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Through-puts this season

Dave

Dave

TS Founding Member
I know it's a very geeky thing to moan about but throughputs really have been terrible this year. Sometimes barely reaching half what the ride is capable of. On park today there must be around 28,000 on park and using the throughput calculater Oblivion which should comfortably reach 1450p/hr was struggling to get 1000p/hr with the queue out of the entrance. Rita was barely getting 800p/hr and Th13teen had a 120min queue with a 40min fast track queue.

This is symptomatic of the seasons throughputs, what happened to the park taking pride in their operations :(
 
Completely agree and before anyone even says its all about customer service, don't! The park can offer both if they really wanted to, but it seems like everything they do nowadays seems to be to create money or to save it!

I also find many members of staff to be completely unable to do two things at once. I mean can't they bay load AND run the ride? Its not as if its hard to shout for a few more people to come down and fill the bays up!

As for stupid rules and regulations. If someone has done something wrong on the ride, then they need to be retrained and the whole team told to be more vigilant to prevent it reoccurring. Forcing the ride team to double check seatbelts or to not open the airgates until the passengers have left is not going to make much difference to safety, but instantly reduces throughput!

Oh and while we are here, what on earth is all the shouting in air station about? Seriously guys if a row needs rechecking, surely the station operator can see it and the staff should know the basics on how the restraint works so they don't have to go and recheck it about 10 times to get it to close.
 
I must be te only one on this forum that dosent know a thing about throughputs!

:D
 
Total number of people per hour that can ride. Lately it has been shockingly bad and this is creating big queues. I somewhat feel that they have been told to make big queues to sell more fastrack, but the thing is, lowering the throughput just makes the fastrack queue move slowly as well.

For example air can get 52 trains por hour creating a throughput of around 1456 people per hour. Obviously they cannot fill every seat even when they force odds down one side and even down the other and fill the empty seats on station 2 with single riders. It just doesn't work!

So realistically they probably fill 90% of the ride creating a throughput of around 1310. Still really good and the queue would move along smoothly. The problem is that they never get 52 trains per hour and sometimes we have worked out that they average just over 40.

So 40 trains per hour x 28 people per train = 1120 people per hour. Now assume that 10% of those seats are empty. That creates 1008 people per hour. That is 456 people per hour less than the ride can achieve!
 
It has really shown lately this season on rides like Oblivion and Rita which are running were really low throughputs compared to the start of the season. Its just painful waiting to see Rita launch now, and the same with Oblivion waiting for the air gates to open.

The main reason both of these rides have got worse is stupid rules that have came in this year. On Rita its the launch cable and not walking under it (I still find it strange that you can walk and stand under Steaths launch cable), They have to wait until everyone is totally clear before they start the ride, not only does this slow the throughput, but its costing them more with ride staff, as they now need one at each end of the tunnel.

On Oblivion it seems they cant make their mind up each week, a few weeks back the airgates opened straight away, but two different staff members had to check your seatbelts, then that was scrapped and it went back to normal. However now they open the air gates when the station is pretty much cleared and then both members of staff have to do a OK sign before they check the seat belts. To me the ride has been running perfectly well for 14 years, so whats with all the changes now?
 
After my radge earlier, maybe we can post a few sensible things to improve throughput and highlight a few things that simply don't work.

I can only really comment in detail on rides I use to work on or rides I know a fair bit about. The others I can only really give a basic bit of feedback. These are what I think should be happening and my reasons why.

Air
On air, I often find staff standing not doing much or chatting. This is ok, if you are whacking out 48 or so trains an hour, but completely not acceptable if you are getting 40 or less. I also find it annoying when the staff seem to not be able to work things out for themselves. For example, if they can see that there is a 2 in one bay and a 2 in the other bay, why does it take ages for someone to sort it out?

All station staff need to be aware of what the other staff are doing, work as a team and ensure that the bays are full. The station operator should be viewed as a promoted position as they are key in getting high throughputs. They need to push the other staff and ensure the gates are opened quickly, information is passed on as soon as possible and that the ride is dispatched as soon as its clear to do so.

Too many times I see the station operator waiting around for the other staff to do things instead of sorting it out themselves. If row 5 has a recheck and the exit host is busy, whats stopping them from checking row 5 themselves? On the subject of rechecks, why is it necessary for the Operator to shout down the PA? The station operator has lights showing the row that needs to be recheck so he can relay that information without having to use the PA at all. Also its fairly easy to see which harness needs rechecking from the leg flap position or the harness locking pin position, yet they seem to waste time by checking every harness on that row!

The baggage cages should be done as soon as the craft leaves the station meaning it is ready for the next craft that enters. The onload and station operator should start to bay load as soon as the train leaves. In theory, station 2 can run smoothly without a bay loader even on fairly busy days as long as the station staff are on the ball.

