Don't know if this should be put in here but it is a fault which is being dealt with slowly.
Just thought I would share a moment from yesterday at the park.
Although I am a smoker I have do obey the ruled for smoking in que lines even if people around me in the que don't.
Whilst queuing for SW last night/evening we were in the last straight of the que line and the Ride op in the cabin came on the Mic and told a guy to stop smoking in the Que. He didn't so she said again "would the guy in the blue top please stop smoking" one of this guys onterage then precceded to wave the cigarette in the air.The ride op then told him that if it wasn't put out then he would not be riding. highly entertaining for us in the que and embarrasing for the boy who was smoking
On another note while in thew same que while the ride had a short break down we noticed two boys who were stuck on the final brake run suddenly light up and started to smoke on the ride this was promptly stoped after a ride op who was on one of the block sections spotted them straight away and yelled at them to "put the fags out"
wow... smoking on rides... wonder if anyones tried that on nemesis/oblivion... someones gotta have done it and then come off with a face full of ash :P
i am a smoker... well actually was, i havent had one for about a week (hoorah!) it wont last, but i think that would be awful if someone lit up in a que... i know wen u gotta smoke thats it full stop, but i have a little more respect, i also make sure i dispose of my cigarette butt somewhere that actually isnt on the floor, cus i just hate that.
never really been around people smoking in ques at alton. though i think it is bad, especially for others queing who
A: dont want to come away from the ride smelling of smoke
B: have their asthma or any other thing get irritated
C: or basically their habit they quit kick started again...
i think what is also needed are those bins, i havent spotted them at the park, but they had them everywhere at islands of adventure wen i went not so long ago, they were like bins, but ontop of them they had like containers ontop of them so you could extinguish your cigarette...
Do you mean the ones with sand on the top like in the hotel?
I think its good that AT have finally follwed in the footsteps of thorpe and banned smoking in queues. However it cant be very easy to enforce since there are no cameras around the queue.
[quote=""Dara""]Do you mean the ones with sand on the top like in the hotel?
I think its good that AT have finally follwed in the footsteps of thorpe and banned smoking in queues. However it cant be very easy to enforce since there are no cameras around the queue.[/quote]
yeah they are , but i think at IOA it was like a tiny coloured gravel...
i think they should install "fake" camera systems around the park and not hidden away, yeah they wouldnt work, but placed where the public can obviously see them i think it would give more of a presence that they are being watched, and no smoking in the que line, no vandalism, no que jumping... it may cut it down a bit anyway...
Smoking in the queue line is really horrible for those who don't smoke, who wants to be standing for ages next to someone constantly lighting up there cigarettes. Fortunately at Thorpe Park we do try our hardest to stop people smoking - especially in the family ride queue lines such as Mr Monkey's Banana Ride. I caught five people inside an hour smoking yesterday.
i wont let people smoke in any of my queue lines when im operating, if i catch them, i make them put it out, if i catch them again, i dont let them on. rules are rules. i dont smoke, and it annoys me when i go for my day off and am in a queue and there is someone smoking, cause i cant do anything, i could flash my ID and tell them to get out of the queue, but without my uniform on, it dosnt carry alot of authority.
Its easier to do on smaller rides. I do it all the time when Im on Blade but on air its much harder because the Ops are in a cabin no where near the queue and the assistants are down in the station so they caint see either.
When I went (11th) when I was in the que for Enterprise the woman in front of us lit one up and then the people behind us did as well .Then my twin said there should be a No Smoking sine up some where , then the woman in front of us then put the fag in front of us and started to blow it in are faces , she then said to here 2 girls i don't put this out for brats .the people behind us said that woman dose no even know them , we then said why are we brats she said un like my kids that are well behaved you are brats while blowing more in are faces . we said hopfully the wind on Enterprise will blow it out she then said smuggly just before the end of the que if you said please then i would have put it out :evillaugh: .I then said will you Please put that out and she did.
What a cow.
im sorry but i disagree with pretty much all of that
[quote=""Adrian-TT""]Perhaps if you didn't believe all the government lies and hype about smoking and respected the fact that a lot of people do want to smoke just like smokers are supposed (I know some don't and they should be slapped) to respect that a lot of people don't want to smoke you might understand why smokers get so defensive and angry when people start to moan![/quote]
what if someone lighted up a joint in public? the effects on your health are less than smoking, its not addictive. smoking is only legal because people have been doing it for so long.
