Fright Lane issue, and other thoughts

[MagnumFan]

Magnum,

Did you by chance stop at guest services on your way out and tell them about your experience while waiting in line for the train the first time? I hope you did because if that was indeed the case, it sounds like the train crew needs to be talked to about how they are letting the fright lane guests onto the ride.

Sadly, no. It was 1:45AM by the time we got done with Tombstone. Plus, the fact that I have had discussions with management at different levels of more than one Cedar Fair park in the past, with no resolution, or even acknowledgment of the problem, at any point. Waste of time.

In another thread, someone mentioned the Fast Lane wait for Beast on Saturday to be 1/2 hour. This validates my point, they are selling way too many of these things. Look at the wording of how these passes are advertised. "...front of the line..." is used in multiple places. What does this really mean, then? If I paid for Fast Lane and had to wait 1/2 hour, I'd be upset. Either it's front of the line, or it's not. If the actual reality of it is "80% quicker than the regular line", then advertise it as such.

I agree with other posters that part of the problem is the employees managing the ques. I know this was a big part of the problem I saw on Beast at night. The guy up in the station seemed very confused on whether he should be letting Fast Lane people in, or regular people.

In short, I reiterate my earlier statement, they sold WAY too many on Saturday. In my simple mind, the correct number to sell would be where there is almost never a backlog of people waiting IN the Fast Lane que, while at the same time not affecting regular patron's ability to visit each attraction. Either the number of passes needs to be more limited, or the price raised substantially. Either way, it is most certainly an art to achieve this, and a moving target from one day to the next.

[bkroz]

Once upon a time, if you wanted to ride a ride, you paid. If you wanted to ride again, you paid again. You could not pick your seat. Lines were seldom long. Parks knew what rides paid for themselves and which did not. Even for company picnics, most of the time the rides required tickets.

Six Flags still runs their mazes this way.

Then came Pay One Price. Believe it or not, parks did this to make more money, as in the old days non-riders paid little to nothing.

Now, many attractions are upcharges, pay to not wait is becoming common. Will the day come when pay per ride is again the norm?

Nope because you buy a ticket, and all the rides and attractions are 'free'. Once something is free, people won't see a reason to pay for it again because it was previously 'free' haha.

His point was that, one at a time, rides and attractions are becoming not free with the one-price admission. Xtreme Skyflier, Slingshot, Thunder Alley, Dinosaurs Alive, Dinosaurs Alive 3D!, Trick-or-Treating, Pumpkin-making, Fast Lane, Fright Lane, to name a few... At Six Flags, their Fright Fest still works that way - each house requires an individual ticket. The benefit is that unpopular attractions that are not "pulling their weight" are removed. Consider if Kings Island had such a system. Would people buy tickets to ride The Crypt as an individual attraction? Probably not. That would clearly identify it as an unpopular experience, and soon its operating cost would rise above its income. As it is, rides that are unpopular simply get dragged along with the rest of the park.

It would seem people are paying for trick-or-treating with the dinosaurs this year, despite the fact that most of those people got it for free last year, and most probably saw the dinosaur display already this season. Apparently people are paying for the 3-D movies, too... If they weren't, the price would've been lowered by now, right?

I don't think major parks will go back to a pay-per-ride system in my lifetime, but I think there will continue to be a focus on the "VIP" experience, with the everyday park-goer dividing into two distinct tiers. Good or bad, people who have more get more. If you have a lot, you can get a Platinum Pass. If you have quite a bit, you can get a season pass. If you have enough, you can get a ticket. If you don't have enough for that, you're S.O.L., and that's how this economy works. It's not "fair," and no one ever claimed it to be. When it comes to front-of-the-line passes and up-charge experiences, I think they'll keep coming (hopefully balanced out with "included" attractions). When I'm at my home park, they bother me; when I travel, I utilize them.

Just because you buy a house doesn't mean you get water, electricity, garbage removal, sewers, and gas for free.

[flightoffear1996]

I would personally rather see a queue bot system. You can your bot and it tells you to come back at such and such time.

[MagnumFan]

I would personally rather see a queue bot system. You can your bot and it tells you to come back at such and such time.

While I do like Disney's Fast Pass system, I don't think Cedar Fair has the ability to successfully implement one.

This requires staffing. That alone is a red flag. I don't like to have to plan my day around being at a certain place at a certain time... ie, we don't have time to ride another ride right now, because we have to be back to Diamondback in 35 minutes. Disney makes up for this through nearly flawless execution of # of passes, displaying CORRECT wait times (using again MORE staff to continue to monitor/adjust as needed). I'm not optimistic that CF can replicate this experience.

