An idea for CP concerning a new system.

Whatever idea that you come up with....the idea of the ride operator at the entrance of the queue changing the board to the proper wait, and then also hitting one of say 8 or 12 buttons with certain signals that would be sent to a computer.

But the computer could do as we know...anything. Report the statistics online for .com viewing (not that useful in a CP situation), report them to LED signs placed at the park in strategic locations, a cell phone message system, or a system like q-bot. It is just the fact you have a wireless signal you could harness and send it "anywhere" . It is just a matter of coming up with an idea that is priced right / attractive to everyone.

My text message idea was cool in my mind because you could be in line for something and plan whats the best ride to walk to in terms of distance away / wait time as soon as you get off the ride. Phones are probably the second most popular gadget I see in line.

And my golf cart idea, yes I have been to the park on a busy day, and yes if it happened frontiertown would be a little more squeezed.

But I know many people would use the system....

I'm not talking about irresponsible park guests driving them. I am talking about a one-way 6 foot wide lane for golf carts with say 24 golf carts running.

Maybe you haven't been in CP when they are restocking refreshment stands, using the first aid vehicle, or pushing any large object that is just as wide as a golf cart.

It's not a genius idea as 99% of customers would complain of the cost to ride it (but if you had a cell phone alert telling you that the Raptor is now running and currently has a wait of less then 15 minutes),and you just got off the Magnum....what are you going to do punk?

Hail a golf cart and book it!

In 2006 we went for 4 days and one person in our group had some thunder thighs and by the 3rd day there crotch was bleeding from so much walking.

Hell I think they should sell baby powder in the park...and you know what I am talking about.

How about this... Compiled from all the ideas above...
You text message to a special super-duper CP computer system requesting the wait times of the rides. Then is dispatches a golf cart, say maybe one of 24 available to your location. On the back of the golf cart is a wait time sign for you to look at.

Come on, the signs they have work fine. It's an amusement park, not a raceway. Go have fun, leave your cell phones in the car and relax.....

Yeah. If you're trying to "marathon ride" around the park, then you should walk fast or jog. There's no need for golf carts. While I think knowing ride times would be a good idea, I don't like the idea of encouraging people to bring their cell phones. There's a big difference between people having cell phones to call people in their group and the park offering a service which requires people to have phones.

K well moral of the story is...it would be easy to get a signal updated regularly from the front of the lines by the ride operators.

It is a matter of what method you choose to present this information in weather it be on a cell phone, online, or billboard is up to what ever is most agreeable.

Yeah the current system works fine, if your in front of the line looking at the board. Which defeats the whole purpose of maximizing your fun / minimizing your time wasted.

Yes my golf carts idea is beyond reality, but you have no idea how many times I have said to myself...i would pay $5 for a ride up to the WT mid-way. All it takes is one irresponsible parent to let a kid get run over.

Put it this way, if burger king can have a digital drive through (I also know the lead engineer behind McDonalds / BK's digital drive through), there is nothing stopping CP from having it. It is really low cost now-a-days with technology, and no longer can the old excuses of "weather permitting" will the sign work...

CP's current system is as primitive as it gets. And it doesn't take a super computer to run a simple database. I would say your average Core 2 Duo could run this sort of system.

*** Edited 9/8/2007 3:31:51 PM UTC by factory81*** *** Edited 9/8/2007 3:42:06 PM UTC by factory81*** *** Edited 9/8/2007 3:49:25 PM UTC by factory81***

You're forgetting that Cedar Point is one of the last parks to adopt technology and embrace its power.

^ Also, can you please do a better job proofreading your posts? They give me headaches with all the improper grammar and capitalization.

Yeah I just try and make it hard on people. JK. I am just waking up.

So Turks and Caico's...are you just tired of the beach? Such a tourist destination for people, and you sit on the computer?