[quote=""Adrian-TT""]There is no hard evidence that passive smoking, especially when it's outdoors, actually does anyone any harm. It has a lot more to do with people not liking smoking which makes me angry because there are many things people do in queue lines that really annoy me but I don't call for it to be banned! Puting my hand in someones 'second hand' chewing gum is equally disgusting! So should that be banned?! Who knows what disgusting things I could catch from it, it could ruin my health! (read that with a huge amount of sarcasm)[/quote]
so you think smoking should be allowed in queue lines? alot of what people do in queue lines is not detramental to others health. Ok so there isnt any hard evidence that smoking outdoors can cause damage passivly, put there is actually no recorded deaths due to smoking either, its not a proven fact that smoking kills, however the corolation between people have died of serious heart, lung and throat conditions, aswell as numerious kinds of cancer, is incredibly high. just because it isnt sceintificly proven, dosnt mean it isnt true. If you were queue for a childrens ride, would you feel differently, if you had a family with 4 children, and someone started smoking , would you be annoyed, or think, not its ok, it isnt harming them? would you want people smoking in the queues for childrens rides banned? whats the difference between the queue for the tractors and the queue for oblivion, ive known 10 years olds be tall enought to go on the big coasters.
[quote=""Adrian-TT""]The sooner new labour and there nanny state has gone the better! and we can all carry on with the important task of getting on with our own lives instead of worrying what other people are doing. I try to refrain from smoking in queue lines but if I'm stuck in one for 2 hours (which often happens at Alton Towers) then sometimes (and may god strike me down for this) I do have to do that most evil of things and light up![/quote]
hope i dont catch you
[quote=""Adrian-TT""]I thought this country was supposed to be getting more tolerant not the other way round![/quote]
why should people have to put up with other peoples bad habbits, if someone took their shoes of and started biting their toe nails, what would you say? id find that less annoying than smoking to be hoenst.
[quote=""Adrian-TT""]Smoking outdoors and indoors are very different things and non smokers should respect and understand that and understand that other things that people do in queue lines are equally annoying and disgusting![/quote]
yes, and everyone finds them annoying. you said earlier that we should all be more tolerant. prehaps you should realise that you made the decision to start smoking, not the people around you. when you smoke, even if it isnt effecting their health, theres the smell, which i person find makes me sick sometimes. no body likes queueing up for 2 hours for a ride, and you might want to smoke to make it go quicker, but those surrounding you proberly dont. if anything, it will make their queueing time seem twice aslong because they have to put up with it.
[quote=""Adrian-TT""]Smokers are fed up of been made the scapegoats for all of societys ills! Perhaps 'society' needs to take a long hard look at itself and it might realise they also are not so perfect![/quote]
again, you choose to smoke, you should accept the stereotype that comes with it. no one asked you to smoke, the decision was yours.
No smoking signs are in all the large queuelines. Air as several, spinball wizzers has several and a PA anoucement. Staff have been told that they must wherever possible stop ppl from smoking in the queue and anyone who refuses to put it out will be asked to leave the queue.
Even at Thorpe Park with 'no smoking' signs in queues people were still lighting up. At one point there were people smoking on either sides of us. It may not particularly damage my health, but the smell is digusting and I cannot get away from it without getting out of the queue line. Is it fair that we should suffer because people couldn't wait twenty minutes without a ciggarette? I'm just glad my sister- an asthmatic- had chosen to go on another ride at that point.
Ok, speaking as a smoker who is trying his hardest to give up i can say this without any preconcived ideas on the subject.
I have been smoking since the age of 16. From the day i was taken home from hospital i have always been in a smoking envionment. That makes in, 20 days, realisticly i have been "smoking" for 29 years! Even for the first 16 years of my life it wasnt my choice. My health wasnt too affected and the doctors only found a slight trace of childhood asthma but it wasnt at the stage that medication was ever needed. This is common in the majority of children but it does subside with age.
I started smoking because it was something to do, not because of peer pressure, just because i wanted to.
Due to a lack of confidence when i had my second visit to AT ever in 2002, i smoked in the queue for Air so much that it gave me a sore throat... along with the screaming i did on the way around. Yes, i WAS a wimp. Since AT introduced the "No Smoking" policy in queue lines, i feel a lot healthier when visiting AT. On the recent trip i organised for myself and some of my close friends while waiting in the queue for spinball and the flume, my friends did light up. I did tell them that the queues this year were non smoking. I didnt tell them to put them out because i would invade their right to smoke where they like in the outdoors. There were others in the queue for both who were smoking and no-one told them to put it out.
