Ride Capacity Questions

We-o-we-oooo said:oversize racially insensitive banana

Made me LOL.

Jeff is right. The time consuming safety theater is a much bigger issue than people dropping their crap in a bin. I was at another park yesterday and on three different rides the ride operator tugged on my seat belt in such a way that doing so proved nothing worthwhile (tugging against the anchor instead of against the buckle). The belts are orange so they can be checked visually. What ever happened to "drop the bars and go"?

Which is basically what Disney does.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

They mostly don't have belts, but when they do, as is the case with lap bars, they ask you to tug on them. Ride ops don't hide behind things.

Those bins have murdered capacity at Magnum. The trains on that ride aren't easy to walk through and the unload side of the station gets congested with the group exiting or retrieving items still in the way of people trying to get to the bins to put something in. People come back to the train and find their lapbar fell down and is now locked. They also added that safety rail by the elevator now which makes things a bit tighter. Barring major renovations to the station (putting the booth above the track as was rumored to be originally planned - much like Gatekeeper) and adding a second set of bins and a second or wider exit ramp to get people out of there quicker, I'm not sure there is a good solution there if they insist on having the bins.

Raptor is equally bad in terms of crammed station design, but at least the train is shorter and easier to walk through.

CP moves people fairly well still overall compared to other regional parks, but it is a far cry from how it was 10 years ago and a far cry from Disney. I will say they did a pretty nice job with Gatekeeper having many sets of bins basically right next to you as you board the train so it's not out of the way at all to drop something in and retrieve it when you're done. Obviously, the design of the ride lends itself to that and most other rides aren't as accommodating like that.

I think free lockers would be a better solution, but they'd need banks of them near every major ride and that would cost some dough although they seem to be more willing to spend it the last few years than in the past. IOA used to do free lockers while you ride, but I thought I saw they were charging for them the last time I was there.

The trick is to have a smaller number of freebie lockers...but located in a way which is impossible on most rides: between the entrance and exit, very close to the platform. See the trouble is, a lot of times that crap people are carrying gets used while waiting in line, not while out on the midway. So the ideal customer-friendly solution would be a place where you can step aside immediately before entering the station (not the queue), maybe with double sided boxes so you can put your stuff in one side and get it out the other.

As for a Magnum station redesign...anybody else notice they re-did the doghouse this year?

One more thing. That Blue Streak video from 1991, where they load an empty train and dispatch it in 40 seconds...something worth noting about that is that in that time, 24 people are loaded into the train, 12 lap bars are closed, and all 12 seat belts are fastened. Loose objects are stowed, and every seat belt and every lap bar is checked. How much of the modern slowdown isn't because there are so many things to do now, but because there is no sense of urgency?

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

Of course I noticed the new doghouse at Magnum. :) No more rounded plexiglas window. Kind of sad. I liked knocking on that thing back in the day. :) The old booth was literally rotting away though - they had replaced the floor in there at least once. Booth replacement was probably overdue.

The entire control system has been redone too. Supposedly B&M (or probably Consign) did it. Haven't been back since opening weekend to see how it goes with three trains. It appears there is no manual release of the safety brakes necessary anymore. It also appears that the person at the back of the platform needs to hold the button to keep the train coming onto the station (similar to at Raptor). Thankfully, it doesn't appear like they overcomplicated things with a million extra proxies or anything like that. Not sure what changes (if any) were made with the control of the trims.

Also, I think you are onto something about lack of urgency. That is something that was very important back in the day. I'd say it's about a 50-50 mix of dumb safety procedures vs. lack of urgency. I do see some hustle on occasion, but it used to be the norm, not the exception like it seems to be now.

I can think of a couple of examples of RideMan's in-station freebie lockers. The big one is the Voyage, where riders hand over their loose items to the ride ops for storage in cubbyholes, which can even be locked. The other example is Flight of Fear at King's Island where riders stash their stuff in cubicles in an alcove just to the left of the loading platform, which leads to the exit corridor.

I haven't been to either park in a while, so procedures may have changed.