Stacking on air should never ever ever ever happen unless something serious is holding the station up. Even then, if its a guest, you should move them to the exit so the ride can be dispatched and then deal with the problem. If a station goes down, as soon as the operator is aware, they should divert trains to the other station and keep running. If its a major issue, they can load alternative stations until the queue on the problematic station is clear.

Air can quite easily get a decent throughput if the staff put the effort in, but recently this is not the case and the management team don't seem to be giving any of the staff the motivation to do so.

Nemesis
More of the same really. Why is it that most of the platform staff don't bother bay loading? Why don't the onload hosts talk to the person doing single riders and tell them which rows have spare seats before the next train comes in? Why don't they look for larger guests and inform them they might be better off and more comfortable sitting in row 4 where the larger seat is? Why is everything left until last minute?

These are just a few of my pet hates at the moment. I almost want to grab some uniform and do it myself at times. The thing is, none of them are that hard or will cost anymore money, but they can have huge impact on throughput.
 
Pure answer to above is training - this year has been heavily involved in customer service, and rarely, if ever, is there any seeming emphasis on throughputs or how to work quicker. If staff aren't trained "correctly", then they won't really know or care to do it.
 
Thing is, why can't they do both? Its not hard to be polite, helpful and caring whilst still getting high throughputs.
 
thefatone said:
Pure answer to above is training - this year has been heavily involved in customer service, and rarely, if ever, is there any seeming emphasis on throughputs or how to work quicker. If staff aren't trained "correctly", then they won't really know or care to do it.
Click to expand...

The irony of that is guests feel customer service better when they queue less. I'd certainly prefer to get on a ride faster then to be asked what my favourite ride is.

Why would the staff member care what my favourite ride is? :p
 
The thing is as well, being asked by 20 or so different staff members "Are you having a good day so far" is actually really annoying. An odd few members of staff yes, but its clear they have been told to ask you and not doing it out of genuine care.

Its much better to keep queues short and maybe pop in a quick bit of good service. A quick "hello" or "good morning" is all it takes to improve customer satisfaction levels. Leave the quieter/slower rides such as skyride, monorail and most of the kids rides to really ramp up guest interaction.
 
I can't say I have noticed better customer service on major coasters this year?

Throughputs generally have been less.

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Indeed I think customer care is worse this year, I had to bite my tongue with one Nemesis host who was incredibly rude on Saturday. And Oblivion staff completely ignored all guests as they went for the record of worst Oblivion throughputs of all time and had a chat about their hair.

Failing on all counts really.
 
Not saying that it's worked, just saying that's been the focus of this year.

Why on earth they'd want to concentrate on customer service, when the vast majority just want a short queuetime with quick loading rides, so that you'd only have a 5 second impression anyway - customer service should be left to retail and smaller rides, those where you can make a difference, and leave the high throughput rides to be achieving high throughputs where you make a difference by increasing guests ride count.

But hey ho.
 
Th13teen had a didn't have a fantastic start yesterday (but better than Rita which opened after lunch, and Spinball which opened before 12). It had a 45 minute queue with throughput figures between 800 and 900 riders per hour for a while, but once we'd got to the station, they'd got it to 1100 riders per hour with three trains operating. That figure remained pretty constant until about 5:50 when the queue fell to 10 minutes and stayed that way until the gates closed.

Not bad, but could have been better to prevent the queue building to the gate so early in the day. It's certainly a lot better than what some of you guys have reported though and I'm glad I avoided those days!
 
My first trip to Towers (which was only 2010) had me hearing the op on Oblivion repeatedly stating over the PA that they were going for a throughput record and were encouraging people to embark/disembark as quick as they can whilst also cheering when they exceeded targets.

How times change.


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Throughputs will inevitably suffer during Scarefest. Firstly, there is a big changeover of staff from the summer period and into September. Students return to university and the park recruit new starters to replace them. Unfortunately the dead days prior to Scarefest do very little to prepare them for the 60min+ queues of Scarefest/Fireworks. Operators and experienced hosts are well aware that throughputs are low and the slow pace of operations is a source of immense frustration! It takes time and experience for a team to consistently hit decent throughputs.

Add in the fact that everyone is working five or six 12 hour shifts in a week and staff will understandably be a little less energetic. The suggestion that the staff are just lazy and feckless is a little harsh I think! There are always a few bad eggs but on the whole ride staff work hard and get very little recognition, from either management, the general public or apparently enthusiasts!
 
Throughput on Oblivion has been at an all time low on two occasions this season for me - During the end of the summer holidays, and in the first week of Scarefest.

It was completely ridiculous how slow they were dispatching trains - So poorly one was in each block right back to the tunnel before the restraints had even been checked. I actually think I waited longer to get off, than I did to get on. It was comically bad, they couldn't have been any slower if they tried.
I did think this might have been intentional, as the queues were reasonably short, sitting at around the merge point all day.
 
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