Easter 2022 Crowds at the Theme Parks

[themagician]

Following on from the recent discussions about the crowds over this Easter long weekend, I just visited MW again to see how the crowds/queues were today. The crowds definitely weren’t as intense as on Saturday, but still very busy and the queues were definitely an improvement. It was still the traditional school holiday wait times, but today Rivals was 2 hours. SE, Scooby and WWF were about 1.5 hours. WWF was being operated very efficiently today with boats being dispatched at the fastest I’ve seen them since the new boats were introduced. SE and Rivals still only had 1 train operating but they were sending them out a bit quicker (Surely the second trains are in maintenance and are waiting on parts for them to not be in use). Overall, queues were being managed much better and weren’t flowing onto the paths and blocking access through the park.

On 16/4/2022 at 2:07 PM, themagician said:

Superman and WWF currently having issues. Rivals has a 4 hour wait.

Every other ride has a 2 hour wait 

GL has a 2 hour wait, but they still dispatch some trains with empty seats. Why MW.

 

On 16/4/2022 at 3:28 PM, themagician said:

Yep, 4 hours. 

The sign says 3.5 hours, but the app says 4 hours. I asked the attendant which was more accurate and she said the app and that they couldn’t find a 240 minute wait label. 

 

On 16/4/2022 at 2:54 PM, themagician said:

DW is pretty busy today too, carpark is about 80% full. ST has both trains running with fast operations and has a 30 minute wait.

 

[franky]

SE looked to me like it had two trains, they were a bit slow at dispatching though. Just had another look at the app and it looks like SE is closed...

The line was almost around the corner toward the Arkham entrance when we got off. Edit: just saw a SE train going so it's still operating

Edited April 18, 2022 by franky
SE going again

[themagician]

From the outside SE didn’t seem like it was operating 2 trains, but that’s good if they are. When I was there at 12pm the entire indoors area for the queue was full and was about to start heading outside. It was a 2 hour queue at that point

[joz]

I've thinking this for a while, but Australian parks spend lots of money on very good rides that fully 300 people per hour can go on. I think with attendance where it was, even if ops were at their absolute best, it still would have been a shit show. The fact they couldn't get those second trains running (if they had them, they would have used them) just adds to the overall fuckery, but it isn't the cause. The cause is all rides max out at a fairly low capacity, and attendance was at levels not seen since Christmas holidays pre 2016, and even then only rarely. MW also doesn't have much excess capacity to eat up crowds. I'm glad that they're starting to figure out how to do WWF's new boats a bit better. That ride is the traditional people eater, and having that do Storm like numbers would be a disaster.

 

The thing that makes me confident that huge attendance is a large part of what happened rather than ops: elsewhere it was mentioned that Vortex had a 40min queue. If true, that is by far the longest queue that ride will have ever had. Even in summer holidays it rarely gets to 10mins. To get to 40mins says that the parks were beyond slammed, quite possibly one of the busiest days the parks have seen. The only thing you can really do is extend trade and put extra shows on, which you normally have to plan out in advance, and I have no doubt that even expecting a big day, theyd have been surprised by how busy it got. Aside from that it's capping attendance which I don't think is as straight forward as it would seem.

 

I just feel sorry for the guests in all this. I doubt many people were having a good time. Ops contributed, but there was simply no way with the numbers they got that there was any hope for a good day 

[Dean Barnett]

The throughput I've seen at Superman is really bad. They need to get rid of the wall between the load and unload because its hardly ever used as designed. The time spent for the train to go between the unload and load stations is completely wasted. 

The use of lockers for a ride with always a long queue (and terrible ops) at the front of the queue is really old school. Especially when all of the 'entertainment' in the queue is a short loop made 20 years ago. Bins on the station platform (or RMC style pockets on the trains) wouldn't slow down the current operations at all.

The only ride I've been on that's close is Rip Ride Rocket - but they're sending a train of 12 people every 20-30 secs. 

