Only 4 Bar Checkers?

When I went to the park Sunday, I noticed the ride was being run with only four people checking restraints on the load platform. Magnum has six when they run 3 trains. With the extremely slow loading times this year, why not add two people to check restraints?

-Sam

Short staffed, it's a end of season kinda thing.

Yeah. They dont have a problem with Millennium Force setting up. If magnum doesn't dispatch its train on time, it'll setup causing a ride shutdown... Thus when they are understaffed due to overtermination, they cut staffing on MF instead of Magnum.

Avalanche Sam said:
...Magnum has six when they run 3 trains. With extremely slow loading times this year, why not add two people to check restraints?...

Just a quick question? Why does Wicked Twister have 6 people checking restraints with only 1 train?

Cedar Point has established the fastest, most efficient ways to run the rides. Millennium Force is fine with 4 people checking restraints as long as everyone is paying attention to themselves. The best thing about 4 people is that everyone meets somewhere in the middle. This way someone can keep checking seats and catch up to the other person if they are moving slowly on something. By fastening your safety belt and pulling out the mandatory 1 inch slack before pulling down on your harness, you can greatly help the ride hosts. I will admit that with the end of the season staffing getting shorter, it does get difficult to hit interval as often, but the ride hosts are trying everything in their power to get the rides going as quickly as possible.

I think Wicked Twister having six is more of a safety issue than anything else. As long as that train is, I know I feel more comfortable with having someone mid-train able to see in between the cars. I know it's unlikely, but if someone for some reason was not actually secured in a seat and was standing between seats, people on the ends wouldn't see it.

The 4 people on load isn't a staffing issue, thats how the ride is supposed to run. 4 at load, 2 at unload...Last year there were 3 at unload I believe.

3 at unload? Ha! Sometimes there were even four. ;)

Whats weird is the smaller rides only have like 2 bar checkers, such as Gemini. For each side they only have 2 bar checkers.

Well on Gemini they only have to go down one side rather than checking every single bar. There isn't room on the queue side of the platform for anyone to check bars anwyay.

With the seatbelt problem 2 extra checkers will speed up the process. The seatbelts cause the ride attendants to stop and help tug on the belt. With 6 people they'll speed up the process a bit. Dispatches were very disapointing this year, the operations team can do better.

I'm new to this so don't bash me. I'm an employee at KI. But at our park we wish we had even 3 bar checkers. Most of our rides are only staffed to only have 2 at a time. For example Vortex, there is three trains with 7 cars per train, and only 2 bar checkers.

What is the staffing mininum on some of the rides up there. We wish everyday that we had a well staffed park as CP.

It just depends on the ride and what the staffing levels are. I can attest that CP management tries their hardest to make sure that every ride is staffed at the appropriate levels. Millennium Force is designed to have 4 "bar checkers" from a safety standpoint. Each respective side meets in the middle so that their is no confusion as to whether or not a seat was not checked. If someone is taking more time with one guest, the other person can continue checking seats and meet further up (or back on the train) so that the other person doesn't have to finish with the first guest and then have to check a whole half of the train. One thing I have found that helps to speed the process up is if the orange strap is showing so the ride host can check everything and keep moving.

Gomez-

Until you actually spend a summer working as a "bar checker" on MF, you're not in any position to be making comments about the crew being able to do a better job.

I worked the ride all summer and I can tell you that the crew did as good of a job as was possible given the circumstance and all of the factors involved (many of which you, as a member of the general public, don't even know about).

I'm sure everyone can agree on this board that the dispatch times were much slower than previous years. I not saying the crew did a bad job, because I have to give them a lot of credit for not going crazy over the difficult circumstances. But something has to be done, maybe the seats can be changed or the extra two bar checker. There has to be a way to speed up the loading process.

Thanks to, Lusty Lil and the rest of the crew, for the great season.

Before the crazy slack rule, 4 ops on the platform was plenty to have the train cleared and ready to go before the catch car even returned back to the station. The summer of ’00 and ’01 we would consistently have our thumbs in the air and have to wait for the dispatch light to catch up to us.

Opening year for MF had 2 entrance people, 1 portables entrance person, 1 exit person, 4 unload attendants, 4 load, 2 crowd, and one control person. The number of ride hosts on hand went up even higher for the Ticket to Ride fiasco.

I’ve seen the staffing levels at MF get cut little by little, some of which make sense (there is no good reason to have 4 unload attendants). And some that just outright anger me, like cutting the freeway merge position.

Another op on each side of the platform, as Gomez suggests, would help to make up for the time that is lost due to the stricter seatbelt rules. Unfortunately I don’t think that will ever happen. Park Operations has a regular history of cutting positions rather than adding them.

*** Edited 12/3/2004 2:29:51 PM UTC by Rihard 2000***