not sure how many trains probably 2 they’re running but one has water dummy’s and the other dosen’t todayApollo's Chariot
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not sure how many trains probably 2 they’re running but one has water dummy’s and the other dosen’t today
They setup Apollo so that the last row is open.
I don’t know if I’m a fair judge, given how long it’s been, but I lucked into a back row ride (they’re assigning rows) and it was as floaty as ever.
It's because they aren't loading every row and they are trying to keep everyone distanced
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So in the WTF category Apollo went from running every other row at the beginning of the night to by 8 loading every row. This is a bad image given how visibly they had it marked as every other row at the beginning of the night and I would love see an explanation for the change.
Apollo's Chariot's new program is really funky with the brakes. And now it does that weird slowdown thing when the first car reaches the top of the lift hill just like Alpengeist
No. It rolls right on through for the cleared blocks I just noticed it is much less smooth on both the MCBR and safety/sevice brake. The transfer brakes and trim are still the same.
Personally I actually did not feel to bad about that as there is a fair amount of spacing between rows. I felt about as comfortable with that as I did with Griffin and Alpengeist as the spacing looks pretty close to the same. That said I found it concerning that they very visibly had every other row blocked of for safety at the beginning of the night and then removed all of the blocking points and markers latter in the night the PR optics on that are just plane bad.
Got a few trimless night rides on Apollo, good times. Definitely running a little slower, which is understandable since it’s been sitting idle for months. Also, looks like they forgot to add the ride sign to the entrance, classic BGW move.
When I rode it at around 5:50, Lembke was in the exit area on his phone. So my guess is the call was made somewhere around then.
Ultimately, it’s not ON the ride where I think it’s a potential issue: it feels similar to the distance from Griffin, and while there isn’t the same “barrier” as Alpengeist that isn’t really a concern. The issue is when, for example, you have people in each row waiting for the train in front of them to be cleaned, which means they’re likely standing within six feet of someone for potentially 10-15 minutes. We were coming into the station as this was happening, and while I was happy to see one of the ride ops asking some dude to pull his mask up over his nose, that’s still a lot of time.
Of course, it’s still time where most people are wearing masks properly, and you’re in a well-ventilated station (one of the best in the park), and so it’s not like it’s a death trap waiting to happen. But they at least need to revisit their dots and create SOME spacing between rows so that they have closer to six feet during longer waits for the train, especially for when we get deeper into the event and ride ops potentially loses the “host” position guiding people to their proper rows like I saw during the end of the Taste of Busch Gardens event.
Anyway: shoutout to the host who realized at like 8:57 that their unwillingness to let people go to the back row makes no sense with the way that the station is laid out so we could get back-to-back last row night rides to conclude the evening.
They had an extreme unwillingness to give the back row. Twice it was wide open and I asked and they acted like it was going to break the laws of nature for me to be in the back row. Next week I'm walking to the back
It’s not a coherent argument. They claim it’s because they’re trying to minimize contact, but the way the station is set up you don’t have to “walk by” anyone to get to the back row. I suppose their argument is that if they let people pick the back row, they could theoretically end up in a situation where the lines for the front row and back row overflow their number of Distancing markers (the back has only two, the front has I think five), which would mean that people traveling to the inner rows would need to pass by them or be in close contact with them, but the chances of that happening seem pretty slim, and I think given the crowd levels even enthusiasts (the only people who are really concerned about the back, let’s be honest) would say “okay, there’s already two parties waiting for the back row, I’ll do a ride in the middle and come back later” without much fuss. I don’t know why they HAVE extra distancing for those rows if they’re not willing to let at least two parties queue for them.