Steel Vengeance

Rhode Island CP Fan said:
I remember begging my parents to go and waiting for the website to load on good old dialup when TTD came out.

Gawd, I'm old. When I was a young'un, we didn't have dial up. Or computers. Or, worse yet, no Food Network on cable.

We learned what was new at the park when the commercials started airing on local tv stations, or by writing letters, on a typewriter, and mailing them to the park requesting information.

I don't think empty seats has much if anything to do with Fastlane (since on many rides, Fastlane people merge well before the station anyway), but more to do with IROC procedures of not allowing the load side hosts to walk back and forth along side the train to pair up riders while the next train is coming in. It used to be a big thing for us to do this at Magnum to fill every seat in addition to hitting every interval, but I haven't seen anyone doing it at any ride in at least a few years now and I'm pretty sure it's actually not allowed because they have to stand on dots or mats or behind pillars or even holding a button. :(

Filling one seat is about 3% of your capacity if your train has 32-36 people, but if it costs you three seconds delay to do it on a ride with an 80 second interval, you've given back 3.75% so it isn't worth it. It's only effective if you can fill the seats AND hit interval. If you miss interval by 10 seconds every time (which seems pretty typical these days on many rides), you're at about 12.5% less capacity than if you hit it every time.

Frankly, I don't believe ensuring all seats are full and pairing single riders should be the responsibility of the operators checking seats. This should be handled by the "crowd control" position and I don't think the park as a whole does this effectively or staff this properly.

This is something Disney mastered decades ago. I personally believe the best approach is to just go down the station and assign rows one right after the other. For those that want to choose where they sit, say OK and let them pick their row of choice but they just might have to wait one more train. Being assigned a row, especially if it's consistent among all the major rides, it something that would not be a big deal for MOST guests. It's the best of both worlds, ensuring trains are filled and those who want to select a row still get the opportunity. This seems to be the approach at Disney and they've always accommodated our seat requests in the past and the seats are still getting filled. But again this would require a different approach to CP's current "crowd" position and in many cases require additional staff which unfortunately getting enough staffing in general seems to be a weakness.

I can see Steal Vengeance having some difficulty filling seats properly due to the existing station size/layout. Assuming for the moment they are not increasing the size of the load side of the platform, Mean Streak's loading platform is not large and that makes it more difficult as a "crowd control" person or "grouper" to ensure the train is filled. Not to mention, at least with the current layout, Fast Lane enters the station directly at the front, separate from the normal standby line. This adds to the difficulty of filing trains when you are pulling riders from two sources instead of one. That's why I am always in favor of Fast Lane merging with the regular line prior to entering the station. From a queue theory standpoint, it's mathematically the most efficient. My hope is that this is rerouted for next year.

The problem with checking the lapbars is the way the trains are designed, once the lapbar is pulled down there's no way to check the seatbelts. On wicked cyclone the attendants walk from the back of the train to front and check the belts, then walk back to the back of the train as they check the lapbars. They do it pretty fast and even when the line is big the wait time is never more then about 40mins with a full que.

All I keep hearing in my head is "LAP BELTS FIRST"

Regarding single riders, some single riders are also equally to blame for this. I remember in my season some single riders throwing a tirade when they were paired up next to someone and then delayed the dispatch even further. I had so many times where a certain individual proclaimed that he wanted to ride alone and would shout it when sitting down in the train..absolutely crazy.

What needs to happen is this:

• Queues filled with pairs when possible, single riders potentially identified, if not no worries.
• If empty spots are there, try to fill if possible, but no worries
• If an empty seat is still there, just close it

Safety is first, efficiency is second. Plus, sometimes delaying to fill one seat delays the ride further. Looking and calling for a single rider may cause more time and even cause a stack where sending an empty train on interval yes may miss 1-2 people on the train, but will help in the long run by getting the ride running on interval constantly. That's really the main thing to knock out any line is ride consistency. For instance if a crew is busting through and clearing trains on perfect interval, a few seats won't hinder it. But if a crew has to wait for loose articles, argue about phones, or fix restraints / etc and a train stacks, you're losing potential seats over the course of that hour / day.

you think there will be a tv in the station that shows what seats are locked/unlocked like on Valravn or is that just a Valravn type thing

Hopefully no. That info should be in controls to manage dispatch times / see if the ride is ready to clear. I hate that normal people see it because they all stare at the TV, not pay attention to movement on the platform or listen to instructions. If the crew needs to know dispatch times, a simple "ready" or "ready ready" work just fine.

