How fast are Alton Towers' operations? 

I bloody love data. Well done! Comparing clones would be a true comparison of operations….

loved this video, can’t wait for the thorpe park version!

Now this kind of video is what I love to see. This sounds like the beginning of a massive global effort to gather data on rides. Or at least I’d love to see it and would help with my home parks. You could get a lot of data with everyone spread out, though the US parks are especially bad right now due to massive staffing shortages. Tatsu at SFMM is down 2 staff on the restraint checks so the dispatches are probably pushing 3 minutes or more. Much worse than what Galactica seems to be doing.

Gotta say Oblivion always felt the fastest to me in that I never actively queued. I always felt like I was moving even during busy times and only actively stopped once I was pretty much at the ride building. The Smiler even when I was able to use Single Rider queues always took what felt like eternity to ride on. So I just stopped riding on it.

I found this fascinating. I used to work at Walt Disney World, where I ran 4 separate attractions, and was even an efficiency coach at one at times, where it was my job to ensure we hit our hourly capacity numbers! Disney’s numbers… I won’t say what they are… but they were much higher haha. I am excited to see future videos in this series!

I have that exact calculator in the thumbnail!

I was there this past weekend and found them to be incredibly efficient. Great park, has always been consistently impressive.

As a former ride op and teamleader at Europa - Park & Walibi Holland its great to see a video that goes so in dept about operations! Just a fun fact; at Condor at Walibi Holland we got a capacity of 709 riders per hour. Theoretically its 640 per hour :) best we ever did that year was a 15 second dispatch! Getting the team highly motivated and the guests involved (aka turning it into a game of sorts) is the key to succes!

Great video. Really interesting, the contrast between how ambitious some manufacturers are about their theoretical capacity! Some really superb footage throughout as well.

This was super interesting! My preditcion for thorpe park is that swarm will be the highest, with saw being the lowest

Absolutely love these kind of videos, can't wait for you to do more.

This is some quality nerd stuff, I love it, also explained really well!

These are really well done and thorough.

This was fascinating! I would love to see this for more parks!

Another brilliant coaster bot video. Thanks Harry for providing such in-depth and addictive content!

Cool format for this one!

This was certainly very interesting I dont normally think about this if I see a ride I want to do and it has a decent wait time I go for it 😁

An excellent video! Loved it!

Loved this video! Can't wait to see more

Super interesting video!! Looking forward to more ❤️

Cool video !

Very interesting video to watch! I'd definitely be curious to see what other parks are like for sure!

Your clip in the intro of Speed at Oakwood sent me back in time. Used to be a ride op there. Honestly, nevermind efficiency, any time a ride makes it back in to it's station with all it's wheels still attached and no missing passengers is a miracle. That place is awful.

13 was awful when i went, so was galactica. The Smiler and Rita were great! It's so different depending on the day and everything else . I loved this video so much!

Loved this, so interesting. The music is so ominous, edge of the seat stuff 😬

Fantastic video

absolutely loved this video!

I love it. It is an nother type of compend theme parks, and very interesting. So I'm can't wait for for the next video ☺️

This was really exciting, looking forward for the Thorpe Park edition as that is my home park!

Great video man!

That is a nice way to compare the operation time! I would love to see parks in Germany and in the Netherlands!

Great video mate very interesting!

THIS is one nerdy video! :) Well done.

Now this in the content I subscribed for!

Would love to see more of these, i always thought The Smiler would be a queue eater, just shows!!

This has potential to be a great series of videos! A great idea.

that was a really great video cant wait for other theme parks

This video was so good, I need you to do it for every park

"However, Alton Towers can only run up to four trains on The Smiler" OOF.

Can’t wait for Thorpe park very interesting data

I loved it!

I went in 2020 during the summer and i must say for a brand new ride and a busier park capacity than i expected, wickerman's line moved surprisingly fast! I think the estimate was 90mins, but we were constantly moving and i definitely fot on much sooner than the estimate

Interesting stuff. I like it and would be interested to see more.

I would love to help you with this if you want! I can get the Holiday World rides.

Nice video 👍

I love this everything I ever wanted

This was fantastic and interesting! I didn’t know the operations on the smiler were that bad! Anyway the park overall has good operations and I realised that when I went on 13

I really liked how when I was watching the smiler two trains would go up the lift hills at the same time and the train going up the sloped one reached the top first meaning it'd wiz past the one still going up the vertical one

That thumbnail though

Wow this was interesting

You have absolutely shat on Coaster Studios here. Well done chap!

