The Smiler - General Discussion

Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:02 pm

I went on the smiler. Loved every second of it. Was soo intense from the start, managed just an hour queue single riders but could have halved that time.... After the indoor queue and bag drop, the queue splits into single riders and normal queue on the stairs. There were no staff checking single riders didn't go up the stairs on the normal queue side. I I still went single riders but could have just waited 5 mins instead of the extra half hour. got front row and loved it so not complaining

Sun Jun 09, 2013 10:31 pm

I went on The Smiler twice today - Both in the single rider which was about 30mins long & both on front row. It was absolutely amazing! I don't think I'll ever get bored riding it & also had a nice spray of water!

I heard this little boy say it made me giggle "daaad, I've been marmalade"

Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:05 pm

xTeddlesking wrote: £10 for sure, got told in briefing this morning!

Definitely £10 earlier in the day, but then chatted to a guy on blivvy sometime after 3pm today who had just purchased FT for The Smiler and the price had dropped to £6 again! Not too sure what's going on there!

Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:12 pm

Maybe mornings is £10 because its bussiest then?

Sun Jun 09, 2013 11:27 pm

POV using GoPro

Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:17 am

Alton really need to sort out the queuing for the Smiler,:

-On Saturday we reported 4 queue jumpers, nothing was done
-Guests smoking in the queue - nothing done
-Today, guests moving the barriers and jumping in, staff told and "Thank you for letter me know" followed by nothing done
-Today 5 smokers all in the queue, staff told and had to be told twice before action was taken
-The Shop in the main queue, it needs two tills and three people to run it, 2 serving and one stocking, covering breaks etc as it causes huge hold ups in the queue
-The shop is over popular because people are waiting hours, the weather is fantastic so they wall want an ice cream, so on Saturday it was good to see only one member of staff on his own in there (Blivvy has an array of vending machines in the queue line, The Smiler has nothing apart from the shop!

-If the shop can't cope with the demand, they need a few vending machines in the queue area or mobile sellers

Staff in the shop were instructing guests to queue jump because the shop was holding up the main queue, I have issues with this:
-Get more staff and serve quicker which means more sales and more proffit for Merlin
-If the shop is not enough, have a mobile seller of items elsewhere in the queue
-We have queued for hours and the last thing we are going to do is let other people queue jump past us
-We as customers are giving Merlin additional money by purchasing items, so why should we loose out and queue longer when Merlin are getting additional cash.. I don't think so

I know by next year the queue won't be as bad and the shop like nearly every other shop at the Towers will be closed up

Also why is Gerry (Dr Kellman) not dressed up? He is displayed on the huge LED screens as the Doctor and Alton have him in a standard red uniform. They really are missing a trick here, they need him to walk up and down the queue line, also why not have female members of staff dressed as nurses, at least try and link the Sanctuary to the Smiler

Mon Jun 10, 2013 12:25 am

bensaund wrote: Alton really need to sort out the queuing for the Smiler,:

-On Saturday we reported 4 queue jumpers, nothing was done
-Guests smoking in the queue - nothing done
-Today, guests moving the barriers and jumping in, staff told and "Thank you for letter me know" followed by nothing done
-Today 5 smokers all in the queue, staff told and had to be told twice before action was taken

That is really terrible that they were taking no action when they usually take all of that stuff extremely seriously. That just annoys people a lot and a little thing like that could get me pretty mad at the park for the day. It's there job to stop this from happening and if they are told and nothing is done they should be reported.

Mon Jun 10, 2013 7:55 am

From Krave facebook
"next patient please"
Funny,nobody needs a repeat visit

Mon Jun 10, 2013 9:42 am

Its stalled again!!!. It has dummies on too

Mon Jun 10, 2013 9:53 am

sully1311 wrote: Its stalled again!!!

Something is seriously wrong with this now. I know coasters stall from time to time but shouldn't be this often! This is terrible news, and now I assume X Sector will be closed all day.

