Return of Reserve N Ride?

[TPJames]

Hi all,

I was just having a look at the thorpe website and I've noticed a feature on it.

https://www.thorpepark.com/tickets-passes/ticket-information/

When you click on tickets the options come up, RESERVE N RIDE, is the last on the list however risk still there. However, when you click on it, it comes up with an error message! My question is mainly aimed at thorpe however it takes a while to do a direct message to them so I was wondering if anyone knew if they had plans to bring back the system?

Many thanks.

[THORPE PARK]

We have not made any firm decisions about next year yet.

[Project LC]

We had around 80% of visitors in the Resort using the system over the weekend actually, and the system was the only way to ride Colossus and SAW - The Ride on Monday and Tuesday.

How many were using it the morning? I'm willing to put money on it that you only got 80% in the afternoon. Also whats the point in only trailing it fully on saw and Colossus if you dont have the rest set up in that way. You may see minor effects but your not going to see the full effects. Also saw has been at 2 hours or above throughout the trail with points on saturday being 3 hours 30 minutes. In what way is that better than before? That could limit the number of coasters you are able to go on to 3 in the space of 9 hours. Also a point which may have been considered but doubt it a lot is if you reserve a ride for 20 minutes and the shortest physical queue in the park is 40 minutes what do you do in that time. Its a theme park where people are to ride rides, they will not go shopping I'm pretty sure they will just wait outside which defeats the entire objective.

[TPJames]

Its simple what is going to happen. A queue will form to get into the queue. This is what happened on slammer last week, a 60minute queue formed behind us when we were waiting for it to reopen after checks. This is what will happen with RNR, people will turn up way before their slots and wait outside meaning a queue will form to get into the rides queue.

 

As the slammer ride team said, the british just typically love queuing for things.

[Project LC]

I know Thorpe will try and deny that but I'm pretty sure that is what is already happening with the trails. Something I would like to know is if Thorpe looked at the spectacular failure of Disney's system, which one ruined the experience and two didn't solve anything. There really is so many things they should have tried before RnR. I guess my days of multiple rides on stealth are over and are instead being replaced with 4 or 5 coasters in a day and being forced to queue for a load of flats I don't want to ride. I am so glad I didn't buy a VIP pass as what a waste of money that would have been. 

[Benin]

I'm 100% sure if you visited any other park in the world which had a ride closed at the start of the day and was testing there would be a queue developing for it... Definitely not just a British trend to queue outside closed rides in the hope it'll open soon...

[Marc]

I know Thorpe will try and deny that but I'm pretty sure that is what is already happening with the trails. Something I would like to know is if Thorpe looked at the spectacular failure of Disney's system, which one ruined the experience and two didn't solve anything. There really is so many things they should have tried before RnR. I guess my days of multiple rides on stealth are over and are instead being replaced with 4 or 5 coasters in a day and being forced to queue for a load of flats I don't want to ride. I am so glad I didn't buy a VIP pass as what a waste of money that would have been. 

 

An average everyday guest would be more than happy with that on a busy summers day though? 

[Project LC]

An average guest which didn't start their day at swarm wouldn't be. Whats the point in making everyone have 4 or 5 when before a lot of people were getting over that. I highly doubt this system will ever solve their problems and I'm certain there are better solutions. One major problem they have is that once people ride swarm they never return, everyday I have been to Thorpe swarm always has short queues after lunch. So effectively you have 1200pph coaster going to waste because of its location. I honestly believe that 80% of the problems related to queuing could be solved by getting the tvs working and showing interesting stuff. Games, music, facts and useful tips. They could stick their own advertisement on it for annual passes or whatever. Getting some tvs installed/working must be a lot cheaper than all this RnR stuff and would improve the experience for guests so they are more likely to return. The simplest ideas are the best ideas. .

[Marc]

An average guest which didn't start their day at swarm wouldn't be. Whats the point in making everyone have 4 or 5 when before a lot of people were getting over that. I highly doubt this system will ever solve their problems and I'm certain there are better solutions. One major problem they have is that once people ride swarm they never return, everyday I have been to Thorpe swarm always has short queues after lunch. So effectively you have 1200pph coaster going to waste because of its location. I honestly believe that 80% of the problems related to queuing could be solved by getting the tvs working and showing interesting stuff. Games, music, facts and useful tips. They could stick their own advertisement on it for annual passes or whatever. Getting some tvs installed/working must be a lot cheaper than all this RnR stuff and would improve the experience for guests so they are more likely to return. The simplest ideas are the best ideas. .

