Let's talk about Fast Lane

I last went to Cedar Point in May, 2011. We're going again this July (and also to King's Island, Platinum Pass for the win). We're looking to do go July 28 and 29, a Friday and Saturday, and are going to do the Platinum Exclusive Ride night for Magnum/Top Thrill.

Of course, those are a Friday and Saturday in July. We all know how busy that can be. Fast Lane exists, though, obviously, and it's probably worth it to get one. I'm in Kansas City, and a trip to Cedar Point is a couple times a decade kind of thing nowadays.

The issue is that, for my entire life, I have been a standard, non-Fast Lane rider and scoffed at the "pay-to-ride" approach of these types of things--for my experience, they make a significant negative impact on standard riders, depending on how Fast Lane is set up.

Am I crazy to think that? Or is it just an accepted part of the industry these days?

Nah, they don't make a negative impact on riders...They didn't pay for a service offered to everyone...and if they get mad, who cares.

Not my fault the peasants didn't buy the special line pass ;)

I don't feel bad about buying Fast Lane on occasion. It's a privilege I pay for. As for normal riders, of which I am one 90% of the time, I don't see it as a significant impact. Sure it may look like it, but if Fast Lane didn't exist, there would just be more people in the standard queue. Now there's less people, but I don't feel it lengthens the wait much. Fast Lane is kind of a marketing scam, in some ways. They advertise dozens of rides that offer a FL queue, however, a large majority of these provide no benefit for FL users (depending on the day, perhaps).

^It's def. depending on the day. My girlfriend and I went up one weekend. She laughed seeing that some rides offered Fast Lane when the park was incredibly dead (mostly due to weather) on a Saturday. Sunday when she saw good weather and everyone in the park with cramped lines, she understood it's value.

I typically go when I feel it won't be too busy, like the weekdays very early in the beginning of the year or after major events (like the week after Bike Week). If I travel during the main point in the season like July/August, I'll potentially spring on the fast lane tickets. The only hindrance to that is some trips are for a full weekend or so, and with that I have a ton of time in the park, so if I don't get to marathon like a crazed enthusiast, so be it. More time on the midway to sip beer.

As someone who gets to the park upwards of 20x a season I have never used it. I don't see the value in it for me personally for rides I've been on hundreds if not thousands of times in my life. I have purchased it at parks like Knott's, Hershey, Dollywood, etc. Parks that may be a once in a lifetime visit, I want to maximize my time there. I loved Dollywood's version cause it also included reserve seating at shows! A small added perk which literally costs them nothing and increases the perceived value of the line skipper.

If you can afford it, go for it. Like others said, it's a service available to everyone. If it makes your trip more enjoyable and you can maximize the experience when you may only got once a decade.. just do it. Plan it into your budget for the trip!

Honestly I do feel bad when there's a 2 hour wait for Valraven and I can get on 4-5 times in a row passing the same people that have been waiting the whole time. Doesn't stop me though, so feeling bad changes nothing. Staying at Breakers and never having to deal with leaving the park at night or simply having to walk a mile from my parking spot also makes me feel bad at times.

With that said the whole world is wired in favor of people who have extra money to blow. Hell a hot shower is a luxury most in the world don't have. So in the grand scheme of things I'll continue to enjoy the blessings my life has afforded me and never look down on those who cannot afford such things.

I'm not kidding when I say that (Keeping this on CP) when I'm heading down the causeway, checking into the hotel and buying a FP that I always thank god or whatever for the privilege that so many others don't have.

Thor-
Just call down a few well timed claps of thunder in the morning and again mid afternoon, the park will be empty. No need for FastLane.

I was in the same boat regarding Fast Lane for a while, until last March actually. I had a platinum pass in 13 and 14, and living an hour away, it wasn't a disappointment to me missing out on a few rides every visit if the park was busy. Then working at the park in 15 and 16, same deal.

Last March over spring break I took a trip down to Carowinds and Kings Dominion, Carowinds either wasn't crowded or all of their rides are capacity machines, but I was able to get on everything I wanted within that day. At Kings Dominion the following day was a different story. Due to a few circumstances, I wasn't able to spend the full day in the park, and decided it would be worth it to spring some extra money on Fast Lane. Had I not bought it, I wouldn't have made it on all of the rides I wanted to in the time I had.

TL;DR wait until you're at the park, get a feel for the crowd that day, then decide if you feel it's worth it.

thedevariouseffect said:

Nah, they don't make a negative impact on riders...

This is flatly untrue. It is relatively common to, as a non-FL rider, see FL riders take a few laps while you're waiting for one ride. So there is an impact on your wait time, especially when the park is busy. And the impact is more pronounced on popular rides with poor capacity (Maverick, MF, Valravn).

