Park Operations

[JoshC.]

The restrictions changed last year, where the park decided to be more strict following long-term considerations after the Smiler incident.

 

Each ride has operating conditions set out by the manufacturer. In many cases, these aren't strict and have several variables related to them (a ride running for 10 hours straight is not going to stall the second the temperature goes 0.1C below the recommended temperature, for example). Merlin are now following these recommendations strictly though.

 

Following them strictly means that if the temperature does go below 0.1C or whatever, even for a second, the park stop running the ride, and require the temperature to be at the minimum operating temperature for a set period of time thereafter. It's a ridiculous system, as with something as complex as rides, a flat cut off condition - bar for extremes - is a bad idea.

 

So the conditions aren't new, but how the park view them is.

[Benin]

It's almost akin to the idiocy of Cedar Fair parks closing EVERY SINGLE RIDE as soon as there's a spot of rain...

 

Like even some drizzle was enough to make them close Blue Streak temporarily! 

[RobF]

Tbh I worked a snow day and stealth was open shortly after the park, and nemesis around lunch time, most flats were open as normal ....

 

 

 

[Mark9]

Anyone remember the TPM meet where some members rode Tidal Wave in the snow. That was a great day.

[Marc]

Not much of that story adds up to me - someone managed to get the persons bag, get the keys find the car in the car park with no prior knowledge of where it is and drive it out of the car park in the middle of Fright Nights within 40 minutes ?

[Project LC]

Well it took 40 minutes for security to show up. It isn't possible to tell from the article how long it was before it was noticed the car was stolen. The keys for the car would have indicated the make and you could have just walked up and down rows until the keys opened a car. 

 

I have seen the aftermath of someone's handbag stolen from the Saw baggage room before so I can believe a bag being stolen from there again. 

 

It's not an impossible chain of events but it does seem an unlikely one. 

 

£271m was the profit before tax in 2017 while the article quotes the operating profit before tax. The company made £209m profit after tax in 2017 giving a better estimate of £1.7m per site. It's actually pretty reasonable considering revenue was £1.6bn so it's profit margin is greater than most other entertainment based businesses. Although the same is unlikely to be true for the slowdown in 2018.

[Ringo]

And rather conveniently for Merlin

 

Quote

Thorpe Park has told the police it has no CCTV footage of the vehicle leaving the car park or of the baggage area showing her belongings being handed over or taken

 

[MattyMoo]

Did the thief pay £8 to get out of the car park by booking online, go to a kiosk to pay £10 or think yolo and splash the cash paying £15 to get out?

 

I know how difficult it was to pay for my parking online at Fright Nights personally ?

[Flipper]

On 1/14/2019 at 3:20 PM, Marc said:

Not much of that story adds up to me - someone managed to get the persons bag, get the keys find the car in the car park with no prior knowledge of where it is and drive it out of the car park in the middle of Fright Nights within 40 minutes ?

I recon its quite easy to do as MattyMoo has said. The keys will be branded to the car; walk up and down and you'll find it. There's no indication still as to if the car was valuable etc so it could have been a bigger target.

 

The bigger concern should be that bag rooms consistently lose wristbands and so forth, and such an occurrence is frequently happening (wrong belongings handed out). I kind of agree with the removal of bag rooms they're just not needed and I hope SAW, Stealth and Swarm follow suit to Towers as soon as a logical solution is found for SAW and Stealth.

[Coaster]

Just to add, there's often times when they don't even give out a wristband, but just tell you a number; it's happened to me on Stealth numerous times and IMO is a huge breakdown of security.

 

People could say any number and get someone else's belongings, it clearly shows that Thorpe do not take security seriously enough when they won't even replace bands.

[Mattgwise]

Great to see that overall operations continue to be great at Thorpe this year. It has certainly been improved this year compared to the last few years and nice to see coasters consistently opening on more than one train! Also nice that the park was pretty much fully open from 9:30am despite advertising as open from 10am.

[Matt N]

Hi guys. I don’t know about any of you, but one thing I personally like doing in queues is throughput timing. I have an app on my phone called Dispatch Timer which allows me to time how quickly trains are being dispatched on a ride, and I often try and get a number of readings while I’m in the queue. So I decided to make a thread regarding the topic of operations/throughputs at Thorpe Park, where you can post any of your own timings, or just general comments about ride operations.

 

I made this thread because I visited Thorpe Park today, and I grabbed throughput timings from various different rides.

