Capacity and Throughputs - Do they matter all of the time?

[Rick]

A couple of points about capacity, I'm pretty much of the opinion that large parks don't need to keep adding rides with vast capacities as long as the overall park capacity (in terms of number of rides * their throughput) moves in the same direction as attendance.

Take any large park with a Wild Mouse coaster, it's a great experience but it's such that it can't be delivered with a 4-digit hourly throughput. I'd certainly argue for that kind of ride to remain/be built, than not.

'The experience that we are trying to provide with the highest capacity possible' should be the approach, rather than 'any experience with the highest capacity possible'.

The above isn't only an approach taken by Merlin, Great Adventure, with a comparable attendance to Alton is installing Joker, an S&S Free Spin this year. It's not going to hit half the capacities of any of their 5 B&Ms, but they're not trying to - they're trying to introduce a compact, new coaster to the line up and you can't do that AND have great capacity.

Should Disney Studios not have built Crush?

Capacity is not everything. It's another thing that enthusiasts obsess over, which I think needs a more rational approach.

 

[DiogoJ42]

Should Disney Studios not have built Crush?

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.... Nah, too easy.

 

[Tim]

I have to disagree Rick.

I've worked as a ride opp in a park with one or two very low capacity rides and saying it doesn't matter because overal the higher capacity rides pull the overall number up is false.

Here's a perfect example of this. The park I worked at had a Christmas event with a star attraction involving Father Christmas. On the day in question that attraction had several issues pulling the throuput down, the result was an absolute disaster. Every guest was stuck in the same line waiting for the same attraction for up to 2 hours. The other rides saw no one for hours. In the end the event got panned, next day the problem was solved and everyone loved it.

You could say that's a one off event because everyone was there for that attraction. However even on a normal day there are some rides people consider must do's. I've seen people leave a park having only been on 2 rides because they insist on riding a certain ride with terrible capacity, even when there's another ride just around the corner that's practically walk on.

PS. Walt Disney Studios is one of those parks where this is most obviously a problem. Of a 4 day trip I did most rides in the main park on the 1st day and it took the remaining 3 just to get everything done in the studio, mainly because I wouldn't queue for Crush at peak times

 

[John]

Crush was a completely inappropriate choice for a Disney coaster. If they'd done a Primeval Whirl and put in 2 of them it would have been fine but as it is the capacity is woefully inadequate. In the same park, Ratatouille is also significantly under capacity but at least it ticks enough other boxes that it just about gets away with it.

Thorpe already has issues with capacity, any major attraction should (ideally) aim to at least partially address that. Adding a major new addition that can't deal with crowds could be and remain a major issue - just imagine how bad Galacita would be if it hadn't been for the Smiler significantly suppressing guest numbers.

I don't think major parks should be adding off-the-shelf mice either, it's a lazy option and they should look for something a bit different for a family coaster, even if it's just a Maurer spinner or Gerst bob. I make an exception for Matterhorn Blitz as it's only there to promote the ride system.

 

[DiogoJ42]

I'm not sure the "GP" - or to sound less condescending, "non-enthusiasts" - are even aware of the concept of throughput. If one queue is longer than the other, they probably just think it's due to more people wanting to ride it, rather than the hourly capacity of the ride system. I know such thoughts never occured to me until I joined this place and started hearing the term thrown about, and I was "enthusiastic" long before the internet even existed!

 

[Benzin]

I would say Ratatouille is one of those attractions which is just popular rather than low throughput...

Throughputs are important to consider... Seen enough miserable faces in the Dragons Fury queue to know that one...

 

[Burbs]

I would say Ratatouille is one of those attractions which is just popular rather than low throughput...

Well, the rows of 3 don't exactly help.

 

[John]

Ratatouille is high capacity on paper, but as it effectively operates 1/3 main queue - 1/3 fastpass - 1/3 single rider the capacity is under-utilised.

 

[Rick]

@Tim Your specific example just sounds like bad management, particularly if it was sorted the very next day.

You could say that's a one off event because everyone was there for that attraction. However even on a normal day there are some rides people consider must do's. I've seen people leave a park having only been on 2 rides because they insist on riding a certain ride with terrible capacity, even when there's another ride just around the corner that's practically walk on.

