What changes to operations should we expect post Covid-19?

We're veering quite substantially off topic here, back to discussing changes to operations at the park, not post after post of education discussion please!

An american airline got in big trouble for offering passengers an empty seat next to them for "a few dollars more".
A more exclusive, expensive experience of the Towers may suffer a similar backlash.
Tenner a ride outside normal hours is how they might claw some cash back.

The problem is that companies don't want to be seen to be profiteering from the crisis, otherwise people might boycott them when things get back to normal.

From a public relations point of view, companies need to be tactful. They will need to encourage and reassure people who want to come but set realistic expectations about what to expect. In return people want their loyalty to be appreciated and not feel like the crisis is being used as an excuse to rip them off.

Alsty said:

The problem is that companies don't want to be seen to be profiteering from the crisis, otherwise people might boycott them when things get back to normal.

From a public relations point of view, companies need to be tactful. They will need to encourage and reassure people who want to come but set realistic expectations about what to expect. In return people want their loyalty to be appreciated and not feel like the crisis is being used as an excuse to rip them off.

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But Alton Towers do like to profit from unexpected situations. I can specifically remember a case of Spinball Whizzer doing "down" and it was clear it was not going to be a quick reset. They delayed evacuating the queueline until the Refresh@Spinball catering unit had been opened up earlier than planned as it "was a good money making opportunity". (The exact words of the Director of Park Operations on the radio).

Kraken27 said:

But Alton Towers do like to profit from unexpected situations. I can specifically remember a case of Spinball Whizzer doing "down" and it was clear it was not going to be a quick reset. They delayed evacuating the queueline until the Refresh@Spinball catering unit had been opened up earlier than planned as it "was a good money making opportunity". (The exact words of the Director of Park Operations on the radio).

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I don't think making money from people in a broke down ride queue, is in quite the same ball park as making money from a global pandemic. Neither would it get quite the same backlash from the public.

Theme parks could axe queues amid plans to let customers book timeslots to meet Covid-19 safety standards

Thrill seekers may never have to queue for white- knuckle rides again as theme parks draw up plans for a safe reopening. Technology firm Accesso – whose clients include Thorpe Park and Alton Towers owner Merlin Entertainments – is working on the roll-out of a system that will let customers book timeslots on rides via their mobile phones.

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Good luck with trying to book a queue time slot, I hope that you all will have better luck than trying to book a home shopping groceries delivery slot

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...dards/ar-BB13QLaV?li=BBoPRmx&ocid=mailsignout

And the first estop and it all goes tits up. People turn up and wait for the ride to open them more turn up and more and more and more

Yeah we know how it’s going to fail

RoyJess said:

Theme parks could axe queues amid plans to let customers book timeslots to meet Covid-19 safety standards



Good luck with trying to book a queue time slot, I hope that you all will have better luck than trying to book a home shopping groceries delivery slot

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...dards/ar-BB13QLaV?li=BBoPRmx&ocid=mailsignout

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I think this would happen more regardless of covid- Disney show that if you don't have guests waiting in line they spend more time shopping and eating so spending money in the park. Probably worth more than a limited number of people buying skip the line passes

Might be a silly question but if you can’t just join and queue and you have to prebook a slot on your phone. What happens to all those that turn up to the park who don’t have mobiles or those who can’t get signal?.

What happens to all those not stood in a q. Where do they go ?

Mr Pearse said:

Might be a silly question but if you can’t just join and queue and you have to prebook a slot on your phone. What happens to all those that turn up to the park who don’t have mobiles or those who can’t get signal?.

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The parks all have parkwide WiFi (though granted, where it’s the Cloud as opposed to Merlin’s own it’s somewhat sketchy...), and do many people really go without their phones? Many at all?

I know Legoland can lend phones to people that need them, as their RAP is already run on this system.


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bluesonichd said:

And the first estop and it all goes tits up. People turn up and wait for the ride to open them more turn up and more and more and more

Yeah we know how it’s going to fail

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That is the problem with any "book in advance of the day" Virtual Queue / Fastrack product. It assumes the rides will reach certain capacity figures. As soon as they breakdown / fail to reach the expected capacity it all goes Pete Tong.

That was one slight advantage of the old free Fastrack with tickets only issued on the day at the ride. If there was a breakdown then you could skip issuing some ticket timeslots to give you a chance of getting back to normal later in the day. Yes, you'd have a bit of a backlog as people continued to turn up & waited longer than planned due to the breakdown, but miss out some timeslots and it gave you a bit of breathing space.