I love the ride but the whole process with lockers - inability to use your phone and really slow dispatches is a huge turn off - and is what the parks should be focusing on if they want more repeat visits of the GP. 

 

And yes they 100% need to increase the hours. They'd sell way more food if they were open for dinner, and the crowds would thin their selves out across the day and night.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Dean Barnett

[Rivals]

32 minutes ago, Dean Barnett said:

And yes they 100% need to increase the hours. They'd sell way more food if they were open for dinner, and the crowds would thin their selves out across the day and night.

i think definitely during the School Holidays and public holidays they need to be open until at least 7pm. 

With superman’s locker situation, i think a solution similar to MDMC’s loose article rotating bins would work really well, or even something like the claw, have 2 sections for each train, put your loose articles on one side and collect on the other, the only problem i see with these is they would need to rework the station so these would fit.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Rivals

[Dean Barnett]

Ghostrider just has two massive chests - one for each train - the attendant open/closes them as the train dispatches. I reckon these would work on the platform. 

[New display name]

2 hours ago, joz said:

Aside from that it's capping attendance which I don't think is as straight forward as it would seem.

Why not?   

(I've been stopped at the gate at WWW because it is full).

Having 180 numbers ready to go shows, MW are happy to let guest wait 3 hours for a ride and as I said before with wait times like those MW are ripping people off.

 

 

[Rivals]

40 minutes ago, New display name said:

Why not?   

(I've been stopped at the gate at WWW because it is full).

Having 180 numbers ready to go shows, MW are happy to let guest wait 3 hours for a ride and as I said before with wait times like those MW are ripping people off.

i think the difference here is one cares about the guest experience more, whereas the other one cares about money more. 

[New display name]

I'm not going down that road @Rivalsbut from the bombardment of bad reviews MW received over the long weekend the general consensus is people felt like they wasted their money.

[Rivals]

3 minutes ago, New display name said:

I'm not going down that road @Rivalsbut from the bombardment of bad reviews MW received over the long weekend the general consensus is people felt like they wasted their money.

couldn’t agree more 

[Dean Barnett]

The fact that they only had one train running for their busiest period in 2 years.. is unbelievable. 

[rappa]

6 minutes ago, Dean Barnett said:

The fact that they only had one train running for their busiest period in 2 years.. is unbelievable. 

I mean that’s a pretty ignorant comment. 
Yes it sucks, but Blind Freddy can see that if it was possible to run the other train they would be. Something must be wrong with it. 
 

I don’t think any amount of reasonable planning was going to help the parks this weekend. Too much compounding crap from the last few years combining to screw them. 

[Rivals]

4 minutes ago, rappa said:

I mean that’s a pretty ignorant comment. 
Yes it sucks, but Blind Freddy can see that if it was possible to run the other train they would be. Something must be wrong with it. 
 

I don’t think any amount of reasonable planning was going to help the parks this weekend. Too much compounding crap from the last few years combining to screw them. 

this is true, but they could’ve atleast made sure they sped up operations so the lines for rides such as Rivals weren’t as painful.

I would love if they do what they do with Taipan (even if it’s just during peak periods), and have 4 staff members checking, the front two checking rows 1-5 then the back two checking rows 6-backwards. 

[themagician]

Has anyone ridden rivals recently and noticed anything different with their load/unload procedures. Do they check harnesses differently or something? Surely there is a reason for why it’s such a long gap between trains arriving and leaving the station. 

[franky]

I haven't made it over to Dreamworld yet, so I can't compare, but I couldn't really fault the ops on Rivals today (compared to Jet Rescue yesterday) They weren't running around, sure, but they had the next train consistently ready and guests loaded straight through.

Props to the grouper running it today, the amount of yelling they did about not touching the belt, I'm surprised they still had a voice left by 5pm.

Got assigned to the back row (but not backwards) seat. I was shook by the drop off the lift.. got flung up in the seat and was NOT prepared for that!