Coasters

• Colossus (Theoretical: 1,300pph): 689pph (average of 4, 2 trains, taken from Rush's queue line), 437pph (average of 2, 2 trains, taken from Colossus' queue line)
• Nemesis Inferno (Theoretical: 1,150pph): 831pph (average of 5, 2 trains)
• Saw The Ride (Theoretical: 1,000pph): 363pph (average of 10 dual dispatches, 5 cars)
• Stealth (Theoretical: 1,000pph): 796pph (average of 10, 2 trains)
• The Swarm (Theoretical: 1,100pph): 905pph (average of 7, 2 trains)

Non-Coasters

• Detonator (Theoretical: Unknown): 315pph (average of 3)
• Rush (Theoretical: 960pph): 476pph (average of 5, 2 swings)
• Tidal Wave (Theoretical: 1,800pph, did not ride): 471pph (average of 2, 2 boats, taken from Stealth's queue line)

I hope you find my timings interesting! I'd be really intrigued to hear any of your personal timings or any general thoughts on Thorpe Park's throughputs or operations.

[Matt N]

Sorry... I never knew there was a thread already.

[Mark9]

8 hours ago, Matt N said:

Hi guys. I don’t know about any of you, but one thing I personally like doing in queues is throughput timing. I have an app on my phone called Dispatch Timer which allows me to time how quickly trains are being dispatched on a ride, and I often try and get a number of readings while I’m in the queue. So I decided to make a thread regarding the topic of operations/throughputs at Thorpe Park, where you can post any of your own timings, or just general comments about ride operations.

 

I made this thread because I visited Thorpe Park today, and I grabbed throughput timings from various different rides.

Coasters

• Colossus (Theoretical: 1,300pph): 689pph (average of 4, 2 trains, taken from Rush's queue line), 437pph (average of 2, 2 trains, taken from Colossus' queue line)
• Nemesis Inferno (Theoretical: 1,150pph): 831pph (average of 5, 2 trains)
• Saw The Ride (Theoretical: 1,000pph): 363pph (average of 10 dual dispatches, 5 cars)
• Stealth (Theoretical: 1,000pph): 796pph (average of 10, 2 trains)
• The Swarm (Theoretical: 1,100pph): 905pph (average of 7, 2 trains)

Non-Coasters

• Detonator (Theoretical: Unknown): 315pph (average of 3)
• Rush (Theoretical: 960pph): 476pph (average of 5, 2 swings)
• Tidal Wave (Theoretical: 1,800pph, did not ride): 471pph (average of 2, 2 boats, taken from Stealth's queue line)

I hope you find my timings interesting! I'd be really intrigued to hear any of your personal timings or any general thoughts on Thorpe Park's throughputs or operations.

 

I love how wild some of those theoretical throughputs are. Colossus for example is so wildly over exaggerated by Intamin. Where is that Tidal Wave capacity from, I always assumed it was around 1000 an hour on three boats.

[Matt N]

26 minutes ago, Mark9 said:

 

I love how wild some of those theoretical throughputs are. Colossus for example is so wildly over exaggerated by Intamin. Where is that Tidal Wave capacity from, I always assumed it was around 1000 an hour on three boats.

I got that Tidal Wave capacity from WhiteWater West, who gives a blanket figure of 1,800 riders per hour for their 20-person Shoot the Chutes ride: https://www.whitewaterwest.com/en/products/water-rides/shoot-the-chute/

 

I believe WWW superseded Hopkins and started selling their water ride products, as Tidal Wave is one of the first case studies given on that site. So WWW’s figure is effectively a manufacturer figure for Tidal Wave.

[Mattgwise]

54 minutes ago, Mark9 said:

 

I love how wild some of those theoretical throughputs are. Colossus for example is so wildly over exaggerated by Intamin. Where is that Tidal Wave capacity from, I always assumed it was around 1000 an hour on three boats.

I don't believe the third boat has been used at all this year and often it seems to have been running leaving one row empty on the two boats on the circuit, though not sure why. 

[Mark9]

I was impressed by operations yesterday. It's very rare to see a B&M inverter dispatch the train and having to actually wait for the second one to arrive back at the station. The fact this happened multiple times made it all the more impressive.

 

Great work

[Matt N]

I was at Thorpe Park yesterday, and I managed to get some throughput readings on the major coasters! Overall, I’d say operations were pretty good; in some cases, there were truly excellent operations that were the best I’ve ever seen on the respective rides!