Europa Park manages to have a perfect safety record while being more efficient than CP at many times. And capacity has regressed thanks to bubble wrapped procedures and overly conplicated restraints on rides not designed for them (Blue Streak.)

And before somebody says something about litigious Americans, Germany and Sweden are the two most litigious nations in the world. (Albeit I'm not sure how many of these are frivolous like the infamous ones in the USA.)

https://www.clements.com/resources/articles/The-Most-Litigious-Coun...-the-World

I don't think FL has anything to do with empty seats. It's mostly people not paying attention and looking at their iPhones. There are countless times I've heard ops ask to fill a seat and when they find someone, people don't move in time for the gates to close. It's more of a hindrance to capacity than anything.

I mean I don't really understand why it has it. The info on it is nothing that the GP should be concerned with as was stated a few posts up

GigaG said:

Europa Park manages to have a perfect safety record while being more efficient than CP at many times. And capacity has regressed thanks to bubble wrapped procedures and overly conplicated restraints on rides not designed for them (Blue Streak.)

I don't think the rides with safety harnesses / gates / etc. is a result of litigation or other suits brought against the amusement industry, I would actually believe a bit of it comes from stupid people. I have literally witnessed people sitting on an OSTR for Corkscrew before with no issues or worry..it's that bad. I also wonder how some guidelines (ASTM) is written, as most industries comply with these to a "T." So some overbearing guidelines here may cause some issues you see. However, that would be something I have a hunch on, but not necessarily verifiable. Calling Dave ;)

^I've actually talked to Dave at length about the standards. It still confuses me. That man is a walking amusement park encyclopediaZ

People in general aren't helping the situation. Its amazing how oblivious people can be. What gets me is the situation with the "lap belts first then pull down the bar". You are in line and hear them say this OVER and OVER and OVER again. By the time its a persons turn to strap in you would think it goes with out saying, but there are always those people not paying attention

Saloon Junkie said:

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 interesting how so many people badmouthed this coaster. It's old. Tear it down. Everyone hates it. It jerks you around too much. Obviously it's not a worthless old coaster or CP wouldn't be investing the money in it!

Actually, that's exactly why they put money into it.

I agree people don't pay attention. But is there some responsibility for the confusion that some rides have opposing procedures? Push this lap bar, don't touch the lap bar....seat belts first, lap bar second... ride host will push your lap bar.

If there was a way for solid consistency it would help.... but people are busy having a good time with their friends to pay attention to the myriad of different rules per rides.

I think you are giving people too much credit lol especially the older crowd. Young crowd I will give a pass lol

I've been out for a couple of days and I haven't had the chance to read this whole thread from the past couple of days. What I have noticed is a lot of people on her questioning the capacity.

I look at it this way: According to the rendering POV, the train doesn't clear the lift block until about 45-50 seconds from dispatch. The train also doesn't clear the block brake block until about 1:24 from initial dispatch. Now, assuming there will be 4 ride hosts checking seats (each ride host checking only 6 seats each rather than the typical 8+ on almost every other coaster), I think we will see these trains running quite efficiently

CPGuru said:

Just last Saturday (the 12th), Dragster was down most of the day, but when it opened in the evening they were asking for single riders. The crew was on point (no pun intended) and I have never seen Dragster's line move so fast. The sign said 1.5 hr wait but I swear we got to the station in 45 min.

I have never seen any other coaster at Cedar Point call out for single riders other than TTD. I am almost always a single rider and the only time I am looking around is on TTD since I know I can jump way ahead. Am I missing something? If so what other coasters? Certainly not Maverick as I see empty seats all the time.

What cracks me up are the empty seats I see on Raptor and Valravn in the front row on the end. Best seats in the house and someone didn't think to sit there.
They must want to hold hands or something.