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So we went to Alton Towers yesterday; the weather stayed nice and it was sufficiently quiet that we kept going until our stomachs started feeling like they'd had enough of being thrown around, thank you very much.
We did however spend a fair amount of time waiting for rides to start working again... I think in the first four rides we did three of them briefly stopped working, one of them turfing us out of the car while they sent it round empty. That was annoying... we could have been on a couple of other rides in the time we spent waiting for them to fix things. It was the same last time we went, too; one ride stopped twice while we were queueing!
Fair enough, they have to err on the side of safety and there is probably a lot to go wrong, but do rides always break down this much? Last time we went to a theme park we had Is this normal everywhere? Do they have "early season teething troubles"? Are they cutting back on preventative maintenance because everyone is skint?
Yours,
Mildly peeved of Staffordshire
Normally with newly opened rides they have loads of teething problems and they seem to spend more time shut down than running in the first year. They normally get better as the years go by, but they do have very rigid safety standards, so there can be delays. Better safe than sorry!
Did you go on the new underground Nemesis?
We did go on the new one (on the second try, it was not working when we first tried!).
We were expecting something, erm, different... "Nemesis but underground" it is not...
i like it when they are fixing them just before you go on them, it adds an extra squirt of doubt induced adrenaline
More first world problems.........
It'll be on the front page of the mail by morning 😉
Slightly arsey of waleshire
They have a big network of sensors all round the track / ride. If any of them play up, the ride halts and doesn't let anything go. Can be a broken sensor, or a random electrical glitch or whatever. Most often they just reboot the ride and the glitch goes away, and they have to run the ride empty once to check it is okay. If the sensor still shows something doesn't go away, someone needs to climb up and look at the sensor and check the bit of the ride it is monitoring, which delays things for longer
Worst I've seen was the press launch for Saw at Thorpe Park, where it broke down with a bunch of celebrities at the bottom of the lift hill, half way round the ride, leaving them stuck there for ages. Ouch. There were some extremely worried men in boilersuits there. Although they got acres of coverage from that one, so I guess PR people win whatever happens.
We did some work on the PR launch for the Nemesis Sub Terra (with my "thrill scientist" hat on), I've ridden it about 10 times. It is one of those rides that you don't want to know about before you do it.
Joe
Classic STW. No matter how obscure the subject someone pops up who's worked with it.
We were at Alton Towers all day on Sunday and didn't experience any problems.
You must have just been unlucky .
Yeah does sound like bad luck.
Only seen a couple breakdown: Chessington it was Rameses Revenge and Stealth at Thorpe Park.
Alton Towers use to have Thunder Loop. That was great ride. Must have been one of the first launch rollercoasters in the UK...broke down every time I was there although did get to go on it
Last couple of times at Alton Towers has been the same for us - 2010 & 2011
Annoying that when they open at 10am (or whenever) some rides are closed due to technical problems as soon as you get in there, before anyone has ridden them - wtf, have you not had half the morning to make sure they are working?
I went to Florida in Feb and did the Harry Potter part virtual reality part 'live' ride 4 times. It broke down on 3 of them, leaving me in various odd positions and with time to study where the magic came from.
Still great mind!!
Worst I've seen was the press launch for Saw at Thorpe Park, where it broke down with a bunch of celebrities at the bottom of the lift hill, half way round the ride, leaving them stuck there for ages. Ouch. There were some extremely worried men in boilersuits there.
I was at Thorpe park a few weeks ago and after seeing some of the people that fix the rides at work (mostly scratching their arses and looking confused) i was glad i'd been on all the main rides already as that might have put me off a bit 😆
I like queuing up with slightly nervous people and pointing out all the nuts and bolts and saying things like "i wonder how often they tighten them up" 😐
I reckon it would be a great laugh to get on a ride with a stranger next to you, and then as you go up the first climb produce a bolt from down near your feet and ask them if they think it's important?
spent 40 minutes in the front carriage of a roller coaster that had broken down just as it was about to go over the crest of the main big drop when I was a kid. Thought we were going to have to climb down at one point!
More first world problems.........
It'll be on the front page of the mail by morning
Immigrant attractions shut down for "health and safety"...[b]and [u]YOU'RE[/u] paying for it![/b]
My brother was a fitter in a theme park as a summer job whilst he was studying engineering.
I don't think these rides are aeroplane level complexity but they do get regular maintenance and IIRC the fitters were always the first ones to go on the rides in the mornings (great with a hangover) so there is an incentive for them to be safe.
I would guess that you were just unlucky or they are still getting the gremlins out after standing all winter.