Re: Alton Towers' Galactica VR coaster/Rollercoaster Restaur
Okay, I can weigh in on both of these now.
First up, the divisive Galactica.
I enjoyed it. The two 11 year olds and SSIL_Furie (30-something) also enjoyed it.
I'll caveat that a little. We enjoyed it under the circumstances we were in
I fundamentally agree with Joey. There are a lot of faults.
However, Air for me was always a display of missed opportunities. It was a mix of two Tussauds' eras. The one where they wanted to break new ground in the industry and pull the UK Theme Park industry up to international standards and the one where they just wanted to sell out. I think Air started development in the former and was built during the latter (look at 2004 and 2005 additions to see how it went from then on).
So the entire ride was promise, but delivered something that was fundamentally flawed. There's little Alton can do about a poor layout, or swoops over the car park. It can't make it a decent length. It could have perhaps tarted up the tunnel and lift hill and the end brake run - the main parts that the VR really helps with and where you spend most of the ride.
And that for me is key. Air is a mediocre experience (yes, it's nice for people who want a gentle introduction to bigger rides, etc.), but still mediocre at best. Part of that experience is the horrid concreteness of it all. Concrete everywhere. It's grey and depressing. It always has been. Most of the ride you are looking at concrete - or the bottom of somebody's shoes. It's ****.
So, VR definitely improves all of that. You now have something else to distract you. I found it made the top and tail of the ride much better and you barely noticed it. So that's the big positive for me.
In terms of all the gubbins.
Through put is definitely hit, but not anywhere near as badly as I thought. I watched closely (and despite generally avoiding Air, I've always been intrigued by their operations).
As the riders are getting off, the crew walks behind them wiping the headsets. So each row is finished before the ex-riders are off the station platform. They then start batching really quickly. Before there was a much bigger pause between people leaving the area and getting riders on, now it seemed to be as soon as the baggage areas were free of milling people. The staff were really on the ball maximising things and reducing faff. Getting people's headsets on while other members in the group dropped bags or stood looking confused (as some people always seem to do when presented with a coaster seat). Headsets were put on and checked as the staff checked restraints and the control lights on the trains. It added time, but it was minimal. I think that there was different staff running the final checks too, rather than it being the restraint checkers - maybe Bob can confirm.
In all though, the time added was minimal and Ben is right, the trains didn't stack. If the trains don't stack, you've got optimum throughput in dispatch. Maybe they spent an extra 30 seconds on the brake run than usual, but I've certainly had longer waits on that brake run. Or maybe I was there for ages, but with VR I was so detached that I didn't notice it was minutes? I don't think so though.
So I found the dispatch times to be good. The team were very efficient.
I was using disabled access though, so skipped the queue. I suspect my view if waiting an hour
may have been different, but see later
The VR experience itself I liked for the reasons I stated above. It added a distraction to the slow crawl out of the station, the tedious lift hill and the nasty spit-covered floor at the end. Was it great VR? No, but it was adequate.
The initial "launch" was ruined by the way the VR playthrough didn't quite match the motion of the trains. Massively dropped the ball on the design element there. That stuck out like a sore thumb both times I rode it. The second time I could force some justification through suspension of disbelief, but it was forced and the first time it did break the VR spell.
The main ride video and experience I found to be "fine". Somebody somewhere (I think it was Joey) said that it takes a coaster and makes it more like "Soarin'", when all that those rides have ever tried to do is imitate a coaster. I agree here, but... There were moments where the more extreme forces and body position worked well with the interactive landscape you were flying through. It was a bit underwhelming in places (the ice planet for instance), but the earlier stages I thought worked well. It's an odd one for me. I have much derided Space Mountain at DLRP for the use of inversions in the dark where you can't tell you're inverted. This suffered less because the VR matched that, so I think it IS kind of that Soarin' experience, but at the same time it adds more. It's a weird one. I agree, but don't care at the same time
I just found that overall, it was an improved experience. The same as Air, I would only queue for it if I was in a group. Unlike Air, I would happily queue skip for this. I found Air had become such a bland experience, I'd rather sit it out. Galactica has just enough to interest me now to make it worth riding again. I'm not saying it's good, or a good idea or anything, but it IS an improved experience of a ride that was always never as good as it should have been.
Okay so Galactica out of the way - Rollercoaster Restaurant.
If you've ever been to one of these, you know what to expect. Typical theme park food (i.e. almost, but not quite Wetherspoons quality, only smaller portions and twice the expense) delivered "amusingly". I think the interactive delivery is quite fun and the others with me really enjoyed it.
We got Kids' desserts for £2 each, and they were really good value. Big portions actually.
They do an annual pass discount too of 20% which brought it down to £15 per head, which I don't think is a bad price for a sit down meal at a theme park - when you include drinks and dessert.
The biggest issue for me was the queue length. It was out of the door and they estimated an hour and quarter to get to people further back. When we got in however, there were several "pods" of four seats empty. In fact, we had 8 seats around us empty all the time were were there (over an hour). Yet, the queue outside never diminished.
I don't know if they had some kind of capacity issue due to staffing, but they certainly weren't overly stretched. In fact, considering that the ordering is done yourself on a tablet, the team on the floor have very little to do. I can imagine somebody who has worked in a busy restaurant being flabbergasted by so many floor staff to serve so few tables - especially when they don;t actually have to do any order taking or delivery. I think it's 14 tables of 16 (most with just 8 people on them) and I counted 6 floor staff I think. I don't know how that compares to normal operations in a restaurant?
I liked the internal decor in the place and the references to the coasters past and present. The occasional big screen displays of old ride adverts mixed with other footage was good too. So the atmosphere was quite cool.
I doubt I'll do it ever again, but as a "special treat", it was okay.
In terms of park operations - just to add something to a comment Joey made somewhere - baggage. The crews were awful across the park - not just Galactica. No staff puling the cage doors across (in fact on Oblivion and Nemesis they're removed cage doors). In fact, we had to leave our bags on the station platform on Rita, then fight with other people getting off the train to open and close doors to get at our bags. Utter shambles.
