It’s quite simple though really, just enforce the bloody things. Anyone demanding to ride in a group gets ejected from the park for breaking park rules.
I visit with a young family and their removal has had a huge negative impact on my visits, I only went twice last season
I do agree with you, they need to be enforced properly to cut out the abuse, however, when the enforcement has a negative impact on the dispatch as a whole, it's not just the SRQs they're affecting it's the whole ride. As I say, I know it doesn't happen all the while and when I was in America roughly a year ago, they were a god send as I was with family who were not too keen on the more intense rides.
But, if say it's just the one member of staff doing the "routine", SRQ and Fast trackers, someone in the SRQ starts abusing it and mouthing off every 100 or so people because they've witnessed it happen before and got away with it, then the ride can and will run more efficiently without it.
Yes it is annoying to us as enthusiasts seeing empty seats when we see empty seats on Smiler, Thirteen etc but to the GP do they notice it? But you start dispatching rides with empty rows, or worse trains, because the staff member is preoccupied with trying to explain the rules of the SRQs; well the GP notice that and it puts a bad taste in their mouths.
The amount of times I heard similar comments when Nemesis last year was running two trains early in the morning but only loading one due to how quiet it was, yes they'd all be allocated on the next train and it's a marginal extra wait but they want to know constantly why the train/rows aren't being filled up, further delaying dispatch times.
We get it at work on the phone lines, you end up taking one longish phone call, the rest of the people in the queue will start demanding why it's taken so long to get through, especially when it says you are only 1 call from being answered, you explain the situation to that person, successfully deal with the caller and then the next person wonders why they've been waiting a long time, the process repeats itself and gradually a 5 min wait, turns to 10 mins, turns to 15 mins etc.
Not meaning to side with Merlin on the issues of SRQs but it was clear it wasn't working for them in its current form