Reride with No Line Policy

Last year in the Begining of August we went to Cedar Point for a Family Vacation on a Tuesday when there were barely any people.We rode Thunder Canyon once and asked if we could stay on the ride instead of getting walking off and getting back on and nobody was in line for it.They said we had to get off and get back on if we wanted to ride it again. Why wouldnt they let us stay on? I didnt find a past post about this so I made this one so someone could answer my question.

Because that is the policy. No re-rides. Wasn't anything personal towards you and seems silly, but rules are rules I guess.

Cedar Fair needs to implement a common sense re-ride policy chain wide: if there is no one waiting for your seat, you can re-ride.

This is the accepted approach at King's Island on dead days, and I've never seen any conflict with it.

I doubt that the employees at KI are supposed to be doing rerides. This is something that the team leader or area manager is allowing and managers higher up the chain are unaware that rerides are occuring. How can Cedar Fair track ridership if the guests are not going back through the turnstiles.

I don't understand the rule, but its the policy. I think the main reason though is to track ridership as said above. At least that is what I was told when I worked there.

Mikeybo2004 said:
How can Cedar Fair track ridership if the guests are not going back through the turnstiles.

Good point, but then why are re-rides acceptable close to closing time? Last time I was there we were able to ride Maverick five times in a row without getting off just before 10:00.

Turnstiles seem ancient at this point. Why bother counting? How does knowing how many people rode a ride per hour help them in any way? Just count the train dispatches if you need some sort of 'metric'.

The reason they let people do it at King's Island is because they do not use turnstiles. Every ride's leader has a "pitch counter." Its something used in baseball for pitchers and keeps track of things up to the number 9999. The ride attendent just clicks it for every person in the train and then reports when it is at 9999 mark. Supposedly Diamondback has computers that count, but I'm not sure on that one.

Cedar Point still uses the turnstiles for every single ride. If rerides were allowed then the number of people who rode would be off.

There are still ways to get rerides. Most ride ops don't remember you from the last time they dispatched you. If you get up and act like you just sat down then there is no problem. You just have to be smarter than the ride op. :)

Last year we rode Maggie 8 times in a row, without getting off. This was during Gay-Day 2010 (Nobody was in the park during this time)

Friday, my brother rode Snake River Falls twice in a row and we were offered a reride on Mean Streak (which no one accepted).

Last time I was at Cedar Point 2 years ago with a Season Pass, I rode Raptor 3 times without having to go back and wait in line again, but this was during the 1 hour early entry with my platinum pass and it was in the fall. Some of the ride ops were even trying to get people to get on this ride in the early morning hours just so they could fill the seats. Needless to say I got 2 rides in the very front and one in the center.. awesome :)

Yeah, it depends on the circumstances. During special event ERT they don't always make you get off if there is no one waiting. In ladyjerrico's case, they wanted to keep the train full to prevent a possible rollback. I've seen them do the same with MF on cold mornings of ERT.

They do rerides at CP as people mentioned, the ride host manually counts the number of people riding again and adds that number to the daily count of riders.

I go all the time as a single rider and they never let me reride, they always make me go around but last year at canadas wonderland I was reriding everything except behemoth which was cool

Mikeybo2004 said:
How can Cedar Fair track ridership if the guests are not going back through the turnstiles.

There are plenty of other methods for keeping track of riders.

Even the re-rides during ERT events seem to be getting fewer and fewer. Raptor wasn't allowing it at Coaster Mania this year, and it wasn't the only one, just the only one I remember.

On the other hand, I was at Holiday World on Saturday and rode Voyage non-stop for the last half hour without getting out of my seat. Although the next day my body really wished that seat would have not been in the very back of the train.

Your mom is to fat to ride TTD. said:
The reason they let people do it at King's Island is because they do not use turnstiles. Every ride's leader has a "pitch counter." Its something used in baseball for pitchers and keeps track of things up to the number 9999. The ride attendent just clicks it for every person in the train and then reports when it is at 9999 mark. Supposedly Diamondback has computers that count, but I'm not sure on that one.

Cedar Point still uses the turnstiles for every single ride. If rerides were allowed then the number of people who rode would be off.

If this is true though, then why doesn't every single Cedar Fair park use the pitch counters, which would enable re-rides? It's silly how this chain has different procedures for just about everything at each individual park. There is no way to compare different park results in the chain when the methods for collecting the data have different error rates, etc.

