SkyRide Closure - Now Reopen

General discussion regarding the UK's No.1 Theme Park. Talk about anything and everything Alton Towers here.
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Dormiens-Dave

During February Half term 2010 they where replacing the cable from valley to dark forest, as we where all gawping at 13 construction you could also see the work being done on the cable and it involved huge wooden ramps being constructed and whole parts of the area having scaffolding and the like... I imagine things will be complex on the Mutiny bay side though because it passes over buildings.

There is no way they could do it in season
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James
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With regards to how long it will take to fix this problem, it highly depends exactly what they're doing with the cable. If, as people have said, this is a full new cable that needs to be put in place then they will have to wait till the end of the season till any thing can be done.

You've got to remember that the cable for the Skyride is an absolute mammoth, they will have to carefully separate it from the Towers Street and Forbidden Valley stations then it will have to be carefully removed (or lowered? I'm don't know much with these things) without resulting in any damage to the areas and the Gardens. Then obviously it would be a nightmare of a task to get the new cable up safely (again, without damaging the Gardens/any areas) and then it has to be all connected to the stations systems and tested. Due to the sheer weight of the cable and the vast area it spans over it's not a simple matter of taking the wire down and getting a new one up one afternoon. It takes weeks to replace a cable and there's a lot of issues that have to be taken into account just incase they arise.

Realistically it would not be possible to replace the cable during the season without closing multiple areas of the park for a few weeks, although this would be a nightmare and would cause more issues than it's worth.

I'm sure if the Skyride went over a empty piece of land it would get fixed during the season, but with park areas, rides, members of the public and protected gardens all underneath the cable it's not so easy.
DiogoJ42

I would imagine they use the old cable to pull the new one through.
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mattbailey
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All I'd like to add, is that currently, with the Skyride down, and also the X-Sector / Spinball path closed, traffic is 3x heavier past Battle Galleons... so it might be a bit of a scrum there tomorrow!
.Will

That is because of the concert. It has been like that for a while it is for access.

:)
DiogoJ42

The Spinball path is closed?
.Will

No the path leading from Adventure land down to X-Sector.

:)
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mattbailey
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[quote="".Will""]That is because of the concert. It has been like that for a while it is for access.

:)[/quote]
:joy:

As above Diogo. Absolute ball-ache tbh :)
DiogoJ42

Good job I'm not going there for a while then.
.Will

I have been a couple of times whilst it has been like that and it really is a pain in the arse.

:no:
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Vicki
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Stupid question here, because me and my mate have never searched for the answer on park:

Are there routes to all areas which are wheelchair accessible while the Skyride is down? We've always just used it so I'm curious as to the answer :)
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.Will

All of the pathways are wheelchair accesable if you aviod the gardens. You can walk to FV through MB and then KK and finally thorugh GW. You will have to double back on yourself if you want to get to X-Sector or the Dark Forest from FV but you can go back to MB and then walk across past the bridge that isn't a bridge by the lake and around.

:)
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siralgenon
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[quote="".Will""]All of the pathways are wheelchair accesable if you aviod the gardens. You can walk to FV through MB and then KK and finally thorugh GW. You will have to double back on yourself if you want to get to X-Sector or the Dark Forest from FV but you can go back to MB and then walk across past the bridge that isn't a bridge by the lake and around.

:)[/quote]
#
You can also use the Haunted Hollow :)
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James
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I think Haunted Hollow may be just a bit too steep for a wheel chair. But yeah, all areas of the park are wheel chair accessible, the only issues that you may come across is there there are some steep paths in areas of the park. But other than that there are very few steps around the park and as long as you keep to the main paths you'll be fine. :)
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Vicki
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Thanks! We live fairly close so know it's all fine access wise, but because we use the Skyride to cover larger distances didn't know all the routes round :) Even when I go with other mates we use the Skyride! :)
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Stelios7
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I at least think they should try and Fix it for Scarefest, because of more and more vistors then, but now I see it is Unlikely!
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Magrathea
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Well from what I've read it's not a case of them not BOTHERING to do it in time for Scarefest, they simply require the time of the closed season to perform the replacement.

We all know how popular a move it'd be if they shut the park for a few days instead.

---- Post Info Added ----

Well from what I've read it's not a case of them not BOTHERING to do it in time for Scarefest, they simply require the time of the closed season to perform the replacement.

We all know how popular a move it'd be if they shut the park for a few days instead.
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DiogoJ42

I suppose it could be possible to close Mutiny Bay / the Flume / Haunted Hollow off for a week or so, but then the only access to that side of the park that doesn't go under the Sky Ride would be via the gardens. Hardly practical.
fredward

I think the best action would be to just close the sky-ride for the rest of the season! All you people complaining about it and attempting to Merlin bash are just being plain lazy! It's exercise, it'll do you some good! I highly doubt Alton Towers planned this to happen... :roll:

as for the wheelchair comment, the park is highly wheelchair accessible, just may get you slightly out of breath! My sister was in a wheelchair for a week or so due to an operation on her foot, we only used the sky-ride once. Just take plenty of breaks! It gets quite exhausting!
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Actually I have to agree with sir algenon from a few pages back. If the Skyrider is to be closed all season because the cable has reached the end of its life this is very poor show by the park.

If this is the end of its life I presume it will either be approaching a Fatigue or Creep failure. Both of these occur over a long period of time and should have been noted during off season checks as not being able to last the year. The fact the ride has been closed now shows they are monitoring for these failures, so they must have spotted it before. It was foolish to wait until it passed the safety margin before deciding the cable needed replacing.

Of course it could be there is a completely different problem, but from what I can see it seems like they’re tried to avoid spending money on a new cable by not replacing it at a more appropriate time. As a result we have another season with no Skyrider.


As for some of the early on comments about the Skyrider closure not mattering, it really does. I usually attend with someone who needs crutches for long distance walking. During 2009 we had to plan our day to stick to certain areas of the park, seriously reducing the amount of rides we managed on Oblivion and Rita as we could only manage to visit these areas once. We were also limited to only eating at the food outlets closest to where we were at the time. I hate to think how much harder it is for someone who’s fully disabled.

Someone mentioned they could use a temporary Road Train which I think is a great idea. Just running it in a loop around Towers Street, X-Sector, The Towers and Mutiny Bay would work well. If it’s cost efficient I could see it working alongside the Skyrider when it re-opens.
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