2016 Ride Crews

This season I've noticed that the ride ops have really stepped up their game! The Gatekeeper crew has been busting it hitting interval conisistently! Whenever I've ridden we'd only be waiting outside of the station for only a few seconds before being pulled into the station. Other rides have been doing just as great as well!! I also have to mention the Millennium Force crew this year! They seem to be really motivated and on top of their game! That crew is moving very efficiently! They also are always so nice and friendly when I've been there as well! Whoever is the supervisor there, must be doing an excellent job!

The absolute worst crew I have seen this year is without a doubt Valravn's. They were constantly hitting 100 seconds on the board of shame and the trains almost always stack for awhile.

I have noticed the hustle from Gatekeeper, they seem to be on a mission and it moves that line nicely.

The Valravyn Crew also just seems to have a nonchalant attitude about them. Almost as if they couldn't be bothered.

With all due respect, leave the Valravn Crew alone. They are trying their best. We have to remember that Valravn is brand new, and some of the crew at that location are first year ride operators who have probably never operated an Amusement Park ride until they started with their on-sight job training. This is just clearly my opinion, but if they don't look like they can be bothered, it might be the one at crowd control being asked 1,000+ times a day if a guest can ride in the front row. Again, just my option. I have a good friend on this crew, and he is always cheerful, pleasant, out going, and fun to be around. Keep up the excellent job Josh W. And to those of you who are ripping on the Valravn Crew, "Love Thy Neighbor".

New rides should be run with the most motivated and experience crews as possible. If someone does not have the "right stuff" to run a difficult to run quickly ride, they should be transferred to another location. I am not saying anyone is a bad employee, I am saying working short unload/load time rides is not for everyone.

That being said, I must also give a shout out to the ride crews at CP. They exceeded my expectations by a lot, and I have very high standards.

Another Cedar Fair park that operations impressed me was Kings Dominion. On my last visit at the end of March, the rides were run better than I have ever seen them run before.

I wish I could say the same about all Cedar Fair parks. At my home park, Dorney, operations have been far below my expectations this year. Minimal staffing and unmotivated crews does not give me a "Best Day of Summer Experience".

I agree with that, whoever staffed Valravyn just missed the mark. Take the gatekeeper crew and give them Valravyn.

That said the crews are the best I've seen at any park.

I really liked the Intimidator crew at Carowinds. The operator was saying over the loudspeaker that the train was at the midcourse and needed to get out. They didn't like stacking the trains. And Fury moved along very quickly.

Went to Cedar Point Saturday, and while I do think Gatekeeper had a crew that really tried and was hitting interval constantly, it seems they might be going too fast. With how the bins and exits are, people exiting the ride tend to block the ones entering through the gate for a few seconds. The crew tho trying to be fast, only kept gates open no more than 3 seconds, causing people either not making it through the gate, or one person stuck behind and have to reopen the gate to push them into the line again (by that time the seats were locked). With that, they would send out trains with empty cars nearly every other car, causing groups having to recount/move about which trickled down each time.

Also seemed they didn't check if those entering cleared the gate area before starting to close and there were close calls of people getting wedged in them. With the way the station is, they either need to slow just a bit down, or remove bins entirely to speed people to the exits, which will give those entering room to enter. It shouldn't be "must push your way through, you have right to enter" type of procedure.

TL:DR version: Gatekeeper while hitting interval, seems doing so requires guests being pushy/frantic going in and also likely making them be efficiently inefficient .

I was appalled by Valravn's operations when I visited around 2 weeks ago. The sign said it would take 30 min. It could have been 20 with gk's crew. They were super slow and averaging around 120 seconds per dispatch. They were also loading the trains with 2 rows of fast lane and 1 row of normal queue. It was ridiculous. Me and my friend calculated it out and they were hitting around 600 people per hour including fast lane riders. So the line ended up taking around an hour and fifteen minutes. Then I addressed guest services very politely and they just gave me a ton of attitude and disrespected me. I never thought Valravn was a great ride and I probably won't ride it again until the problems are fixed. The crew was great for coaster mania though!!!

XS NightClub said:

I agree with that, whoever staffed Valravyn just missed the mark. Take the gatekeeper crew and give them Valravyn.

That said the crews are the best I've seen at any park.

