Attraction Source Forum

It used to be my favourite but after my trip in May last year it's been way demoted - it was SO rough!

Potentially daft question (as I don't know) - are there ways of making a rollercoaster smoother? how would they do that?

Could they have been just wearing new wheels in? I haven’t found it to be rough at all, but my first visit last year was at the end of June.

I think it would depend on the cause of the roughness. New and old wheels can apparently make a coaster rough. That’s easy. Wear the wheels in / change the wheels. If the cause was track deformation due to climate / temperature changes through seasons (the constant expanding and contracting of metal) or deformation due to forces applied to high load parts of the track (this is what is happening when a normally smooth coaster develops a rough patch on an intense element, cobra rolls for example are notorious.) This would be a little trickier, retracking I pressume. 

I imagine there are a thousand other possible causes. 

After my first few visits to towers, I enjoyed the thrill of Rita and even decided it was my favourite at the park. This year, after not visiting for many years, I have noticed how rough it can be, and also how boring the layout is after the initial launch. But above all of that, my main hate for Rita is it's reliability. I think I have experienced over 5 breakdowns on it this year, which just seems a little ridiculous.
I think Rita is next to go. There is little that can be done to improve the experience or the reliability, so it should definitely go before any other major ride.

On Monday 10/08/2020, the ride was closed all day. At the beginning of the day, it was expected to open within the first hour. I got speaking to some staff, and waited outside of the entrance for around 2 hours. Then because I hadn't ridden anything that day, I was allowed to go on Th13teen through the disabled entrance, skipping an atrocious 120m queue. I hung around Rita for another hour, and then I went to The Smiler, which I queued 45m for. Then I stayed in Dark Forest for the final 4 or 5 hours of the day, and actually a staff member let me have a free large plush toy which I gave to my sister. Rita never ended up opening that day, so I waited a total of more than 7 hours for it to open, but at least at the end of the day the Th13teen queue went down, and I got on it 2 more times. Once was a 2 minute wait, and the other time I let everyone past at the entrance so I could get last ride of the day. Only 5 guests were on that train, so a few staff members joined us. It was brilliant! Haha