Steel Vengeance dispatches... Wow!

When Magnum got to 3 trains on the final two days of our trip last month they were flying! It was awesome. Did 3 rides back to back to back both days. Old school.

The dispatches on mine ride were quick.. super Himalaya (or music express as it was called at geauga lake) the poor ride op was going at it solo. That one needed at least 2 to keep it going smooth.

MDOmnis said:

If you let 26 people in instead of 24 or 34 instead of 32, it's not the end of the world. ... just keep people moving through until there are 4 or 6 people in each row and pause for a minute until some people board.

So much this.

My friend won a VIP package several weeks ago, so he and his son and I used the FLP for Steel Vengeance. Since we only had to wait about 20 minutes, we decided to wait for the front since that's a rare treat. The station attendant said we could, but pointed out we'd have to wait for 4 trains since there were already people in the front row queue. We said that's fine, but then she asked us to step aside, behind the trash can just outside the station. Seemed odd since there was still plenty of room in that front queue.

Meanwhile she's trying meticulously to fill each queue with exactly 2 people, calling out down the stairs for smaller groups to come forward, to the point that some rows went out empty as people made their way up.

Train after train dispatched, and still she wouldn't let us in, even after we asked. Some other folks asked if they could wait for the front, and she said no, these guys are already waiting. Uh, OK. One group said well fine, we'll wait out here too, let other people go ahead of us. She said no you can't do that, I'll get in trouble with my supervisor, etc., but they refused to budge.

By this time, there was NO ONE left in the front queue, and she finally let us in... and since there were 3 of us, she assigned one of us to row 2. Having witnessed ridiculousness already, we just went with it. None of what happened made any sense. Why have a front row queue if you aren't going to use it? And why was it being used right up until the moment WE asked about waiting for the front? It was all very confusing.

But, SV is still #1. Once you get to ride it.

So I've heard from a few different ride ops that Cedar Fair is going to require visual checks only for seat belts pretty soon here. No hand of either the guest or associate will check it. Just look at it and make sure it is locked. If this ends up happening, I think we're about to see capacity that we've never seen in a while! Anyone else hear anything similar, or notice this on their last visit to the park? I'm shocked IROC would even consider allowing such blasphemy.

I was at KI on Wednesday and on several coasters and other rides the op had the passengers tug on their own seatbelt and also used phrases like “shake your bar up and down for me please” and that was enough.

Been working just fine at Disney for years. It's something more parks should start doing.

I mean that's the way it used to be until I believe 2004. Attendants checked lapbars only. Seatbelt was just visual. Then halfway through the season they decided to require a physical seatbelt tug too.

Disney just instructs you to check your own restraint as the train is rolling out! If they do it like Disney does, it will be great. If they do it like Gemini crew has been doing this year, it will make things worse than ever.

Of course, dispatching more trains doesn't do that much if they're still half empty, so they need to make adjustments to their turnstiles/crowd training too.

It'd make my year if I heard the sh!^canned IROC! It would be a good first step to all that efficiency and streamlining BS they talked about on their conference call. It's like CF finally realized they needed to do better with foods so they started hiring chefs, built better prep areas and serving lines. But with rides, they went backward. Hoping this might signal the end of that.

I could live with the way IROC slowed down dispatches, because it was still better than some other parks (Kennywood, Hershey, many Six Flags) on a good day for them. But the station management this year is so nonsensical, and with lines longer than ever (never have I seen the queue for Gemini or Blue Streak full so many times not on a Saturday than this year) and trains going out with 4-5 empty rows after sitting in the station for a 4-5 minute dispatch is *never* something I thought I'd see at CP.

MDOmnis said:

I mean that's the way it used to be until I believe 2004. Attendants checked lapbars only. Seatbelt was just visual. Then halfway through the season they decided to require a physical seatbelt tug too.

Would that coincide with the S:RoS accident at SFNE?

Major league headache, running the Giant Wheel with just two people. It has been done, but you go from four to six cycles and hour down to two or three.

The Giant Wheel hasn't been able to be run by 2 people in several years. There are acknowledge buttons at both the entrance and exit.

Which is something that should have been done a long time ago. The "thumbs up" system was problematic on that ride at best