RE: Verbolten
Being on the receiving end of this was extraordinarily annoying. Traveled down from Ohio with a group of first-time visitors on Sunday. Went straight to the park after eight and a half hours of driving to get a quick ride on Verbolten and the line was JUST being sent back out into the park with ops saying it wouldn't open again that night.
The next day, we rush to the park and guess what? Closed. Not just that, but the closure was PLANNED, and a good two hours after the park opened and after an upset tweet from me and maybe others, they finally tweeted that Verbolten would be closed Monday and Tuesday... A little annoying since it's the headlining attraction right now, so any foreseen, extended closure should be announced. If indeed the problem that occured Sunday required a new part from Germany, they obviously knew the ride would be down for two days while they waited, but didn't mention it till halfway through the next day.
So we returned on Wednesday on a whim because we had a few hours to kill in the afternoon and rode once. Returned today expecting to really get a day's worth of rides, and it closed around 2:30 and showed no signs of opening at all.
So we had four days at Busch Gardens with Verbolten being the main draw for us, and only got to ride it once. The park didn't communicate very well, which left a sour taste in our mouths first thing in the morning on their first full day there when the parking attendant hands us the slip that it won't be operating - if we'd seen that on Twitter, we would've delayed our trip (which, I think, is precisely why they DIDN'T tweet it).
I don't know. It's frustrating. I know that the industry standard is to say "We don't know when it will reopen" whenever anything goes wrong, but it's clear that excessive downtime will be a part of Verbolten's life. In that, I don't think it's wrong to have operators say "We have to perform a computer override due to a blocking issue. It usually takes two or three hours, but we can't know for sure" or "Unfortunately, a technical issue requires that a worker from the ride's manufacturer works with us, and we won't be able to open the ride for the rest of the day." As it is, being indecisive is really not doing anyone any favors. Even if timetables are left out of it, it would just be nice if visitors had some idea what the problem was, because when it closed at 2:30 and all anyone would say is "We don't know when it will reopen," that didn't really inspire us to stick around or anything. Even saying "There's an issue with the computer sensors on the drop track" would at least set up a scenario in my mind where I could envision how much work might be required, and it would be very beneficial, I think, to at least say "Things are going well. Everything's on track. At this point, it looks like the ride may open within the hour," etc to the people who continue to wait or line-up for it to reopen. Being open-ended is really only going to disappoint.
I was very, very frustrated, and truthfully, if we didn't meander over to the park on Wednesday to waste a couple of hours, we wouldn't have gotten on Verbolten at all on this four-day visit... Totally unacceptable, if only because I felt very out-of-the-loop. :\
