Ticket To Ride Returns?

If it doesn't upset Dan, who is at the park more than everyone I know in real-life combined, then it must not be a horrable thing. :)

-----------------
- The Darling one

"Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which we will not put." -Winston Churchill

Another thought more than 3 hours later...

The switch to the digital season passes has made me wonder since last year wether or not a hi-tech system was in the works. If you're familar with FASTPASS at Disney the little machine that dispenses your tickets reads the magnetic strip on your ticket and gives you a ticket. Now, the season passes from last year don't have a magnetic strip, but how hard could it be to switch over if the printing equipment supported it? Could anyone who already has their 2002 pass speak up if there's a magnetic strip on the back?

Of course, this whole thought doesn't mean anything, since the barcode on the passes and on tickets could serve the same function...

-----------------

The new passes look just like last years pass but it has 2002 printed many times in small letters on the background. Im surprised they didnt change it significantly.

The new passes have the barcode like last years, no magnetic strip.

Disney uses magnetic strips.

Actually the barcode on the pass could be used and it would make implementing a system easier. Individual day tickets can have barcodes printed on them so non-passholders have something to use for the queueing system also. Much easier and cheaper than putting mag strips on everything.

-----------------
It's very hard to drink all day...
Unless you start first thing in the morning.

Tickets currently DO have individual bar codes on them, thay are just taken at the gate. Unless you buy at the entrance, then it's a thermal printed reciept...

Hooper.. well said. I've had that argument with people many times. People have lost patience..

-------------
June 11th, 2001 - Gemini 100
VertiGo Rides - 82 Farewell my good friend..

Well, the switch to the digital card was done for one reason only: It is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper to do printed card than Poloroid cards. It took CP longer than anybody else to change over because allegedly The Boss didn't like the appearance of the photo on the older card systems. But once a good color system became available, the decision to switch to it would have been a no-brainer.

At work we don't print nearly as many cards as Cedar Point does, but we still saw a significant cost savings when we retired the ID-2 system in favor of the new Datacard system.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

---

RideMan said:
All they would need to do would be to get accurate queue time estimates on a regular basis and display that information on QTV every few minutes.

---

A friend and I were talking about that not too long ago. Go to any airport, and one thing you see ALL OVER the place is Arrival/Departure boards. A similar system in amusement park, displaying wait times, could go a long way towards helping spread out crowds. As RideMan pointed out, PKI already HAS screens in place that could be used for this as an experiment.

Of course, such a system could disrupt our patterns for "working" Cedar Point, or people would just ignore them because they "want to ride the big one" anyway. ;)

-------------
--Greg
My Home
MF count: 52

Also with this system.. You're going to need the ride-op's to call into Park Op's every so often with thier times so the system can be updated. That's alot of extra work for Park Op's and there aren't that many people IN the office at a given time. It's a zoon in there as it is on alot of days...

Not to mention the time it takes from the ops working the ride to have to make the call.

Great idea, but alot of work..

-------------
June 11th, 2001 - Gemini 100
VertiGo Rides - 82 Farewell my good friend..

Rob made a good point that it would take a bit fo staff time to get this sort of "airport system" idea to work. Islands of Adventure has a system like this in place, but it involves some employees being staffed specifically to update the boards by hand. In talking with Mr. Miears a while back he seemed to express interest when talking about the system used by IOA, but wasn't too thrilled at how it was all done by hand. Perhaps this is the biggest hurdle keeping CP from implementing their own system.

I remember reading on one company's site about a system that could perform the entire task without using a single employee. The idea was to track the number of people entering each line and comparing it to the dispatch interval and downtime being registered on the ride's PLC. That information could then be displayed electronically throughout the park. A costly system to first introduce perhaps, but I can't help but think that the public wouldn't love to see something like this in place.

Just imagine walking down the exit to Magnum and seeing your choice between a 2 hour wait for Raptor or a 45 minute wait for MF.