If a ride is a 'must do' and has 'terrible' capacity, you have to take the rough with the smooth, in that scenario - the queue will be represenative of that scenario and there's a decision to be made in terms of the riders as to whether they wait fo that particular ride or not.

Crush was a completely inappropriate choice for a Disney coaster. If they'd done a Primeval Whirl and put in 2 of them it would have been fine but as it is the capacity is woefully inadequate.

Inadequate against what metric? Disney regularly build double (and triple!) installations of the same ride side by side, but in this case, they didn't. You can't have every ride in the park have the same capacity as Rock n' Roller Coaster or Tower of Terror, it isn't feasible from a cost or space point of view. Not only that, but you will get to a point on a quiet day you offer so much capacity, that your attraction is no longer a full day visit - which is the exact opposite of their strategy.

There will always be bottlenecks and that's ok - if a park provides a fairly accurate assessment of the queue time, as Disney do - I think it's ok for the riders to make the decision as to whether they wait or not.

I don't think major parks should be adding off-the-shelf mice either, it's a lazy option and they should look for something a bit different for a family coaster, even if it's just a Maurer spinner or Gerst bob. I make an exception for Matterhorn Blitz as it's only there to promote the ride system.

Only lazy if you visit parks throughout the world and are suitably informed to know it's off-the-shelf. The whole cookie-cutter debate is an absolute nonsense. When you ride Blue Fire, it's not less fun because there are four or five clones of it around the world. Batman the Ride at Great Adventure isn't less fun because it's one of 10 etc.

I'm not sure the "GP" - or to sound less condescending, "non-enthusiasts" - are even aware of the concept of throughput. If one queue is longer than the other, they probably just think it's due to more people wanting to ride it, rather than the hourly capacity of the ride system. I know such thoughts never occured to me until I joined this place and started hearing the term thrown about, and I was "enthusiastic" long before the internet even existed!

Great post - very much agreed. If you develop that thought even further, take Oblivion which in the glory days was shifting 1800pph, it's very difficult to do that with a family coaster (unless you have a fair old project budget or a manufacturer as your owner...)

 

[Tim]

@Tim Your specific example just sounds like bad management, particularly if it was sorted the very next day.


If a ride is a 'must do' and has 'terrible' capacity, you have to take the rough with the smooth, in that scenario - the queue will be represenative of that scenario and there's a decision to be made in terms of the riders as to whether they wait fo that particular ride or not.

The situation I gave was resolved because the capacity was increased, regardless of what caused it.

As for the second part of your response you have assumed your average guest will make a sensible decision. In reality they normally don't, and not normally through there own fault. Sometimes they have kids with them that "have" to go on that ride. other times they can't judge a queue length (ironicly because they are not an enthusiast as you originally pointed out) and so assume a faster moving queue. Interesting fact, if a rides queue is coming out the entrance it puts more people off ridding regardless of if the extension lines are open. This makes a massive difference to wait times.

The point I'm making is you can't add a headline ride with an hourly throughput of less then 1'000 but expect everything to be ok just because the parks over-all capacity is 30'000. Say the park is open for 8 hours that's less than 8 in 30 guests which even have the chance to get on that ride, and those 22'000 which miss out are not going to be content just because they got to ride another high capacity ride twice.

Of course adding a low capacity filler ride is fine, as no one cares if they miss it. However as this conversation was originally about Thorpe Park and Merlin don't do fillers my point still stands.

 

[Rick]

@Tim - but you can, parks do it all the time in order to add new and innovative rides and experiences.The consequence is that those rides have longer queues in the early seasons, but that's generally accepted. As for guests making "sensible decisions", I think that's entirely up to the guest(s) concerned.

As I said, I'm saying this based on parks who offer accurate queue times publicly via signage or an app etc - I'm not defending parks who have sucky capacity and make no effort to offer at least an indication of wait times to unsuspecting guests (Pleasure Beach, anyone?).

You can't account for stupid people all of the time, if folks choose to wait 6 x 40 minutes for Spinball rather than 24 x 10 minutes for Nemesis, more fool them - perhaps that's how they want to spend their day. I don't think that fault lies with the park, particularly given the availability of queue times via boards and RideTimes.

A lot of queues are self managing, again - if you give people the opportunity to make informed decisions. If you have 15 rides, all with sub 30 minute queue times and you have something with a lower capacity posting a 90 minute wait, there's a decision to make on the part of the guest - I don't agree for a moment that people can't be trusted to make that decision.

