pluk Posted October 17, 2013 Report Share Posted October 17, 2013 Yes, but it is a gamble. There is no way you can have any idea of the wait time until you join the back of it. From my limited experience if they are holding the single rider queue of more than a few people at the bottom of the stairs then join the main queue instead. If you get through to the post bag drop single rider and it is coming down the stairs at all it will be at least half hour. They are good with filling it, but not perfect. I had a bit of a go at the batcher for twice sending empty seats, even as when we pointed out there were empty ones he said'no, there's four there' but when the train came back in sure enough there were empty seats. In fairness after that mistake he did release a couple of us extra on to the next train, it pays to keep an eye on it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted October 17, 2013 Report Share Posted October 17, 2013 Looks fab at night... From TowersStreet EC! and Kerfuffle 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pluk Posted October 17, 2013 Report Share Posted October 17, 2013 Looks good but it is not still closed at the moment? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted October 17, 2013 Report Share Posted October 17, 2013 I thought it was only due to be closed Mon/Tues? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
James2 Posted October 17, 2013 Report Share Posted October 17, 2013 I'm really hoping the "Flasher" actually does something at night. Maybe the best is yet to come as far as the ride experience goes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pluk Posted October 17, 2013 Report Share Posted October 17, 2013 TowersStreet fb today said it was still closed while the supports are fiddled with. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted October 17, 2013 Report Share Posted October 17, 2013 I think it did reopen.. guess it went down again. Its ok though because all new rides do this... oh wait no they don't Inferno 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 I don't think many rides have a really badly done ground survey though... Really, Saw should've flagged stuff with weak ground shifting and causing the ride some problems... But for some reason, it didn't... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 I dont think Saws had any problem like this to be fair, certainly not had work like this has needed throughout the season. I guess there will be alot more carried out over closed season too Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 Nah, course Saw hasn't had the same level of issue, but I'm referring to the infamous sinking support at the base of the main drop which is still a killer... The work on Smiler is because the entire SITE is like that... Because they clearly hired idiots... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marc Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 I'm not too sure on Saw now.. My last few rides have been quite smooth I'm beginning to wonder if its more a car thing. I dont think thats down to sinking as it was like that from day 1. Inferno 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark9 Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 Its ok though because all new rides do this... oh wait no they don't such wit what homour much funny Tom, Cornflakes, Benin and 1 other 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inferno Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 I'm not too sure on Saw now.. My last few rides have been quite smooth I'm beginning to wonder if its more a car thing. I dont think thats down to sinking as it was like that from day 1. I am usually the first to slate Saw for how rough it is... But my couple of rides on it at the weekend were literally as smooth as The Swarm! I have no idea what's happened! Must be down to the individual cars I suppose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 Pretty certain smiler was open for the entire of yesterday? It looks very good in the dark though. Marmaliser provides almost entire of the area lighting, therefore making it look rather nice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattgwise Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 I'm not too sure on Saw now.. My last few rides have been quite smooth I'm beginning to wonder if its more a car thing. I dont think thats down to sinking as it was like that from day 1. I have to say all four of my rides last Friday were also smooth throughout the whole ride. No jolt on the main drop at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrightNights04 Posted October 18, 2013 Report Share Posted October 18, 2013 I'm getting corrected on 25th October for the first time! I can't wait!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mah boi Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 This is more Gerstlauer related than The Smiler related, but I'll post it here. While I was looking through the Infinity coaster brochure I saw that a mistake was made on one of the words (bottom left of the image where the 2 lines and arrow is). Link to brochure: http://www.gerstlauer-rides.de/assets/downloads/brochures/Infinity-Coaster.pdf Link to Infinity coaster page: http://www.gerstlauer-rides.de/products/roller-coasters/infinity-coaster/#Modelle MarkC 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveJ Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 Well there's no mistake in "magnetic retarding brakes"? What did you think it was supposed to say? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 Retardation is the technical term for an object losing speed or 'deceleration'... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mah boi Posted October 19, 2013 Report Share Posted October 19, 2013 Well there's no mistake in "magnetic retarding brakes"? What did you think it was supposed to say? Retardation is the technical term for an object losing speed or 'deceleration'... Whoops, I didn't know it was meant to mean that. I thought it was meant to say magnetic retracting brakes, since that is what the brakes do. Thanks for telling me the definition of the word in other terms. FrightNights04 and SteveJ 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MattyMoo Posted October 23, 2013 Report Share Posted October 23, 2013 Rode the Smiler for the first time yesterday - decided to head straight for it in the morning just in case it decided to misbehave. The sheer size and integrity of the thing is quite overwhelming when you see it. I won't ramble on too much, but: Even walking round it (without queuing) - that enclosed cattle pen goes on for-ev-er, I can't imagine having to queue for 60 mins plus like that (hence why I'll never visit a theme park on a peak day!) Drainage does seem to be a bit of an issue in parts of the queue Area on the whole though is very impressive as I say - very imposing and so dense in terms of track! Pre-loading area of the station would be impressive except one of the projectors had a blue screen showing "no input" which rather killed the effect! Surely that should've been spotted on a walk round in the morning as we were literally the first batch of people on? I do love the clinical look of the main station, and the lights when you leave but the station is almost "too" sparse? And particularly unappealing from the outside The ride itself was pretty brilliant I have to say - even with playing the game I had no real idea where I was heading next,other than there was going to be a bit of respite in a minute for the vertical lift hill Second section - I definitely felt that "jolt" that everyone talks about, ouch! Other than that though, I thought the ride was pretty smooth - seemed far less rough than Saw For what AT have achieved in such a comparatively small area, is to be commended in my view. I did come off the ride feeling rather disorientated, and, other than that jolt - couldn't really fault it from start to finish. I actually like the fact that after the vertical lift hill, there isn't a beyond vertical drop as it would be too obvious Loved the shop (how often can you say that...!), attention to detail is brilliant and Smiler Shop TV is spot on. Particularly liked the Smiler pen bit where the presenter uses it to write "Smile smile smile smile" over and over. Bought myself a cushion (£15) cos it matches our yellow sofa and a paperweight (reduced to £18 from £40!) as I thought that was a fair price! Loved the hype in the queue line, good mix of first time riders and also re-riders - certainly has people talking, which is good. And as a sidenote - I'm not a Rita fan anyway (Stealth ftw) - but that scaffolding in Dark Forest looks absolutely TERRIBLE. Th13teen broke down yesterday but other than that, all rides behaved themslves - and as any FB fwends would have seen, Sonic had longer queues than Smiler for a fair bit of the afternoon, peaking at 70 - yes, 70 - minutes against Smiler's 50. All other rides were 0-30 all day really, with the majority being 0-10. Sidders, Whiteknuckle, Cornflakes and 2 others 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Posted October 24, 2013 Report Share Posted October 24, 2013 Went up for scarefest last two days, was really good however half of The Smiler seems to be broken? The Giggler, The Innoculator and more annoyingly, The Flasher! The one time of year The Flasher would of had any effect on the ride and it's broken/not turned on?! As Matt said above, one of the projectors was turning off and on displaying "EPSON" and "Press ? For help" - bit of a kill joy. Also what is with the annoying strobe that randomly goes off, it's so irritating! The first day was really good smiler terms not a single shutdown that I saw, the same can't be said for the second day. We headed over upon arrival to see a train stuck at the top of the second lift with one also at the bottom of the second lift. After excitingly watching reversing down the lift ( and watching everyone crap their pants when it dropped several feet) we decided to head off elsewhere. We came back a few hours later and it was shut yet again couple hours later it was shut yet again, we decided to wait as it was dark and we loved it in the dark, it opened, 10 minutes later " we are sorry to announce due to recent delays we will be removing a train from the circuit which will greatly lengthen your queue time" - never again will I queue for Smiler on 3 trains, it was the most depressing thing I've ever endured. Moving what felt like inches every 5 minutes. After about 45 minutes and moving a total of about 50 meters they made an announcement they would be adding a 4th train which everyone was excited about. It reopened after 10 minutes of faffing about, I've never heard so many cheers that a ride had reopened before. We thought this would greatly improve the movement in the queue. We were wrong. Very wrong. We moved exactly the same as before and eventually what was a 30 minute queue the day before turned into a 100 minute queue. So the two days varies quite some. Smiler is still an interesting ride operationally FrightNights04 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inferno Posted October 24, 2013 Report Share Posted October 24, 2013 The cheer when it re-opens always cracks me up as well! I agree about the flasher, that would be great in the dark. They're obviously having an absolute nightmare with this ride I found the Smiler absolutely incredible in the dark! The Marmaliser's screen does light up the entire area FrightNights04 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benin Posted October 25, 2013 Report Share Posted October 25, 2013 Well, it's not like Merlin parks have a fantastic reputation for keeping effects working now is it? I doubt the Flasher would be that good at night anyway because it doesn't 'flash', just turns on for a few seconds and then back off again... Pointless... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inferno Posted October 25, 2013 Report Share Posted October 25, 2013 I agree that a strobe would be better, but the solid light would still be pretty blinding for those on the ride though. Th13teen's camera blinds you as it flashes at night, so imagine what the Flasher would be like! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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