Alton towers keeps getting bigger and bigger. People are travelling around the world just to visit this amazing theme park. But they didn't stop at TH13TEEN...
Has the world got you down? Are you looking to turn that frown upside down? Well, why not try The Smiler, a coaster developed by the Ministry of Joy, a secretive organisation now believed to be behind the various experiments in X-Sector. Opening in 2013, The Smiler was the seventh in the series of coaster projects known as the park's Secret Weapons, following in the footsteps of Nemesis or the neighbouring Oblivion. Codenamed SW7, the coaster was built on the former site of Black Hole in the X Sector, fitting a surprising amount of coaster into quite a compact site, with a track around twice the length of the older ride.
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The Black Hole site had been largely unused for many years after the coaster closed in 2006, though the ride's tent still filled the quarry and was used for the final time in 2011 for two of the mazes during that year's Scarefest. Shortly after the event, a planning application was submitted to Staffordshire Moorlands District Council in December 2011, for the park's ambitious new coaster.Over the following 17th months the site was cleared of its exisiting coaster and The Smiler rose over X-sector.
The ride's original planning visuals, released in January 2012, did not indicate of the number of inversions, nor that the ride would be a record-breaker. The secret was kept until May 9th 2013 when the world was finally told - The Smiler would have 14 inversions and would be a world-record holder!One of the trains shortly before opening. Originally expected to open in March, construction on The Smiler was delayed several times, and opening was eventually slated for May 2013. The park set an opening date of May 23rd 2013, but it was announced only the day before on May 22nd that due to teething problems, the ride would not be available as planned. The Smiler finally opened to the public on May 31st 2013.
On June 2nd 2015, four people sustained serious leg injuries after two trains on The Smiler collided. The incident occurred on the "batwing" element of the ride and involved one full train and one empty train that had stalled on the track prior to the event. The incident garnered significant media coverage, and is the worst in Alton Towers' history. Following a five-day park-wide closure, which allowed the Health and Safety Executive to visit the crash site and carry out on-site testing of the ride, the park re-opened with The Smiler unavailable to all guests and with all of its obvious branding removed.Following completion of investigations and changes made to operating procedures, The Smiler reopened on 19th March 2016. The majority of the ride's theming was restored, although some minor changes were made, including removal of the video showing comical fictitious medical effects to riders and also the removal of references to riders being 'corrected'. But this should not put you off riding the smiler yes it might be scary but it will 100% never happen again it was all human error and those workers have been sacked, the ride sistem it's self told the workers there was something wrong and they decided to ignore. Don't let this put you off at all safety is Alton towers no.1 priority they will not let anything like that happen again. We all need to forget what happened and move on mistakes are made and we learn from our mistakes.
