OMG 10/12/2013

Yes, the parking lot at Blossom always sucks. If you go there you just have to accept that you won't be leaving until 2am and that's just how it is. Don't even bother turning the car on.

I was there it was crowded I had no problem waiting to leave. I just wish a park worker or someone in charge would have told everyone in the park of the problem because I had nothing to drink or eat and if I knew what was going on in the parking lot I would have got something In the park as I was leaving. but other than that it was no problem

Saturday was a super-mega-crowded day, we all know that. I don't really see many complaints about the lines in the park, just how long it took to get off the peninsula. Yes it's going to take a while, but I have to admit if the reports of four hours to get off it true, then that is too long.

From what I hear, on days like Saturday, if you are parked in the back (Soak City) the exiting traffic may not even start to move until the front of the park has almost entirely cleared. To get people off the point efficiency, they really need to have three lanes exiting the causeway. One lane from the back of the park, one lane from the VIP/Blue Streak end of the main lot, and one lane at the back of the main lot. This gives a constant flow of traffic from what I would consider the three most critical points. The only thing that I can see making this difficult is widening Perimeter Road from about Blue Streak to the toll booths.

Days like this happen periodically, maybe once a year or so. It seems like the park was very much unprepared to get the cars off the Peninsula. I hope in the future they can come up with a procedure that would allow for a more efficient exiting of the cars.

I thought it was a normal for halloweakends I have been go to halloweakends for years and it's always like this on saturdays

0g said:
Days like this happen periodically, maybe once a year or so.

Well...if days like this happen just once a year or so, does the park really need to make a special effort to deal with such a situation?

Yes.

Smitty Werbenjaegermanjensen said:
Did anyone make it up Sunday the 13th?

We went Sunday, totally ignorant of what transpired the day before. We hadn't been since Labor Day so we made it a point to go. The kids didn't even have Monday off from school so didn't think it would be that big of a deal with who had Columbus Day off. Started off very crowded but thinned out, we were mostly riding at night, though, so we were pleased with 10-15 minute waits for the big ones at the front of the park. I think everyone was either in the haunted houses or in the 1.75 hour waits for MF and Maverick. All other rides were pretty open.

I think the parking lot was full when we arrived after 2 p.m. and we were directed back to Soak City lot. We stayed later than we planned and were fortunate to have been directed out of there quick because we looked at the main front lot and it looked like it was going to take them a while. I wonder now if they let the back lot go on through because it sounds like the night before they had the longest wait.

JuggaLotus said:
Hopefully the changes involve doubling the parking and admission prices and making some extra money for the shareholders. Obviously things are priced too low on Columbus Day weekend if this is the result.

So you want to double $40 admission and $20 parking...real smart plan.

The only reason it was so crowded is it is one of the last weekends it was nice sunny and it was a holiday.

If you increase the cost of days that are expected to be busy it would just cause more problems. People would show up unaware without enough to cover the added expense and after paying more to get in if there were to still be a parking and line issue people would just be that much more POed.

I agree with the previous (many) posts of allowing 1-lane in, 3 lanes out on the causeway at closing. That one road (sorry, escapes me at this time) that takes you to 250 has the arrows/X's that change to accommodate the flow of traffic.

But it sounds as though once traffic got past the toll booths, it was smooth sailing, so would this plan really need to be put in place?

e x i t english said:
I, for one, welcome the storms. Ben, you can come hang out at the LHP cottage and grab a couple of brews and we'll look for waterspouts. :)

Sounds good. We'll likely need antifreeze as closing weekend looks awfully cold. Highs in the 40s and lows in the 30s. Blech.

Ooooh man. That'll make for some interesting weather. Remember a few years back when John had the cottage (I think you were staying, too) and it was raining so hard, and pelting the front door, that it was just coming through?

I hope it's not like that again.

Then again, if it is - I'm in a cottage, so I can go play in the rain, come back and change/warm up and play Cards and Against Humanity while drinking Maker's Mark :).

haha yeah that was 2006. It was fricken cold and nasty that year. Doesn't look to rain this year on closing weekend at least. We'll see. Just cold (at least what I'd call cold)

raptorqueen said:
I agree with the previous (many) posts of allowing 1-lane in, 3 lanes out on the causeway at closing. That one road (sorry, escapes me at this time) that takes you to 250 has the arrows/X's that change to accommodate the flow of traffic.

But it sounds as though once traffic got past the toll booths, it was smooth sailing, so would this plan really need to be put in place?

I think it could work that way if they can direct sectioned areas of the parking lot to its designated lane.

I also think if they opened up the lanes for the toll booths for exiting traffic as well, that might alleviate the flow of traffic. Exit out of the parking lot the same way you came in. And then have a merging point somewhere after the grass patch.

Wouldn't that just create another logjam at the merging point?

Theoretically if the traffic starts moving faster at the merge point it wouldn't be too bad. In practice, not so much though.

All traffic, not exiting via the chausee has to merge to the two current exit lanes. This includes the employee lot, marina lot, anyone from the back part of the park, and any amount of streams coming from the main lot.

If any stream of traffic towards the eastern part of the main lot (not exiting via the chausee) could be routed thru a gate lane into the 3rd lane on the causeway, I think it'd help alot.

You don't want to open all the booth lanes cuz that would cause a merging issue. Just open up one more hole and the cars will flow out easier...sorta like the Miller Lite pop tab!

You do have to account for the 1 incoming lane though....it would have to cross paths with that extra hole created. For example, the employee bus has to get through, and it can only get through the far left hand gate....You almost have to say that the lane set up would need to be OUT-IN-OUT-OUT and that might be a logistics/safety issue.

Come to think of it, the 3 lanes out and 1 lane seems like a good idea, but maybe not a doable one.

They can change to a diagonal parking formation that was pointed out to be used by Disney. One direction goes out one way to its lane, the second direction the other. Cars from the back and marina, etc. go the third lane. They would need a traffic controller at the merge among other areas, of course.

Or how about this, it wasn't record setting (IE it's been worse and no complaints there) and it's a busy halloweekend for a park at minimum staffing when the crowd reflects that of a busy day in July if not possibly a bit worse, and theres only a single lane road back to soak city, and single lanes from the parking lots going to a two lane outside of the toll booth..It's a bottleneck, it always has been...but you didn't see complaints on the 4th of Jul, ect...

This has been this way for many a year, not just this year, dunno why people chose this year to flip out