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What do you consider a “good” ride count at a theme park?

I think it depends on the size of the park and the length of time you're there. If the park in question only has five rides and you're nipping in to grab the credits, sure; that'd be great. A park like Alton Towers and only being able to get on five rides in a day is atrocious. Based on gate price, you're looking at around £10 per ride regardless of which rides you do. That makes Winter Wonderland the cheaper option with their headlining attractions.

It's evident the park are looking at the subject of how many rides people are doing per day, as seen in the surveys and by hiring in the travelling rides to bolster the lineup. If you are only able to manage five rides at your own fault by not planning ahead or joining queue lines for rides at their peak periods, then of course it isn't the park's fault but that still wouldn't be good enough. By doing The Smiler first with Rita and Thirteen following it, you can have three rides that normally attract well over an hour of queue throughout the day at Towers ticked off in just over an hour.

I think the highest ride count I've managed in a day is around the 40 mark at Liseberg, including 12 rides on Helix.
 
My two times at Towers this year my count has been 20 and 16. I’d be pretty disappointed with 5 @Matt N, I’d probably be disappointed with double that to be honestI like to set the bar at 15, so I’m pretty happy I’ve achieved it both times this year - on a 10-7 and 10-5:30pm. My Towers record is actually 27 though on a Scarefest Saturday.
Is that with or without RAP?
 
If you don’t mind @Burbs, may I ask you a quick question?

How on Earth do you go about getting on 25 rides in a huge theme park like Europa? Surely every major ride has a queue of 1hr+, and even many of the less major ones have queues of at least 30-45 minutes? You must either have the slickest strategy, or you must literally sprint from ride to ride!

Even when I went to the very compact Blackpool Pleasure Beach, where attractions are virtually right next to each other, I only got 11 rides in! Well, I’d consider 11 an astonishing count, personally, but it’s low relative to some of the suggested amounts (e.g. 25 for Europa).

I think a larger park like Alton Towers is actually advantageous for getting more rides in, based on a park with a similar number of total attractions. At any one time in Alton Towers, there are a fair few guests not in a queue line because they are walking from one area to the next, whereas somewhere like Thorpe Park which is far smaller, a far higher % of guests will be in a queue at any given point. This means if you visit on a day with the exact same number of guests the queues will be far longer at Thorpe than they are at ATR.

As far as ride count goes, I'd be disappointed with anything under 15 rides at Alton Towers - even in Summer 2002 with 2hr queues for Air and multiple breakdowns I managed around that number.
 
Just did the maths on my EP visit the other week. I managed twenty rides (including two turns on Can-Can Coaster and Pirates), watched an Ice Show, walked around the water gardens near the entrance and had two thirty-minute breakfast/lunch breaks in a 9AM-6PM day. Admittedly, the park was fairly quiet, but I left feeling I had certainly got my 50 euros worth. I think the only time I managed just 5/6 rides at Alton was during my school trip days in the early noughties, when we had to be back at the coach for 330PM. I can see how it can happen these days, given the relative lack of support rides or alternative activities.

Incidentally, with just one day at EP, I'd say everything I rode was fairly 'E/D' ticket tier, but had it been busier, I could have opted instead to ride less blockbuster but alternative rides and shows. Very few parks have that depth of a lineup though, perhaps on Disneyland in California and maybe Efteling? Liseberg also has lots of options.
 
Every credit !

On my last visit, I only went on Nemesis, which was fine, that's all I wanted to ride.

I don't have a hard number, depends on the day, depends on the park. If I am visiting a park for the first time or somewhere I rarely get to.
 
It's evident the park are looking at the subject of how many rides people are doing per day, as seen in the surveys and by hiring in the travelling rides to bolster the lineup. If you are only able to manage five rides at your own fault by not planning ahead or joining queue lines for rides at their peak periods, then of course it isn't the park's fault but that still wouldn't be good enough. By doing The Smiler first with Rita and Thirteen following it, you can have three rides that normally attract well over an hour of queue throughout the day at Towers ticked off in just over an hour.
The thing that confuses me, though, is we’ve always done what everyone says we should do. We often start in Dark Forest, and leave Wicker Man/X-Sector until at least midday. We often arrive on Towers’ property by around 9:45am, and are usually on park for just after 10am.

Why is it that we always seem to eventually stumble into long queues, thus reducing ride count?
 
The thing that confuses me, though, is we’ve always done what everyone says we should do. We often start in Dark Forest, and leave Wicker Man/X-Sector until at least midday. We often arrive on Towers’ property by around 9:45am, and are usually on park for just after 10am.

Why is it that we always seem to eventually stumble into long queues, thus reducing ride count?

Arriving on park after 10am is, simply put, too late.

Arriving at the entrance plaza by 9:30 at the latest will make a big difference.

