dazza4783
TS Member
Yes, a mixture of that and not wanting to announce an opening date until they are confident of hitting that date and not having to delay/cancel anything.
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Drayton Manor Park
- Thread starter Matty
- Start date
possibly, if just out of the 20 prople on the train dosn't see or read the sign, then they have to open the restraints and recheck
KolonelKlink
TS Member
The problem with that as a business strategy is that - unless you happen to have been to Drayton recently and noticed a new coaster was being built - virtually no-one will know until the event and the park seem to be relying on families making last-minute day trip decisions rather than factoring it into their summer holiday plans.
Honestly, they’d be better off waiting until 2025 now, they’ve got a new ride (of sorts) to push this summer (providing the train issues are sorted) and should use next year’s marketing spend to go all guns blazing on a March opening.
Ian
TS Team
- Favourite Ride
- Dizz, Bobby’s Yarn Land
You can put all the signs and announcements in places that you like, but I can guarantee that there’ll still be people who will attempt to close their lapbar as soon as they sit down. It’s just instinct. When people see a restraint or a seatbelt their natural response is to close/fasten it. You see it a lot of planes when they’re still refuelling as you board. The seatbelt light will be off, the crew may even make announcements, but people still automatically fasten theirs once they sit down and then have to be told to undo it.
This whole system on The Wave sounds shonky at best. If it has such a specific set of requirements for only allowing the restraints to be closed once a certain button is pressed, why does the train not have the ability to lock the lapbars open until that button is pressed? GCI and Intamin worked that one out years ago!
Failing that, if it’s true that you have to press a button to say that you want the system to start monitoring restraint positions (why that needs to be a separate task is weird to me, as aside from during unlocking when would you ever not want positions to be being monitored…), surely the most logical fix here would be to say you push that button as soon as you open the airgates? Then, if a guest does decide to pull the bar down as soon as they’re seated then it’s surely not an issue?
The whole thing sounds like a mess and doesn’t make any sense to me, which is a shame really, cause feedback on the actual ride experience itself seems half decent. I’d love to hear what the rationale (if any…) was for these design decisions. Seems like a pretty big thing to have gone unnoticed and unconsidered during design and testing
This whole system on The Wave sounds shonky at best. If it has such a specific set of requirements for only allowing the restraints to be closed once a certain button is pressed, why does the train not have the ability to lock the lapbars open until that button is pressed? GCI and Intamin worked that one out years ago!
Failing that, if it’s true that you have to press a button to say that you want the system to start monitoring restraint positions (why that needs to be a separate task is weird to me, as aside from during unlocking when would you ever not want positions to be being monitored…), surely the most logical fix here would be to say you push that button as soon as you open the airgates? Then, if a guest does decide to pull the bar down as soon as they’re seated then it’s surely not an issue?
The whole thing sounds like a mess and doesn’t make any sense to me, which is a shame really, cause feedback on the actual ride experience itself seems half decent. I’d love to hear what the rationale (if any…) was for these design decisions. Seems like a pretty big thing to have gone unnoticed and unconsidered during design and testing
Dave
TS Founding Member
Signs are useless, the other day I was following a visitor at work down multiple corridors, they passed 5 signs for the multi-storey car park clearly lost, then turned to me stood directly under a huge sign saying “multi-storey car park >>” and said to me “can you tell me how to get to the car park” and nothing about them made me consider them to be particularly unintelligent or unable to read.
When people are emotionally charged or rushed they stop reading. It’s a human thing.
When people are emotionally charged or rushed they stop reading. It’s a human thing.
immelmanloop
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Apocalypse (R.I.P)
The restraints can be locked up, and as of sunday just gone, this was being used to stop guests pulling down restraints. Dispatch cycle was about 5 minutes.
Themeparksandy1981
TS Member
Years ago under the Bryan’s you never found out what Drayton Manor were installing to you picked up a tourist guide from the stand in a service station. (Theses were roughly made in January and I found out the company who printed Drayton’s and they would send me a 1 weeks before they were put in the stands)
It’s been roughly 2 years in the making this coaster and it’s on the website, social media, forums and vloggers have been posting updates since Apocalypses deconstructed in November 2022. Not sure what else the park could have done without revealing the coaster name and a computer generated POV. With all the building been nearly finished and they started installing the queue lines I can see testing starting by the end of the month.