[bkroz]

Not only that. The price of Disney's system is integrated into a daily ticket. It costs $85.00 for a day at Disney. At least a portion of that goes into the installation, maintenance, staffing, and material stock of those machines, time displays, passes, computer systems, etc. If such a system were installed at Kings Island, the price of a daily ticket / pass would need to rise to meet the additional cost of implementing the system. Perhaps the $10, $15, or $20 more expensive ticket would be worth it on Saturdays in July or October, but probably 84% of the days Kings Island is open, such a system would not even be utilized. That wouldn't matter: the price of a ticket would still need to be high to keep the machines running, the lines staffed, etc.

The Q-bot system has advantages and disadvantages. It has the illusion of being confusing, and thus is an immediate turn-off to some guests. At Six Flags at least, there's a lengthy procedure to get the Flash Pass, including watching an introductory video on how to use it. Even that system requires a very large financial investment for the park - those little robots aren't cheap, as evidenced by the fact that they keep your photo ID for collateral, and if the device isn't returned, you get charged something like $250.00 to buy a replacement. And talk about tiered visitors, there's literally a Gold Flash Pass that bypasses the other Flash Pass users, and a Platinum Flash Pass that bypasses the Gold Flash Pass users who bypassed the Flash Pass users. And there's been a few times when I've noticed wait times greatly exaggerated to push the sale of Flash Pass... That's no coincidence.

By far the cheapest system I can think of for the parks is ones like our Fast Lane or Busch / SeaWorld's QuickQueue, which uses inexpensive wristbands and a few laminated signs pointing up exit ways. Small expense, big income.

[The Interpreter]

QBots are provided under contract by an outside vendor. There is no outlay by the parks per se. Rather, the vendor provides the service and retains a portion of the revenue as its compensation. The portion provided to the park is incremental revenue. The QBot people know their product and provide a turnkey, patented operation to the client parks.

Some parks believe, rightly or wrongly, they can deliver such a service inhouse and not give up a percentage of the revenue.

Terp, not currently associated with the QBot people, nor has he been employed by or an agent for them in the past....

[Dalefan]

Magnum,

Did you by chance stop at guest services on your way out and tell them about your experience while waiting in line for the train the first time? I hope you did because if that was indeed the case, it sounds like the train crew needs to be talked to about how they are letting the fright lane guests onto the ride.

Sadly, no. It was 1:45AM by the time we got done with Tombstone. Plus, the fact that I have had discussions with management at different levels of more than one Cedar Fair park in the past, with no resolution, or even acknowledgment of the problem, at any point. Waste of time.

In another thread, someone mentioned the Fast Lane wait for Beast on Saturday to be 1/2 hour. This validates my point, they are selling way too many of these things. Look at the wording of how these passes are advertised. "...front of the line..." is used in multiple places. What does this really mean, then? If I paid for Fast Lane and had to wait 1/2 hour, I'd be upset. Either it's front of the line, or it's not. If the actual reality of it is "80% quicker than the regular line", then advertise it as such.

I agree with other posters that part of the problem is the employees managing the ques. I know this was a big part of the problem I saw on Beast at night. The guy up in the station seemed very confused on whether he should be letting Fast Lane people in, or regular people.

In short, I reiterate my earlier statement, they sold WAY too many on Saturday. In my simple mind, the correct number to sell would be where there is almost never a backlog of people waiting IN the Fast Lane que, while at the same time not affecting regular patron's ability to visit each attraction. Either the number of passes needs to be more limited, or the price raised substantially. Either way, it is most certainly an art to achieve this, and a moving target from one day to the next.

You can't just give up and not try and do something about a problem. That won't solve it. Going to the park via calling them or emailing them will at least get the ball rolling.

[MrB]

MagnumFan,

For most of the night, Tombstone was loading about 10-20% of each train (assuming a full train) for Fright Lane. However, there was a point were the trains had to stop running for about 30 min for something outside of the parks control. At this point, the Fright Lane really started to back and it never seemed to recover until a few hours later. So while it seems that on Tombstone that there were too many Fright Lane guests, it only appeared that way due to the delay.

I suggest going back and giving Tombstone another try if you come back to the park (and hopefully there wont be any delays). I would guess that right around midnight would be a good time as that is when the line starts to go down, the scare actors should all still be there and you should have time to still hit up another house if it isn't too busy that night.