Thoughts on FUN TV?

I really don't care much for it. You can barely even hear anything coming out of it and a lot of the TV's are not even working as well. I wish we had lines that played music. Sure they play music but not non-stop and as I said you can barely hear it. I miss the DJ booths. I loved the 80's music while waiting in line for Raptor and Magnum.

They seem to have let it fall through the cracks this year. I also noticed that they are, in six flags fashion, advertising on the TV's now. I couldn't give 2 you know whats about that stupid mobile strike game that they've been advertising on my local TV channels for at least the past year, let alone seeing adds for it on the TV's at cedar point.

Also noticed that the music playlist when I was last there is roughly 3 hours long...heard the same songs many times throughout the day, and they were for the most part, not good. Plus I noticed that some of the extra stuff that they usually show, like sports recaps, weren't working. It'd go blank or black for a bit then jump to something else. I suppose if you consider the TV's 'theming' it makes sense that they have let them go already ;)

This system is incredibly complex. Maintaining it is a major labor involving multiple divisions... Most of the content is generated at KI and then sent to Dallas (as in Texas) from where it is streamed to each park and then via network to each rides' player and televisions. Each ride has a lot of componentry to handle the signal from the player to the screens. Replacement parts come via Dallas with a lead-time. So, the park works pretty hard to keep them up. And yes, the CF idea is that this is a revenue stream (as in advertising) that gives millions of impressions a day at some expense to the advertisers.

Sounds like they overcomplicated it.

They shouldn't have gone to Intamin for their queue TV's.

Wasn't aware that's who made them, I just thought the TVs went out whenever Valravyn went down.

It seems like it is over complicated, especially for how amateurish the programming is.

With the amount of money and effort that is reportedly going in to this, I would expect a much more finished product.

As far as downtime, I would also expect redundant systems, it surely couldn't have added much to the install for a simple local backup system.

I miss the music too. If they're just after advertising revenue they could bring the music back and play ads in between songs. It certainly wouldn't require the labor and upkeep of the TVs. It sounds like a lot of overhead just for some advertising opportunity. It was decent at best last year, but the playlist is terrible when you're within ten feet of the TV and can actually hear it. The other "distraction" games are useless and the sports and popular news segments rarely feature news that is less than a week old.

Once in a while there's a decent song and my kids like park trivia but I really don't care about it one way or the other I guess. I have noticed that some places it's super loud and then you'll be in another line and you can't hear it at all.

I miss Mavericks queue music

I thought it was neat last year they would show POV videos from other parks. I had no idea how complex a system this was for something that seems so simple.

It should be simple. Not sure why Cedar Fair made it difficult.

IT Department Head Job Security.

Wouldn't it have been more complicated to have content centers at each park instead of just at Kings Island? Also, wouldn't it be worse if all the TVs and equipment came from different places instead of just one?

I'm curious how it could be made more simple and less expensive. Complaining about the content is understandable, but a totally different issue really.

Well we don't know the actual full setup honestly.

I'm convinced the content is created/administrated by staff at KI. However the content is then piped to the park, stored there, and distributed through their intranet. I'm not fully convinced each TV is looking externally to KI for their broadcast. If so, I'm surprised because even though maybe ~300 TVs broadcasting a buffered HD video isn't all that much data in the grand scheme of what they have to go out and get either externally or through VPN/etc. However I really do think each park has some form of infrastructure, but content is created & administrated from KI.

I'm reasonably certain that content is distributed to each park, and in turn each unit pulls from there. You have to design for connection failures.

I agree with you, but none of us can say for certain what their setup is. Regardless, it works well & they are adding more and more content & ads, so it's clearly building itself well within the chain

Content for each ride location is downloaded to the park during a general update (usually overnight.) During the day the system checks back to see if there is any new content. Each ride location has a stand alone PC that fetches, stores, and plays back the content. Said PC has a video out that goes to an HDMI to LAN converter, then that goes to a network switch and that switch distributes the video to each TV at that ride, which has it's own LAN to HDMI converter. Rinse and Repeat for every ride location.

The TV network is completely separate and does not connect to the network, only the PC connects to it's own subnet on the Intranet, and then the Internet. Not sure, but considering how the IT department handles things at CP, I would bet the ports that the PCs connect to will allow only data coming from the service at KI.

JW Addington said:

I miss Mavericks queue music

Agreed! I really like the new regime but I really don't like the changes they have made when it comes to music. I liked the 80's music in Raptor and Magnum line. I liked the techno music in MF line as well as the Maverick music.

I also miss Love Shack! :)