I went on the 10th this month and it was great!

love it

I went on sunday and operations were great, got on nemesis twice in an hour, Galactica twice in an hour and 10 and wicker man twice in 1 hour 15, definitely worth it

Great video! One on CWoA please!

I can't wait to see videos like this for more parks😄. (When Covid is gone and you can go there) Europa Park would be interesting, because they have really fast operations on most of the rides.

Interesting video.

Brilliant. Be interesting to have data updated weekly using an app and reporting by enthusiasts. You could have a league table. Be interesting to see what patterns emerge. Parks, suppliers age etc. I think the customers leaving the platform after the ride could be a significant factor

Alton Towers has Good Operations to keep the park going! 👍 By the way, I was hoping you should do Thorpe Park next for your next video!

I'm willing to bet that once this series comes to an end, Europapark will be on top. Never visited a park with quicker operations. Apparently a 45min wait is considered obscene over there. Visited mid-july and never waited more than 30 min.

Would love you guys to do vids like these in some parks around Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany aswell

This thumbnail took me back to 2015

Very interesting

If I had an Oblivion clone at my park, I would be pushing for all 7 to operate as long as they were not needing maintenance.

Not me not knowing what a single thing means but still watching because it’s interesting

Very interesting...

Really interesting video! I like these data heavy ones. However the topic of operations is quite difficult to discuss. All you need is a few more or less motivated staff members and the whole picture can change. We went to Tripsdrill yesterday and one of the staff members at Hals über Kopf was basically running around the train, checking restraints in record time because he was so into it 😂 I'm sure that coaster would've smashed its load factor that day 😎

6:05 The Music: *Sings The Laughs as the park can run 4 trains*

You knew what you were doing putting Icon as the first point of comparison. Icon deserves it's reputation as the gold standard for operations in the U.K. You're always queing out the door for it, but you're on it 20 minutes later every time. The park staff are wizards. If you do revisit this concept at Towers though, I would love to see estimations for the Mine Train. I feel my soul leave my body any time I have to queue for that ride. Entire planets are birthed, grown to maturity and die out whilst i'm still stuck waiting to ride.

Very interesting Harry . Proof they nemesis is the best in whatever category it’s in .😉. You forgot roller disco 🤣🤣🧱👍🏽

Do one of those next time you visit Liseberg!

When I went to Alton Towers a few weeks ago, only one Galactica station was in use.

Would like to see one of these for portaventura, they seemed a tad slow with operations when I went two years ago!

Such an interesting series idea... There is one thing you've potentially missed out here.. The depreciation factor. You can't push an older coaster to hit theoretical capacity because if you do, they would fall apart (not literally, of course) - but you would risk more mechanical breakdowns or stoppages than if you took it slightly easier on the operations. So, your theoretical capacities are good as estimates when the coaster is in the beginning of its service life but you will need to lower these theoretical capacities to accommodate age. I can try finding out what the depreciation percentage is if you like? So for example, nearly 20 years in for Rita, it is not reasonable to expect it to be hitting that when it is aging. This is why coasters then end up on kill-lists - because it is no longer economical to run them. The GP often forget this factor when using their subjective view of operations and is also why Wickerman can plough trains out while Rita limps in... Wickerman will depreciate over the years starting from, around 2023. You can sorta see this in action already. Th13teen opened with a higher than theoretical capacity of 1440 per hour - topping 1600 in some calculations - compared to the 1210 you had on your visit. Yes, your visit was running 3 fewer rows, but on opening the checks would have been longer, which would essentially cancel each other out to an extent.

That's a nice new format for videos. For me personally it's still a mild shock, that most rollercoasters don't exceed the 1000 riders per hour, when there are rollercoasters like Big Thunder Mountain at DLP with theoretical capacities beyond 2400 riders per hour.

As a ride op myself, this is super interesting stuff! I found the Nemesis bit particularly interesting, as I'm currently working a ride of the same model

I would love to see this video redone after covid precautions are dropped to see how the pandemic affected dispatch times

Helllo There, this is interesting to know, thank you for giving us your perspective on this, it's much appreciated. Cheers Peter :) p.s. the operations are pretty decent at Alton Towers, it will be great for you to do a comparison video of different operations including Paultons Park, Legoland, Paultons Park, Flamingo Land, Oakwood Theme Park, Thorpe Park Resort, Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Chessington World of Adventures etc.