Unfortunatly, we are becomming a nation of "Oops, i cant offend anyone because they'll complain that im doing X,Y&Z" Like Adrian said, we are becomming a nanny state. Who does the nanny state affect? The people that they are trying to protect or the people who want to have a right to do what they wanna do to their own bodies? In this case smoking.
As i said at the beginning of this post, i am trying to give up smoking. Its very difficult and somedays it feels like hell. The thing that everyone seems to lose sight of is that smoking is an adictive state that some people try to break. It was a social thing as well as a private thing. Its now becomming more and more a private thing that the goverment have gone mad trying to lecture us on what we can adn cant do to ourselves. I would rather have someone smoke in a queue line than in an enclosed space.
I do hope that Tussauds start to maintain a tolerance that is fair to all. At the moment it seems like non smokers have the upper hand. Yes it is fair to the non smokers but what about the people who are so addictive to smoking that they chain smoke? If it was about someone who was fat then there would be an outcry. Because its smokers and apparently smokers have a choice. Some smokers dont have a choice. Nicotien is the most addictive drug known that is legal.
I have no problem with people in queues who smoke, the problem i have is non smokers not understanding fully that it is a habbit that is very very hard to break for some. I say live and let live, we are only on this planet living once so let people live.
This is a very interesting topic! I think what we should remember is that Alton and Thorpe have banned smoking from the queue lines, in which case if you want to visit the parks you have to abide by their rules. There is no question about freedom to smoke because their poilcy is the no smoking rule in the queue lines, just like the queue jumping policy.
Smoke outside yes, there isn't a ban there but there is in the queue lines. I personally would never smoke in a queue line, come on you have to go longer than a couple of hours without a fag don't you? Like in everyday life when you're at work, on a plane journey or shopping in a mall.
I think it's very unfair to non smokers when smokers light up in such close proximity to them, especially in a place like Alton Towers where there are many childern. The smoke is bad enough but quite often you will get an eyeful of ash too yuk!
I do understand that smoking is a habbit and that it is hard to get rid of it.
But buy buying a ticket to the park to smoke in a q line is as bad offense as q jumping which leads to being escorted out of the park in many cases. I am not a smoker (well i am 13) but i agree its a habbit. Ideas to stop smoking in queues:
1) Make a seprate area of the queue one for smokers and anther for non.
2) Put up more signs the q jumping signs are all over the place but not many no smoking signs
3)More cameras to reduce smoking and queue jumpers
4)Smoke alarms?? (just and idea)
5) Crack down more and be told to get out of the park with no warning you should have read the signs!!!!
These are my ideas any one else have any??
i dont know if many of those ideas would work, they are good ideas tho, smoke alarms is abit risky because what if it was a real fire? i do like the seperate areas fo smoking tho, prehaps every couple of hundred meters there could be a little shed set back from the queue and if you want to smoke, you have to forsake you place in the queue by however long it takes you to smoke, and rejoin the queue when you finish. you'd soon have people stop smoking if everytime they wanted a fag, it meant they had to queue for 10 mintues logner.
your missing the point however, if you want to smoke, no one is trying to stop you, but you shouldnt inflict it on others that do not wish to smoke. if you want to do it, thats fine, but you shouldnt do it in an envrionment where not smokes cannot escape from it. if you wanna smoke, have one before you start queueing, have 10 if its a long queue, and then as many as you want afterwards, but realisticly, you should be able to cope with 2 hours max without a smoke.
Exactly and maybe it won't cause major health problems, but it's still uncomfortable for non-smokers around who dislike the smell or often having ash from cigarettes blown around. As has been said, it's your choice to smoke, but it's a non-smoker's choice not to do so, yet there is no choice if someone in that sort of area choses to light up around you. I think in an area such as that people should expect to be asked to put out a ciggarette and should respect other's wishes if they are asked to do so, and especially shouldn't light up if it's the park's rules as you do not have to be there and it's almost like smoking in a non-smoker's house. You've gone their and they're offering you hospitality so it's only fair to do as they wish you to do. There are plenty of other areas to smoke, and as has been said you can generally wait two hours for a ciggarette.
Though I do agree that in other open areas where non-smokers need not be affected or be surrounded by smoke and ash, imposing their lifestyle choice upon you is not fair. But a queue line is a different matter, really.
this was promptly stoped after a ride op who was on one of the block sections spotted them straight away and yelled at them to "put the fags out"
, but i think at IOA it was like a tiny coloured gravel...
.Then my twin said there should be a No Smoking sine up some where 
, then the woman in front of us then put the fag in front of us and started to blow it in are faces 
