Re: Alton Towers' Galactica VR coaster/Rollercoaster Restaur
We ventured up there today and managed to ride it first thing this morning.
Thought I'd share so observations.
It held a queue of 60-90 minutes all day on a Saturday, but the rest of the park was dead!
The throughput of it is really bad. The queue barely moves anymore.
We were the 3rd train of the day out of the left side of the station and that still took the best part of 40 minutes to get on and off.
The unloading is tedious, even staff seemed fed up of the routine already and it has been open 2 days!
Craft comes in, headset cleaned with disinfectant wet wipe, put back in pouch, move onto the next person. Wait until the whole train has got the headsets away and then release the restraints.
Loading is pretty much the same, pull restraint down, handed headset after being rubbed over with a dry cloth. Try to adjust the strap and focal quality with the bulky restraints and wait! Ride op then resets the headset from a new panel next to each seat.
The actual VR is quite good. Lift hill is great, then as you crest it, it just bounces around with the movement of the coaster so it's quite jumpy.
They seem to have tried to squash as much to see as possible into a short ride time.
Seemed quite a lot of people liked it, but after a couple of rides with the same film, can quite easily see it becoming un-rerideable and people not bothering anymore.
With them literally just putting a wet wipe over the headset and then drying them, it won't be long before they are disgusting!
I worry that as the park approaches the summer season and the initial peak of "new ride experience" as worn off, the queues will be vile with fewer staff maintaining the ride and the hygiene being forgotten about. Hopefully they can keep running it in sync too otherwise there will be a lot of ill guests!
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