New Steel Vengeance Locker System for 2021

This was mentioned earlier, but is works just fine at Universal. They stop you from entering the queue if you haven’t been to a locker. Some pass through, some don’t. The queue is far from empty.
Having said that, I was at CP about a month ago and had my first experience with the lockers on a busy day. I’d venture to say no “empty” trains left the station. The locker itself was a process and there was a learning curve but it didn’t seem to delay anything past that. Maybe my visit was before this wanding, I dunno.

A week ago I rode Steel Vengeance...honestly it was the first time I rode it where I didn't do it because someone else wanted to, and it's only the second time I didn't come up the exit on someone else's alternate access pass. It was maybe a 5-minute wait.

I had no idea that there was any distinction between the two magnetometers, so after I dropped off my phone, I proceeded to the magnetometer that didn't have an argument going on in front of it, and proceeded to the top of the stairs, where I learned I had actually come up the FastLane stairs. Personally, I think this is part of the problem.

They are working so hard up at the platform on maintaining some kind of equitable distribution between the FastLane entrance and the main entrance, and on reserving rows for people coming up the exit stairs, and on trying to assign everybody to a seat, that they are simply not bringing people up to the platform fast enough. You can do all you want to fix the flow of people down at the magnetometers, you won't fix anything until you convince the gatekeeper at the top of the stairs to move a lot faster, and to keep at least TWO trainloads of people in the shotguns. Yes, it's one more train to wait for the exit ramp people; or it means simply telling people standing on the platform that THEY need to wait one more train. The whole reason for shotgun loading is so that the entire train can be loaded in a few seconds. That only works if the shotguns are loaded before the train gets there.

I think by the time riders come out of the locker area, they should be considered "merged". Direct a roughly equal flow of people up each stair, perhaps designating one stair for the front of the train and one for the rear; flow those lines continuously into the station and keep the load side of the station full of people. The role of the person at the top of the stairs should be to direct traffic towards empty seats (not to assign rows), pair single riders, and occasionally stop the flow if it gets too crowded. When the wait is short, that position could almost be eliminated just to let people stack up in the station and down the steps.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I honestly thought they were considering anyone at the lockers already merged.

That was what I thought, but the attendant at the top of the stairs seemed to be taking count from each entrance. This is with literally not enough people coming in the entrance to fill the train, let alone bottle-necking at the magnetometers.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

In terms of the actual queue setup, I think the simplest option at this point is to permanently reduce to one pathway/staircase to the station to ensure a more even flow of guests.

Of course, that would require the park to speed up their screening process. One employee hand wanding each guest for 5 seconds creates a capacity of 720 people per hour, which—being less than the ride’s (theoretical) capacity of 1,200 people per hour—is going to result in empty seats, regardless of where the metal detection takes place.

Maybe the park could simply put two metal detectors in front of one pathway. While I suppose that could get messy with two lines merging simultaneously and groups wanting to stay together, two metal detectors would help prevent bottlenecks.

If the park keeps two separate pathways/staircases to the station, I’d love to see one returned to being reserved for FLP. But since the park hasn’t done that since opening weekend (at least to my knowledge), I assume they found the process of re-splitting standby and FLP guests after the lockers too inefficient.

With the current locker set up, which I love, there is no way of splitting the FL from the regular guests without having a huge amount of people held up in the locker area which was, from the sounds of it, a huge disaster on opening weekend. The ride ops assigning seats really have to work quickly. Somehow, though, Universal uses one person to assign all rows and gets them out in 60 seconds or less on Velocicoaster. There are definitely ops working on the SV platform who have/had no business trying to assign seats. People on the stairs should equal every row being used...Now if only CP could get a single rider line in there, similar to what Maverick had.

What if one set of stairs was single rider after lockers and the other groups?

Pull from the groups and then pull from single rider to fill empty spaces.

No matter how they rearrange things, the bottom line is they have to be able to scan more people in an hour then the capacity of the ride is in an hour. They have trouble doing that. Fix that and then other tweaks can be done as needed.

Is the metal detector issue recent? There was always a line on both sets of stair anytime I went. Rows only went empty when a frazzled gatekeeper couldn't keep up with assigning seats.

That seemed to be the problem in my experiences with half trains as well. There was no shortage of people on both stairs. They just couldn't get them in the station fast enough.

They wait too long to let the next group of people in. Fortunately, the entry is at the middle of the station. It's not as though people are going to try to sit in seats that go to people going to put stuff in bins. Maybe have 2 people assigning seats...Old FL side is for back half of the train and the other stairs go to the front half. You decide before the metal detectors. That might even make it easier for ops to yell for single riders, assuming anyone can hear over those back stops...lol

One of the problems I have observed with the current way they assign rows is that they are not allowed to have more than one train worth of people in a row. If some of the guests line up in an already occupied row, and not the row they were assigned, they will stop letting more people in until the guests move to an unoccupied row. By then, there isn't enough time to fill the rest of the train, and empty rows go out. Management seems to be putting a far higher emphasis on keeping the riders organized than they do about filling trains.

Or...how about not assigning seats at all?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I haven’t really been to any other parks that require a locker for specific rides. But if you were to ask me, the current locker system for SV is garbage and takes a long time. There has to be a quicker way to choose your locker.

Was there last night. Probably best job of filling trains I have seen all season. Sometimes they were even looking for a single rider to fill a train.

It seems to be heavily dependent on what employee is at the turnstile/crowd position (or gatekeeper as a few people called it). I've seen it being done well and I've seen it being done disgracefully. Same goes for the stations preceding that (metal detection/wanding and merge of Fastlane/peasants). I do agree that they ought to just merge the lines back together after the metal detector/wanding spot. If they don't want to make the modifications to the stairs/queue to make that happen, they should do left metal detector = back of train, right metal detector = front of train and just install a divider in the station between the third and the fourth car so there can't be crossover. Trying to re-separate FL from regular at that point is splitting hairs (especially if they went to one stairway and not two) and just making things more complicated both there (checking bands again) and up at the top.

As far as groups wanting to stay together, it's as simple as if one person in your group needs a locker, you all enter the locker area and stay together out of the way and then exit the locker area for metal detection together as well. Meanwhile, the rest of the queue (people not needing a locker) keeps moving.

RideMan said:

Or...how about not assigning seats at all?

That would just be too easy.

Studies have shown that Southwest Airlines chaotic cattle call method of loading an airliner is actually the most efficient, even though it sucks. Is it any different here?

Is it actually the most efficient, or is it the most efficient of the ones that are currently used?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAHbLRjF0vo

Out of curiosity, can anyone report on how SV’s queue/locker system is going this year? Any differences from last year?

I watched a social media video in which the post-merge tunnel looked to be completely full again (which, as I’ve said before, I dislike as a FL user—especially when both staircases are for general use).