This is not to say I have any moral objection to FL, as I have gladly coughed up the dough for it on numerous occasions, even when the park isn't very busy. But FL does have a negative impact on the "standby" guests.

Knowing him, I'm willing to bet he was being sarcastic. Ya GOTTA use those smilies people! :) ;) :( 8D

Çp4€và04 said:
Honestly I do feel bad when there's a 2 hour wait for Valraven and I can get on 4-5 times in a row passing the same people that have been waiting the whole time.

That there's the part of the FOL is unfair argument I don't get. Why feel bad because other folks chose not to choose Fast Lane?

Some people spring for a season pass and saunter into the park well ahead of folks buying tickets at the gate. Some people call a restaurant for reservations and walk past the folks waiting at the bar for a table because they just walked in.

Some people can get a thrill, holding hands and sitting still ... Sorry, started channeling Merman in Gypsy.

FL does make an impact on standard line guests. There's no way around it - if you have what is basically a "line cutting" pass, the capacity of the standby line is going to be cut down. It's a fact.

While I like the fact that low-capacity rides are on the more exclusive FLP system (Maverick...), I don't like how FL/FLP is handled on some rides. Valravn is the worst. The setup basically throws FLP riders in front of you right as you get to the grouper. FLP riders end up going to the front row. And because of Valravn's strict grouper, the standby line riders don't get the front row as much as FLP riders.

Also, seeing a large chunk of the train reserved for FL when FL's line is fairly short, or seeing the standby line get held back when there's barely any FL users, is quite irritating. I actually prefer a system kind of like Gatekeeper's or Raptor's, where FLP merges in a few minutes before the station and everybody gets the same opportunity in the station. (MF is another example of this, but I personally think that MF's FL merge point is actually too FAR from the entrance - a rare example of me not siding with the standby riders.)

Another thing about FL is that it got rid of the single rider lines on some of the only CP rides that had them; Maverick and STR (RIP) being the examples. But Maverick's single rider line was just a split after you've waited for most of the queue, and STR's single rider line moved hideously slow, even for a single rider line. It was nothing like the insane timesaver that some Six Flags single rider lines are, so I guess that the loss of single rider lines was not a huge loss.

Fun fact, and slightly off-topic: Europa Park, the park that has begun to beat CP in the Golden Tickets, has no fast lane system. They just have ludicrously fast operations from what I've heard, and they optimize rides for capacity. Wodan, their GCI, is the only GCI in existence with no seatbelts, specifically ordered that way for capacity.

Meanwhile at Cedar Fair parks, the B&M hypers have jury-rigged seatbelts (when nobody has been ejected from a B&M... ever) and the classic woodies (Blue Streak being a prime example) have headrests, seatbelts, dividers, and ratchet bars, which means the ride "stacks" 99.9% of the time. This is in contrast to the fact that with the original control system, the ride would require a maintenance reset if it stacked/stopped on the approach to the station. Iron Dragon got rid of the third train because people felt like they were being "rushed on" and they couldn't afford to stack on the lift, ruining the ride's capacity.

As much as I like Cedar Point and as good as its operations are, there's definitely room for improvement and there are some points where an illusion of guest comfort is exchanged for capacity, when it would also be possible to just move the line faster. But I guess there is money to be made in Fast Lane.

noggin said:

Çp4€và04 said:
Honestly I do feel bad when there's a 2 hour wait for Valraven and I can get on 4-5 times in a row passing the same people that have been waiting the whole time.

That there's the part of the FOL is unfair argument I don't get. Why feel bad because other folks chose not to choose Fast Lane?

Some people spring for a season pass and saunter into the park well ahead of folks buying tickets at the gate. Some people call a restaurant for reservations and walk past the folks waiting at the bar for a table because they just walked in.

Some people can get a thrill, holding hands and sitting still ... Sorry, started channeling Merman in Gypsy.

Did you read my whole post or just that paragraph? Because other than different situations I said the same thing. If feeling bad is apart of the argument, that's not mine. But yeah I do feel bad, can't help it. Like I said above it doesn't stop me from buying them ;)

Otherwise I completely agree, doesn't mean I don't feel grateful.