Why can I picture this exact type of analysis for a couple going on a date and how long it takes to get from first to second base and so on. Then the voice over continues, now his expectations were..... fill in the blank, but his actual output of reaching that goal was in fact this long. And on it goes. Not exactly hilarious stuff, but great fun and silliness. Maybe on this channel on April Fools Day next year? Grab your date and Coaster Bot will grab his calculator! Better watch out all you Ritas! He's watching you.

I’ve counted dispatches on Nemesis in 5 minutes, multiplied that by 12 and clocked it at being capable of 1,536 riders per hour, assuming no hold ups and every seat filled - could potentially push 1600 with no stacking for the whole hour

You should do Oakwood! Went yesterday as live locally and we seemed to have a better day than you guys did! All rides were efficient in getting us on and a couple were walk on! And it was a Saturday!

I have a lot of complaints about Merlin, but typically operations have always been decent - not amazing, but decent. Great analysis, and great to see you measuring capacity properly by taking an average at a specific point, too.

I was suprised by the wickerman out of all the coasters. When at full capacity thirteen eats the queues well i think. Ive queued right at the entrance and slowly walked the full queue onto the ride in about 40 mins pre covid days.

Eat this Taylor!

Much better than the Coaster Studios ones lol (don't tell Taylor!)

Duelling on the Smiler? You’re not kidding

Galactica operations are awful which we know anyway went Monday queue board was 50 minutes actual wait was 2 hours 15 minutes wasted half our day and it didn't even break down during that time operations were just slower than normal. Great video

I am deeply interested in these stats. If you organized a google doc to crowdsource data, I’d be happy to contribute on my park visits this summer. It would be particularly interesting to see a comparison by manufacturer to see who more accurately predicts real-world throughput.

Great video, Harry; really interesting to see the real world throughputs these rides get! I did some throughput timing of my own at Alton on my last visit, and I did get some different readings to you; for Wicker Man, I got 1059pph, which is higher than your reading of 973pph, and I also clocked Oblivion at 1156pph, which is a fair bit higher than your 897pph. On the flip side, I got a far lower Thirteen reading of 957pph, which is way lower than your 1210pph. I think that just shows that operations can vary a fair bit, if nothing else! Out of interest, how did you calculate the theoretical throughput of rides that had less trains than their full capacity (e.g. Smiler was 985 instead of 1200 and Oblivion was 1108 instead of 1900)? Also, if you’re wanting to do more videos like this, I’d recommend an app named Dispatch Timer. It makes timing these things very easy, and is free to download on the App Store!

To be fair, Rita breaks down very often - usually while you're queueing for it. So the actual PPH is even lower

Interesting video. My question is this; do the dispatch intervals compiled here include the amount of time that it takes the next train to enter the station upon the incumbent train dispatching? I would assume thats the case in this video. The Coaster Studios dispatch series focuses more on how quickly operators could operate a ride rather than the resulting attraction capacity. They're enjoyable, but not intended for accurate calculations. This video is an interesting take on capacity though that I've not seen online, I applaud the math here.

I wish Rita was like stealth, always loaded with trains to send out, way way shorter queues than Rita it’s just quicker and you could say, better than Rita. But I love both coasters none the less

I never knew you could type fast or slow on a calculator!!!!

Alton towers had One of the fastest op i have seen except for that minetrain for some reason they needed 3 people together to put down the same bar

They need to bring back those covid staff, I yesterday operations were TRASHHHHH. Oblivion was only running one load station and only dispatching a train every 3 minutes, we had immense stacking, 3 trains all piled up on the two break runs waiting for the 4th to unload. Such a mess. And as you may have heard, Nemesis has been running at half capaciry, only loading the front half of each train, which was a nightmare for queue times and not getting an intense back row ride. Smiler queue usually moves steadily but it breaks down so often. The best operations of the day was Airlactica, and we got a back row ride too which shocked me with it's intensity (compared to the rest of the train)

this happens because the 4th is in the scrapyard and i have a seat btw oblivion has a small que and usualy 3 stations one is secret and has 5 trains

Great video! Although u said the smiler can only run 4 of its 5 trains but in my visit in 2019 it was running all 5 however on my visit in 2021 it was only running 4. Any idea on why it only runs 4 now. Also oblivion was on 6 shuttles on my 2021 visit so that increases the pph on this video.

What’s your opinion on the GP?

it takes wickerman 15 min to move a train from one track to another galactica 25 seconds and nemysis 5 mins for examle as the smiler would take 15 mins

As others have mentioned some of the theoretical maxes are likely to be unfair to begin with. Different vendors are going to estimate differently. Perhaps an additional point of reference would be what is the throughput of the coasters fastest turnover compared to their average.