 

Surely it depends what time of year you go - the trials being held in the middle of summer at a time when queues are usually pretty long that would be pretty good. I dont see how a 1200pph ride goes to waste as the RnR system will simply allocate 1200 people per hour to the swarm (Give or take some for fastrack allocations etc).

[Project LC]

I more meant swarm goes to waste on a normal day with or withour RnR. The queue always drops later on in the day by quite a lot which means the queue is no longer holding 1200 people so they go else where making the queues longer for the other coasters. I dont think anyday can be as busy to only get 3-5 coasters done. The only way that could happen is if everyone in the park queued for the coasters at the same time. Which thanks to RnR they now are. Its no longer around 8000 people divided up among the coasters its the full 15000. It makes all of the RnR queues longer than what a physical queue would be and because thorpe are unable to change the laws of time means you cant get as many coasters in. You can tell me what you like but that is a fact.

[JoshC.]

Holovis (who were involved in the pre shows of Wickerman and Walking Dead Ride, and have done rides like immersive tunnels) have also developed a similar style app: http://www.holovis.com/free-social-distancing-app-to-help-destinations-re-open-safely/ There's a webinar where they explain it in detail, though I've yet to watch that.

 

Obviously the idea of virtual queueing is being thrust into prominence once again. And since parks will be operating at a reduced capacity, it does help with the problem of "won't the pathways be rammed?". It doesn't solve the problem of what people will actually do when waiting for their slots, especially since entertainment offerings will be diminished / basically non-existent. 

 

Psychologically, it could very much change how a day at a theme park goes. For the most part, you'll be waiting around in pathways, with very little to do, waiting for your booked slot. Though similar to the concept of waiting in a queue line, you lose the sense of anticipation, the buzz, etc. After all, a good ride experience starts when you start queueing. It also just leads to the issue of people waiting outside the ride's entrance, which defeats the object entirely.

 

Reserve n Ride's long term aim was to stop people waiting in queues so they could other things instead. In this set up, you just can't do that.

 

I believe Walibi Holland's Fastlane system operates on a similar logic (depending on how much you pay, you wait a percentage of the ride's queue time outside the queue - ie virtually - free to do other things, then go on the ride). So it'd be interesting to see how they would operate it on free scale..

 

 

I'm not sure on the worthwhileness of virtual queueing when the parks reopening in response to Covid. Parks should be reducing their capacity anyway, which will inevitably mean that queue times (or, at the very least, the number of people in a queue) will be shorter. If you introduce virtual queueing, you then have the majority of people visiting the park in the pathways, where it's going to be harder to maintain social distancing. Surely it would be better to have people in organised queues, where you can clearly mark social distancing markers, etc, making it easier there.

 

Any cleaning procedures on rides will take time, and increase wait times. But that's counteracted by the fact there's a smaller number of people on park, and clear communication that queues will move slower due to cleaning. 

 

And of course, as has been mentioned in the coronavirus thread, no amount of reduced numbers and social distancing will matter when you're on a fast moving ride. If someone at the front of a train has Covid and coughs, it's likely those droplets will land on riders behind them. Knowing and accepting that, you have to question at what point parks draw a line as to what measures they implement. And I'd say that introducing a tech-heavy, experimental virtual queueing system is crossing the line of "not really worth it".

[Glitch]

Lets just have a fair system and put everyone on a yellow band. Oh wait if we did that we would have long queues up the ride exits and a cattle pen queue at the start of the day to collect the band.

[MattyMoo]

3 hours ago, Glitch said:

Lets just have a fair system and put everyone on a yellow band. Oh wait if we did that we would have long queues up the ride exits and a cattle pen queue at the start of the day to collect the band.

There'll be a seperate app and different virtual queue for that m80 as even being in a virtual queue too long stresses out my kidz.

[Glitch]

1 hour ago, MattyMoo said:

There'll be a seperate app and different virtual queue for that m80 as even being in a virtual queue too long stresses out my kidz.

I'd question; no hate please, but we should really see less yellow band users on park the fist few months after opening, due to lock down and vulnerability measures.

[JoshuaA]

Honestly the poor operations and people who pay to skip the queue offend me more. Especially on rides like DBGT that have a throughput of 20 people per hour..

 

[Mark9]

On 5/13/2020 at 2:49 PM, Glitch said:

I'd question; no hate please, but we should really see less yellow band users on park the fist few months after opening, due to lock down and vulnerability measures.

 

In a country that uses logic and understanding, yes. In this country, no.