Frontier Festival Preview

Check out the photos here:

https://pointbuzz.com/Photo/Album/808

Reminds me a little of an Epcot festival, which as Disney knows, and the SeaWorld Entertainment parks have copied, is pretty much an excuse to print money.

Jeff, that is exactly how I answered my wife a couple hours ago when we walked through Frontier Town and she wondered what all the decor & pomp was. I told her that they usually hold this event later in the year but one reason it may be scheduled now is for the need of an immediate influx of cash. Everything there is an up-charge. With the great weather the attendance should be high, today was crowded and there were not too many children around. Just wait for Saturday & Sunday.

Ken had a line at his make-shift booth next to the museum stretching all the way to Snake River Falls entrance. Poor guy.

Thanks for the pictures, food looks good, can't wait to try some of them.

Is the price of fur still good?

Looks gorgeous.

The line for ticket redemption. 😮

No social distancing at all. I hope all those people are vaccinated!

Speaking of social distancing/vaccinations, isn't the CDC saying that fully vaccinated people don't need masks? Also, the mask mandate will be lifted June 6th?

They're outside. In the sun. They'll be fine.

Skyhawk06 said:

Speaking of social distancing/vaccinations, isn't the CDC saying that fully vaccinated people don't need masks? Also, the mask mandate will be lifted June 6th?

It'll be interesting to see how the park handles this, as the state mandate may lift but individual businesses can still set whatever requirements they deem appropriate. I did see that Kennywood announced they will not require masks for fully vaccinated guests.

I was there yesterday and was pleasantly surprised.
I didn't were a mask all day, indoors or out, and no one said a word.
Lots of others were doing the same. Distancing was almost non-existent too. Leave a 6-foot gap in the line and someone will fill it for you.

Mandates in Ohio are set to expire on June 2 but DeWine is supposed to update that today. I expect he drops all mandates immediately after what the CDC said.

I’m trusting that Uncle Steve is fully vaccinated.

^ Yes sir., we got the Moderna from Kroger.
No line at either appointment, painless injections, minimal sides.

That ticket line... what exactly are people getting there, the tickets to redeem at the food/beverage spots? That seems like a bottleneck to getting money from people. I wonder if they have a better solution in mind for future years. The Epcot festivals have a real POS at every booth, so you can pay the normal ways (I use my phone almost exclusively), plus little RFID cards that you can "charge" at any of the same POS locations. I get that's an investment of a few grand at each location, so it may be an issue of scale.

Currently you have to go to that booth first to redeem your ticket lanyard (which has 12 tear off tickets on it). It’s a mess, because the combination of people buying the tickets and people not knowing how to work the online ticketing system to get to the QR code on their phone, create a huge bottleneck. The worst part is that the stand doesn’t open (to redeem your tickets) until the festival starts at 2pm. I would have gladly came by earlier if they were open.

I guess in reality, it might not have mattered. After you leave this line you spend an hour waiting in all the food lines. Hopefully they’ll figure this out with time. Obviously the combination of people wanting to get out again, the weather, and the staffing is making this a bit of a mess. On the bright side, the food I did have was fantastic.

Reading that I am regretting getting tickets to the festival for tomorrow. Maybe I’ll try to change the date. Not worth all that hassle.

In the previous years, Frontier fest/ Brew and BBQ felt moderately busy, but never had many lines to speak of in the 6-7 times I’ve been to the event. I might have waited 10 minutes at most for getting the tickets, and food lines were non existent. Since it was a cashless transaction, you just handed the ticket over and they slinged you some pre made food.

It hopefully is just a case of a lot of season pass holders who took up the flash sale offer and got it for this weekend. Unless they are doing something different with the food (perhaps more overly complex assembly) I don’t get why there would be large lines, those should be quick transactions.

Also they used outside contractors to staff these before. If they are trying in house that could get ugly with the staffing issues.

My favorite year was the first year when it was dubbed brew and barbecue. They actually had a Brew Kettle truck with knowledgeable Brew Kettle staff serving you cold draft beer. After a few White Rajas I swear Maverick spawned an extra inversion.

Aaronosmer said:

Currently you have to...

That I don't even understand what it is that you just described is probably the first indication that the approach needs some... iteration.

Today the redemption booth closer to Mine Ride opened before 2:00PM and they had created two additional lines for picking up the lanyards, so it seems like they are trying to improve that bottleneck.

Yea they seemed to do a decent job fixing the redemption process for day two and even made some tweaks (having someone go into the line to do wristbands) on day one. I still think they need greater capacity for the food/drink booths. If they could get the festival food out of the park food locations (Roundup, Miss Keets, etc), that would help. They could also double the staff at each booth to get close to twice the throughput. Probably easier said than done right now. The food was good, the drinks were good, but they didn't seem prepared for the crowd which is unfortunate. Also unfortunate was some of the drinks being not available on both days. Not sure if they ran out, never got them or what. Looks like the maps/guides were printed in March.