Jump to content

The Smiler


th13teen

Recommended Posts

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!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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).

Gerstlauermistake_zpsf24902be.jpg

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

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

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 :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...