Steel Vengeance dispatches... Wow!

What we just experienced in our SV wait had to be seen to be believed. Standby quoted at 120, fastlane 60. Well that ended up being correct, 58 minutes fastlane. During this time, I counted 12 trains sent, including ours and the one just before, with at least 6 empty rows when dispatched. During our wait in the final fastlane switchback, a train was sent with ONLY row 12 in use. 22 empty seats. Before that, the prior train dispatched with only rows 1,2 and 12 in use. 3 others were sent with 12 riders each.

This current process, in use on 7/20/21 anyway, is an abomination. I can't believe it, honestly I cannot.

The in line lockers, as they are presently handling them, is a catastrophe. Sending row after row of empty seats while both the standby and fastlane lines swell to beyond the entrance, is totally and completely unacceptable. There HAS to be a better way.

Can confirm. Even have a fun pix of an mostly empty train I can post later.

Overall, I have found the lockers to work well. I have yet to see the lockers be the capacity bottleneck...

... When the lockers are working. I was there a few weeks ago, when the lockers weren't working. They had to go to plan B, where the staff manually checked the loose items into plastic bags. That was a significant capacity bottleneck. Again, overall, I like the lockers, but they need to figure out a better plan "B".

Something must be drastically different than when we were there just a few weeks ago, unless this is a just a fluke of today. Both Fastlane and Standby lanes were moving at a great clip, and I don't recall seeing any empty seats; at least not to the degree of which you speak.

And no, I certainly don't doubt this happened, but a few weeks ago this was not the case.

So I haven't been to CP since 2019...but I'm having a hard time understanding how those in line lockers are causing them to dispatch trains with so many empty seats. How does the locker situation affect this? I genuinely don't understand, but to be honest, haven't put much thought into it.

They need to stop waiting for a train to dispatch before they fill the row. If there is some kind of holdup, the next train is in the station before they assign people to rows. I am not advocating just letting the station fill up but try to keep 4 people in each row. I have seen similar issues with Raptor because it can dispatch very quickly.

Kevin, not sure if they have changed the way they move people through the line, but I did experience two different ways. When I was there in June, everyone merged at the tunnel and if they needed the lockers, would use them and then get back in line and use either the left or right staircase. On July 9th, they were allowing 20 Fastlane and 20 standby guests through the tunnel and using the right staircase only. The employees letting people into the tunnel waited for anybody using the lockers to be done before allowing anymore guests to go through. From what I witnessed the second method worked out much better for Fastlane users. Not sure what others have experience, but I have only seen from time to time a row of no riders or a couple singe riders. Nothing of nearly empty trains.

I'm pretty sure I experienced the first option of what you described, but in either case there is no excuse to run trains that are missing such a significant amount of riders on a regular basis.

There is no shortage of riders waiting in line.

The process today, 7/20/21, that caused all these very light trains, was:

Guests were let in from the new fastlane/standby merge point at the start of the tunnel, about 100 or so at a time. They were then stopped at the locker cut off and, if you needed one, a ride host would take your stuff to a locker for you. They had 4 hosts doing this as we passed. They were holding the line until that person or group got their locker info back from the host, without letting guests who did not need a locker go past. As a result, the amount of guests past the metal detector was often very small, and this led to the empty seats we observed. When our group was let through at the start of the tunnel, my wife and I were the 5th and 6th guest for this group, a group of 4 in front of us. All 6 of us did not need a locker, so when we reached the locker area, we all passed to the metal detector and up the stairs. The group behind us needed the lockers, so the line paused there completely, and we loaded onto the train and dispatched with rows 7-11 empty, we rode in row 12. Row 3 was also empty for our train. By the time we were having our lapbars checked, more guests were reaching the station for the next train.

I don't have words for how dumb that sounds.

Not you, James, but the procedure you just described.

Were the lockers “down” again? Otherwise, I don’t understand why employees would be taking guests’ items to lockers.

Not sure about the lockers condition today. We'll be here through Friday, so I'll see how the next 3 days go. The ride host at the merge point at the start of the tunnel explained what was the holdup/reason for all the empty trains we were seeing. It wasn't even me that asked him, it was the group of 4 just ahead of us at that point.

In a year where staffing is of the utmost challenge, relying on staff to put guests' things into lockers for them is... troubling. Hopefully there's a temporary reason for this, and this isn't a policy for the remainder of the season.

Gemini is another ride that has been filling at least the first half of the queue but sending 6+ empty rows a cycle between the two trains. The reason here is the groupers are so slow between walking to the Fastlane side of the station, admitting the FL guests, and then admitting so few standby guests per cycle that multiple rows go empty while the regular line can get to 30-45 minutes.

Keep in mind this is with dispatch times reaching 5 minutes. The main issue seems to be they leave the station completely empty until the trains dispatch. Blue Streak has been doing this as well.

Are fewer people in the station a Covid carryover? I understand that a completely jam packed station is not desired, even pre-Covid, but there should at least be two trains of people in the station to keep from sending empty rows.

Report from our rides late this morning, 7/21/21...

The process today, from 1030am till noon, was TOTALLY different. We managed 3 rides with FLP during this time. Groups were being admitted past the merge point at the start of the tunnel about every 4-5 dispatches. When you approached the locker cutoff they were allowing guests to go to the lockers themselves, and those who didn't need one were passing by and through the metal detector. They kept a steady line about halfway down the line between the stairs and metal detectors, so we observed no issues with large scale empty rows during this 90 minute session.

Hopefully, this means that what we saw yesterday was due to the lockers being either down or malfunctioning. If was the reason, I hope I never happen to be here again when they do. Our experience today was worlds better. Vengeance crew was flying, most dispatches were occurring while the 3rd train was in the middle of the third lap.

Meanwhile I'm still waiting for the Gemini and Blue Streak trains I boarded yesterday to clear for dispatch

Just got home from CP. Rode Steel Vengeance 6 times. Never saw a completely empty row. I didn't watch every train but I kept on eye on them. I saw couple of times where there was more then a group of two at the front of the line and they had just 1 row open, they yelled out looking for just 2 and were successful. So they were working to fill the trains. I am a single rider and sometimes they put me with someone and other times not. Think it depends on who is at the entrance to the station.

Cartwright said:

Gemini is another ride that has been filling at least the first half of the queue but sending 6+ empty rows a cycle between the two trains. The reason here is the groupers are so slow between walking to the Fastlane side of the station, admitting the FL guests, and then admitting so few standby guests per cycle that multiple rows go empty while the regular line can get to 30-45 minutes.

Keep in mind this is with dispatch times reaching 5 minutes. The main issue seems to be they leave the station completely empty until the trains dispatch. Blue Streak has been doing this as well.

We saw this today on Gemini. Felt bad for that ride host in the chute at the station, he was running from the FL entrance back to standby, and he could never hit enough to totally fill both trains. We rode it twice and had rows empty around us each time. During this time, standby for the ride had both queue sets filled.

I can't remember the last time (outside of Halloweekends Saturdays) Gemini was filling the queue. Let alone on a weekday.

5 minute dispatches combined with station management so poor that you wind up with multiple empty rows on each train is absolutely inexcusable.