Since the season is now upon us the traditional ride downtime topic is back.

Given the amount of closed attractions at the resort this season there is added pressure on the rides that are open to remain operational.

Less than a week into the season and we already have our first bit of significant downtime with Oblivion being closed for a large part of Thursday and all day Friday. It is also yet to open for ERT today.

Dan wrote:

Since the season is now upon us the traditional ride downtime topic is back.

Given the amount of closed attractions at the resort this season there is added pressure on the rides that are open to remain operational.

Less than a week into the season and we already have our first bit of significant downtime with Oblivion being closed for a large part of Thursday and all day Friday. It is also yet to open for ERT today.

It wasn't shut all day friday, I went on it. Was closed for most of the day though

MakoMania wrote:

It wasn't shut all day friday, I went on it. Was closed for most of the day though

Ooops my mistake, I interpreted your post in the Quick Questions thread as it being closed all day yesterday.

Was disappointed to see Oblivion ERT starting late on the Saturday of opening weekend and Spinball ERT late on the Sunday. Very unimpressive

Not sure what's going on with Oblivion, but once it had reopened yesterday I rode it and noticed the brakes are being significantly more aggressive than usual.

But it's been good to see that with the exception of a half hour point on Wednesday of two vehicle operation, The Smiler's had no downtime at all so far!

Nemesis is down again, according to ridetimes.

Just a quick reminder - whilst ridetimes.co.uk is useful for a general overview of queue times, it is not the best source for judging if a ride is having an extended period of downtime.

The site is only updated every half hour, as such if a ride happens to be experiencing a temporary shut down at the time the site updates (for example due to guest illness, or for a member of staff to retrieve a prohibited item such as a mobile phone), then the ride will show as closed for a least the next 30 minutes (until the next update). Therefore, it may be best to be careful if posting downtime updates which are purely based on what ridetimes.co.uk is displaying.

Something is definitley up with Oblivion, stopping & starting constantly.

Th13teen has been running brilliantly on 3 trains though, I've not seen it break down yet this season!

It's strange, thirteen, Rita and the smiler are the most reliable rides so far this season when they have been the rides which breakdown more often in previous years, and Oblivion and nemesis have been down quite a bit, and galactica has apparently had problems with some headsets but the ride has been fine. It is odd seeing Oblivion and nemesis down more than usual.

EDIT: Although ride times isn't that reliable it still says nemesis is down, it's been around 2 or 3 updates where it's said closed.

Credit @GlennThornton5

Dan C wrote:

Not sure what's going on with Oblivion, but once it had reopened yesterday I rode it and noticed the brakes are being significantly more aggressive than usual.

But it's been good to see that with the exception of a half hour point on Wednesday of two vehicle operation, The Smiler's had no downtime at all so far!

Are the brakes on oblivion brake pads or magnetic? If pads then maybe they have been replaced over the winter and are bedding in?

Guitar wrote:

Dan C wrote:

Not sure what's going on with Oblivion, but once it had reopened yesterday I rode it and noticed the brakes are being significantly more aggressive than usual.

But it's been good to see that with the exception of a half hour point on Wednesday of two vehicle operation, The Smiler's had no downtime at all so far!

Are the brakes on oblivion brake pads or magnetic? If pads then maybe they have been replaced over the winter and are bedding in?

They are friction brakes, so yes they use the pads that cause friction against the car. The aggressive brakes are only occurring since it broke down earlier this week. If it was to do with closed season maintenance they would have been that aggressive when it first opened.

The Smiler is currently down due to high winds according to AT Facebook:

The Smiler is temporarily unavailable due to the high winds we are currently experiencing. We'll have the ride on the move as soon as possible.

It would seem Rita has stalled on the first corner after the launch! This means it will remain closed for the time being.
There was no one on board when this happened.


Credit to TowersStreet for these images -

On opening weekend we noticed that Rita was running extremely slowly during a short period of downtime when it was running with empty trains.

The launch must have been severely underpowered and I imagine it didn't quite have the momentum to clear the highest point of the ride so has rolled back.

The system the ride uses to calculate the launch speed normally takes data from the previous launch and makes the next either more powerful or less powerful depending on the speed of the last. It's likely that the system had an issue with this calculation and so like Dan has said, it has rolled back. Luckily the system should have alerted staff that the train was moving particularly slow and so it was known about quickly, hopefully meaning Rita should be back in operation quickly.

Rita has re-opened following its stall during testing this morning.

How did they recover the train from there? Very rare for this to happen

Ryan.B wrote:

How did they recover the train from there? Very rare for this to happen

Maybe a wrench? Perhaps if there was enough staff, they could have pushed it?

Something's really up with Oblivion, it's been down for hours nearly every day over the last couple of weeks.