Personally, I think that the wristband system currently in place at Cedar Fair's parks does make quite an impact on the standby wait, mainly because of the ability to circle around and re-ride as many times as your heart desires. Think about it: each ride has a finite number of seats available per hour, and when a FastLaner rides that ride 10 times in one hour, there's 9 seats right there that were occupied by that FastLaner's re-rides, yet could have been occupied by other FastLaners or standby guests' first time on the ride. They try to control for the general impact of FastLane on the standby wait with high prices, placing low-capacity rides on higher tiers, and limiting the number of wristbands, but ultimately I feel that the specific impact that FastLaner re-rides have could only be seriously minimized if a time limit rule is put into effect (i.e. 20-30 minutes between re-rides on the same ride). That way, re-rides (when they do occur) happen with less frequency and FastLaner marathons are not possible; returning to the previous example, the 9 re-ride seats that the FastLaner occupied could be reduced to just 2 re-ride seats (assuming a 20 minute time limit between re-rides), thereby allowing 7 other standby guests/Fastlaners onto the ride within the hour.

On a side note, since Cedar Fair has a business relationship with Accesso, I find it quite interesting that they didn't go for Accesso's LoQueue virtual queuing system, seen at parks such as Six Flags and Dollywood. Since the LoQueue system is usually set up to have the guest still wait for some time in a virtual queue for their ride, re-rides are a lot more separated, and the result would be the same as the proposed time limit rule, if not even better. I guess the return on investment and the profit margins would be quite a bit lower than the wristband system (since the Qbots and implementation both would cost quite a bit), but overall I think a time-limited system (whether with high-tech Qbots or low-tech Tyvek wristbands) would be a lot more fair than the system we have today.

Of course, I think a free system would be the most fair for all guests (much like Disney's FastPass), but I remember the logistical nightmare that happened when Cedar Point tried to create a free system to bypass waiting in line (does anyone else here remember FreeWay?), and as such, I see that a paid system is what allows the park and the rides to run with the most harmony possible. Overall, I think the current system isn't very good for overall park satisfaction (I give it a 5/10 overall), but with this time limit rule, it could be made a lot less irritating for the larger majority of guests who wait in the standby line, and would make my feelings toward it more positive (I'd probably give the system a 7/10 with this rule--not the best option available, but still fairly decent).

bootymix96 said:
Think about it: each ride has a finite number of seats available per hour, and when a FastLaner rides that ride 10 times in one hour, there's 9 seats right there that were occupied by that FastLaner's re-rides, yet could have been occupied by other FastLaners or standby guests' first time on the ride.

But the seats were filled. How the people filling those seats got into the seats doesn't matter, really. Some people choose stand by, some people choose FOL access.

I'm a cheap bastard and in all my years of going to amusement parks, I've never bought a park's FOL access product. I've also never stood on line for a ride fretting that people who bought a product they bought and I didn't are enjoying the benefits of that product and I'm not.

I guess I don't really see how it's relevant what ride the Fast Lane user previously rode.

TTD 120mph said:

Knowing him, I'm willing to bet he was being sarcastic. Ya GOTTA use those smilies people! :) ;) :( 8D

I did put a winkie! It's there see! Haha

thedevariouseffect said:

Nah, they don't make a negative impact on riders...They didn't pay for a service offered to everyone...and if they get mad, who cares.

Not my fault the peasants didn't buy the special line pass ;)

Now, totally being honest, yes it may have an impact on the guests in the main queue. However, I don't have time to observe the peasants as I lap Valravn for the 12th time in two hours when they've been in the queue since 10. ;) <--See Winkie is present

I feel like the current system on Maverick and Valravn draw the most attention to the wait differences. If those rides joined at the stairs, like the ramp for Dragster, the effect would be less pronounced.

I.e. Mavericks would split front/rear train. Valravn could split front row wait at the stairs.

My wife and I take 3 weekend trips to Cedar Point each year. Along with a hand full of day trips to Kings Island with our grandson. I always saw FastLane as a waste of money. Do we get to ride every ride every day. No, but we get to ride all the rides over 3 days. Utilizing ERT each day to get short waits for the best coasters we generally don't wait in any lines over 30 minutes.

The last 2 years we have gotten FastLane Plus for free when we renew our passes in the fall. After using the product I would consider buying the pass on a busy day. Broken down to cost per hour it's a good deal. And better than walking out of the arcade with a beach ball you spent $50 to win.

Never appreciated the invention of the Fast Lane at any park. The Fast Lane pass does not teach patience and it only makes the regular line a little longer (depending on when you get in line for a certain ride, though - I knock out Valravn, Millennium, Maverick, and Dragster first every morning I go). I would never buy a Fast Lane because, if I'm going to ride a ride like everyone else wants to, I'll wait in line for my turn, whether it be 5 minutes (like on Gemini) or 45 minutes (Raptor).

What makes a big difference in being able to knock out the busiest rides first is having a Platinum Pass. With the early hour between 9 and 10, it's easy to ride these coasters before the big line develops. Any other time on these rides in the same day is a bonus, but I'll wait my turn.