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Retro Squad at Alton Towers

C

Coastercal

Roller Poster
With Towers carrying this on for a third year now by adding another low capacity un-themed fun fair ride for this season and significant investments opening next year and 2024, how long do you think we will see temporary flat rides at the park?

I personally think the general public aren’t against these rides in the same way enthusiasts are. They won’t think of what could be there instead. They’ll just enjoy the ride that is there and think what a great addition it is.

I thought this was worth a thread especially as now we have 2 temporary rides in x-sector next to each other.
 
I dread to think how long tbh.

They do need them for capacity but X sector is dreadful atm. They need some permanent flats but with decent theming to match. A nice drop tower or something in Xsector wouldn't go a miss
 
This will be the last season I would have thought.

The latest one which has replaced Enterprise looks terrible.

I wouldn't even mind them as much if they got some decent flats in but they are all mediocre. Funk n fly is probably the best of a bad bunch.
 
Coastercal said:
I personally think the general public aren’t against these rides in the same way enthusiasts are. They won’t think of what could be there instead. They’ll just enjoy the ride that is there and think what a great addition it is.
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I respectfully disagree with this.

The retro squad rides definitely stand out as temporary attractions in the way that they are placed, the music they play and overall aesthetic.

I'm not saying everyone will pick up on this of course, but I do know a few non enthusiasts from my area that have actually mentioned that there's "fairground rides" at Alton Towers.

The GP can be pretty dumb at times, but to be fair it's not like AT have put much effort into hiding the fact these rides are temporary travelling rides at all.

Merlin are probably going to squeeze as much as they can out of this set-up until it's absolutely unavoidable for them to start investing in permanent flat ride replacements. If it wasn't already starkly highlighted to them that this should already have happened/be happening.
 
We enthusiasts go around hating on these rides and compare them to permanent well done ride installations. What some of us fail to realise is that the option is not traveling rides vs permenet rides but rather traveling rides vs nothing. Instead ask yourself the question: Would you rather have absolutely nothing over these rides?
 
I don’t particularly mind them - as long as they keep switching them up. I thought Mixtape was great. Bring that back!

Hard to have your ‘immersive theming’ ruined by fairground rides when the ‘standard’ (without the Retrosquad) is a bunch of midway games, an arcade, a donut shop and KFC knockoff. The X-Sector is hardly Rookburgh. With that said, I haven’t seen two of them next to each other yet, so it’s probably worse than it’s ever been.

… I’m far more bothered by how grotty Oblivion is looking out the back of the Enterprise area, based on the clips I’ve seen. Give it a power wash, for goodness sake! Letting things get that tatty is far worse than the Retrosquad IMO.
 
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I only did them in the first year of operation, and I only bothered with Mix Tape, Flavio's and Funk & Fly.

Mix Tape was decent.
Flavio's loading procedure is a farce and managed to make what should have been a 5 minute wait at a fair turn into almost 30 minutes of my life wasted.
Funk & Fly didn't impress me.

Of course I'd rather these rides be there than not, or else the few hundred people in the queues for them would be in some other line elsewhere on the park, but I feel Towers need to address the very urgent issue around flat ot support rides. If Sub Tera does reopen that will of course help, but on its own its not enough.

Both Dark Forest and X Sector have 2 high profile coasters with either nothing else to support, or Retro Squad rides, its not good enough particularly when you take into account how unreliable 3 of those 4 coasters are.
 
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