Park Operations

[BigBobJones]

Or sending out every other train on Colossus empty until the queue builds up.

[Coaster]

I think that as long as the coaster can run with only a few people in it then they should do so rather than taking a train off.

[J.S217]

The Swarm today has a 30min Queue but they have over sold the fasttrack it is basically from the Queue entrence to the incline and is crowding the main queue I estimate a 2 hour fast track Queue.

[Marc]

The Swarm today has a 30min Queue but they have over sold the fasttrack it is basically from the Queue entrence to the incline and is crowding the main queue I estimate a 2 hour fast track Queue.

That would mean there's almost 2500 people in that fastrack queue... I can't see that

[J.S217]

It llooked it ,

it Proberley was hour but Brave it Backwards was 2 hours

[Dan9]

If the queue was full they'd probably just batch entire fastrack trains every other time until it's more reasonable level, effectively making it one train operation for everyone.

[Mitchada04]

That doesn't sound fun for either queue but it wouldn't surprise me if half the Fasttrack queue were actually non Fasttrackers. Because of the new queue entrance (Fasttrack straight on, main queue to the right) I have seen it many times this year where lots of people are getting confused and going in the wrong one.

Either way it isn't great!

[Spider]

What baffles me about one train operations is that is basically leaves the station staff standing round chatting for half the time. This is obviously all paid labour, and surely that wasted time would be better spent enhancing guest experience, by running two trains and therefore making it a full time job. They are effectively throwing money away by doing this, and I cant think of many places where the logic applied here would be deemed to make good business sense. I honestly think that they would make a lot more money by getting people on as many ride as possible - making them think kindly of the park and more likely to return, than the relatively small amount they make from fast track sales. Low staffing is one thing, but inefficient use of staff when they could do something do simple to make people's day better is crazy. Ergh Merlin.

[Coaster]

What baffles me about one train operations is that is basically leaves the station staff standing round chatting for half the time. This is obviously all paid labour, and surely that wasted time would be better spent enhancing guest experience, by running two trains and therefore making it a full time job. They are effectively throwing money away by doing this, and I cant think of many places where the logic applied here would be deemed to make good business sense. I honestly think that they would make a lot more money by getting people on as many ride as possible - making them think kindly of the park and more likely to return, than the relatively small amount they make from fast track sales. Low staffing is one thing, but inefficient use of staff when they could do something do simple to make people's day better is crazy. Ergh Merlin.

I absolutely agree with this 100%. The staff this year are, honestly, much worse than last year's. The staff last year tried to make your day enjoyable, whereas this year they are treating you more like an inconvenience than a valued customer (not mentioning any names here, *cough* swarm staff *cough*).

Last year operations and staff were not perfect by any means, but this year it has declined greatly.

[Inferno]

^ To be fair it is just the odd few staff who seem useless... I would still say the majority of them are fantastic.

It also seems to vary from one day to another unfortunately.

[tomglazed]

What baffles me about one train operations is that is basically leaves the station staff standing round chatting for half the time. This is obviously all paid labour, and surely that wasted time would be better spent enhancing guest experience, by running two trains and therefore making it a full time job. They are effectively throwing money away by doing this, and I cant think of many places where the logic applied here would be deemed to make good business sense. I honestly think that they would make a lot more money by getting people on as many ride as possible - making them think kindly of the park and more likely to return, than the relatively small amount they make from fast track sales. Low staffing is one thing, but inefficient use of staff when they could do something do simple to make people's day better is crazy. Ergh Merlin.

I definitely agree with what your saying but you have to remember that, whilst one train op does mean having staff being less busy therefore not using them to their full capacity, it does mean that they do save money on the maintenance side of the house. Some roller coasters go through wheels like they are going out of fashion and they aren't cheap (not to mention all the other parts which require replacement from time to time) so I understand why they do run one train op on the dead days. Busy days is a whole other case obviously.

I do however think, if a ride is on one train op meaning staff do end up with more time on their hands, that is a perfect opportunity for guest interaction. Asking how their day is going, what their favourite ride is etc.

[Mark9]

Hats off to Thorpe staff yesterday they were running the park like it was a capacity day. Every single rollercoaster was running at the fastest speed possible. For example, the Colossus team were exemplary, the train barely stopped in the break before rolling into the station, The Swarm staff were sending out trains out as the other train was heading through the barrel roll above the station and Inferno had zero stacking. Despite all this, no downtime or problems.

