What is the Capacity of Each Coaster’s Full Que?

[SonofBaconator]

Is there an official capacity number out there for the total capacity for full coaster ques at KI? For example, how many people can Diamondback’s que hold with all the switchbacks open? The Beast? Mystic? I feel like that number is out there somewhere, or maybe former ride ops know, so I’m curious to find it out!

[Stoan]

I know the idea I've heard is that each switchback is supposedly an estimated amount of time, which is effectively an amount of people, so there has to be a number

[silver2005]

I imagine you could ballpark it by knowing the wait times from certain spots given what parts of a certain queue are in use and doing a bit of calculations regarding the capacity (though you have to subtract the Fast Lane capacity on those affected rides). 

[SonofBaconator]

10 hours ago, silver2005 said:

I imagine you could ballpark it by knowing the wait times from certain spots given what parts of a certain queue are in use and doing a bit of calculations regarding the capacity (though you have to subtract the Fast Lane capacity on those affected rides). 

I asked AI to break it down mathematically and this is what I was told:

”When we estimate the capacity of a roller coaster’s queue, we’re really connecting a few pieces together — some we know, and some we have to assume. The first piece is the ride’s theoretical throughput, which we’ll call RPH (riders per hour). That’s usually given by the ride manufacturer or operations team. Next, we look at the time it takes to walk through the entire queue when every switchback is open, which we’ll call QWT. We don’t actually know the total path length of the queue, but we can figure it out by multiplying QWT by an assumed average walking speed, W. That gives us the queue length, QL = W × QWT. From there, we don’t really know how much space each person will take while standing in line, so we use an estimated spacing value, S, which might be around three feet per guest in a tightly packed switchback. Dividing the total queue length by that spacing gives us the maximum number of people the queue can hold, Qcap = QL ÷ S. Finally, to translate that into a wait time, we divide that capacity by the ride’s throughput and multiply by 60 to put it into minutes: Qtime = (Qcap ÷ RPH) × 60. The parts we don’t know exactly — the true walking speed and the exact spacing per person — are assumptions we have to make, but they let us model the queue’s capacity in a reasonable way.”

[disco2000]

How long it takes to get thru the queue is different than the capacity (how many people) can be in the queue at one time.

And then of course Fast Lane throws an additional variable into the mix, along with if the ride has storage, how accommodating the seats are to different sized riders, number of associates on the floor, etc.

A full FL queue will impact the regular line wait much more than a no wait FL.

But back to the original question, most queues are designed for an average of 1 person per 1.5 feet, but that can vary too by group.  Take any queue with steps.  Sometimes you may see 1 person per step, and sometimes 3 people in the same group will stand on the same step.  So if you are looking for something to do, google map the distances of a queue to figure it out LOL.

[Losantiville Mining Co.]

It seems that the Boo Blasters (soon to again be Phantom Theater) queue holds about 1 hour's worth of guests, as evidenced by my experience waiting in there tonight. I'd suspect that factoring in the rest of the Fast Lane queue as well as any ride stoppages could add another 15-30 minutes to that.