They’ll put the best team they have on the ride. They also have some staff who work their who have experience operating Swarm, so they’ll likely be all over it as best they can
“Don’t worry, we’ve got our best man for the job”, sounds like the opening of most sitcoms.
I don’t think the problems are primarily with the frontline staff. Every year people complain that the staff are slow, but it seems unlikely that the people who live near Chessington all happen to be really slow every year, and the people who live near Europa Park all happen to be really quick.
Chessington did butcher a Vampire train largely because they were stacking so much, although it also meant they got a load of free spares for the other trains, and saved the cost of stripping down and maintaining the third train each year. But I agree that slow dispatches were the main thing. I do think there’s an element of rose tinted spectacles with Vampire though. It was designed for the Arrow trains where people took their bags on with them, and the original trains didn’t have seatbelts making them quicker to check. Once the new trains came in, I think stacking became a much bigger problem, although I’m sure most ex staff will tell you that the trains never stacked when they were on it. Then they cut the number of staff and put in more laborious procedures…
‘Putting your best team on it’ doesn’t sound like much of a strategy to me. I mean, how would they even know who their fastest team are? Organise a sports day? It does sound like an excuse for the managers to put their friends on the new ride and then hang around it all day, neglecting the rest of the team.
There are clearly lots of factors that can affect how quickly people work: how frequent and long their breaks are, how often they get a day off, how long their shifts are, how staff are trained, how engaged they are, morale, teamwork, how staff are incentivised… putting your ‘best’ staff on the new ride isn’t necessarily a bad thing and sometimes a team can work at the speed of the slowest person. If we assume that the ‘best’ team is selected using a fair and objective process without nepotism and workplace politics, then it might be a good thing. It also assumes that managers spend plenty of time in the park observing the staff, and that any throughput figures for the rides are accurate and not just made up by the operators when they fill in their paperwork at the end of the day.
But there is also a danger that blaming slow staff for any problems distracts managers from looking at the root causes of any issues. Disney are famous for their slick operations. That’s not because they’ve carefully built their theme parks where the most athletic people are.
“Don’t worry, we’ll put our best people on the new ride”, does sound like a park that’s run out of ideas. “It’s okay everyone. The lads from Thorpe Park are coming. They’ll be all over it”.