My evening experience with 'fast pass'

I went to the park after work today, and of course was very curious as to how well TTR is working. First some background info. The park was fairly crowded today, judging by the midway crowd and the number of cars in the parking lot. In a previous visit to the park, with a similar number of cars in the parking lot, MF’s sign said that the wait was 1:45.

I arrived at the MF entrance at around 6:45. All the TTR coupons were distributed for the day. A quick look at the queue showed about a 10-15min. wait for TTR ticket holders for the 6:00 – 7:00pm time period. I was instructed to come back at around 7:45. At 7:45 people in line for the general admission were already being let into the queue. The line snaked down the Frontier Trail, I found the end of the line at Tenderfoot Pass and got in line. The queue was fairly empty, so the line moved quickly as the queue was filled up. Total wait time for the ride was only 1hr. As I left the ride, I looked at the wait time sign which now said a 2hr. wait.

A quick comparison of wait times:

Non TTR
1 ¾ hr.

TTR
15 min. with TTR ticket
1 hr. at 7:45pm
2 hr. for the rest of the night

My view is that TTR works, it would have been an incredibly short wait if I had a TTR ticket. Even without the ticket, getting in line at 7:45pm saved me about 45min. compared to the time it took to wait for the ride during a similarly crowded day. If I wanted more rides, the wait time was about the same as before TTR, so that’s a wash. So, my feeling is that TTR does enhance the CP experience for a large number of people and should be kept and further refined.


*** This post was edited by Pete on 6/28/2000. ***

Wait a minute. Now I am officially bummed out.

Some dude said they never used TTR today.

My brother went and said they weren't using anything, and he rode it like 2:00 pm.I dunno, i wasn't their, i'll ask my bro again when i see him tmw
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MF Rides-1
Raptor rides-Around 15-20

I was there, and they used it. It didn't go into effect until about 1 though, because the ride was down for much of the morning. I got 7 rides in, I kind of cheated the system. It works for people that know what there doing, but its terrible for people that don't understand. They ran out of tickets at 2:30, so I basically stocked up before then, then used them at the end of the hour time slots, allowing my waits to be very minimal. Between 7 and 8 the line was so short that I rode 3 times within a half hour (they never collected my ticket, or anyone elses who didn't show theres). So if they can find a way to not run out so soon, so that you don't have to wait until 8, then it could be succesful. Also, the other ride lines were much busier then usual today.

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Whats life if you never get to the point?
MF:22
www.angelfire.com/oh4/hurricane6
*** This post was edited by Hurricane_6 on 6/28/2000. ***

SO, you can only ride this ride if you get your ticket between 1pm and 2:30pm. Otherwise you have to wait till 8pm. Oh yeah that is such a deal... What about those coming for a night trip.. Those not there the whole day.

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Raptor Flights: 54
Force Rides: 25

Hooper dont worry they give the tickets out all day and this is a very effitive system from what i saw when i was at the point. they had plenty off tickets when i went and it was a vert busy day judging by the number off cars in the parking lot.

The TTR system ends at 8:00pm because that's about when the lines start abating, as the big motorcoaches start to leave. Not all of us are blessed with a mere 2:00 or less drive to the Point.

I have to wonder...by how much were the 8:00pm lines artificially inflated by the presence of the people who got shafted by the TTR system? It was something I had planned to check out on Saturday, but I was too busy riding Magnum, which had gone from a 75-minute wait to about a 20 minute wait, as it usually does at that time of the night...

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Pete,

You forgot to factor in the amount of time someone waited in line so that they could get their TTR. So the wait was longer than 15 minutes for the TTR system.

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Ain't it neat to have your butt out of the seat.

One Thing I'm Slightly woried about is how to controll the tickets. What would kkep a dishonest person from "manufacturing" these tickets, or saving them for the next day (unless they use a dfferent color for every hour of every day)? There is nothing to stop them from doing this on the current pass system, just like the people who reride with the same ticket because they don't collect it. It's like all the kids at the local carnival saved thier armbands all year so they could ride again without paying, after a few years they came up with new ones, which were paper, so now you can just scan and copy them. I Don't want anything like this happening at the point, because i want it all to stay fair, so they really should have first come, first serve, or use barcodes or magnetic strips or something.

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HA HA HA, MELLENIUM FORCE, YEAH BUDDY!

I’ve thought of the counterfeit problem also. Someone just needs to take a pass home and, using his computer and scanner, could easily make duplicates. This also brings up the issue of scalping. Someone who makes a bunch of copies could also sell his counterfeit passes on the midway for a small amount of money per pass.

I don't think that is a major concern. They can change the color scheme from day to day, or date stamp the tickets...I don't think anybody is going to turn the scheme into a moneymaker 'cause the tickets simply don't have much value as a commodity. I could see, perhaps, setting up a TTR swap area near the ride (as if it isn't congested enough right there) so that people who want later times can swap with people who have earlier times and vice versa, particularly people who go through the ticket line a couple of times and end up with useless multiples of the same hour (since the line ends up an hour or longer, so extra tickets for the same hour are useless). I'm not certain that the concerns here of people getting multiple tickets and so forth are necessarily examples of 'abuse' of the system; after all, there is nothing on the ticket or published by the park to indicate that possession and use of more than one ticket is any problem any more than riding the ride more than once a day is a problem.

Pity that people who get off the ride ready to ride again can't, though....

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

The guy at the entrance to the queue noticed that I had a lot of tickets, and all he said was "How many of those do you have?" in a jokingly manner. So its obvious they don't care. Also, I think that the TTR swap area is a good idea, or they could let you choose your time instead, which would help a lot of people.

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Whats life if you never get to the point?
MF:22
www.angelfire.com/oh4/hurricane6

Rideman,

Oh great now we're gona have a stock exchange for Fast Pass Tickets. Good Grief.

What else are you gonna do while you wait for your time slot to come up? :) --Dave Althoff, Jr.

So, if you dont have a ticket you aren't allowed to ride, is that it?

Brett, maybe you should check out the 240 plus thread if you don't understand how it works.

Tyler..they pass out all the tickets after the MF que fills entirely, starting around 11am. They pass out tickets for each hour of the day first come first serve and are all out of them in a few hours. I have been there twice and found no tickets waiting for me but wait till 8pm and ride then..until then wait in a LONG line and walk the midways to buy something. This was definitly done to make more money.

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Raptor Flights: 55
Force Rides: 26

MaxAirTime, you only have to usually wait about 5 min. or less to get your TTR ticket. It was only five min. for me and the line was just about full. They have two people that do nothing but hand out tickets and the line moves very quickly.

It might be a 5-minute wait if they've got their little temporary queue filled up. But Saturday morning, that queue was woefully inadequate. I found the end of the line at the Main Midway end of the tunnel, and that was about 20 minutes. (not much) Later in the day, the queue went all the way down to Thunder Canyon. And as a point of fact, almost all of those people started at the Millennium Force entrance, so the length of the line was effectively double the length of the 'formal' queue...just to get tickets. Had I counted from the time I joined the mob of people trying to find the end of the ticket line, my ticket wait would have been closer to a half-hour.

--Dave Althoff, Jr. *** This post was edited by RideMan on 6/29/2000. ***

It's too bad the lines don't end there. You must still wait in a line before the ride.

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Dispatch Master, This is Transport one! I'm losing control, I'm losing control!