Ride wait times exagerated

I have noticed from my last few times at the point and on any busy time i have been in the past few times that the wait time is pretty exagerated. I guess its to try and keep lines shorter. If people think its to long they wont ride. When i was there on 10/7/06 the magnum line said 3/4 of a hour all day long even when the line was at the bottom of the stairs going up the the station. There have also been plenty of times when the line for millie said 2 hours but only took one. My main point is i guess you cant always trust the wait times.

Thanks for this insightful bit of information.

Besides, with the way they're staffed right now, my guess is they're just being honest.

Very seldom have I gotten on a ride at the Point where the wait time was greater than that advertised at the entrance (unless the ride broke down in the interim or weather came into play). I suspect this is intentional on the part of CP; if the sign says 45 minutes but you only wait 30, you're gonna be a lot happier than if it reads 45 but you wait 60.

I think a lot of times it's just forgotten about.

But let's be honest here. The average person doesn't really go to an amusement park expecting no waits for rides. If you wait less than what the sign says, just consider it a bonus.

I haven't paid attention to wait signs since I was a kid. They never seem to be accurate, and I just look at the line and know about how long it is.

Well, you can never estimate a ride wait length. There are so many factors coming into play, so they usually give a rough *over*estimation. People pay close attention to those ride wait signs, and they would not be happy if they had to wait for longer than advertised on the sign. However, it makes people feel good if they make it on the ride before they thought they would. That's pretty much it. Really just one of those subliminal ways of making people happy.

A lot of the entrance people will jack up the wait time at the end of the night to turn people away. The less people we had in line at the end of the night, the quicker we could get back to commons, especially on thursday and sunday nights.

This is standard practice in most areas of the service industry. Its always better to underpromise and overdeliver, than it is to do the opposite.

I've always just subtracted 15 from the ride time because thier always up...in my opinion.

"they're"

Ride prides at entrance they dont know the wait times

Nice work on the complete sentence. ;)

That is probably the biggest reason for the inaccuracy in the wait time signs. You've got people who are volunteering and being put at entrance. They don't know how to "read" the line and so don't update the sign or just guess.

If I was a ride pride I'd set the wait sign for Magnum to read 3 hours and then sneak on the ride a few times.

Michael Darling said:
If I was a ride pride I'd set the wait sign for Magnum to read 3 hours and then sneak on the ride a few times.

That may not work for a ride like magnum because people would just take a peek at the line through the trees.

But a ride like MS where they can't see the line... then you have a possibility

Thanks for pointing that out. I've never ridden Magnum before so I was just guessing.

When I was there on Saturday, the Wicked Twister line said 45 minutes. We waited an hour and a half. In the freezing cold.

^^ That's funny. My sarcasm detecto-meter is going off. Darn thing's probably acting up again. Better get it checked out.

We were instructed on how to set line times based on the number of queues filled. Generally as long as we were hitting interval they were right on, or slightly over-estimated.

However, interval was a rare word to hear on MF during the '04 season.

I just want everyone to understand something. The wait time meter only has certain times on it, 15, 30, 45, 1 hr, 1.5 hrs, and 2 hours. Sure at the end of the night we try to jack up the wait times a bit, but most of the time it dosent work at all. It will never be accurate, so we have to put it at a wait time that is closest to our estimate. Just ask the person at enterence what they think the wait time is, most will tell you that its around 15 minutes, but use your own judgement.

Nckinfn04 said:
When I was there on Saturday, the Wicked Twister line said 45 minutes. We waited an hour and a half. In the freezing cold.

Wow. An hour and a half? I've never heard of that for WT. Was the entire queue filled?

I've found CP's wait times to be dead on, but they will occasionally be little over stated. I don't think thats done on purpose though... I think it is better to have it over stated than under stated.