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KolonelKlink
TS Member
Apart from the Midlands newspaper advertising and TV campaigns, you mean?
From: https://youtu.be/bz5UyC21kh4?si=hKNb_pkkNB4IIp_E
You’re making my point for me - most people outside the enthusiast arena and guests who’ve already been this year (and are observant enough to notice the construction) have no idea this is happening. As far as the website goes, you have to really look hard to find any mention of the new ride.
I’ve never known such a low-key build-up anywhere to what is really quite a major investment and I genuinely don’t understand the strategy behind it - pushing a Shockwave retheme with an unreliable train for a few months then suddenly switching to “hey, we’ve actually got something else for you now so forget about all that” is confused, bad marketing practice in terms of awareness building and downright bizarre.
The only rationale I can think of is they haven’t decided if they want to open it this year or not.
jon81uk
TS Member
Its not bizzarre. Tell people the new ride is coming later this year and a majority will wait until that time to visit. This is why Thorpe Park offered discounts for May, they know people will wait for Hyperia to open. Don't tell people you've got something new coming and they will visit now and they might come back later in the year, or next year for the next new thing, you can get two visits from people.
If it doesn't start testing in the next couple of weeks then late June opening is not happening. You then have to question if it will be open by the end of July. I have a feeling the project may be behind but I do think the park needs to be a bit more open in giving people a rough idea of when it will be ready.
jon81uk
TS Member
Why? They haven't even told people they are opening a ride at all.
Its not like Hex at Alton Towers where we were told it would open this year and now hasn't. Drayton haven't really even acknowledged what the ride will be, let alone considering the rough idea of when it will be ready.
Because it may impact people's decision to visit? I'm putting my own visit off as long as I can so I'd like to have a rough idea, I think it's quite poor actually.
jon81uk
TS Member
As in my previous post, for the majority of Drayton Manor's visit the opposite is true, they don't know anything is being built. Therefore knowing something is coming would stop them visiting as it has for you. By not significantly stating they are opening a new attraction soon, Drayton Manor are therefore ensuring fewer people delay trips and more visit now.
Matt N
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Mako (SeaWorld Orlando)
I can understand why they’re not shouting from the rooftops given that the ride doesn’t seem too close to opening, but I find the complete radio silence on the major new coaster quite odd. By now, I’d have at least expected a ride name and a basic summary of what it does to be out there in the public conscious.
If you weren’t an enthusiast or in some position to be in the loop with developments at Drayton Manor, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they weren’t building a new coaster at all and that The Wave was their principal new draw for 2024. The only reference to the new coaster that is in the wider public view is on the Frontier Falls web page, where “new coaster coming soon” is a mere footnote among the attractions list of the land, hidden behind the likes of Accelerator and Drunken Barrels. Yes, Victoria Lynn has spoken about it in Blooloop articles and in videos by the likes of TPW, but those aren’t consumed by anyone other than enthusiasts, who know about the new coaster already.
The Wave has now been open for 2 weeks. Even if they didn’t want to announce the ride prior to The Wave opening, I’d have hoped for some sort of acknowledgement now that’s it been open for a good period of time.
I could maybe understand the approach a little more if the attraction was a more minor draw, such as a flat ride, walkthrough or some other more minor investment. However, this is no minor draw… this is Drayton Manor’s biggest new ride investment since at least 2011. This attraction is a really, really big deal for the park, and I’m surprised that they aren’t marketing it as such.
People say that “not announcing the new ride now means that people will still visit now when they may not have done otherwise”, but I’d argue that not announcing it means that plenty of other people won’t know to visit once the new ride opens. There may well be plenty of people who would plan a return visit to Drayton Manor if they knew that the park was building its biggest major draw in at least 13 years, but wouldn’t go back otherwise. By not even announcing the ride and making somewhat of an attempt to spread awareness about it, they risk missing out on these people. These people will plan summer holiday visits to other places if they don’t know that Drayton has a big new investment to shout about. With the complete radio silence, you may have a situation where even very local people don’t know that Drayton Manor is building a new coaster, and if local people don’t know, then people from further afield definitely won’t.