• Colossus (Theoretical: 1,300pph on 2 trains) - 592pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 7)
• Nemesis Inferno (Theoretical: 1,150pph on 2 trains) - 693pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 6)
• Saw: The Ride (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 8 cars) - 770pph (unknown number of cars, 15th September 2023, average of 3)
• Stealth (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 2 trains) - 867pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 8 )
• The Swarm (Theoretical: 1,100pph on 2 trains) - 983pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 6)

I should say that I was unable to get as many readings as I would normally like (I normally aim for 10), as the queues often weren’t long enough (a very good problem to have!).

 

I should also say that on both The Swarm and Stealth, the averages I’ve listed here were skewed by an instance of “guest faff” that produced one particularly slow dispatch. Without these instances of faff, both ride teams were managing faster averages than the averages I have listed here. The Swarm was seemingly managing a consistent string of 90 second dispatch intervals with mere seconds of stacking (if any at all) all day, and Stealth was managing a pretty consistent string of 75-80 second dispatches, with the operators quite literally running down the train to get restraints checked! I was very impressed with the operations on both rides; the throughputs were the best I’ve ever seen on those rides in both cases!

 

Saw was also operating absolutely brilliantly; the average I got for it is as good as I’ve ever seen on that ride. The average listed above was also lower than what I saw at another point in the day; I did a longer string of readings earlier in the day where it seemed to be getting somewhere in the ballpark of 800-850pph, which is the best throughput I’ve ever seen Saw get, but I accidentally messed this string of readings up by pressing the dispatch button twice, so I could not save this reading and save the final average…

 

The picture of excellent operations was not entirely consistent, however.

 

The throughput of Colossus was not terrible compared to what I’ve seen in the past, but it wasn’t particularly amazing either; I’ve seen it go slower, but I’ve also seen it go faster as well.

 

Nemesis Inferno was also letting the side down a bit; when I sat down and timed it, it was getting a pretty consistent string of 2.5-3 minute dispatches, with the average above only being as high as it was due to a faster dispatch at the very end. Every time I rode, stacking for a fair period of time was routine, and in general, the operations seemed slower on Inferno than elsewhere in the park.

 

Overall, though, the operational picture from Thorpe Park was very good yesterday, with numerous rides having some of the best operations I’ve ever seen on those rides! The operations also weren’t causing much issue, for the most part; there was always a coaster queue below 15 minutes somewhere on the park, and to my knowledge, no queue exceeded an hour all day. At one point, Inferno hit “55-60 minutes” as per the tannoy, but that was pretty isolated to that ride and didn’t last all day; nothing else got a huge amount above 30 minutes, and even Inferno dropped to more like 30-40 minutes after that brief period of 55-60.

EDIT: I’m unsure why “average of 8” on Stealth turned into an emoji…

[JoshC.]

7 hours ago, Matt N said:

EDIT: I’m unsure why “average of 8” on Stealth turned into an emoji…

 

8 followed by a closed bracket - aka ) - gives 😎. It's an old school way of doing the sunglasses emoji which our forum software still uses.

 

 

As you note, your averages are across quite a small sample, which isn't the most reliable. But it still gives some useful insight.

 

7 hours ago, Matt N said:

The Swarm (Theoretical: 1,100pph on 2 trains) - 983pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 6)

 

This is pretty good, especially considering you mentioned there was some guest faff. 

 

7 hours ago, Matt N said:

Stealth (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 2 trains) - 867pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 8 )

Again, given there was guest faff, that's not bad. With it's onload/offload platform, batching procedures and the way bag collection is dealt with, Stealth should be pretty consistent.

 

7 hours ago, Matt N said:

• Saw: The Ride (Theoretical: 1,000pph on 8 cars) - 770pph (unknown number of cars, 15th September 2023, average of 3)

Saw hasn't operated with 8 cars for a number of years, and likely won't ever again. 770 is pretty painful for its popularity, although really not all that surprising for what it is these days. This is going to be hit hard next year being near Exodus.

 

7 hours ago, Matt N said:

Colossus (Theoretical: 1,300pph on 2 trains) - 592pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 7)

I mean, this is painful, but sadly what we've come to expect from Colossus these days. I can't remember the last time it ever did well, but it simply just doesn't do well these days. Another one that will be hit hard next year.

 

7 hours ago, Matt N said:

• Nemesis Inferno (Theoretical: 1,150pph on 2 trains) - 693pph (2 trains, 15th September 2023, average of 6)

Christ knows what the park have done to Inferno. Quite a few years ago (well, I guess we're getting close to a decade now, but whatever), Inferno was a throughput machine. The 1000pph mark was standard. Nowadays, 700 mark is good. It's better than like 5 years ago, when 600 was good, but it's really a sad situation to see.

