Gatekeeper- terrible stacking

Pete said:
The people running Tiki Twirl took forever to load the ride because they were standing around talking about something while riders were waiting to board the emptied ride. One person yelled out to ask it the ride was down because nothing was happening.

That's unacceptable IMO. I had to work Tiki Twirl (Calypso) for a weekend, and at that time, only 1 person worked the ride (check seats and operate). As you can tell, I'm all about getting numbers (and safety of course) even if it isn't a much popular ride, so standing around and talking was not an option.

I rode Tiki Twirl the first week. There were probably eight of us in line all together.
The ride op was training someone, so that slowed things down. With every move he stopped to talk and explain what he was doing to the new guy. (I'm ok with that, I guess. And it was a slow day. )
But- the ride op greeted each oncoming rider at the gate and had lengthy discussions with each one. How many, please put larger riders to the outside, etc. then he would turn and stare at the ride to see where these riders needed to go, apparently in an attempt to balance. Then there was the gal with the backpack that he talked to at length, I'm not sure what about, but she went to her seat looking disgusted.
Then came the eternal checking of the lap bars and seat belts. I get that too, but he might've employed the use of his trainee to handle at least part of that, or maybe tried to hustle.

Then a couple more kids came running up the ramp and he let them in too, starting the whole thing over again. Ugh.

So it was probably a good five to eight minutes, maybe longer, while I sat in a red car, legs bent, waiting for the ride to go. I looked at the little queue they built along side of the ride and could only imagine, at that rate, the line spilling onto and down the midway on a busy day.

And Tiki Twirl turned out to be no better a ride than Calypso ever was...

Did you expect it to be better? All they did was painted it and changed the name.

Thabto - you might want to crank up your sarcasm antenna. LOL

RCMAC said:

So it was probably a good five to eight minutes, maybe longer, while I sat in a red car, legs bent, waiting for the ride to go. I looked at the little queue they built along side of the ride and could only imagine, at that rate, the line spilling onto and down the midway on a busy day.

And Tiki Twirl turned out to be no better a ride than Calypso ever was...

In our recent experience, May Days typically see only one person staffed per flat ride. Last year we went through this exact same mind-numbing experience on rides like Scrambler, Monster, and the like. And yes, it seems someone would always wander up just before we were all done and the attendant would let that person in. A nice gesture unless you were one of the people already waiting for double-digit minutes.

I would hope that once busier days are common then even these smaller rides have at least two working with their butts in gear, but I cannot speak from any experience there.

And yes. YES it should've been better.
If they were going to hang onto a crappy, tired flat and give it a makeover, they should have concentrated a little more on the mechanics of the ride.
It worked for Monster. Not only is it a better looking ride, but for the first time in a long time, a better ride.

Tiki Twirl is a ride where the table spins and the seats rotate. What more do you want?

Follow the money...

Longer lines = more FastLane sales...

CF officially has no reason to care about capacity.

If that's the case, then don't post ride numbers and boast which ones have the highest number of riders after each season on the CP blog. That's how I look at it.

TwistedWicker77 said:
Tiki Twirl is a ride where the table spins and the seats rotate. What more do you want?

How about a table that doesn't bounce and cars that all rotate at the same speed? Or motors that can handle the load? Sometimes the sweeps don't turn at all.
Like I say, Monster, just as old, got the right treatment. It's not that important to me, just disappointing. It was a cosmetic remodel only and I was expecting more.

GK's station is too chaotic because people are forced to run into each other even if they aren't going to the bins. Plus, what is it with overweight people not trying out the test seat? Why would you want to put yourself through the embarrassment of an operator trying to squeeze you in only to be kicked off anyways while EVERYONE watches and knows that your heaviness is to blame for the ride hold up.
I was also at KI, yesterday, and had to force myself to stop getting in the 5 minute line for Banshee or I was going to puke.

I was surprised with riding Furious Baco in Spain last month at Portaventura. The winged coaster has only one side of loading so you had to actually step over the middle hump of the train to load on the left side and also to exit from the right side. It made for speedy loading but kind of tricky to step over, lawyers here would never allow this set up. Also there were no overweight people to slow things down since it was Europe and not the USA :)

That is an Intamin ride and presumably has a different platform design. I don't see that being possible, let alone safe, with the B&M design.

