You can also access Smiler on some of the unlimited fast passes but the sale of those is seriously limited.

Throughput is circa 1200 on an average session according to ride staff, raising to 1300 if swift dispatch.

Watching a conga line of people with fastrack, waltzing into the Smiler fastrack queue line would speak otherwise.

[Fred]

Maximum number of dedicated fast tracks sold currently have been 40 per hour not 200.

You can also access Smiler on some of the unlimited fast passes but the sale of those is seriously limited.

Throughput is circa 1200 on an average session according to ride staff, raising to 1300 if swift dispatch.

You're misinformed I'm afraid. It originally was set at 20 per hour, raising to 40 per hour within a couple of days. Couple of weeks later it changed to 100 every half hour timeslot. Smiler is also on platinum (unlimited - 100 people per day) and Gold (one ride, 250 per day).

The most the staff have ever managed to dispatch in an hour is 67 vehicles. That's 1072 if it was full. They usually get 60 per hour.

[pluk]

Over £10,000 a day for the single tickets alone then. They have clearly become reliant on this income for the park to make a profit they are happy with, regardless of what it does to guest experience and satisfaction.

[Deleted Users]

You're misinformed I'm afraid. It originally was set at 20 per hour, raising to 40 per hour within a couple of days. Couple of weeks later it changed to 100 every half hour timeslot. Smiler is also on platinum (unlimited - 100 people per day) and Gold (one ride, 250 per day).

The most the staff have ever managed to dispatch in an hour is 67 vehicles. That's 1072 if it was full. They usually get 60 per hour.

Out of interest, do you know if the amount of fast track has any relationship to the throughput or is it just arbitrary numbers? Also any comparison to the other coasters would be great. The only coasters that seem to be running efficiently this year are 13 and Nemesis.

[Fred]

They have a cap of 25% of daily throughput, so I imagine smiler is right at that point due to the natural popularity of the fastrack for it.

Other rides are different, in that they mainly sell non-time slotted tickets so people can all turn up at once if they want, plus chances of them selling out on most days is unlikely. However, they've got a cap of 25% of daily throughput. Most are fair bit lower though.

[JohnD]

That's all very well, but Rita, Oblivion and RMT have all been running well below their theoretical throughput this year - Rita seems to be because of slow staff, but Oblivion and RMT have both seen changes to operating procedure that reduce efficiency. Earlier this year Oblivion was getting less than 1000/hour - even if the fastrack allocation is based on a far more conservative 1200/hr it would still be more than 25% of the throughput they were actually getting.

The allocations are only part of the overall picture too - there's also the priority passes they hand out whenever anything breaks down or anyone complains about pretty much anything, plus however many disabled guests there are. Then of course there's the problem of people naturally wanting to use fastrack during the busiest times of the day - tickets bought in the morning may be saved until the queues are longer, with few people using fastrack late in the day after queues start to shorten. A daily allocation of 25%/hour becomes around 40% at peak times.

Going back to Oblivion as an example, during scarefest last year there were times when fastrack had exclusive use of bays B1-B4 (still with a wait of 20 minutes or more), whilst A1-A4 were shared between disabled guests and the main queue. This means that out of every 32 seat dispatch only 12-16 seats were filled from the main queue, which was advertised as 2 hours.

[Coaster]

Oblivion and RMT have both seen changes to operating procedure that reduce efficiency. Earlier this year Oblivion was getting less than 1000/hour

What has changed about Oblivion's operating procedure?

This is very poor if it is true, as the throughput for Oblivion has always been quite high.

[JohnD]

For a while last season they were checking all the restraints twice (2 hosts would check both rows on every shuttle), then this changed to giving a hand signal before checking the row. This didn't slow things down too much, but they’ve also been waiting for everyone to leave the station before opening the air gates, which obviously takes quite a long time as people crowd round the tiny bag cages trying to get their stuff. The impact on throughput has been massive – it means there are always 4 shuttles sat on the brakes for quite a long time before each dispatch.