 

 

This really highlights the need not so much for Exodus to be a throughput machine, but to be able to have a solidly high throughput which it can easily maintain for years to come.

[Inferno]

Interesting to hear Saw never runs on 8 trains?

Any ideas why that is?

 

I agree about Inferno too.

Maybe this is too cynical but I have thought could it be because it was too efficient? Inferno’s queue used to be quite fast moving, perhaps making the mighty Fastrack less appealing….

now adays the ride ops seem to do a lot of walking about and phoning each other in the station. No idea why it takes so long now to get a train out.

 

One thing I have noticed since the Smiler crash however is that they no longer rush and put pressure on guests to hurry, on any of the rides.

I seem to remember it being a bit of a mad dash previously to get out of the air gates and in to your seat!  Now it’s a bit of an amble.

Years ago now I remember inferno in particular, they would sometimes count down until dispatch during the summer, which really did put the pressure on people to hurry up!

I suppose that would be inappropriate now adays

 

I’m glad you had a good day Matt and it was quiet!

 

As for busier days - All I can say is thank god Stealth and Swarm can still get through people - I think that side of the park is the place to be next year while not waiting for exodus!

[Mark9]

I think the counting down thing is just operator specific. When I was at Thorpe back in April, the operator was counting down on Inferno and they were dispatching incredibly quickly, no waiting outside the station, straight in.

 

 

[tactic]

6 minutes ago, Mark9 said:

I think the counting down thing is just operator specific. When I was at Thorpe back in April, the operator was counting down on Inferno and they were dispatching incredibly quickly, no waiting outside the station, straight in.

When I went at the end of August the operator was counting down on inferno, the operations were great that day, inferno didn’t stack that much at all.

 

I’m on park today so can maybe take some reading and see if they match up with Matt N’s results from a couple

of days ago.

[Inferno]

That’s good they’re still doing that - I haven’t heard the countdowns for years!

 

Throughputs are such a hit and miss thing I guess, Mark’s right, one operator might be more hot on it than others, and on a quiet day it really doesn’t matter if things are a little slower.

[JoshC.]

10 hours ago, Inferno said:

Interesting to hear Saw never runs on 8 trains?

Any ideas why that is?

Sadly no clue. I know it's quite a recent change (last couple of years), so not a result of the Smiler incident, or any other theme park accident that I'm aware of.

 

It could just be a 'Stealth-like' scenario where they choose to rotate the annual maintenance of cars. So they have 7 cars available, with the 8th being serviced / used as a quick spare part replacement, a la Stealth, where the 3rd train is always being serviced. But again, I stress I have no idea.

 

10 hours ago, Inferno said:

Maybe this is too cynical but I have thought could it be because it was too efficient? Inferno’s queue used to be quite fast moving, perhaps making the mighty Fastrack less appealing….

Definitely cynical, in that this wouldn't have been the reason. The park would not have gone "Inferno is running too efficiently, never has a long queue queue to sell enough Fastrack, we need to slow it down". The departments in charge of Operations and Fastrack are completely different, and beyond communicating throughput numbers, will have little interaction with one another. And certainly the Fastrack department would not be able to ask them to slow down, nor would anyone higher up.

 

However, whatever the reason for the slowing in operations and reducing throughput over the years, it is certainly a by-product that Fastrack is more appealing. And I'm sure they're likely to sell more tickets as a result.

 

 

10 hours ago, Inferno said:

now adays the ride ops seem to do a lot of walking about and phoning each other in the station.

A recent change on bigger rides I've noticed is that staff now have headsets to communicate with each other, rather than the phones. This means they can be in constant communication with each other, and don't have to stop to do so. This has pros and cons, but there's now no longer this scenario of people walking over to a phone to have a goss with each other.

[Cal]

Opening times for this season have been released on the website. 

 

Overall I'd say its an improvement on last season, and its nice to see that Thorpe continue to have the best opening times out of the UK Merlin parks. 

 

Less closed days than last season and more 7pm openings, however Oktoberfests seem to have been cut as no 7pm closes during Oktoberfest this year. 

 

I've said it plenty of times before and I'll say it again, the only improvement I'd like to see is the return of 10pm closes for Fright Nights. The extra hour in the dark really makes a big difference.

 

I'd love to see the return of a 10pm closing event during summer but I doubt that'll happen due to demand unfortunately. 

 

Also, the Sunday opening this year is strange? But I assume thats due to a buyout day on the Saturday.