To remember with all ideas, people in general are not smart. Anybody that works in a customer or food service industry can attest to that. Just look at an average day at CP. I've seen people walking through landscaped areas to try to get in a line or talk to people in line, ignore the no loose articles signs at the entrance of the biggest rides, etc. etc. Not only would a queue time system have to be simple and self explanatory, it shouldn't involve the guests. As much as I like the FastPass system and similar ideas, it's just more rules to be brokem by guests. As far as the golf carts, do you really expect people to stay out of the golf cart lane. Just walk through a crowded airport and see how well people stay out of the way of the motorized carts there.

A few digital signs listing the major rides that are updated in set intervals would be sufficient. Lately the current signs at the ride entrances have been pretty accurate. A 5 second call to whoever updates the board wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience for anybody.

ha ha! I work a LOT! So I'm in front of a computer when I'm not out on site monitoring construction. Plus, it's rainy season here right now. The beach isn't very fun when it's thundering, lightning and downpouring. :)

How about a live attendance count on the CP website? :)

Ah, I guess I already have a way to answer the "how crowded are they" question by looking at the webcam anyway...

I am just pretty much saying computers are cheap, powerful computers are cheap, simple custom computer programs can be cheap.

But I bet Six Flags runs there parks on Windows ME, thats why the coasters are down so much.

My golf cart idea is just pipe dreaming, but I was hoping a few people would go...yeah as impossible as that sounds. I would use it given the right circumstances. *** Edited 9/8/2007 4:14:41 PM UTC by factory81***

Mass transit not required - Disney is orders of magnitude larger than CP with respect to land area. You just can't compare the two.

With ride breakdowns what they are at CP and the new rain shut down policy, electronic wait time updates are meaningless. You still will have to get from where you are to where you want to be, during that time, wait times will change.

Grab a pop & a pogo & enjoy!

^I completly disagree, while wait times do change a ride is not going to go from being a 2+ hour wait to a half an hour in an instant and in 99% of cases the opposite is also true (that 1% being opening, or some other large event getting out around it, which does not apply to CP but defiantly applies to Disney.) What the times help with is giving you a a general idea of what kind of line to expect, for instance if I see a one hour wait for MF when Im at Maverick, I expect to see a 45-90 min wait when I walk there. Its just something that helps plan your day better so you dont meaninglessly backtrack to rides you missed.

I've often seen rides have a 1 hour + wait line, shut down for some reason, and have a 5 min wait 15 minutes later.

The little signs they currently use for wait times seem to do the required job.

^Yeah but how long was the shut down? My bet is that "5 min wait" was as long if not longer then the original hour. No one is saying that the signs arent doing the job, at the ride entrance, but some of us would prefer to have a general idea about all the rides. I was at Disney World this summer and it was dead helpful, for example, to find out ToT and RnRC had 2+ hour waits with no fastpasses before I walked all the way down Sunset Blvd.

^^The new system wouldn't replace the signs they have now. We've acknowledged that the current signs do accomplish what they are meant to. The new system is to show wait times of rides across the park. Wait times wouldn't change so drastically that they would render the new signs obsolete.

I think that the digital signs at each ride is a good idea. It might not be ideal for those of you that think that it is an eye sore. Its not like it needs to be large, but it should be somewhat obvious where these signs are.

Frick people here don't read do they. IT ISN'T A SIGN AT EACH RIDE!! The signs that are in place now would remain, the system we are talking about would just be to place 4 or so signs around the park listing wait times for the major attractions.

My bad. Im sorry. But I do think that it would be nice to have one at each exit to the main rides.

One point everyone fails to realize, modern wait time reporting signs are great to the guests however all they do is equalize the ride time of all the rides in the park. If Maverick has a 1 1/2 hour line and MF has a 30 min wait the crowds are going to go to the lesser wait times therefore just distributing the same amount of people over more rides. I like the surprise of finding the short lines that nobody else realizes such as magnum.

P.S. Those manual signs at the entrance of each coaster are junk. I saw some kids messing with them, the park employee didn't even bother to care nor stop them.

Ya. I think that they need to get rid of the manual signs. Anything is better than those. They aren't even acurate half the time.