Remember also that there are a few support rides now, like Duel, Marauders and Roller Disco, that never get queues longer than 10 minutes. If you're not riding them then obviously your overall ride count will be lower compared with someone that is.
 
Arriving on park after 10am is, simply put, too late.
Really? 10am is opening time; do we really have to get there that much before?

I knew they opened the turnstiles & let you get into your first ride queues before 10am, but does it really get that busy early on? I was under the impression that the park was quite quiet until 11am-12pm!

The problem is, I’m not sure how much earlier I could really go, living 2.5 hours from the park; we already get up at 6am to make it to Towers for the time we do! We got to Thorpe at about 9:15am the other day, but that didn’t seem to make much difference, as the park held us at the top by the dome until 10am, and we still ended up getting ourselves into a 40 minute queue for Saw at opening time (although with that being said, that was shorter than the 1hr+ queues it was hitting later in the day!). That experience also made my mum & dad very cross with me and vow never to arrive for opening time again (at Thorpe, anyway), so we never seem to reap the benefits of arriving early, for some reason.

I’m always slightly surprised that people are able to get such high ride counts, because even when I follow everybody’s advice regarding strategy, we still never seem to hit the same ride count heights. What am I doing wrong? Am I just visiting on strangely busy days or something?

Ah well. I guess I need to be grateful for every theme park I’m able to visit, whether I get on any rides or not!
 
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Even on a relaxing day at Europa Park where I spend most of the day drinking beer I can still get a reasonable ride count in. Though the opening hours in summer pre covid certainly helped with that usually being 9am-8pm earliest. I remember the Euro Sat days of joining a queue snaking out of the queue line well past Universe of Energy and still only waiting just over 20 mins. . Usually try and knock out Blue Fire, Wodan and some of the lower capacity rides first before it gets too busy and usually Blue Fire/Wodan end of the day too.
There has been only one occasion when I’ve visited Europa where I’ve seen queues of 90 mins plus and that has been in August on a very hot day. Usually queue times tend to top out around 45-60 mins.
At Towers I can usually box off Smiler, Oblivion, Rita, Galactica and Nemesis before 11 leaving room to relax and do the smaller attractions leaving Wickerman to last thing usually.
At Thorpe I just prey
 
While you have to play the cards you're dealt, I don't think you should have to be at Alton at 9AM to get a decent ride count in. Arriving at the park between 10 and noon now seems more reasonable if the park is open until 7 or 8PM, as is fortunately more often the case these days.
 
When I go to Towers I normally try and get the best stuff done, so for me that would be about 15 individual rides in one day (not including re-rides). I do try and pick quieter days to go and normally manage it, but there's not much time to hang around. At Blackpool I can usually do the best 18 or so rides in one day if the day is fairly quiet. At Europa Park there is not the same urgency because we have two or three days on park, so can be relaxed. But on any single day it's easy to fit in over 20 rides.
 
What defines a good ride count depends not only on the park but the person too.

When I visited Paultons recently we only did 7 rides (including 2 goes on Storm Chaser) and a good wander around the gardens and little zoo sections. More than happy with that as had gotten on everything we wanted and had a fairly enjoyable day. But 7 rides for 2 adults does not mean a family of 4 would be happy with that.

Generally at Towers I'm happy doing the main coasters (not Rita), Duel and Hex. Maybe a re-ride here and there but that is at the whim of RAP and if I can be bothered to push the wheelchair back to Nemesis again (I will only do the Smiler/X-Sector hill once per visit because its horrific).

Only you can be happy or annoyed with a ride count. Sure I could get 20 rides in at Towers these days, but ride whoring like that us a young goon's game that doesn't involve pushing a wheelchair around.
 
Short answer: it depends

If we're talking Towers/Thorpe then anything less than double figures is poor IMO. At Chessington there's not that many rides that I care about riding more than once so I'm less likely to reach 10. At BPB there's not much going on other than the rides, so 15-20 would be my minimum expectation.
 
Having stalked through my old ride counts, I've managed 62 at Pleasure Beach before on a 11-5 in 2017 when I was really going for it. Included 22 on Wild Mouse (turned out to be my last ever rides on it).

Energylandia I visited once and managed 35 rides in the day. I distinctly remember stopping for lunch and a pint there as well. But it was dead.

Once managed 32 at Towers on a quiet Sunday at the start of Scarefest.

Europa is normally a relaxed day yet I always range between 20-30 there. Disneyland Paris, similarly relaxed but closer to 20 normally.

In a full day on park, I've never managed 5 rides or less. Considering that a good ride count is simply laughable.
 
My initial thought is that a good ride count is 10. Back in my Ride Op days 10 was the number of RAP passes handed out because in theory it was the average number of rides someone could expect during a quiet day.
But glancing back at the last 5 years very few of my visits have hit double figures. Admittedly I don't spend a lot of full days at parks anymore but even very good trips like my time in Florida tended to be around the 8 ride mark.
 
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