Also, you have to take your enthusiast hat off and get away from the notion of 'must do' attractions and the like, most guests take a far more chilled out approach to visiting a park.

We've not got a ton of coasters being built in the UK at the moment, so lets take a look at the US in terms of how parks are approaching the building of new attractions in 2016.

Lake Compounce - they wanted a launch coaster, they opted for a Premier Sky Rocket 2 and gave it a terrible name. It shifts about 300 pph, yet their signature ride Boulder Dash moves four times that number. The budget was about £2m, there are very few alternatives available in the marketplace when you're on the hunt for a launch coaster with that budget, are you suggesting that they don't build a coaster instead of building a lower capacity one?

Great Adventure - home of some absolute capacity monsters with Kingda Ka, El Toro, Superman, Green Lantern etc etc. They were on the look out for a 4D coaster. Unless there is $20m+ in the budget, your options for a 4D coaster are pretty much limited to Intamin Zac Spin (Six Flags don't tend to buy Intamin anymore) or an S&S Free Spin, they went for a Free Spin and it's opening shortly - the Joker. Are you suggesting that they don't build a coaster instead of building a lower capacity one?

Last year Hershey were looking for an indoor spinning coaster on an extremely small plot of land. They had the opportunity to look for solutions from Mack, Gerstlauer, Maurer and I guess Intamin. Maurer came up trumps in the end for Laff Trakk, yet the ride only provides a fraction of the capacity of Lightning Racer, Skyrush, Great Bear etc. Are you suggesting that they don't build a coaster instead of building a lower capacity one.

The same thing goes for parks that want to introduce a coaster with a vertical drop. Unless you have a hefty budget for a Dive Machine, your options are somewhat limited to hardware from Gerstlauer or Zierer (Intamin provide some bits too..) but all available solutions utilise a relatively small number of low capacity rolling stock.

I understand the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it stacks up in the real world, because it in part suggests that parks large, or small always have the budget for a large coaster and even if they do, it assumes that you can provide every conceivable experience with large capacity rolling stock and you absolutely can't.

Many large and successful parks have Boomerangs, spinning coasters and Wild Mice and those rides are inherently low capacity because of their design, but they have a place in a line up, even in a 3m+ attendance park because they add to the overall capacity of the park's offering.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. Now excuse me, I have to wait 120 minutes to ride Galactica whilst Nemesis is a walk on.

 

[Cheese]

No, on a park-wide level ride capacity is certainly not everything. It would clearly be daft for a park to only install a ride if it can chew through the contents of a sizeable cattle pen in 20 minutes flat. As you pointed out Rick, such a policy would exclude a lot of popular ride types and systems that just aren't capable of this.

What is massively important though is for a park to make sure that every ride it installs has an appropriate throughput for the number of guests they expect to ride it. Obviously a large number of factors affect that. For instance, what proportion of all our guests can ride it or will want to? For the primary target audience how major a ride is it? Are there already other similar rides in the park, and if so are they likely to ease the load on this one, or is it a significant enough attraction for guests to really want to do this one specifically? I disagree that so many guests will just go with the flow; I'd expect them to have in mind at least a few big stand-out rides that they know they want to get done at some point in the day, and if these are high on most guests' hit lists they need to be queue munchers. By contrast, in a relatively large park a standard wild mouse or flat is still a fun ride but doesn't tend to have the same pulling power, and normally just gets treated as something to do while in the area, so its lower throughput isn't such an issue.

With that in mind:

Crush's Coaster is absolutely not suitable for Studios Paris. Maurer spinners can make good supporting coasters, but we're talking about the sole family coaster in a Disney park that only has two real coasters (RC Racer should not count in anyone's book). That elevates it to a position in which it can't cope. I presume it gets 600-700 per hour at best? At a quieter park with one or two other family coasters it would be inoffensive, but for the park it's in that's completely inadequate.

Is Smiler's sub-1000 per hour capacity good enough at Towers? It's not far off I suppose, but no. It's a highly regarded headline coaster in a park where other thrill coasters are capable of 1200+. By the time you start chipping bits off that with the fastrack hammer you're down to 800-900 for main queue at most. It only ever feels like you're making satisfactory progress through the pit of despair after ride close when the main queue gets the full capacity.

