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WTF Merlin?

toofpikk

Mega Poster
682947_1.jpg

lovely bit of political seasoning to spice everything up

nice
 
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streetmagix

Mega Poster
Word on the street (park) is that Wicker Man won't open today, it's third day out of operation. I get that rides break down but Wicker Man feels incredibly unreliable even for a Merlin ride. WTF Merlin?
 

elephant58

Hyper Poster
It seems weird that it should be a relatively small wooden coaster with the serious reliability issues. Like I understand the Smiler or DBGT having problems, as they're all big and technical, but Wicker Man...
 

streetmagix

Mega Poster
I saw it on Towerstreet Twitter (I think), since been updated to 'It's finally opened'. Good work on them getting it open, lets hope it's more reliable now.
 

jokerman

Giga Poster
Yeah, it's been opening late recently. Was there on Sunday and Monday. It's a shame that it hasn't been open for ERT, but to their credit they've been getting a couple of other rides up and running nice and early in an attempt to compensate slightly.
 

TPC

Roller Poster
Thorpe Park's flash sale is incredibly misleading. The terms and conditions refer to it ending at 5pm today, yet you could not get the discounted price at 4pm (which would be a saving of almost £10 a person). I'm not the only person to realise this (as Twitter shows). This reminds so much of the DBGT 12p tickets being sold at the wrong time. So so annoying and frustrating, especially with Thorpe being such a major park. Did nobody realise 4pm is not 5pm?
 

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Thorpe Park's flash sale is incredibly misleading. The terms and conditions refer to it ending at 5pm today, yet you could not get the discounted price at 4pm (which would be a saving of almost £10 a person). I'm not the only person to realise this (as Twitter shows). This reminds so much of the DBGT 12p tickets being sold at the wrong time. So so annoying and frustrating, especially with Thorpe being such a major park. Did nobody realise 4pm is not 5pm?

Maybe the server was set to the wrong time zone? Or maybe they're overcompensating for daylight saving time? At first I thought the server was set to UTC, which in the summer is one hour behind GMT, but that would have extended the offer to 6 PM instead of shortening it.
 

TPC

Roller Poster
Turns out there was a technical problem for "15 mins" (much much longer). They supposedly decided to extend the offer by 45 minutes, without telling anybody. This meant many people including me lost out on this offer.
 

EndlessWire

Mega Poster
Ok, I need a little rant here.
I run a craft beer shop for a living. As such, I need to work on Fridays and Saturdays because thoseo are our busiest days. To offset that, I take Wed/Sun off instead of Sat/Sun. I don't drive yet and don't have masses of cash to throw around, but now that the madness of summer is over and the rest of the staff have all taken their holidays, I thought now would be a good time to look and find a Wednesday in the next few weeks to visit Alton Towers.
Today is the last regular Wednesday Alton Towers is open this year.
Inexplicably, it's open on Monday and Tuesday next week but not Wednesday, and from then on until Scarefest (which I don't have much interest in), it's Thu-Sun. It's not feasible for me to take Fridays or Saturdays off, and Thursday is our main delivery day, so I need to be in work for that too. That leaves Sunday, which thankfully is a day when national and local train and bus services run extra-frequently...oh. If I do take a Thursday or Friday off, I've got to get there super early and cram everything in before 4pm, which makes it almost not worth the time, money and energy involved in getting there.
Seriously, WTF Merlin? It's concerning to see them having to do 4pm closures, but the lack of days and lack of variety available is downright irritating and it seems as though they've not considered the park's infamously inconvenient location when making their opening hours decisions - 11-5 makes a lot more sense to me as people would have more time to arrive. I get early opens are better for their hotel guests, but it shafts those of us traveling from further for the day. In short - arrrggghhh, that's bloody annoying.
 

Pokemaniac

Mountain monkey
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Ok, I need a little rant here.
I run a craft beer shop for a living. As such, I need to work on Fridays and Saturdays because thoseo are our busiest days. To offset that, I take Wed/Sun off instead of Sat/Sun. I don't drive yet and don't have masses of cash to throw around, but now that the madness of summer is over and the rest of the staff have all taken their holidays, I thought now would be a good time to look and find a Wednesday in the next few weeks to visit Alton Towers.
Today is the last regular Wednesday Alton Towers is open this year.
Inexplicably, it's open on Monday and Tuesday next week but not Wednesday, and from then on until Scarefest (which I don't have much interest in), it's Thu-Sun. It's not feasible for me to take Fridays or Saturdays off, and Thursday is our main delivery day, so I need to be in work for that too. That leaves Sunday, which thankfully is a day when national and local train and bus services run extra-frequently...oh. If I do take a Thursday or Friday off, I've got to get there super early and cram everything in before 4pm, which makes it almost not worth the time, money and energy involved in getting there.
Seriously, WTF Merlin? It's concerning to see them having to do 4pm closures, but the lack of days and lack of variety available is downright irritating and it seems as though they've not considered the park's infamously inconvenient location when making their opening hours decisions - 11-5 makes a lot more sense to me as people would have more time to arrive. I get early opens are better for their hotel guests, but it shafts those of us traveling from further for the day. In short - arrrggghhh, that's bloody annoying.

Then again, consider the poor Alton Towers employees, who only get Wednesdays off since the park is open all weekends. On their free Wednesdays, they'd like to go visit this awesome craft beer shop they've heard of, but alas...
 

EndlessWire

Mega Poster
Ok, I need a little rant here...
Oh for pity's sake. Further to that and against my better judgement, I took this Friday off, and lo and behold, there are now NO BUSES running from the park to anywhere until Scarefest, despite their website saying there will be. W T ACTUAL F, Merlin?!
 

NeoXIII

Best Newcomer 2016
Oh for pity's sake. Further to that and against my better judgement, I took this Friday off, and lo and behold, there are now NO BUSES running from the park to anywhere until Scarefest, despite their website saying there will be. W T ACTUAL F, Merlin?!

To AT defence here, it's not them managing the bus service from and to the park. First Bus is to blame for that one, they seem to decrease the service to the park each year.
Last year I was able to get to the park somewhat easy on a week day, but with AT running their own staff coach service now the X32 got reduced even more.
Wouldn't be surprised if the last bus home on Scarefest is going to be like, 6PM or something...
 

EndlessWire

Mega Poster
To AT defence here, it's not them managing the bus service from and to the park. First Bus is to blame for that one, they seem to decrease the service to the park each year.
Last year I was able to get to the park somewhat easy on a week day, but with AT running their own staff coach service now the X32 got reduced even more.
Wouldn't be surprised if the last bus home on Scarefest is going to be like, 6PM or something...
This is true, though it is somewhat annoying that AT's website does say that buses are available without any caveats.
 
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