Allocated Ride Times

[Gazza]

I just had an idea for a way parks could reduce queues: allocated ride times. What would happen is when you get your ticket it would have times for you to ride major attactions, and all guests would be allocated times. Of course you would not be forced to ride at a timeslot though, or even at all, but guests would be encouraged to ride at that timeslot and if they co- operate they can enjoy a better day. My theory is that if the boarding times were spaced out properly there would be a more even distribution of people which would lead to shorter queues and people would only enter the queue at their time so there would not be large groups entering wanting to all ride at the same time, leading to queues. The times would be based around the regular cycle time and passenger capacity. during the first half hour, the final hour and during the lunch period no times would be allocated. For example, if this system was impelmented at DW, times would be given for TOT ,GD, WO, The Claw, Cyclone, Thunder River and The Log Ride and Big Red Car. One problem i am aware of is breakdowns causing delays, but under good circumstances it could work well, what do you think?

Edited December 29, 2005 by Gazza

[aidan]

that would be good but if u lined up and that wasnt ur time would they not let u in

[tom]

They do that at Alton Towers in England. It worked well as far as I remeber. You got a time slot on a ticket, say 1:30pm, and if you had a ticket (which you got by walking through a turnstyle near the ride entrance) you were fast tracked to the front of the line. If you didnt, you were either put into a sepearte que area, or you waited in a line just out side the que enterance, and when that particular time slot closed, the rest of the line was let in. It made queing so much easier. But the downside that I found, was that you had to enter the turnstyles multiple times if you wanted to be fast tracked acouple of times. Which ment you often had to go to the turnstyles, get your ticket, go find something else then come back. But yeah, you get the idea! It would work well in our parks, like gazza said, if everyone cooperated.

[willsy]

I don't think it would be good. Like if you got ride time early in the morning but you didnt feel like riding the "thrill" rides then. It sounds unfair for the people that have been waiting for an hour or so in the line then people can just come and jump on. I'd rather it stay the way it is then everyone waits the same.

[DaptoFunlandGuy]

i think a fastpass idea would be better. each guest is issued a ticket at the gates that has a barcode on it. OR to participate in fastpass, you BUY a plastic swipe card with a unique barcode. at the end of the day you return the pass and receive part of the purchase price back. this way only those interested in priority queuing would have to pay extra, and it also means the park can control the amount of priority queuers there are. One you have your ticket\card, you go to a small booth outside the rides associated with the pass. each barcode has an account that can have only a certain number of rides allocated to it. You could either select your preferred timeslot, or have it randomly allocated to you, with this being handled by the park back of house based on ride times, queue lengths etc through out the day. i know i am basically describing fastpass in the US, but with a few extra twists to adapt and control the system here in Aus.... what do you think of paying a little extra fee - say $20, for the fastpass plastic card, and receive back $10 when you return the card at the end of the day?

[kennykoala]

having a disney fats pass system at DW is not needed, however they could do what magic mountain dose. There fastlane pass is $15 and it gives you 4 tickets to enter the ride via the fast lane entry ( ride exit for most of the rides.) They also have an add on option for there annual pass, were as you get a Fastlane 4 ticket voucher every time you come to the park without payint the $15. I like that idea for annual pass holders. But at the end of the day, the line for TOT and cyclone are crazy at the best of times, do u really wanna wait for the ppl coming through the exit. I love fast pass at disneyland, and i know Lots off ppl hate fast pass at disney on alot of the disney forums. But DW dont have that many ppl go and enough major rides to spread ppl out while waiting for there time slot.

[Gazza]

The point of my idea was not to have seperate queues or anything like that, it would just use the existing one and would really just be a "guide" as to when you should ride. More of a low cost alternative to having to build seperate queues, scanners, turnstiles and printers. It would just be printed on a section of your ticket.

Edited December 30, 2005 by Gazza

[willsy]

You should ust beable to go there and ride the rides when you want, not when the park "tells" you to, You are the paying guest after all.

[Gazza]

But you would still have a choice to ride it whenever you want (read the 1st post), its more of a recommendation to help reduce queues rather than something you have to do.

[Slick]

Rather than ranting, let me just say something calmly, these systems that VERY large parks use is because they need to co-ordinate large crowds of people efficiently to maximise the greatest possible capacity from their attractions. The problem with Dreamworld is that they have poor capacity that can be improved, and not tremendous crowds, so realistically a system like that is pointless if a simple capacity improvement can be done.

[Bussy]

Most of the big parks have passes for disabled people and their chaperones so they arrive at the exit to a ride and give the operator the pass. The operator looks at the queue and judges how long it is and then allocates a time and tells them to come back at that time. The system works well. "The Bus is now leaving Judges Park, NSW"

[joz]

There must be some merit to the idea, since some parks do use such a system (Cedar Point comes to mind). Personally I don't think we have the capacity on our rides to make a system like that work well. Realistically, you’re going to need more staff to operate a system that inconveniences half the guests in the park. Another thing is from 4.30 or 5 onwards the queues are pretty minimal anyway. I'd say a gimmick of allocating/recommending a ride time of 4.45 with the promise of a shorter wait, would be more useful then doing a real system.

[Richard]

This concept simply will not work in a park which has all of around 6 major attractions and is only open 7 hours a day. It doesn't at all increase the cycle of the attraction, but merely offers a flexible way to queue. Instead of standing in a line, you can be out in the park riding other rides, shopping, eating or just walking around. It would never work effectively in a park the size of those in Australia.

[Gazza]

Did i ever say that the system would be used at one of our parks, i simply used DW as an example because it was a park that i could easily remember what the major attractions were. The point of this was more to suggest a concept parks could use as another way of reducing times people spend in queues without the need for major new infastructure.

[Bussy]

Do you really think that Australian parks have a big issue with waiting times? I would say that for the majority of rides the wait is less than one hour and for a few rides between 1-2 hours. I know from experience that the longest wait at Wonderland was around 3 hours for Demon, Space Probe, Snowy and Bush Beast but that was on a day when there were around 15,000 people in the park and I'm pretty sure no park in Australia gets that big a number on a regular basis. I also know that most of the big parks in North America will have queues of 3+ hours on their major attractions and unlike Aussie parks they have 10+ major rides and crowds of 30,000+ on a daily basis. I think we should feel lucky that we don't have to deal with those numbers here in Australia. "The Bus is now leaving for Numberthown, Western Australia"