The Smiler - General Discussion

General discussion regarding the UK's No.1 Theme Park. Talk about anything and everything Alton Towers here.
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Justin
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I know it is a small thing, but I am quite disappointed by that sign. It looks like a vinyl overlay, but what niggles me is the border has been cut off, therefore it no longer matches the main entrance sign.
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Mr_Gibson
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Yeah, it lacks a certain attention to detail.
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GregH94
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Any plans to release the mounted POV that was recorded at the spring event? 
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Dan
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GregH94 wrote:Any plans to release the mounted POV that was recorded at the spring event? 
It will be uploaded to our YouTube channel in due course :)
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DeadJack5
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In case you missed it. The POV that was recorded during our Spring Spectacular event last month, has been uploaded to our YouTube channel.
Smile. Always.
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scruffy_
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My new favourite ride at the park :D 
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Zac
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Very disappointing to read about the smilers issues today. Can anybody shed any light as to why 2 carriages were on the lift hill at the same time?
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Tom170499
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Zac wrote:Very disappointing to read about the smilers issues today. Can anybody shed any light as to why 2 carriages were on the lift hill at the same time?
They weren’t. I joined the queue as Lift 2 stopped. There was another train on section 1 that stopped as normal at the block breaks before lift 2 due to the other train still being on the lift.
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Justin
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Hey Zac, from the footage and pictures seen then the ride has done exactly what it is designed to do. With the ride stopping on the vertical lift hill then safely being lowered to the ground then there was no danger of two trains being on the same track. The papers appear to have made a story up from nothing.
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Mikw
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Justin wrote:Hey Zac, from the footage and pictures seen then the ride has done exactly what it is designed to do. With the ride stopping on the vertical lift hill then safely being lowered to the ground then there was no danger of two trains being on the same track. The papers appear to have made a story up from nothing.
As they usually do, complete with footage of the 2015 incident and one of the amputees.

As far as I can acertain, the ride did exactly what it should've done.
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Tom170499
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Staff handled it perfectly too. They kept us updated, handed out water, and when they started evacing the ride, they told us over the PA that we could all go to Oblivion (at about 18:35) for our last ride as they had kept it open for us. These things happen, nobody was injured and staff did exactly as they were trained to do, exactly as the ride stopped as it was mean to.
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Zac
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My Bad! I totally forgot they were double carriages
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Mr_Gibson
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It’s such a shame the media drags up the same stuff over and over again. The BBC article reads like it was written automatically by a bot rather than a human and if you don’t read it carefully then the incident could look quite scary.

From the App it looks like The Smiler has had the longest queues all morning, I would be curious to know how many people at the park today had read the news articles about it.
Last edited by Dan on Thu Jul 25, 2019 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Merged double post
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Harry347
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I saw several news companies bring up the 2015 incident again, with some saying the crash happened at 90mph which is very impressive seeing as we don't have a coaster in the UK that reaches that speed!
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Dan
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Harry347 wrote:I saw several news companies bring up the 2015 incident again, with some saying the crash happened at 90mph which is very impressive seeing as we don't have a coaster in the UK that reaches that speed!
During the investigation after the incident, it was calculated that the force of the crash was equivalent to a family car crashing at 90mph, so while not 100% accurate, there is some truth to that statement.
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PhNx Survivor
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Dan wrote:
Harry347 wrote:I saw several news companies bring up the 2015 incident again, with some saying the crash happened at 90mph which is very impressive seeing as we don't have a coaster in the UK that reaches that speed!
During the investigation after the incident, it was calculated that the force of the crash was equivalent to a family car crashing at 90mph, so while not 100% accurate, there is some truth to that statement.
And yet you look at the damage.. and I'd say it was built (insert perverbial here) great! To withstand that impact and the forces behind it from one train at a stand still to one moving and to produce that much (or little) damage is quite a fantastic engineering skill.

Especially if you compare the damage to a family car crashing at 90mph.
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wamdue
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I'm pretty sure the press don't dig up the article to hurt Alton Towers, it's some automatic thing to keep you reading the page, just load a previous story about The Smiler, even more so if it's one that has done well. Still I do wonder if there is any journalistic need to keep reposting the story, it isn't new news, and it was well covered at the time.
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Mikw
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Any truth that the Single rider queue doesn't operate now idf the queue is less than an hour long?
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Justin
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It still operates. Queues were 30 minutes on Thursday and I used it :)
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GregH94
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Mikw wrote:Any truth that the Single rider queue doesn't operate now idf the queue is less than an hour long?
You’ll be pleased to know that’s a bogus rumor, pretty much everyone’s used it this weekend.

Come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve used the main queue at all this season.
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