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Alton Towers | Wicker Man | GCI Wood

They're still reluctant to give a definitive yes/no - their latest Facebook explanation is:
"Unfortunately Wicker Man is covered in a good few cm of snow and ice, the ride itself has many man hours of checks in a morning before the ride opens, including our expert team walking the whole track for inspections. Clearly we want to open the ride as soon as it is safe to do so. Keep checking back and we'll know more tomorrow."

This is turning into Saw/Smiler all over again. Watch the ****er open on Tuesday now. I'll bring this up again - Joris en de Draak opened this afternoon (temperatures in Tilburg didn't get over 2, according to google - no snow there, admittedly)
 
Maybe they'll drag out the weather stuff now this coming week as I think they want a weekend opening.

I expect it will open on Tues though. Maybe.
 
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Holy ****. How dare they not have a definitive opening after poor weather. They should create a weather machine to prevent any weather from getting near the park. That way this can't happen again. Or they should just build a massive dome to prevent weather delays. The PR disaster or an unexpected cold front in March. Who would have thought.

Also, it's ****ing hilarious to me that the ride is meant to be ridden at night, but the park is only open at night a super limited amount of times a year.

All that said, decent looking family cred. Let's see if they can properly maintain it.

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^ yeah and would imagine that theres a pretty big difference between operating a coaster that you have been running for years and are used to operating in cold conditions, compared to one that hasn't even had a full days normal operations - so comparing it to any other woody that might be running in the cold is just a little bit daft isn't it.
 
I would assume the rain and snow does have an effect on the state of the wood, which is is likely to expand and contract. The problem would be that unlike, say, the Big Dipper they won’t know all the effects at this stage so are going to have to be cautious.
 
Several degrees warmer today and bright sunshine - Nemesis, Spinball, Octonauts, Rita all in operation - Galactica and Oblivion managed to send test trains.
From what I saw, no attempt was made to run WM, nor to remove the little residual snow from the tracks.
I think I'd give up until the weekend to be honest, folks - I'll be arranging a trip in early April.
 
With regards to snow on Wicker Man, it probably wouldn't be classed as safe (according to Towers'/Merlin's internal H&S) to walk round the track clearing the snow, so they'll likely be waiting for nature to take its course.

From Towers' communication, I'd say that they've emphasized 'official opening' a lot. So I'd expect soft opening tomorrow assuming snow clears.
 
From a PR standpoint it makes sense for Alton Towers to push the date back to the 24th since it's a Saturday but I can't help thinking that it's a bit cheeky on their part to blame snow for 3 consuecutive days when they have other rides running and there are other GCIs running across Europe in similar weather conditions.

This post probably belongs to WTF Merlin, though.
 
Crash on Smiler and people up in arms about H&S for years.
New roller coaster delayed opening due to weather and people up in arms that's it's not open.
Are these the same people?

Surely common sense is to give a new ride a few months teething time to go ride to avoid any zerg of interest or technical issues to be sorted out. Especially with Merlin parks.
 
I’m visiting today so have my fingers crossed for a afternoon opening.

From what I’ve heard my chances are very high that I’ll be riding it today.
 
Wicker Man is having a soft opening today, few theme park groups are posting about it

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