Advertised Capacity vs 2024 Numbers

We were at Busch Gardens Williamsburg recently (our first time there). On a very light Friday (it was 94 degrees). We waited no longer than 15min for anything. It was unexpectedly great. But, their operations were slow. Worse than CP. The operators were just lackadaisically going though the motions. Maybe that was because attendance was so light and if the lines were longer they'd have moved faster (I mean, it was hot for them too!) ... who knows ... I just have the one day to judge by.

But, one of the things that struck us (among many) was that we didn't encounter (or notice on the app) a coaster down all day. Every time I have been at CP for the last bunch of years it seems like there is always at least one coaster down AT ALL TIMES. Not a TT2-like extended closure. Just down for an hour or the afternoon or whatever. I just looked at queue-times and Millenium is down as I type. I get that these are machines and they break and all. But, it is frustrating to me how much it happens at CP. So, my view is that it isn't just operations (which is unquestionably worse than in years past), but also maintenance. It doesn't seem like these rides should be going down as much as they do.

And, little frustrations have mounted for us. We didn't renew passes for this year. But, May rolled around and the summer pass was cheap enough (and we don't often make it in the fall because of other stuff going on). So, we bought in. And, I guess to echo some other poster (perhaps in a different thread), I guess this means that things work Good Enough and CP figures it doesn't need to do better than Good Enough. But, it is frustrating. (And, my wife and kids were there yesterday and came home saying "maybe not next year". And, they knew it was July and it'd be busy. But, lots of little disappointments and frustrations add up.)

The last time I went to BGW (2022) their best attempts at dispatches were far worse than CP's worst efforts on Gemini and Blue Streak

Not saying their operations aren’t lacking other days, but as you described it was 94 degrees. I ain’t moving very fast in that weather if I have to work outside all day. I encountered the same weather at KD (probably the same Friday) and they were doing ok but the whole park, guests and all, seemed to be moving in slow motion due to the heat.

I respectfully disagree with that work ethic mentality. Hot or not, if you refuse to work at an efficient pace that affects operations, I’d probably send you to crowd or Fast Lane to hydrate and stay off of your feet. Far too many times I encountered some employees that thought they would just go through the motions while the rest of the crew was ensuring the guests were not waiting in an unreasonably longer line than they need to.

A single file line of people walking at a reasonable walking speed and standing a comfortable distance apart represents about 2,400 PPH. That's essentially the working capacity of a single turnstile.

Many years ago, on some random visit to the park, I stood on the platform and timed dispatches on Gemini, making the assumption that the trains were full (they weren't, of course, but when auditing via interval it doesn't really matter whether all the seats are full or not). Running all six trains, with no stacking, no stopping outside the station, trains dispatched in tandem, I personally clocked the ride (with a stopwatch over multiple dispatches) at 3,400 PPH, and noted that the dispatch interval was consistent. If you watched the high curve over the station, you would see two trains just clear that curve, and the brakes in the station would release. Running it in this way, there were two points where train pairs would encounter each other: at the point where the high front curve passes the lift hill, and at the bottom of the first drop.

Obviously the ride can only maintain this kind of capacity with a dual-lane entrance and two paths to the boarding platform (because 3,400 > 2,400). The old railings in the station showed evidence that they were built with queue gates in mind, and in fact looking at the underside of the station you could see disconnected swing-arms beneath the platform. These would have been the double-door gates like the ones on The Beast. But by the time I took my first Gemini ride in 1979, those gates were gone and forgotten...assuming they were ever installed in the first place. There were no seat belts, and anything you carried onto the platform (except canes, crutches, and umbrellas) was going to ride with you. The dispatch interval was 63 seconds, including the headway between trains...which was so short that occasionally the new trains would be entering the station before the ones leaving were all the way out.

Even the ride exit was carefully choreographed. With two exit gates on each side, a trainload of riders from the red side would come down the exit stairs and down the path in front of the ride, with the last person passing the merge point just as the first person from the blue side made it down the stairs and through the longer path around the station to the merge point. Just as the last person from the blue train passed the merge, the first passenger from the next red train would arrive. So even the ride exit offered a continuous flow of people coming off of the ride.

I think the only coaster ever built that could match, and in fact exceed Gemini for overall capacity was Dueling Dragons. And it very quickly succumbed to four-train operation long before Gemini did because there was no way to load the station fast enough to keep up with the ride.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Dave, thank you for sharing that. As I read it I could visualize the moving parts of machinery and humanity, likely chaotic as well. I will have to look for the evidence of gate modification, never noticed before.

Dragons, like Gemini, also quickly reached a point where four trains was plenty for most attendance levels against the wider scope of available rides. By the early aughts, I don't recall ever waiting for more than two or three trains. Although with the separate load and unload, there were times where you had to wait for the unload to roll in, so it was in some ways less efficient with four stations and four trains across both sides.

You won't see evidence of the old gates on Gemini as the railings were removed (these would be the orange square-tube railings) and replaced with the round tube railings you see up there today. Hmmm...

The square tube extends out to the end of the rail, where there are two round vertical tubes, and just above the lower rail there is a painted-over zerk fitting. I never saw gates here, but this arrangement with the railings was definitely designed to allow for boarding gates.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.