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Single Rider Queues

:rolleyes:

I give up, reduced waiting times is not a "handy positive" of single rider queues, it's the entire purpose of single rider queues!!!!

AstroDan said:
It did not slow throughput on Rita (I worked on it).

The reason SRQ was removed was so that they could cut a merge host, by having Fastrack arrive at the station itself.

I can only assume this is the purpose behind removing it off other rides, too. It saves money - and we know how tight the purse strings are these days when it comes to operations.
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Fair point for Rita, but if we are to believe that the park have now removed SRQ on rides like The Smiler, Th13teen or Oblivion this would not save on staffing as the fastrack merge is at the same place as the SRQ merge.
 
It is perfectly plausible, as they can remove the baggage drops aswell.

Have cages in the station. Old SRQ becomes Fastrack, direct to station. As for Ride Access Pass, no idea.

I should say, I haven't seen it written in pen and ink that this is what they are doing, only that there are likely reductions to SRQ again this year.
 
I really hope they don't scrap the baggage hold system, it's a great system and really helps throughputs when it's managed well.

But @AstroDan, even if they scrapped the baggage hold system, they will still need a staff member at these points for the fastrack merge, so scrapping SRQ still wouldn't save them any staff.
 
MakoMania said:
I really hope they don't scrap the baggage hold system, it's a great system and really helps throughputs when it's managed well.
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Of course it helps a lot.

But very few parks do it like this.

The best systems are things like Flug der Damonen and Desert Race at Heide-Park. Indeed, with those being Merlin, it surprises me that other Merlin parks have not rolled this out, too.

:)
 
Automated rotating lockers before the air gates with several compartments in a vertical stack. It's a good system, but isn't really possible to retro-fit to existing rides as you need to design the guest flow back past them on the way out.

The removal of baggage stores on the likes of Thirteen and Smiler in particular would be an absolute disaster for capacity. Queues would become an utter misery on all but the quietest of days. I wouldn't be opposed to off-peak closure of baggage stores, but Smiler needs it to be able to run 4 trains effectively - I'd estimate a reduction in capacity of at least 30%. The loss of the SRQ at the same time would make it all but unrideable for me.
 
To be honest, I've only really use the Smiler and sometimes Thirteen SRQ. The problem is that large group of people would use the SRQ in thinking that it would save queuing time. The SRQ can be just a long waiting time as the main queue. Last season, despite the SRQ, trains were seen going around with empty seats and sometimes they would allow groups of people from the SRQ to board the trains in groups, which really defeats the object of having the SRQ. This happened a lot on the Smiler as guest were held up at the bagging area and there were no one to fill up the trains from the main queue line pass the stairs. On Nemesis I like to have my choice of which row to sit in, so I never bothered with the SRQ on that. For me it would be the Staggered ride times that will more of a problem and will make a visit more unbearable in causing longer queue times than the loss of the SRQ.

The Fast track queues are not that much quicker than the main queue line either.
 
Rick said:
Get some friends, kids.
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That's not the issue. Me and the wife queue up together in the srq quite often. Who cares if you don't sit together or are even on the same train. I don't tend to have conversations going upside down or travelling at high speeds anyway. It usually means we get on about 50% more rides in a day without having to pay extra.

I don't visit on peak days anymore and if the news about srq's all being gone is true....that won't be changing. I don't think the park can cope with large numbers as it once did.
 
Poopoohead said:
Makes it a pain in the arse trying to get in any of the bigger rides if you are going as a family with small children
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This in a nutshell. My little lad is 4 so hopping on Smiler and thirteen in 5-10 mins is a god send to us as a family.

I'd be very disappointed if they choose to do this. Fair enough if they want to avoid it on wicker man but 13, Blivy and Smiler SRQ's just make sense. There will be trains of empty seats otherwise.

Let's see what happens. I'm still sceptical they have scrapped them all.
 
Rick said:
Get some friends, kids.
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Yup.
When your own generation grows out of theme parks, you can always set up a bromance or two on sites such as these.
I'm just making plans for who pushes my wheelchair in about twenty years.
Just make sure your new coaster mates are a few years younger than you.

Always used the single rider queues, a lot.
My wife grew out of the rides two decades ago.
This is one srq user who will be spending big money on queue jumping this year.
Going to be the only way to get the new rides in on my days out.
 
rob666 said:
This is one srq user who will be spending big money on queue jumping this year.
Going to be the only way to get the new rides in on my days out.
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All the people who would use single rider buying Fastrack equals more profit, at removing what is a rather useful thing for a fair amount of visitors...

Disappointing that the park keeps removing guests benefits...
 
I won't be paying them diddly extra. If they continue to slap the public in the face they won't last much longer. Although I'm still not convinced they have scrapped them all.

Having single riders in the main queues is counter productive anyway and will cause complaints from both sides. Blivy n Smiler in particular are built for SRQ's. I do concede they make more sense on some attractions over others however and not expecting that they are available on all the big rides.
 
Lockers are a good step if they remove bag drops. They work in almost every other park chain. I wish they had pushed the Oblivion ones harder in 1998 and made them the norm.

Bag drops are expensive.
 
Lockers at the likes of Six Flags and Cedar Point are an absolute nuisance, before you go on any major ride you've got to go over to the terminal or search around for an available one, cough up a couple of dollars and then your entire group tries to squeeze 6 people's stuff into one locker because nobody wants to pay a per-ride tax.
 
@John I've never had a problem using them, personally. Plus, if you wanted to offer them for free - it could well be more cash efficient to buy a stack of lockers vs. paying two people in the bag drop for a season and funding all the indirect costs in doing so.

I think the issue is more that you need a cultural shift to use lockers vs bag drops/station storage. The Tussauds era rides without bag drops still work fairly well. With a good crew you can still get Nemesis trains out without stacking even after someone has spent twenty seconds trying to stuff a giant donut into the cage.
 
Train size is the key difference, Nemesis is 32 per train, so only has to send trains half as often as the Smiler's 16 seat trains for a given throughput. Adding an extra 20 seconds per dispatch on Smiler (which seems fairly typical assuming platform storage) would drop throughput from nearly 1000/hour to more like 700.
 
On the Smiller they are going to have to completely separate the new line with a ten foot high fence to stop people going up the SRQ/Fasttrack and then jumping to the main queue before any checkpoint without being noticed if they scrap the merge assistant at the bottom of the stairs, which might cost just as much as having a batcher.

SRQ to Main Queue jumping was rife last year and the only thing stopping it was the batcher, plus I thought the whole idea of having a batcher at the merge points on Smiler was to control the flow of people so there wasn't queueing on the stairs. I only ever use it on Oblivion since I'm Billy Nomates when it comes to that, but it'll be a major pain on a busy day if they do scrap SRQ.
 
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