I've stopped short of calling the crappy operations a conspiracy to sell more FastLanes although a few people have suggested it. I honestly just think it's incompetence in looking at procedures that make sense and don't make sense and someone having the balls to say, "this is ridiculous and we're going back to the old way of doing things..."

If it continues all summer, I'll just skip my family's season passes, dining plans, and multiple hotel stays next season. I have a Six Flags park with some pretty good coasters about the same distance away from me as CP and I haven't been there in a while. I stopped going because they were so terrible at operating rides. Since CP now sucks at operating rides, I might as well test out the other place for a year to see if they've improved and give CP a chance to figure out how to run more than 12 of 36 cabins on Giant Wheel when there is a 40 minute wait.

Yes, that, Giant Wheel. I realize that there is some kind of balancing that they have to achieve, but it's staggering how long the waits for that thing are with all of the empty cabins.

But if they fill each of the cabins, it should be balanced out. I don't normally ride that, but sometimes when I do, there are lots of empty seats with a long line.

I've never ever seen Giant Wheel operate with a completely full load, even when it was brand new. There's always been at least one section of cars on each side of the wheel empty.

And it's probably all about the balance. True, when there's a full load it's balanced. But let's say they take the time to fill it completely and the line goes down. Then they're stuck with an imbalanced wheel while they unload and figure out where new passengers should go. As long as there's a line of a certain length the wheel will always be balanced- they will always have riders waiting to fill the cars that are being unloaded.
Having said that I'd agree that 12 cars and a 40 minute wait might be pushing it...

Another possible reason for not filling the wheel completely is that in the unlikely event of an evacuation, say a sudden storm or strong winds, it takes less time to empty the ride safely. Plus if there should be a power outage there's less riders stranded.
And having said that it seems like 12 is still too few.

Another reason might be time. Large ferris wheels (and some small ones) normally don't load one car, then the next, then the next, but will load one section then push the wheel to the opposite side plus one. It's a little easier on the motors that way- it allows them to get the wheel to a constant speed before stopping them again, plus its easier to stop. If they followed that procedure for an entire load of riders it would take so much time riders may get impatient.
Having said that I think I'd rather wait for the ride to go waiting in my seat than on the ground.

Lastly, perhaps structurally the old gal can't be trusted with 36 cabins filled with riders. I've observed over a weeks visit that if certain sections are being used on Monday then different ones will be used on tuesday, Wednesday, and so on. So each cabin gets a chance to be used, just not every day.

So I don't know. It sucks that a big ride like that has such low capacity but it's always been that way. I'm thinking the (even bigger) wheel at Kentucky Kingdom operates pretty much the same way, not every seat is sold.

I'm just hoping out loud that letters/calls are being sent to the park as well, and that there's not just venting here. Posting about issues here certainly isn't trivial and might even be seen here and there by the likes of Tony or others, but it shouldn't be the place where genuine complaints stop. It's nearly June, and it sure seems like the time to be "in gear" is either here or right around the corner.

I'm sure everything will be ship-shape on Tuesday when my family gets there.

:)

Does everyone know where the Operations office is? It's in the Colliseum near the women's rest room on the Kiddie Kingdom side of the building.
Their door is open for certain guest services, questions, attaboys, and complaints. They will listen to your complaints and if nothing else, will give you a form to fill out and see that it gets to the appropriate party.

Perhaps if enough of these operation concerns are brought to their personal attention there may be some positive changes.

Once I had a question about a beautiful tree in the park that I couldn't identify. I went into Operations to see how I might find out and they went out of their way to get my answer. (they actually put me in touch with the Head Gardener in Charge by telephone and he was most gracious and informative)

So there's a park service available that some here may not know about.

Actually, the Park Operations office isn't open to the public anymore. :( That change was made a year or two ago. Not sure of the reason.

Having said that I am sure Guest Services by the front gate would let me complain or compliment or ask questions.

I agree somewhat that people should take complaints directly to the park, but quite frankly, a lot of the issues should be evident by looking at DOR numbers which I am confident look really bad compared to last year and probably downright pathetic compared to 10 years ago. Just by walking around and observing how darn slow things are compared to in the past, managers should be able to see something is wrong and make or at least suggest corrections to the higher ups.

Yes, but.... if managers are seeing issues but the customers aren't complaining about those issues, where's the incentive to correct those issues?