I normally post under a different name. I work in the industry and although I wouldn’t share anything confidential, I don’t want my opinions about anything reflect on who I work for. But having written some books about queues, throughputs and capacities (the Absolute Efficiency series) I thought I’d post this one under my real name.
I don’t think there’s any way of objectively measuring the ‘worst’ queue times in Europe. There are lots of ways you could try to do it but there are so many variables you’d never get something that fully reflected the issue.
Firstly you’ve got to compare apples with apples. Are you trying to find similar parks (e.g. the different Legolands), similar sized parks (e.g. parks that get a million visitors a year) or similar rides (e.g. comparing wild mouse coasters at different parks)? And what are you comparing? For example are you comparing queues on the busiest day of the year, an average of the 10 busiest days, an average of the 20 busiest days…? Or are you analysing something else, such as the rate of complaints about queues in Trip Advisor reviews?
Whatever you do is going to be a bit flawed, for example even if you compared waiting times on different wild mouse coasters, they’re going to have different levels of theming, be in different areas of their respective parks etc. It won’t be a complete ‘apples with apples’ comparison.
Also are you just looking at the standby lines or factoring in waiting times with things like Ride Access Passes?
Whilst it’s impossible to precisely rank European countries for queues, I do believe the UK is at the worse end of the spectrum.
There are a lot of variables at play here. For example:
- School holiday patterns. The UK certain has one of the shorter summer holidays in Europe, although to be fair, things do tend to balance out more over the course of a year.
- The international mix of visitors. This is probably a key one. For example, I used to work on Vampire at Chessington. At the time we had to have a minimum of 6 riders so the train had enough weight to make it round the track. There were days when on one train operation we were having to wait for more guests before we could send the train. On the busiest days we had a 3 hour queue. When I worked on Silver Star the queue generally ranged between 20-40 minutes, although it did occasionally go above or below that. There are lots of reasons for that, but it helped that Europa Park got a very international mix of visitors, meaning visitors were following different holiday patterns (chiefly France, Germany and Switzerland), whereas Chessington’s visitors were mostly following England’s school holiday patterns (although there are some differences, such as between private and state schools).
- Weather patterns. Every country has variations in weather patterns and in any country people are more likely to visit when there’s a positive forecast. But perhaps the UK is affected more than some countries by visitors targeting their visits on a relatively small number of days with positive forecasts.
- The age at which children start school, as parents with pre-school aged children are less likely to be tied to school holidays. Also, the percentage of children where both parents work full time.
- Where there’s a culture of adults without children visiting theme parks, as these are also less likely to be tied to holidays.
- The balance between opening on more days and opening on fewer days for longer hours
All of these things affect the distribution of guests. In terms of the standby line the uptake of Fast Track style schemes, and Ride Access Pass style schemes definitely has an impact. As do attitudes towards health and safety and the interpretation of it, the cultural balance between ‘guest service’ and efficiency, and the availability of qualified engineers in that country.
I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. For example, the UK does have a short school summer holiday compared to many other European countries, but we have been effective at shifting attendance away from the summer, particularly around Halloween, and the UK parks have also been effective at attracting school visits, particularly before the summer holiday.
The issue of visits at UK parks being clustered around positive weather forecasts isn’t a new one, and parks have tried a number of solutions, such as rain checks, advance booking discounts and dynamic pricing, as well as weather proofing by design (such as more undercover areas), but I’d say the issue persists
The UK industry does seem to be generally aware that a shortage of engineers can be exacerbating waiting times, which may be a factor in things like Merlin’s new Engineering Academy.
The UK attractions industry is aware of some of the issues, although some parks are aware of the problems more than others, and these are generally the ones that have done a better job of addressing them. I do think on the whole the UK parks do face some clear challenges. In particular, I do think parks near the border of different countries can have a clear advantage and that’s a factor in Europa Park’s success which often isn’t talked about.