I told the gatekeeper crew about how bad the Valravn crew is, and they said that they had the Gatekeeper crew on Valravn opening weekend. They also said they should have added the duel loading station like the Busch parks. This was during power hour and sometimes they would dispatch when the previous train just reached the bottom of the first drop. They are my 2nd favorite crew to Fury 325's crew.

I agree with everything in your post except one thing...

There should never EVER be a power hour. Speed is not the most important factor . I will take Safety and Efficiency over speed. Safety is #1, always. I will never harp on an employee for taking a longer dispatch to double check or verify work done. That person knows what it's about.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is "power hour"?

When for an hour the crew will do everything they can for one hour to get the highest ridership they can. Usually involved rushing guests, lightning fast checks, and and a noticeable anxiety driven hustle. This can lead to errors checking restraints & overall safety checks.

Efficiency will come with time, which will increase the overall speed. Operating above what is normally expected or encouraged leads to operating outside of the norm, which is what I do not want to see ride ops doing.

Gatekeeper, Raptor, and Rougarou get those trains out like nobody's business! Millennium Force always seems to struggle a bit, I remember early on when the previous train would still be on the final approach to the brake run and the train in the station would head out. I haven't seen that in years. I have seen Magnum set up more this year than ever before. And Corkscrew stacks two trains constantly.

However - take a trip to Busch Gardens Tampa and even an off day or slow crew at Cedar Point will seem like absolutely nothing. BGT is worse than a Six Flags these days in terms of dispatch intervals...

Why have Power Hour? Shouldn't Power Hour be all day? Hustle, get the riders moving and rushing as fast as possible, perform checks as fast as possible and get those trains out. Back in the day, that is how it was done. I have seen a lack of "anxiety driven hustle" in the ride crews compared to the 70's, 80's and even the 90's. I think part of the problem is the control systems now allow trains stacking as normal operation. Back in the day, a "setup" caused things to come to a grinding halt and the reset procedure was a pain. Hence, the noticeable amount of "anxiety driven hustle".

I also think in today's safety minded world, there is an abundance of caution that wasn't around even in the early 2000s. Things like the Arrow dance on Corkscrew are now deemed to be a great safety hazard, whereas back in the day it was SOP on all Arrow loopers with manual restraints. It's the same reason why we have airgates, bins, and rides like Gemini and Iron Dragon on permanent two train operation because it is safer that way. Some of the stuff can be over the top, but other things are understandable, IMO.

What I noticed during my recent multi-week amusement park outing is that generally, slow dispatches are almost always due to a guest moving slow/bringing stuff into the station/just not paying attention and so on.

No one moves people like the Fury 325 crew. The Gatekeeper crew is close though.

There's again, a level of hustle. I'm all for moving at an efficient pace. Not blazing through a train. There's ways to be quick and processes that can make things easy. Those processes, I'm totally cool with and I'm all for it. However if speed is more important than safety, then it's wrong, hands down.

The other issue stems from IROC. Their safety setup is so overbearing and unwarranted it's ridiculous. KI is a very prime example of this. Operations last year were...abysmal. Especially with high capacity rides like Diamondback.

An easy example is my ride. Now the op has to stand behind the silver bars of the elevator for the ride op 2 position. That means they have to run out from that area, drop three pedals, lock them, check, flip bins, then return to that area to give their clear. The op on the load side can now only clear from the front of the train. So they will walk from the front to the rear checking, then walk back to the front to clear the train. Which makes ZERO sense to me.

Safety is #1, overbearing safety though yes can improve safety, sometimes becomes more of a burden to efficiency, and adds no extra safety to the overall safety. Those are the bits of fat we can trim that I'm totally ok with, but considering speed over safety is something that I will not accept, and I'd believe the park wouldn't either, and that's absolutely correct.

I've visited the park many times this season, and my opinion still stands that this year's Wicked Twister crew is one of the most efficient crews that ride has had in years (since I worked there ;)). Although the line never seems to be longer than 20 minutes every time I go, the hustle of the crew is outstanding this year to get the train launched ASAP.

Gatekeeper crew is doing an amazing job as well. Never once have I seen them stack trains unless it was for a guest illness.

There must be something about that corner of the park, because even Giant wheel and Windseeker have been moving very well lately too. Especially during Fourth of July when the fireworks were going on. It's like all 4 of those crews were putting on a show for the guests on the beach.

A lot of it comes down to training, capable capacity of the ride, and guest cooperation.