The point about extending the length of the shown queue times is very oo-eery. It deters many guests from the ride which is good for those willing to queue but also it reflects badly on the park for inaccurately recording the queue time. We've had people even here say how bad it is to do that. 

RnR works on a rides capacity and how much throughput it is achieving. It will have less allocations on one train.

The queue times are changed if it's on one train. They don't advertise what would be a 30 minute queue for two train Colossus as 30 minutes on one train. Yes it'll be the same point in the queue but they know on one train that point will be longer so they say it's 50 or whatever it is. The staff often have little diagrams telling them how longthe queue is from ccertain points on one or two trsins.

But it really isn't that hard to work out, I still find the best thing to do is factor the things yourself and work out a rough queue time, by the length of how far it goes back, which extension are open, past experiences of around that point and the amount of trains, if it is only on one I find it's between 1.7 and 2.1 times longer so do that and you can have a rough estimate....

Does anyone know if at Thorpe, staff members calculate the queue times or is it calculated by a computer by putting in certain factors and that.

Staff do.

Park managers walk round with iPads and adjust the queue times by physically going into the queue and checking themselves whilst using their own knowledge and estimate the queue time.

Operators also have the power to radio in their estimate of queue times if they havent been changed in a while or are widely out, and they sometimes get their attendants to ask riders how long they've queued for.

If this is the case it creates the idea of maybe they should develop a system that does it for them which in turn would make it more accurate which would then increase guest happiness and so on but it wouldn't happen....

Estimated queues will never be accuate due to so many reasons how close people stand together exit passes/ fast track ect... However that said a turnstyle at the entrance and station would tell the operator how many people are physically in the queue at that point.

That would help, and then you filter the throughput into that and you've got your queue time, instead of a turnstyle though you could have a member of staff with a clicker counter or you could do it through a camera which then a computer program counts the numbers going through... I guess that would solve it, but then you wouldn't be able to take advantage of wrong queue times, such as a 5 minute walk on queue being advertised as 45 because it hasn't been changed....

It would very difficult, perhaps impossible?, for a computer to predict queue times. The maths behind queuing times is quite complicated, and there's too many variables for a computer to do any better than what a human could do I reckon.

As for a remark about queue times being 1.7-2.1 times longer with one train compared to two: IF this is true, then this shows that Thorpe are pretty decent on one train operation; one would expect queue times to be at least twice as long on half the number of trains..

A number of times at WDW we were given a tag at the start of the queue, which we were to hand in before getting on the ride, so they could update their queue times accordingly. Seemed to work well - estimated queue times at the park always seemed to be bang on. 

Maybe if Disney had spent their billions on something other than a band they could have got a working system for perfect queue times. But yeah, let's face it if any company were to create such a sophisticated system it would be Disney. Instead they spend their money on high throughput rides and interactive queues that pass the time. That way a one hour queue doesn't feel anywhere near that long. It also helps in Disney's case that their rides will pretty much achieve the maximum throughput every hour, the Fastpass+ is limited to a certain number so that can be accounted for and disabled/priority guests never affect things that much so it is a lot easier for them to accurately predict a queue time.

It would very difficult, perhaps impossible?, for a computer to predict queue times. The maths behind queuing times is quite complicated, and there's too many variables for a computer to do any better than what a human could do I reckon.

 

So how on earth do you consider R&R a viable proposition, especially with no standby queue? The system is in effect trying to do exactly that, yet in the real world there seems to be an inability to get the queue time remotely correct!

The thing is, it isn't as big of as a problem, because people dint really mind if it is wrong on there because they are not physically in a queue line, giving them the freedom to go on other attractions

..

The thing is, it isn't as big of as a problem, because people dint really mind if it is wrong on there because they are not physically in a queue line, giving them the freedom to go on other attractions

..

?

 

I don't understand? If they get it wrong there'll either be a big real queue after your virtual wait or the ride will be going round empty. Either way I think people will very much mind! 

People who used RnR were complaining at Stealth yesterday. They waited the Reserve and ride queue time and then faced a queue of 40 - 50 others waiting for Reserve n Ride (The set of stairs on the right/old SQR queue) As half the fastrack queue was full (probably 100 people) and the normal queue was there, plus the ride on one train it meant very few people from the three queues getting onto the loading area. Simply doesn't work having three types of queue on one train operation.

Nice to see all the problems RnR had at the start have since been resolved, oh wait. Same old problems same old view point on it. 

I don't understand how it is still going as a "trial". I don't think I've ever known a trial to last three years!!!! Either always use it or scrap it for good! I know which will get my vote!

The main decisive point with RnR will probably be fright nights but even if it fails I cant see it being scrapped. The thing is for fright nights RnR isn't completely necessary for the big coasters because they all seem to be quiet quiet after 4-5ish but then I guess it gives them another scenario to test....

So how on earth do you consider R&R a viable proposition, especially with no standby queue? The system is in effect trying to do exactly that, yet in the real world there seems to be an inability to get the queue time remotely correct!

 

The way RnR works I believe is that it has an allocated number of people it can deal with each hour.  When people book a slot in the virtual queue, it boosts the virtual wait up accordingly.  After your virtual wait is up, you should be on the ride within 15 minutes (which I don't think is advertised specifically, but is more what is expected of the system by the park).