On my most recent it was much better as they weren't waiting for everyone to leave the station, but I've not been back in quite a while so I'm not sure if it's a permanent change.

[Coaster]

^ I did notice actually when I was there in April that we were sitting on the brake run for a very long time (no break down).

Hopefully it will have improved by Scarefest, poor ride operations and me don't go!

[JoshC.]

Had a few discussions with Turtle, Mark9, Dan9, and we suggested that they should've had an offload platform.

Just as a thought, do any other Gerstlauers other than Saw have offload platforms (having only ridden Saw, I genuinely have no idea).

I remember hearing that Saw was, in a way, a prototype due to the dual loading/offloading, but due to all the troubles Saw had, they probably wouldn't do it again. Not sure if that included the offload station though?

Might be the reason why they didn't include an offload platform though. Smiler being a prototype in itself, they might have though it best to not go back to territory they found troublesome in the past?

[Ricky]

They could of asked for help by Intamin or B&M they both have very well put together load and offload stations and both even have perfected dual stations!

[JohnD]

I don't think an offload platform would make a lot of difference. The gates open very soon after the train comes to a stop, and loading is very quick thanks to the bag room. The problem with having dual loading would be that there's no space for the 2nd train to wait while the first goes round the indoor section and I'm not sure if you could hold another train before the lift either, so you'd probably have to wait for one train to clear the lift entirely before the 2nd could even leave the station. I suspect the best they could have done with the available space would have been to alternate between dual loading and single loading, using the front station as a block brake every other dispatch.

It would have been far easier to get higher throughput if they'd just designed a longer train. Adding one more row would have boosted capacity to over 1200/hr, and the extra weight of the train could have reduced the chance of it stalling.

[Benin]

Just as a thought, do any other Gerstlauers other than Saw have offload platforms (having only ridden Saw, I genuinely have no idea).

I remember hearing that Saw was, in a way, a prototype due to the dual loading/offloading, but due to all the troubles Saw had, they probably wouldn't do it again. Not sure if that included the offload station though?

Might be the reason why they didn't include an offload platform though. Smiler being a prototype in itself, they might have though it best to not go back to territory they found troublesome in the past?

None of the others I've ridden have one, so you might well be on to sommat...

[Coaster]

It would have been far easier to get higher throughput if they'd just designed a longer train. Adding one more row would have boosted capacity to over 1200/hr, and the extra weight of the train could have reduced the chance of it stalling.

Given the reports of the roughness in row 4, I would hate to see it if there was a row 5!

[Dan9]

Given the reports of the roughness in row 4, I would hate to see it if there was a row 5!

I've ridden it more times in row 4 than any other and I've not experienced any extra roughness at all.

Not surprising to hear about Oblivion, it wasn't being run well at all on Sunday, with every car stacking on the brake run and half the station being allocated to fastrack. What should have been a 15 minute queue was more like 35. It's a big shame to have a ride that can theoretically eat through queues ruined by silly operations; firstly Vampire, now this... I hope it doesn't become a Merlin *thing*.

[Fred]

I believe smiler can dispatch once the train has engaged the lift.. so as you see one going up lift one, the train in the station can be dispatched. Not 100% sure on this though.

Oblivion and Mine Train both have ridiculous loading procedures now. Would be nice for someone to look and be sensible with operations. Hopefully it doesn't affect any other rides.

[Mark9]

You're misinformed I'm afraid. It originally was set at 20 per hour, raising to 40 per hour within a couple of days. Couple of weeks later it changed to 100 every half hour timeslot. Smiler is also on platinum (unlimited - 100 people per day) and Gold (one ride, 250 per day).

The most the staff have ever managed to dispatch in an hour is 67 vehicles. That's 1072 if it was full. They usually get 60 per hour.

Outrageous really. I don't mind queuing for rides, particularly really good rides like The Smiler or Nemesis because I know the experience at the end is worth it. But if my queue is being artificially increased on the scale that you say it is then I won't bother visiting the park again this season. Particularly as I know across the pond, there are parks like Europa Park where I can get on better rides like Blue Fire and Wodan, safe in the knowledge that I haven't had 600 people who are too lazy or impatient to wait with the rest of us peasants queue-jump their way to the front.