One thing a few people have mentioned here is about the cash grab with FastTrack. From what I witnessed at both SW yesterday and MW today, there hasn't been a long line for fast trackers, and when there is people in the FT queue, they'll only load a couple and backfill the rest from the general queue. I did hear mentioned that due to being busy they weren't running Virtual Queue or single rider lines. So they're selling out of FastTracks, but they're not overselling them (when compared to something like FastPass/Ride Express at Disney / Universal.

17 minutes ago, themagician said:

Has anyone ridden rivals recently and noticed anything different with their load/unload procedures. Do they check harnesses differently or something? Surely there is a reason for why it’s such a long gap between trains arriving and leaving the station. 

I can't comment on slow days, but here's how it was working today:

1. Harnesses would release on current train but ops would need to assist releasing some of these harnesses

2. Give guests a couple of seconds to dismount and get their stuff.

3. Open gates and let guests sit down. Guests told to lower their own harness but not touch the belt.

4. Ops lower remaining harnesses and secure belt / tighten etc. They would do each row at the same time. (If one side was taking longer the other would wait).

5. Brief speal to backward facing riders ( didn't manage to hear it but they always stopped to explain something specific to them).

6. Thumbs up and button press at back of the train and dispatch.

The ops certainly weren't rushing, but the impression I've gotten from ALL ride ops so far on my trip is to take as much time as required to do the job correctly with no mistakes.

Some of these rides would be very demanding physically in an op. I'd be interested to know if they have many manual handling injuries at theme parks purely as a result of loading coasters.

Edited April 18, 2022 by franky
Spacing

[pin142]

16 minutes ago, franky said:

So they're selling out of FastTracks, but they're not overselling them

They are once per ride now so you won't see people requeue off one.

[Dean Barnett]

Rivals doesn't really need the seatbelt - it certainly doesn't need to have the attendant put it on. 

Even RMC's where the seatbelt does a lot, it just has to be sighted by the attendant. 

VelociCoaster's operations are by far the best I've seen on the planet - The train (1 of 4) enters the station with speed, lap bars are speedy to come up (no seatbelts) and attendants just pull up on them to check them.  If you have any "room" the first hill gets rid of it quick smart.

One train (of 24 riders) dispatches every 40 seconds. The cinematics before the launch are also used as a way of waiting for the block ahead to clear. Two holding rolling blocks at the end of the ride - so the station is never waiting for a train. The grouper can struggle to fill the train at times - but they still send it. Also the second best locker system on the planet. 

 

Not that I'm ever expecting ops like that on the Gold Coast but is a marvel to observe. 

Not having single rider on busy days is bonkers - single rider should always be used because you're always going to have (some) groups of 3 or 5. It also doesn't slow down the load time. If Disney can run it for Incredicoaster with two separate stations, MW can with one.

Edited April 18, 2022 by Dean Barnett

[New display name]

32 minutes ago, Dean Barnett said:

The fact that they only had one train running for their busiest period in 2 years.. is unbelievable. 

It's not that unbelievable when you think of it.  It would be unbelievable to have 1 train running during the Christmas period when the parks train a lot of temp staff for Christmas.    Training the same amount of temp staff to cover a 2 week period isn't really cost effective.  MW need to work on increasing efficiency and crowed soaking..   

[Dean Barnett]

I'd rather it be an issue with the train over a lack of staff. 

[webslave]

If it's as unavoidable as claimed they don't have to keep admitting people to the park.

[Rivals]

i’m just hoping whatever Arkham’s replacement is, it’s a capacity machine that has the line always moving, however if it’s what’s rumoured (vekoma SFC and duelling boomerangs), my hopes are definitely not going to be met

[Dean Barnett]

RMC Single rail with a lift hill would be my pick... or a ground up IBOX RMC

[Rivals]

1 minute ago, Dean Barnett said:

RMC Single rail with a lift hill would be my pick... or a ground up IBOX RMC

a single rail would be a good replacement but if it was, i’m hoping they’d add a moving station 

[rappa]

Single rider isnt very effective on 2 seater rides anyway.