iPhone App

They do have wifi in the coffee shop, but not park wide. I don't think the resorts have wifi eather.

A much simpler solution would be to have wait time boards in the park. A simple board that posts the wait times of the rides. This way, everyone with or without a cell phone will know the wait times.

Some people don't even bring there phone into the park for fear of losing it on a ride or the phone breaking. A lot of these new touch screen phones cannot be simply put in your pocket like the older phones.

^ I actually agree. I don't like bringing my phone in the park, it's just something extra to worry about, I leave it in the car. Otherwise, on every ride, I find myself double and triple checking my phones security.

I'd much rather two or three big time boards around the park.

I like the big board idea. Much like they have on the interstates giving you approximate times from A to B.

I refuse to carry my phone in the park for fear of losing or breaking it. Anyone who knows me knows that they'll just have to wait to get ahold of me until I get back to the car. So I think a few boards around the park would be the way to go along with a park run app for those who would use it.

Boards are a great solution..I know that the Disney parks, Universal, and even the six flags here in GA all have boards with the estimated times on them around the park and even near most of the rides.. As for bringing the phone in the park, I generally wear cargo shorts to keep my phone, wallet, keys ect in so they don't fall out. However, It may be a little cold this opening weekend so I may be leaving them in the car=/

Atleast Tony doesn't forget about us Android owners :)

Best "app" would just be an HTML page that updated itself regularly though. And CP should considering putting a cell phone tower on / near their property. More than a handful of ski resorts have done just that.

Why should CP do that? My cell reception is perfectly fine on the peninsula. Are other carriers that bad? If so, it sounds like their problem, not CP's.

I think it would be cool if CP utilized QR codes throughout the park. I'm sure they could come up with some pretty creative uses.
Check out this one I made real quick.
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=http%3A%2F%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DjbXPhOFRxTc

^ I don't know what that is, but if CP's app looks anything like that, I'm not interested.

It's a QR code, Kyle. With the correct app, you can use your phone's camera to scan it, and it will point you directly to any number of things - another app, a phone number, web site, etc.

"I don't understand therefore I don't like it."
Watch this, its actually pretty cool if you have a QR reader on your phone.

So instead of just having an app on your phone, you can scan that, and it'll turn into an app?

I don't really see the benefit, sorry if I'm just WAY behind, but wouldn't it be easier to just open an app already on my phone, than whipping it out and taking a picture that the phone will read as an app?

*edit* I don't have speakers on my comp at work, so if it explains exactly that in the video, I'm sorry.

I could, for example, scan a QR code here, and my phone's browser would take me directly to the app download.

Ahhh, so if you're at the park and need the app now, bam you can have it? Gotcha.

I could see that being a great tool to get the app up and rolling quickly.

*EDIT* Just how many phones have the ability to read them? And I thought I was so cool with my BB Curve a year ago...lol

I guess I didn't mean to suggest that the QR code thing is better than an app for displaying ride times. Since we aren't likely to see that anyway I thought the QR code would be cool to have around the park for other things. The example I posted linked to a pov of millennium force but it could be used for lots of other things like to download an app or linking to the cp webcam that is pointed directly at you while you stand in front of the pagoda cam.
It's a means of quickly linking someone to info and various media on the web. Instead of taking the time to type in a specific website or navigate your way there via google, you simply line the qrcode up on your screen and it links you to the site instantly.
Pretty much any smartphone has this ability you just need to find the QR reader at your phones app store.

Yea real, I think QR codes are awesome, yet irrelevant for this purpose.

By the way, did you catch the Real Madrid Barcelona game? =)

Yes Messi is the Messiah but Bigsoccer.com and reddit.com/r/soccer are a more relevant place to discuss that.

Heh wasn't looking for a discussion...just a little sidenote as I am a futbol fan =)

JuggaLotus said:
Disney does it with RFID tags that they hand out to random guests entering the queue. It gets scanned at the start and then when you hand it over ot the employee at the platform. Wouldn't be too hard to wire a system like that in and have it, at the very least, feed signs at the individual ride entrances.

Yeah -- if you ever get handed a red tag with a landyard attached to it by a ride host at Disney when you enter a queue, this is exactly how they are tracking wait times. They've been using it for quite a long time now. They scan a tag and give it to someone entering the queue and then at (or very near) the load platform the ride host takes it and scans it at a reader at the load platform. I've been handed those red tags at Disney many times. Their system on the ride queues seems to give the ride hosts some kind of audible alert to hand out another tag at regular intervals.

With RFID becoming even more ubquidious these days (e.g. PayPass in credit cards, electronic tolling, parking/ security gate AVI access.) I would think that even CP could afford to implement some kind of RFID system similar to this to get more accurate wait times displayed at least at the entrance of the more popular coasters.

Really it's only something like that which is controlled by the park that is going to get you accurate wait times.

The RFID thing is what Disney does in Florida. In California, they use a system that even Cedar Point could implement: when the entrance host notices someone who is obviously wearing a watch, he asks that person for the current time and writes it on a piece of paper, handing that scrap of paper to the person. When that person gets to the boarding platform, he hands the paper to the attendant who gets the time off the same person's watch, then uses that information to calculate the waiting time and update the sign accordingly.

(of course, if CP were to do this, they would probably implement it by just having the entrance host write the current time in color-coded magic marker on the unlucky rider's forehead. Why bother with little pieces of paper?) :)

The problem with both of these systems is that the information collected is out of date by the time it is collected. Let's say the ride is a 20-minute wait. I get in line and get tagged (using whatever method) and when I get to the station, the call goes in to set the board for a 20-minute wait. The problem is that the information is now 20 minutes out of date. It was a 20 minute wait when I got into the queue. But because a show just dumped 900 people onto the midway right next to the ride entrance, it is now a 60-minute wait, even though the system has no way of "knowing" that. Or, it's the end of the day and not very many people have followed me into the queue, so by the time I get off, the ride is a walk-on. Again, the system can't know this because its information is out of date...although it will obviously catch up faster when the line is getting shorter than it will when the line is getting longer.

There is a way to get up-to-the-minute information, though. The trick is to put TWO turnstiles on the ride, one at the queue entrance and one at the boarding platform. At any given time, the difference in reading between the two turnstiles represents the number of people waiting in line. If the ride is running at a reasonably consistent rate (which is almost always the case at Cedar Point) then you can simply divide the number of people waiting in line by the current average throughput and get a reasonably accurate estimate of the actual waiting time *at any given moment*.

Of course, at Cedar Point, because ride operations is so consistent, you can usually achieve the same result by looking at the queue. If Millennium Force is backed up to the bottom of the ramp it is a 10 minute wait, to the pop machines is 30, to the DJ booth is 40, to the entrance is 75. Without any technology at all, Cedar Point is able to give pretty good up-to-the-minute estimates down to the nearest quarter-hour. What is missing is any method of distributing that information throughout the park.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.