Ride wait time boards

Anyone else think there should be wait time boards throughout the park? This would help out if you want to strategically plan out what you want to go on. I know the idea of an app has been thrown around on here and there was an unofficial one that was unreliable. If there were boards throughout the park it could save you from walking all the way to the back of the park and what you want to go on is a 3 hour wait.

One major flaw: crowds will notice the short wait times on popular rides such as Millennium or Maverick and move there instead, creating long lines again. And for the rides that have almost no wait most days will get busier.

For me, part of the fun is walking around and stumbling upon a 5 minute Magnum or Raptor wait before others realize.

If you mean something like the boards at the airport with the arrivals and departures and the times were actually accurate it would be useful to some people I guess. I'm sure the invstment they would have to put into it wouldn't pay for itself though since all it would be is a convenience to people who want to walk less. Unless they made it a kiosk type thing and charged for each time you accessed one I don't see it happening and I know it's something I would likely not pay for.

I think wait time boards would be a big help with crowd distribution. They would probably even decreas the overall average time in line for the general public. Unfortunatly wait times for those of us in the know would increase and we would lose some of our advantage over the general public.

It's be a great investment. It's been discussed a lot in the past. Seems like technology is the limiting factor - or the parks tendency to embrace it. Maybe we'll see them soon though with new leadership.

I hope not. Everyone would notice that raptor and gk have no line in the evening.

I think a few boards wouldn't cost that much money. I think a board at the front entrance, one near the Gatekeeper and Wicked Twister midway, one on the Power Tower and TTD Midway, one on Gemini midway, and one on Frontiertown near Town Hall. It would really only need the wait times of the major coasters. I couldn't see the cost exceeding $500,000. It would just need electric for the LED lights, and it could even be updated wirelessly so they wouldn't need to run a wire to each of them.

Wait time boards, especially wireless ones, would hopefully be part of a bigger upgrade. Maybe wireless, digital signs at all the major rides, a quality wait time app and wireless throughout the park. It might be expensive but could go a long way towards guest satisfaction.

For them to have any value for visitors, CP would need a way to get accurate and timely wait times. Right now they really don't have that, do they?

I would love these... They are fantastic at parks like Universal Orlando.

Like the parks that do these, usually somebody at the entrance of the line will give a guest a card... Once they get on the ride, they hand it to the ride host. Usually they have a time on them so they know how long the line is. They can call ride operations, report the length of line, and boards get updated throughout the park.

If that is too complex, they can easily just report the time they would put on the time wait boards out in front of the ride... If they put 1.5hrs on that, put that same time on the digital ones.

The ride hosts could update them since they are the ones that change the signs by the queue entrance.

Invertalon said:
Like the parks that do these, usually somebody at the entrance of the line will give a guest a card... Once they get on the ride, they hand it to the ride host. Usually they have a time on them so they know how long the line is. They can call ride operations, report the length of line, and boards get updated throughout the park.

Or the op at entrance scans the card/fob/whatever into the system, and then the op at the station scans it again to get the end time. Waitboards update automatically. No need to call park-ops or anything.

instead of waitimes it should show wait rides a closed and the reason why there close instead of wasting time walking from the raptor to the maverick and find out the mavericks closed

^ Yes, it would be helpful to know which rides are closed ahead of time. But don't count the long walk as total loss! There are plenty of other things to do around Maverick

If a ride is closed, it could just say closed instead of the wait time.

I don't think CP wants these --- there was a pretty popular iPhone app that people could submit ride times at Cedar Point and it was really catching on...and it was removed from the App Store, most likely due to complaint from Cedar Fair.

This isn't going to happen.

When I went to the GOCC holiday party just this last year this question was brought up. According to Bryan Edwards, it isn't that they don't want to do it or that is a stupid idea. The thing that prevents them doing this is infrastructure and capabilities. A lot of areas of the park are behind on whats underground.

For example with Gatekeeper and the front gate remodel, it gives a chance to do other things while they have everything dug up. So will the park do this in the future, maybe. For now it will have to wait. Its a great idea in theory and who knows if it will be for better or worse when implemented.

My sister and I were just talking about this! They definitely need one.

They could pretty much do this all with no wires. The wait times could be radio controlled, and for the electric, the signs could be solar powered with a battery backup.

Thabto said:
The ride hosts could update them since they are the ones that change the signs by the queue entrance.

Well this even ing the sign said an hour and a half wait for Top Thrill even though it was more like 15 minutes. UnfortunatlyI had to grab my kids and leave to take care of a problem at home so they didn't get to take advantage of it. The employee sitting next to the sign admitted they didn't have any clue how long the wait was so the boards may not be that big of a help. If they don't have the right estimate at the ride itself putting it on a board somewhere else in the park won't matter.