June 17, 201312 yr comment_161047 I don't see the 'it's new, give them a chance to get it working argument'. Surely it's no different and no more difficult to update than the old system? To be fair, its a massive project and all new hardware and software, things are bound to go wrong time to time. They advertise shorter queues to increase fastrack sales! Which is disgusting. No they really don't! Queue times are worked out by juding where the queue ends or handing a guest a bit of paper with the time who then hands it in when they ride.
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161056 glad to hear they started to do 2 train op on majority of the rides now about time taken them long enough
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161060 glad to hear they started to do 2 train op on majority of the rides now about time taken them long enough Yeah, Thorpe never ever run two trains on anything ever. Worse then Six Flags everytime.
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161072 Just so you know before you all jump on the ride staff for being incompetent. Queue times are regulated every 30 minutes or so to Control Operations which manually change the time. A lot of the time Control are busy doing things for every department in and around the park and don't have time to update the queue boards. If you want to blame anyone it's Operations Control.I appreciate that they may be busy, but if they are doing other things so often why have they also got the responsibility of informing the entire park of queue times? Surely the job should be done another way to make it more efficient. The new queue boards do look really good and they were working fairly well on Friday, and I do think it was a positive change for the park, but if what you're saying is true then I definitely think the system needs to be changed to work properly in the long term.
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161079 No they really don't! Queue times are worked out by juding where the queue ends or handing a guest a bit of paper with the time who then hands it in when they ride. But I've seen several occasions with an almost walk on queue advertised as around 45 minutes with someone stood outside the ride selling fastrack (they must be well aware that the queue is shorter than advertised given that it is just behind them). This happens on Saw mostly but I've seen it on Swarm.
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161089 Me too Coaster Jamie, and all the time it happens I will have difficulty believing those who say it is absolutely not done to sell fastrack. I can't sit here and say that that is why they do it and I really really hope it isn't, but they are really putting themselves in a position to be accused of of it while this keeps happening
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161091 Me too Coaster Jamie, and all the time it happens I will have difficulty believing those who say it is absolutely not done to sell fastrack. I can't sit here and say that that is why they do it and I really really hope it isn't, but they are really putting themselves in a position to be accused of of it while this keeps happening I can say that in my experience it wasn't relating to sales, but that was 4 years ago now and at a difference park... Not knowing the inner workings of Thorpe's operations, can any of us really tell why the queue times are constanly incorrect to high levels? Maybe it's a KPI thing so people can say "no, queues didn't spoil my day as I queued less than anticipated"... Of course, it might just lead to boosting sales of Fastrack... I don't truly care tbh...
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161094 I appreciate that they may be busy, but if they are doing other things so often why have they also got the responsibility of informing the entire park of queue times? Surely the job should be done another way to make it more efficient. The new queue boards do look really good and they were working fairly well on Friday, and I do think it was a positive change for the park, but if what you're saying is true then I definitely think the system needs to be changed to work properly in the long term. I had this dispute all too many times, the operator should be able to do from the control box rather than poncing about waiting for someone else to do it!
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161099 Me too Coaster Jamie, and all the time it happens I will have difficulty believing those who say it is absolutely not done to sell fastrack. I can't sit here and say that that is why they do it and I really really hope it isn't, but they are really putting themselves in a position to be accused of of it while this keeps happening On Sunday there were massives of people cutting the queues for stealth, saw and swarm when there was only a 5 minute wait anyway. However, the queue boards were all saying massive queue times!Not sure what was up with the queue boards on Sunday but at one point saw was displaying 'WAITING TIME U MINUTES'! Shame that they have got rid of the old 'brave the force of the mighty warrior in 5 mins' slogans and just replaced them with 'WAITING TIME 5 MINS'
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161102 The 'U' stands for unavailable. They do seem to have changed again to just say the time, except Flying Fish which still has its slogan
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161103 I'm kind of bored of trying to defend the park (which shouldn't need defending - it's obvious there's someone not doing their job properly here). Rides teams are not linked financially to fastrack. They receive sod all revenue from it, they don't sell it themselves and the staff will more than likely hate the fastrack system. Then again, it's down to them to ensure they're relaying accurate queue times to control, who in turn should relay accurate queue times to the boards and over the radio. They might have an issue with the connections (they always used to fail to update on the system at Chessington due to lack of signal anyway). The best way would be having the ride entrance queue times linked to the rides themselves to update, as towers has on the ride entrances that have queue boards.
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161104 The 'U' stands for unavailable. They do seem to have changed again to just say the time, except Flying Fish which still has its slogan The ride wasn't actually unavalible though- and it was displaying 90 mins earlier in the day when the queue was 5 mins!
June 17, 201312 yr comment_161140 Thanks for all the feedback guys - we appreciate that incorrect times on the Queue boards can be frustrating - for us as much as you! The new boards we have had installed for this year have had some teething issues, and we are working hard on an ongoing basis to improve these systems and get them working properly. We never display incorrect queue times on purpose
June 20, 201312 yr comment_161491 Thanks for all the feedback guys - we appreciate that incorrect times on the Queue boards can be frustrating - for us as much as you! The new boards we have had installed for this year have had some teething issues, and we are working hard on an ongoing basis to improve these systems and get them working properly. We never display incorrect queue times on purpose Reassuring. Usually though I can tell the queue by seeing where the line starts and how many trains the ride is running/what setting the flat ride is on so barely use the queue boards...fanboyism.
June 21, 201312 yr comment_161505 well It seems Thorpe Park are being very stingy on week days only having one train on all roller coasters which is making the queues 40+ except Saw which has all 8 Trains running this information is from 'UK Theme Parks Theme UK'
June 21, 201312 yr comment_161508 Assuming they are filming on ride shots the trains will need to be taken off for a short while to attach / detach the camera equipment possibly!
June 21, 201312 yr comment_161548 They posted a nice picture of Colossus today and you could see the last 6 seats were empty!
June 22, 201312 yr comment_161554 All rides where on two trains yesterday, but saw was on 7 Saw has been running 7 cars quite a lot this year. Or at least starting the day with 7 and then adding the 8th by midday.
June 23, 201312 yr comment_161592 Yeah when I visited yesterday it seemed to be on 8 cars My last few visits Saw has been running on 8 cars and the longest I have queued for it is 30 minutes so far this season
June 24, 201312 yr comment_161688 Yesterday at the Exit of Thorpe Park (at the end of the day) there were staff directing people who had paid full price for a day ticket to the annual pass building for a "free annual pass".I asked what they meant and they said that if you had paid for a ticket that day then you could get a free Thorpe Park annual pass.
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