Here's another example of the problems with not having a universal procedure. Cedar Point cuts lines at least 5 minutes after close (Do they still do that this year? If so, I really agree with the concept). I assumed the procedure would be the same at King's Island, but I was coldly told the line was closed for the Beast at 10:00. I looked at my phone, and it was 10:01. Sure, it was technically correct according to what was advertised, but come on! It really killed my mood, and I drove home thinking about every little thing in the day that took a fraction of a minute that would have changed the outcome of never getting to ride Beast that trip.

I don't know for sure, but it's possible that they just didn't want to have to take out the turnstiles at Cedar Point...or add them at all the other parks that don't have them. I have no idea about the error rates, but maybe they are actually pretty close using either method?

There is good reason behind the parks counting actual rides and not just cycles or nothing at all. Counting actual rides provides a better metric as to how popular the attraction is. Cycles are not a good indication of this as there may be 2 people on a cycle, or there might be 36. Counting actual riders adds a little more insight at this level.

Your mom is to fat to ride TTD. said:
The reason they let people do it at King's Island is because they do not use turnstiles. Every ride's leader has a "pitch counter." Its something used in baseball for pitchers and keeps track of things up to the number 9999. The ride attendent just clicks it for every person in the train and then reports when it is at 9999 mark. Supposedly Diamondback has computers that count, but I'm not sure on that one.

Yes and no. The vast majority of rides at Kings Island were adapted (pre-Cedar Fair) to count ride cycles/dispatches. This includes Diamondback, but also other attractions like Vortex, Beast and WindSeeker. The ride attendant then accounts for the empty seats, which are then subtracted from the theoretical capacity (calculated by dispatches times seats), to attain a ridership count.

While this method might be slightly more accurate than the turnstyle method (which could be wrong based on someone playing with the turnstyle, slipping through without turning the turnstyle, or being boarded at the exit), it adds an extra level of complexity with the calculations and leaves something else for the ride operator to do while they should be focusing on the safe operation of the ride.

At Cedar Point, riders boarded at the exit are counted via a non-turnstyle counter, similar to the one described above. These are then added to the daily (not hourly) totals of the ride. Rerides, on the chance they do occur at Cedar Point, are accounted for in this manner.

It is generally understood that Cedar Point does not allow rerides because of the possibility of other rides coming up in the line who might not be able to be immediately boarded due to someone re-riding. It is also easier to enforce a strict policy of no rerides, than a loose policy as to when riders can and can't reride. It is my understanding that this is a company-wide policy, but like many other policies, it has been overlooked or not enforced at the former Paramount Parks where it was allowed, or handled differently, and at parks that aren't as close to the "mother ship."

Ffej, in regard to your above post about cutting the line at 10:00 vs. 10:08. Cedar Point keeps their lines open until 8 minutes after the closing hour as a courtesy to guests. While I'm not sure if this is a company or park policy, I will say that I have visited most every other park in the chain (both original Cedar Fair and former Paramount Park), and never seen the line held open like at Cedar Point at any of them. It may not seem like much, but those extra few minutes do cost money, and may create complications (especially with minor labor laws, at parks that employ minors on rides). Furthermore, the vast majority of Cedar Point ride associates live either in Cedar Point Housing, or very near the park, meaning they don't have to drive far after the park closes. Again, it may seem like only a few minutes, but people add up to additional cycles which does make a difference. I think that if you were to see this enforced unanimously across all the Cedar Fair parks, you would be more likely to see it go away at Cedar Point, than added to the others. Just consider it an unwritten perk.

Edit: Fixed Punctuation.

I don't mind if they stop the line at closing time. A few extra minutes before closing the line like they do at Cedar Point is an unexpected bonus. What I find unacceptable is when they cut off the line Before closing time. So if there's a 30 minute wait, they'll stop people from getting in line 30 minutes before close. I got caught by that one time at Michigan's Adventure. I don't remember anything else that day, but I do remember that my last experience in the park was being pissed because I couldn't ride my favorite coaster in the park. That's not cool from anyone's perspective and I have to wonder if that is policy or the ride ops trying to get out early.

The no re-rides policy does seem silly. Especially if the route to get back on is a long one and they are sending the ride out empty while they wait for riders to go around the horn. Although I don't know if Cedar Point ever gets that slow - this discussion would actully make more sense over at CoasterBuzz.

I wonder if the CP policy for line closing got changed at some point in the last 10 years? I seem to recall marathoning Magnum when I used to stay at Sandcastle or Breakers from around 9:30 till 10:00. I was pretty sure that they closed the line promptly at 10, but I could be off. This would have been around 2002-2004 time frame.