If its the temperature then they need to advertise the ride as opening at midday or whatever. If its the one train then they need Gerst to take it away, run on lower capacity and come back with a new one.

On a plus note, they were eating at 9.30ish, meaning they were at least attempting to get it open on time for the 2nd day running.

EDIT: with dummies? Oh dear. Same track position as before?

Mon Jun 10, 2013 9:58 am

Instead or irritating more people, they should close it down until its 100% working and advertise thatd its closed to avoid dissapointment then properly advertise when jt will be open.

Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:02 am

This is getting repetitive now! Image from TT's Facebook...

How can those people look so happy!? The Smiler clearly still makes people smile, even when it's not working...

Danny · Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:04 am

Due to rather seen problems....:

Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:05 am

I was there on Friday.

There were having lots of issues around 4pm - with announcements to a delay in queuing time, then no trains were dispatched for about 20mins. There was no mention of how long the delay would be and I feel bad for those who gave up waiting.

A 50 min single rider queue turned out to be 1 hour 30.

Off topic but the flume also broke again at 3pm. People being evacuated and the path leading to forbidden valley was flooded.

Other than that, it was worth the wait and I wanted to go again. It is quite intense and does knock you about a bit.

The testing earlier in the day had a few moments that looked on the point of stalling.

If those dummies are filled with water this could mean series issues with H&S - imagine trying to evacuate people at that point.

Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:15 am

I'm going again on Thursday, and was thinking we may have reached a stage where the problems had been mostly ironed out, but apparently not! Seems like it's just pot luck when you turn up, whether or not Smiler will have stalled that day

Danny · Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:18 am

We currently have a team member on site to investigate what number the vehicle is. If it's the same as last time, then the problem seems to only persist on that one vehicle. If it's a different one however....

Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:21 am

JamieH93 wrote: Instead or irritating more people, they should close it down until its 100% working and advertise thatd its closed to avoid dissapointment then properly advertise when jt will be open.

Completely agree with you, I'm going tomorrow and I'd rather know if its closed or open before I go so I can make other plans if needed. It's a 3 hour trip and usually only get to go once a year. Booked this day off work specifically for this date because they are so heavily advertising it as open now. Even if its closed and they give us free fast passes, I prob won't be able to use them this year.

Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:25 am

AT and Gerstlauer really have no excuse for the frequency of valleying, and they need to implement a long term solution that guarantees it won't happen again. Most coasters will never valley, and so valleying 3 times in 3 weeks (that's every week), is ridiculous and it can't be put down to 'teething problems'.

If you're testing a coaster and it doesn't make it round the track, then it can't be opened as that's one of the primary reasons why you're testing it. Valleying/stalling is really one of the most serious problems on a coaster, after major catastrophic faults, therefore it can't be overlooked each time with the train just being replaced.

It really is going to be a matter of time until it valleys with public passengers on it, then AT will be in big trouble...

Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:35 am

Danny wrote: We currently have a team member on site to investigate what number the vehicle is. If it's the same as last time, then the problem seems to only persist on that one vehicle. If it's a different one however....

Uh oh!

Fingers crossed that it's the same train as last week - Gerst can isolate the issue to being that individual train. If it is a different train though maybe Gerst have screwed up with their new design?

Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:36 am

lewis97 wrote: AT and Gerstlauer really have no excuse for the frequency of valleying, and they need to implement a long term solution that guarantees it won't happen again. Most coasters will never valley, and so valleying 3 times in 3 weeks (that's every week), is ridiculous and it can't be put down to 'teething problems'.

If you're testing a coaster and it doesn't make it round the track, then it can't be opened as that's one of the primary reasons why you're testing it. Valleying/stalling is really one of the most serious problems on a coaster, after major catastrophic faults, therefore it can't be overlooked each time with the train just being replaced.

It really is going to be a matter of time until it valleys with public passengers on it, then AT will be in big trouble...

What would happen if people were on it would they have to evacuate them? As I dont suppose you can use the crane with people still in the train.