-----------------
James Draeger
http://draegs.livejournal.com
"Whose bright idea was it to get him talking about Cedar Point?!"

yeah, but by the time you get to MF the wait is 90 mins while raptors is 70, so you go to raptor which by then is back to 2 hours....

part of the fun is waiting in the lines with your friends and family

Well, it would take a lot of planning, but such a system COULD be automated to a large degree. A few cameras over the queues, and some intelligent image processing software, gets you most of the way there. Cedar Point already knows that "if the queue fills out to here, the wait will be 45 minutes". Cameras could detect "where the line ends" farily easily, and from there getting the result posted to boards can be totally automatic.

Expensive? Sure. Amazingly cool? You bet.

(I wasn't at all impressed with IoA's "system" for the very reason that it WAS done by hand. Nice idea, but not quite "there" for the techie in me ;) )

-----------------
--Greg
My Home
MF count: 52

Perhaps in the future, laser tracking devices can be placed at various points in the queue and count how many people cross its laser beam. This information, along with the coaster's current capicity and possibly dispatch times, could be sent to central computers and then distibuted to various screens around the park on a real-time basis. Maybe that's too advanced, I don't know...

-----------------
Back from lurking
New account, same name
KW 2002

IoA's system is longer done by hand, they have around 2-5 computer type things for each ride, and this was during the past summer. Personally I think IoA and Disney have the best idea on "fast pass" type systems

Greg, either you're thinking in a box or you just like making things difficult.

What you need is two turnstiles, both tied into a single PLC. One at the queue entrance, one at the ride platform. By counting the difference between the two turnstiles, you know exactly (well, minus bail-outs and queue-jumps) how many people are waiting in line. Divide that number by your average hourly capacity, and you have the length of wait.

It was either Consign or Birket...I'm not sure which but I think it was Consign...that advocated connecting the two turnstiles into the ride control system to get accurate rider counts.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

I don't think it would have to be too much more complicated than what Rideman says. I bet it would easily be accurate to within 5 minutes even on a ride like Magnum where riders are crammed onto the platform. :) It could update something like a digital display board as often as you wanted to since the concept and calculation is so simple. Nothing would need to be done by hand once the initial set up is in place. You could have the computer store the number of people going through each hour and get a better average hourly capacity as time goes on too. Sounds like a fun but not too difficult idea to implement. I wonder if I could do something like this on my computer engineering co-op? :)

-----------------
-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew

They have the digital display boards at Universal Hollywood. One right in the Gate, one next to the escalator to the backlot tour, one next to "Starway" and one by ET.

As soon as I walked in the park two weeks ago I knew that the line for the tour was 5 min and ET was a mind boggleing 45.

There was also a digital sign at the entrance to each line sort of a high tech "the line for this ride is ___ long."

-----------------

RideMan, it was Consign that came up with the idea.

To expand on RideMan's post... Using an internal clock in the computer it can firgure out the PPH(People Per Hour) count, and a plus is it can even firgure the down time(whether it be moving taking a train on or off the ride, or a set-up) into the wait time. According to Consign, the system can be very customized, i.e. displaying if the ride is down, displaying the number of people the rode the ride, etc. Heck if you want to even take it once step father, you could tie the different data from different rides' computers into one computer and the wait times could be displayed at boards across the park.

- Andrew Hyde
http://www.experiencethepoint.com

Or, how about having the op who's working the entrance to the queue look at the line every 15 minutes and punch in the wait time into a little keypad that will update the wait time on the computer that controls the displays? A lot simpler than linking two turnstyles... but not as cool...

-----------------

While the turnstile implementation is cool, and I should think relatively cheap, why even get that high tech? There isn't a queue at the park that you can't guess times on just by eyeballing it from time to time, which the entrance people are doing anyway to adjust their own signs. If they aren't calling them into a central control point in park op, I should think some kind of system already on the market would allow you to key in a time.

-----------------
Jeff
Webmaster/GTTP, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

How often are those signs really accurate? When I go, they are either way over or way under.