With paid Fastrack, advancing timeslots is all but impossible, as the Box Office just keep on selling the Fastrack tickets and leave the poor ride hosts to deal with the mess caused by breakdowns.

A more flexible real-time system for queue timeslots is technology like the Q-Bot (think SixFlags used these at one point) & Tapu-Tapu (Universal's Volcano Bay). Don't even suggest trying that VQ-Mobile product Towers had back in 2002 - it didn't work. There were frequently delays in the texts going out to guests mobiles & the control unit we had to verify the codes & number of guests it was valid for worked about 10% of the time, so you were just blagging it.

It has to be said that I don't envy any theme park in having to manage the queues / maintain social distancing when they reopen. It'll be a nightmare for all concerned as there are way too many people out there who seem to think they have immunity from this virus.

Islander said:

The parks all have parkwide WiFi (though granted, where it’s the Cloud as opposed to Merlin’s own it’s somewhat sketchy...), and do many people really go without their phones? Many at all?

I know Legoland can lend phones to people that need them, as their RAP is already run on this system.


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Obviously it won’t be a high number of people but you’ll always have people who turn up who don’t like modern technology or don’t want to take the phone into the park. It’s all the possibilities and even the comment aswell once all these people are virtual queuing where do you expect x amount of thousands to mingle safely?. It would work in parks where the Rides are able to run efficiently. I can’t see this working well at merlin run uk parks.

Islander said:

The parks all have parkwide WiFi (though granted, where it’s the Cloud as opposed to Merlin’s own it’s somewhat sketchy...), and do many people really go without their phones? Many at all?

I know Legoland can lend phones to people that need them, as their RAP is already run on this system.


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No phone me.
They lend you a tamagochi or cheap phone on a deposit.
Thorpe tried no queue systems a few years ago and it failed.
Badly.
It also crowds out the midways and paths.
Fine for Towers...space, not so other parks.

I can also imagine that when you each time try and book your time slot, they will try and up sell you a shorter time wait fast track followed by asking you to fill out a survey questionnaire

In ‘normal times’ having all virtual queues wouldn’t work but if the park is on reduced capacity anyway then it would have more of a chance of working.

Disney have touch screen kiosks for booking fastpasses for those that don’t have phones.

In reality, it’s Merlin. They will just stick some tape on the floor of the queues every 2m and leave the guests to it.

FWIW Disney were already using a "smart" version of virtual queuing on Rise of the Resistance, partially because of how often the ride breaks down. It would be interesting to see if/how it could be rolled out to be park-wide. Presumably there'd be a list of rides in the app with approximate return times for each, once you make a reservation you're placed in the queue and get sent a notification when it's nearly time to return. There'd be a nominal physical queue to keep things running smoothly. No need for any extra provisions for RAP (but use the accessible entrance if necessary). If they wanted to annoy me personally they could allocate some % of capacity to fastrack which would allow earlier access to the physical queue (return times for everyone else would already take this into account if so). Simple..?

do they not already run this kinda thing at LLW with qbot
not sure how well it works there

John said:

FWIW Disney were already using a "smart" version of virtual queuing on Rise of the Resistance, partially because of how often the ride breaks down. It would be interesting to see if/how it could be rolled out to be park-wide. Presumably there'd be a list of rides in the app with approximate return times for each, once you make a reservation you're placed in the queue and get sent a notification when it's nearly time to return. There'd be a nominal physical queue to keep things running smoothly. No need for any extra provisions for RAP (but use the accessible entrance if necessary). If they wanted to annoy me personally they could allocate some % of capacity to fastrack which would allow earlier access to the physical queue (return times for everyone else would already take this into account if so). Simple..?

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You have to remember that Disney's FastPass+ system is way superior to anything that Merlin would ever dream of rolling out. (For starters, use of the Disney system is free - albeit included in your high priced entry ticket).

I am sure I read somewhere that the cost of Disney rolling out FastPass+ / MagicBands to their Orlando operation (so 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, 30+ hotels, plus all the retail units was in excess of what it would cost to build an entire new gate [theme park].

I also dread to think how much guest movement / flow data Disney harvest from the MagicBands (the battery in them works for long-range RFID for a couple of years). Whilst I am not Disney's hugest fan, it had to be said they have got it right in Orlando when it comes to trying to keep their guests within the "Disney bubble" for the duration of their holiday.

So basically, everyone will be getting RAP