September 3rd- Unbelieveably Crowded and a TTD Nightmare

Yea Gomez I love going to CP when its raining. One day that I was there nothing was open till noon because of lightning, and then there was no lines for anything. Millenium had a 10 minute wait! But TTD was shut down the whole day. Still was a great trip, I got 11 rides on MF.

I've been disappointed not to get any real "rain days" this year.

MFJedi2 said:
Dont waste your ink sending a letter,i was verbally assaulted by a ride op on MF the year before last and the supervisor there did nothing, a letter to kinzel got a cut and paste letter about the beginning of the season,people are new,blah blah. ...CP could care less about people having problems there. ...a couple hundred unhappy is no biggie to them.

Let me answer that in one word.

WRONG!

I have personally gotten an employee fired for verbally assaulting a guest. On the other hand, I've seen multiple employees get thanked for doing their job even under the fire of idiot guests.

One thing is for sure, 9 out of 10 time it's very easy to see who did wrong and who didn't just by hearing both sides of the story. The other case is typically that both sides are lying to the point that the truth won't come out.

Sending a letter to Dick Kinzel is a stupid idea. He has a company to run, he can't be there for every complaint at each park. The best option would have been to write a complaint in Park Operations that clearly states the events of that incident including what was said without going on a pissy fit about what happened. Believe me, management throughly reads every complaint. If the complaint has basis then they will investigate and take appropriate action.

A couple hundred angry people means much more when they go home and tell all of their friends and family what happened. Each complaint is taken into account even though many are thrown out. This isn't because they don't care, but that the complaint lacks basis, clarity on the incident, or the issue simply cannot be solved.

Management fully understands the fact that one complaint in their hands probably means many more guests have been upset by that employee. They also understand that if they fire too many employees then they will have to replace them. This usually means that they will get somewhat less able employees in return. As of late it has been a catch 22 and they opt for the less painful option.

Just because people are boarding TTD in the unload area doesn't mean they're with the VIP program. Top Thrill 182 said he saw the ride ops filling out paper work for these groups. If that was the case, they probably weren't VIP riders. I'm fairly sure VIP riders don't have paper work (they'd also have a CP escort with them) but parent swap and special access (handicapped) have forms that get signed. So these people probably really were waiting for 3 hours, they just weren't waiting in the regular line. And if those people want to ride front seat, they do tack on extra time to their wait for that. As crowded as it was Sunday, I wouldn't be surprised if you did see a couple of VIP groups, but I'd be willing to bet most of them were not.

Also, I believe the policy is to keep most "major" ride lines open about 10 minutes past close. I think the primary reason is so they can avoid the "well, my watch says it's 9:59" fiasco that would without a doubt occur.

Jump to Conclusions- exactly true! One complaint from a guest means that many more guests could be thinking the same thing. Also, people will tell their friends about bad experiences and those friends will remember that. I think you are exactly right. I've actually been extremely impressed with CP in terms of handling complaint issues. Once I wrote to them saying it was disappointing that Mean Streak did not have its Mean Streak photo holder for the on-ride photo. Minor issue I know, but CP went out of their way to make it right and sent me a photo holder in the mail. Customer Service going out of their way to make things right will keep that guest happy with the company. Customer Service doing nothing will lose that guest, and probably many more.

While I do think CP has great customer service, I think the resorts need some work. I've had two horrible experiences with CP resorts this year, and the people there have done nothing about it. I can promise you I won't be visiting Castaway Bay again.

Its interesting that the major ride lines are open 10 minutes past close. I never knew that. It probably does help the "my watch says 9:59" problem. I think thats a nice policy.

I don't know who the people waiting at the exit were on TTD, but there were TONS. Probably 15 people at a time at least. I've never seen that many people waiting there before. Parent Swap is a good guess.

Top Thrill 182, sounds like I was in the queue just ahead of you. I was in the station and three trains away from my first ride of the day when the mechanical difficulties began. Probably passed you in line when I left the queue at around 6pm. Got back to the bleachers just in time to see the first test train launch. Never did get a ride.

One thing I noticed that day at TTD was the profuse amount of hydraulic fluid that was leaking at various locations along the launch. Not just subtle dripping either. You could smell it in the air, especially at the engine room at the base of the tower. You could see spray coming off the cable and pulleys as well. That can't be right!

The profuse amount of water is normal, if that didn't happen, then THAT's a bad sign. If you thought the amount of water coming out there was bad, the majority of the time, Kingda Ka looks like a water ride with water spraying in every direction with each launch. I think that yet again, the excess water though was due to them overworking the system in the morning, which caused around 5-6 hours total of downtime on sunday, as well as some downtime on monday from what I've heard.

5-6 hours? When I was in line it was only down for about an hour. I was really lucky to get on it if that was the case. I got there at three and went over to Dragster at maybe 3:30 and it looked like it was just opening up. I did see all of the water being used, but isn't that just to cool the track? It seemed a bit more than normal but not too bad. Perhaps overworking the system can explain the HORRIBLE dispatch times. Still it seemed to be just due to the slow load at exit though.

The Engineer, yes I'm sure I saw you. I remember seeing everyone come down from the station and exit the line. I was thinking about doing that too but then it opened. Still took a while to get on however.

You're one of the lucky ones, I got on it around 2:30 then ran off and did the rest of the park, but supposedly the ride was working again from around 4:00-6:00 at which point it broke down again and then didn't open again until around 10:10-10:15 or so and then closed a little after 11:00.

Wow. I didn't realize how lucky we were. It did appear to be closed for most of the evening, but then I saw it running at 10:30 and assumed I was mistaken. Guess they did just open it then though.