 

The virtual wait is easy to calculate - it's just a case of the park setting the numbers.  For example, If an RnR queue is set up to cope with 500pph, and there's 250 people currently virtual waiting, the 251st person to join the virtual queue would have to wait 30 minutes before joining the queue.  The 15 minute 'real wait' time is there to deal with any problems that arise during the virtual wait - say a small breakdown, a higher influx of Fastrack / Ride Access Pass users, etc.

 

With a real queue (without RnR), it becomes a lot more complicated.  Whilst they could do the simple thing of just calculating the number of people in the queue and seeing how that matches to the throughput, they can't control things like small breakdowns, the number of Ride Access Pass users and so forth.  There's also the case of the number of people joining a queue at a specific time, which will vary all the time (depending on time of day, length of queue already, and so forth) - so it's another thing they can't predict or calculate accurately.  Since they can't predict all these things, it makes it more difficult to create a computerised way of calculating the queue time any more accurately than getting a human person to do it.

 

That I think is the brilliant thing about how RnR should work - it gives the park the opportunity to have accurate queue times for guests whilst bypassing all the complications.  Chucking in a standby queue makes life more difficult in my opinion, as you've got a real queue with difficult-to-estimate queue times, plus possibly disgruntled guests, which makes it hard of staff.   

 

 

People who used RnR were complaining at Stealth yesterday. They waited the Reserve and ride queue time and then faced a queue of 40 - 50 others waiting for Reserve n Ride (The set of stairs on the right/old SQR queue) As half the fastrack queue was full (probably 100 people) and the normal queue was there, plus the ride on one train it meant very few people from the three queues getting onto the loading area. Simply doesn't work having three types of queue on one train operation.

Nice to see all the problems RnR had at the start have since been resolved, oh wait. Same old problems same old view point on it. 

 

As someone who would sort of like to see RnR be successful in the long run, this is such a frustrating thing to see!  Too much going on at once, with too many complications and it makes RnR look like the bad guy.  Quite possibly there was over-allocation on the RnR system, but there's also questions of is that too many Fastrack users and why is Stealth on 1 train in August anyway...

 

LC raises a fair point though - this is a problem which should have been solved by now.  

 

 

The main decisive point with RnR will probably be fright nights but even if it fails I cant see it being scrapped. The thing is for fright nights RnR isn't completely necessary for the big coasters because they all seem to be quiet quiet after 4-5ish but then I guess it gives them another scenario to test....

 

Last season, RnR was tested on the mazes during Fright Nights and not the coasters.  Will be interesting to see if that's how they do it this time round, or whether they do it on the coasters or both.  Last season's trial during FN wasn't exactly great though given it unfortunately happened whilst the park was at it's busiest it had been for quite a long time. 

As someone who would sort of like to see RnR be successful in the long run, this is such a frustrating thing to see!  Too much going on at once, with too many complications and it makes RnR look like the bad guy.  Quite possibly there was over-allocation on the RnR system, but there's also questions of is that too many Fastrack users and why is Stealth on 1 train in August anyway...

Of course I would like to see it successful too. But three years and everytime I've been it has been chaos I am going to be negative about it. I completely agree about the other points of one train operation and fastrack overload. Simply too much to cope with having three types of queue on poor capacity.

 

I still remember it being stated during construction updates Stealth being given three trains so that it would never run less than the two it can run!

I still remember it being stated during construction updates Stealth being given three trains so that it would never run less than the two it can run!

 

In previous years though they have only had 2 trains available as they did winter maintenance throughout the year on the other, so they would only have to strip down 1 train during winter. 

This year however with the February opening I know they were planning on having all 3 trains available this year so either 2 trains are currently broken, or they didn't stick to that plan and one of the trains are being stripped down.

In previous years though they have only had 2 trains available as they did winter maintenance throughout the year on the other, so they would only have to strip down 1 train during winter. 

This year however with the February opening I know they were planning on having all 3 trains available this year so either 2 trains are currently broken, or they didn't stick to that plan and one of the trains are being stripped down.

 

When I went last week Train 1&3 were running and train 2 is in pieces in the workshop being stripped down. So it seems as if the other train has broke or its something up with the launch system preventing it running 2 trains!

About throughputs. On nearly every ride you'll see an operator, someone sitting in the control box or an attendent with a clicker (unless there isn't one to click).  They do count throughputs, infact on Colossus they had competitions (not sure if they still do) to see who'd get the highest over a certain duration of time and the winner would win something like donuts. 

Operators all work differently, in example if an operator knows that their team isn't the quickest they might push the queue time up a little in preperation for the lower throughputs. Managers who examine queue lines can't see this however, so it's all very dependent upon who does what.

As said, exit and fast track entrances also effect the queue time and can add crucial seconds to loading times. It becomes very messy and it's near hopeless to try and sort out even more unless you scrap the whole lot and have one queue line, and one queue line only. Having said that the attendents do a brilliant job at what they do and they tend to be quite quick once they get the hang of it.

They still do, in the control room next to the world record and various images of Colossus on each of its inversions, there is a leaderboard and the record is like 1600 or 1800 if I remember and read it rightly....