 

[Tim]

The irony is you keep saying I'm thinking like an enthusiast but I'm not, I'm thinking as someone who has (and still does) work in the Theme Park industry.

"Must-Do" rides definitely exist, I once stood at the front of a ride queue flat out telling people it's a 2 hour wait, go ride something else and yet they've still kept joining the queue. And it wasn't a new ride either, it was 20 years old!

Something that the industry also takes very important is Ridership, that is the number of rides the average guest will get to experience that day (an acceptable level is normally around 10). Operations management our judged by how high that number is. If a ride is not performing they will alter it, sometimes even close it. Just look at Legoland's Boatting School, last year they overhauled it in an attempt to double the capacity.

Now as for your examples, they all miss the point I'm making. They are all perfectly good investments for the parks which are adding them. Lake Compounce is nowhere near as popular as say Busch Gardens so it is perfectly acceptable for them to build a ride like that, Not so much for Williamsburg who could have afforded something more appropriate. For Great Adventures they already have an amazing ride line up, by comparison an S&S Spin is a filler ride. If Kingdra Ka had the same capacity it would be a different matter. I'd say the same for Hershey's.

As I said above low capacity filler rides or as headline attractions at very small parks are fine. But Thrope Park need DBGT to have a high capacity as it is there biggest investment to date. Disney shouldn't build a headline family coaster with anything even under 2'000pph, even though I personally like Crush. And don't get me started on Galactica...

 

[Funcone]

Throughputs aren’t everything, but they are important. Even if a ride typically has a short queue, why make people wait 10 minutes when they could get on in five? And even if the queue’s normally short there will often be exceptions (a special event, a bank holiday etc). When you say you went to a theme park, one of the first things people normally say is ‘were the queues bad?’. When you look at poor reviews on Trip Advisor the queues were often a major factor.

There can come a point where there’s a trade-off between a higher throughput and a better ride experience. Omnimovers have amazing throughputs, but you don’t get such an intimate experience when it’s a continuous chain of vehicles. It’s hard for vehicles to trigger effects when it’s a continuous chain. You can see what’s coming. A roller coaster might have to add more block sections to increase the throughput and that can disrupt the flow of the ride (although on most roller coasters the limiting factor is the time it takes to load the trains, rather than the time it takes for them to get between block sections). When a park adds a new ride there’s an element of making a judgement call.

When parks are adding rides they also have to look at the relationship between the thoughput and the cost. That includes the capital costs of building it and the operational costs of running it. 300 people an hour might be considered very good for a ride that requires one operator. If a ride requires one operator and four attendants 300 an hour would be poor. Most theme parks are businesses and one way or another the numbers have to stack up. A more expensive ride needs to entertain more people to justify the investment.

There’s a long list of things parks take into account when adding rides. Height restrictions, disability access, marketability etc. Throughputs are certainly one of the most important criteria when choosing a new ride, but sometimes it is worth compromising on throughput to achieve a higher score in another area.

 

[QTXAdsy]

For Disney everyone is talking about Crush's coaster. But if you ask me, an arguably worse ride for throughput was the former 20k ride at WDW and probably the Nemo version over at DL.

 

[PeteB]

Is Smiler's sub-1000 per hour capacity good enough at Towers? It's not far off I suppose, but no. It's a highly regarded headline coaster in a park where other thrill coasters are capable of 1200+. By the time you start chipping bits off that with the fastrack hammer you're down to 800-900 for main queue at most. It only ever feels like you're making satisfactory progress through the pit of despair after ride close when the main queue gets the full capacity.

Queues and throughputs are the enemy of theme parks, and one of the reasons why I try to avoid going to places like Blackpool and Flamingoland nowadays unless I get dragged there.

The Smiler's capacity is abysmal. I'm surprised they didn't learn from Rita which has long been the worst coaster on the park for queues due to crappy throughput. It surprises me that Towers were building enormous capacity rides back in the 90's but now don't even bother, with the exception of Th13teen which is decent.. I mean Nemesis was the lowest capacity back then but even that can chew through guests at a satisfactory rate.

Each park is different, and for Towers they need to be building all coasters with at least 1400pph capacity. No ride at Alton Towers is worth queueing longer than 10-15 minutes in my opinion. Thorpe on the other hand has much longer, bigger coasters, but even there I would say no ride is worth queueing more than 20 minutes for.