It could not be any better last Thursday. I entered the park at 9 almost laughing at the peeps lined up already to get in at 10. There honestly had to be about 70 JCC members in the park!
I started with Raptor and had a whole train to myself in and sat in seat 8-1. I was not thinking about an re-ride and even though there was NOBODY on the platform for the next train. I decided to leave Millennium Force. To my surprise as I was nearing the entrance to Raptor this guy ran around me shouting "I can't believe they are not allowing re-rides" as he entered the queue.
Now I can understand if there is people waiting for the next seat to not allow re-rides, and even if that maybe allow a re-ride candidate to take an empty seat. It's just plain ludicrous to not allow a re-ride if there are is nobody else even on the platform under ERT conditions. So while others were forced to walk around they sent out empty train after empty train.
I approached the Force thinking because of it's set up re-rides would be impossible because of the unload/load stations. However the very intelligent Millennium Force Crew allowed peeps to re-queue through the special access entrance so we would not have to walk all the way around. If someone came up through the regular entrance they would let them through ahead. BRILLIANT! I rode 4 times in a row in seat 5-1R Blue in a matter of Minutes :)
Then some Silver Tag Policy Nazi came up and said "no special access entrance for you" (sorry, I love that phrase). So now we had to walk the 5 miles to get back on the ride. When everyone asked him why his cunning response was "It's no fair."
I just see this as plain stupidity. This is ERT and they should lighten up on some of their stringent policies. If I just go another time I'm sure it will be worth the $15 but come on, a little common sense!
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2001 Force Count-43
Kind of makes you wonder if they are going to change the way they do Millennium Mania. M.M. was unique in the sense that you wouldn't have to walk all the way around and re-enter the queue. The only exception was on Millennium Force when the line would periodically extended "beyond" the special access gate. Only then would you have to walk down the exit and re-enter through the regular queue entrance.
Yeah, that's pretty brain dead. I'm sure the reason the MF crew took it upon themselves to do it was that the turnstile for The Force is on the platform, and you need to go through it again to board again.
Still, if it's simply an accounting issue, someone needs to have their head checked. Click the turnstile and let them ride.
It's amazing that a park with such fabulous operational procedures can be so brain dead over something like that.
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Jeff
Webmaster/Guide to The Point
Futuristic bow-wow... do the dog catcher!