[EC!]

It annoys me when loads and loads of people just plunge into fasttrack, especially on the new rides I feel it makes everyone's experience worse as they have to wait longer atleast in smaller parks like Paultons and Oakwood (I know they are quiter) there is no fasttrack to make everyones queuing time longer. Anyway I'm excited to ride it again soon, see how it compares to nemesis again because I was in the worst seat/row for both

[Coaster]

Fastrack is horrendous, but you can't really blame the guests for it.

(Stating that the guests are "too lazy to queue" etc).

The park advertise it wrongly, it sounds like something that not many people would buy to be honest.

But picture this, you've never been to towers before and you turn up to find the park packed, you probably won't be back there for a really long time! What are you going to do? Buy fastrack.

Towers are the ones to blame. They oversell it on rides with awful throughputs anyway (less than or only just 1000pph on a brand new ride is awful!) and guests using it probably don't even realise that they are stuffing up the main queue.

In an ideal world fastrack would cease to exist, however I think that as Towers/Merlin would never do this (due to greed for money mostly) they should price them highly and sell little.

It is absolutely not fair that the queues get stuffed up, but it really isn't the fault of the guests!

(Not from personal experience, I refuse to buy fastrack).

[EC!]

The parks would be so much nice with no fasttrack, or at least get a fasttrack system that gives you a specific time and not one where it lets every body crowd in at once!

[Mark9]

Fastrack is horrendous, but you can't really blame the guests for it.

(Stating that the guests are "too lazy to queue" etc).

The park advertise it wrongly, it sounds like something that not many people would buy to be honest.

But picture this, you've never been to towers before and you turn up to find the park packed, you probably won't be back there for a really long time! What are you going to do? Buy fastrack.

Towers are the ones to blame. They oversell it on rides with awful throughputs anyway (less than or only just 1000pph on a brand new ride is awful!) and guests using it probably don't even realise that they are stuffing up the main queue.

In an ideal world fastrack would cease to exist, however I think that as Towers/Merlin would never do this (due to greed for money mostly) they should price them highly and sell little.

It is absolutely not fair that the queues get stuffed up, but it really isn't the fault of the guests!

(Not from personal experience, I refuse to buy fastrack).

It is the fault of the guests. They are the ones happy enough to part with their money to use the system. We aren't like the Belgians who go to the extremes of boycotting parks because fastrack systems teach impatience and the idea that you buy your way to the front.

As I have said before, fastrack is fine to a point but not at the scale the park sells it at. Tommy had a good idea at the park that depending on how busy the park is, the prices should move around to accommodate it. You want to skip the (artificially increased) 2 hour queue? Fine, but its going to cost you £20 to do so. I'd guarantee you there are people out there that would do it. That's the kind of system that should be in place, particularly on the Smiler.

[NikhilSharma]

I was at Alton Towers yesterday, I purchased the Platinum Fast-Track, I did The Smiler 4 times!, there was a 10 minuet or less queue through the whole day which was good for fast-track, the main queue ranged from 120-80 minuets.

The ride is a fun one, it's a bit to bumpy for a new ride though. But it was enjoyable, the indoor queue is awesome!

I also really liked Sub-Terra!, it's a brilliant attraction.

[BigBobJones]

I went on the Smiler twice today, first time, the queue moved very slowly, the second time the queue moved at twice the speed.

What was different? It was after hours and there was no Fast Track in operation, so this easily shows what a negative impact Fast Track has on the normal queue.

Anyway for all of those who like the way Saw throws you around will be happy to know The Smiler is now doing this on loop 11? ( I think) it is just as powerful as Saw's first drop.

[EC!]

Towers times have just reported that The Smiler is closed and people have been evacuated from The Smiler as witnesses a bolt has supposedly sheared off make a very loud banging noise, its not known weather it was from the track or the train. but it looks like it will be closed for the rest of the day. I can't see this being a long term problem but its been evacuated so its closed.