Adding to that, Inferno and Colossus are also running better then they ever have done. I shocked myself by declaring Inferno's ride this week, better then Nemesis on Monday. It just felt so good and enjoyable to ride. Colossus for me, luckily has not one jolt of roughness.

Sublime job.

[Coaster]

^ Let's hope they have received feedback about the laziness that was seen in previous weeks and have done something about it!
(Although this happens quite often with Thorpe - they have random good days before going back to being their usual slow self... Let's hope this time it stays like it should be).

[Tom]

Unfortunately there's no consistency! I would love to believe they'll run everything well from now on but I just know it's luck of the draw depending on what day you go, what teams are working...

[BigBobJones]

I've seen it take only 10 mins on Inferno to get from the bottom of the stairs and it also take 40 minutes, but lets take any improvement while it is there.

[Mitchada04]

From what I saw today operations were great. All the coasters were running at full capacity and dispatching well. Was great to see Stealth on two trains which is a first for me this season! The guy on Nemesis Inferno even made loading a train like a challenge by saying 'you have 35 seconds to be seated, your time starts now!' Little things like this just make the day much better on a whole.

[darkadder312]

Thorpe should run on 2 trains when the queue reaches 30 mins but they never hardly do I went twice this year queues reaching 45 mins and still one train op

[TPJames]

Thorpe park have gone back to their usual self! Operations today seemed generally poor however some of the rides were really good!

I would just like to point out that the queue time boards today were not working at all and saw and stealth tended to say 'Queue time U minutes'!

[BigBobJones]

For me the Operations were very good, we managed 13 rides before 2 PM and didn't queue. Only Nemesis was on one train, everything was good. They do need to send their staff on The Smiler to cheer them up!

I have no idea how expensive the queue line boards were to install, but they are a complete waste of money, this is not the first time I have noticed this. Let me explain:

Board at Queue reads: Actual queue Time

Colossus, not working 10 mins

Saw, 90 mins Walk on

Quantum 10 mins Walk on

Swarm forwards 55 mins 15

Swarm backwards 30 mins 15

Loggers 15 mins 5 mins

Nemesis 20 mins 5 mins

I have often seen Stealth on a 45 min advertised queue and it only has 5-10 min queue. Now if guests are using the queue boards as an indicator of if they need to buy a fast track or not, then if the board is advertising a 90 mins queue and in fact there is no queue at all, they fair enough the person who brought the fast track wasted their money, but Thorpe have also made money out of mis-displaying information in which they got a financial gain.

[Inferno]

Totally agree with this. they have been wildly inaccurate on all of my visits this year too.

Thorpe have always been poor at updating their queue boards, but this year has been terrible.

I just assumed that they aren't bothering to update the boards because most rides have been walk-on all year, so all guests know that there are no queues so updating the boards isn't really important.

[Ricky]

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.

[Marc]

I have no idea how expensive the queue line boards were to install, but they are a complete waste of money, this is not the first time I have noticed this. Let me explain:

It is a brand new, complicated system. Give them a chance to get them working!

[BigBobJones]

I'm not blaming the ride ops Ricky, I'm blaming Thorpe as a park. This seems like a very expensive investment and the end results for the guests is it is not worth the money due to it being inaccurate all the time. I mean if you buy a fas track based on the displayed times to find it is not a 90 min queue, it is walk on.... you wouldn't be happy. In the same way I have gone to Stealth this year, it has displayed 10 mins which turn out to be 45 or displays 45 mins which turns out to b 5-10

They may be new Marc, but the system for updating the signs can't have changed too much, somebody calculates the estimated time, it is input into a system and the system displays the time.

I fully accept this is an approximate time, so 5-10 mins difference is understandable, but displaying a 90 min queue when the ride is walk on is really a poor show. Two weeks ago the main board said Saw had a 45 min queue, the sign above the entrance was not working, then the ride op put out an announcement "People in the Saw plaza, the queue time is currently 5 minutes"

There is no doubt the signs look fantastic and are a great improvement, it is a shame the information displayed isn't more accurate.

[JoshC.]

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?

Hopefully we can see it reflect queue times more accurately though; we as enthusiasts do sometimes forget it is some people's only way of judging queue times. Though at least the times shown are much larger than the real ones, and not much shorter. :tongue:

[Coaster]

They advertise shorter queues to increase fastrack sales!

Which is disgusting.