I’d cite the example of Thorpe Park and Hyperia as a good way to handle a situation like this. Yes, they haven’t shouted from the rooftops until more recently, and you can pick flaws in the campaign in some regards, but they’ve been doing a pretty decent job of spreading basic awareness of Hyperia and what it’s all about since October last year. They also technically had a new draw in the form of Big Easy Boulevard, so if they were to take the approach that Drayton have seemingly taken thus far, they would have only announced Big Easy to begin with and then maintained complete radio silence on Hyperia until very recently. And given the hype generated for Hyperia through Thorpe’s timely announcement and engagement, I think that would have been a poor move. Granted, Hyperia is a lot harder to hide than this coaster, but you get my point.
Announcing your new major investment this late on is not a very common approach. There must be a reason why so few parks do it, and I do feel that it’s an odd move by Drayton even if there may be logic behind it.
If you weren’t an enthusiast or in some position to be in the loop with developments at Drayton Manor, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they weren’t building a new coaster at all and that The Wave was their principal new draw for 2024. The only reference to the new coaster that is in the wider public view is on the Frontier Falls web page, where “new coaster coming soon” is a mere footnote among the attractions list of the land, hidden behind the likes of Accelerator and Drunken Barrels. Yes, Victoria Lynn has spoken about it in Blooloop articles and in videos by the likes of TPW, but those aren’t consumed by anyone other than enthusiasts, who know about the new coaster already.
The Wave has now been open for 2 weeks. Even if they didn’t want to announce the ride prior to The Wave opening, I’d have hoped for some sort of acknowledgement now that’s it been open for a good period of time.
I could maybe understand the approach a little more if the attraction was a more minor draw, such as a flat ride, walkthrough or some other more minor investment. However, this is no minor draw… this is Drayton Manor’s biggest new ride investment since at least 2011. This attraction is a really, really big deal for the park, and I’m surprised that they aren’t marketing it as such.
People say that “not announcing the new ride now means that people will still visit now when they may not have done otherwise”, but I’d argue that not announcing it means that plenty of other people won’t know to visit once the new ride opens. There may well be plenty of people who would plan a return visit to Drayton Manor if they knew that the park was building its biggest major draw in at least 13 years, but wouldn’t go back otherwise. By not even announcing the ride and making somewhat of an attempt to spread awareness about it, they risk missing out on these people. These people will plan summer holiday visits to other places if they don’t know that Drayton has a big new investment to shout about. With the complete radio silence, you may have a situation where even very local people don’t know that Drayton Manor is building a new coaster, and if local people don’t know, then people from further afield definitely won’t.
I’d cite the example of Thorpe Park and Hyperia as a good way to handle a situation like this. Yes, they haven’t shouted from the rooftops until more recently, and you can pick flaws in the campaign in some regards, but they’ve been doing a pretty decent job of spreading basic awareness of Hyperia and what it’s all about since October last year. They also technically had a new draw in the form of Big Easy Boulevard, so if they were to take the approach that Drayton have seemingly taken thus far, they would have only announced Big Easy to begin with and then maintained complete radio silence on Hyperia until very recently. And given the hype generated for Hyperia through Thorpe’s timely announcement and engagement, I think that would have been a poor move. Granted, Hyperia is a lot harder to hide than this coaster, but you get my point.
Announcing your new major investment this late on is not a very common approach. There must be a reason why so few parks do it, and I do feel that it’s an odd move by Drayton even if there may be logic behind it.
jon81uk
TS Member
Drayton Manor isn't somewhere you'd plan to go three months in advance for most people. Advertising it a month before opening will be plenty.
Exactly, Thorpe have only increased/started the real marketing with less than a month before opening. The TV advert or the more recent social media might be the first some people see about it.
The only difference is DM have kept a lot more secrecy because it appears this ride will be dependant on surprises like switch track and stuff, whereas at Thorpe there is no issue with Jack Silkstone revealling all because the main hook is the height of the ride.
Matt N
TS Member
- Favourite Ride
- Mako (SeaWorld Orlando)
Thorpe have had Hyperia adverts on their social media for quite a few months now, so it’s not like they’ve only just started their social media marketing. They’ve stepped it up a gear as of late, but they’ve been spreading basic awareness on the website and social media channels and such for quite a few months now. The only notable step up more recently has been the TV advert.
It’s this basic awareness that I think Drayton are lacking for this new coaster. I wouldn’t have expected them to be doing full blown TV ads for quite a bit yet, but I would have at least hoped for some of this basic awareness spreading to get the idea of the ride out there. Or at very least, I’d have hoped for more than the current radio silence given the calibre of investment we’re talking about here.