Indiana Beach has new scanners

[kbrown]

I find it irritating that every ride at the park now has scanners. Every person has to scan their wrist band before they get onto a ride. This takes very long and is tedious work for it's customers who just want to get on the ride. Apparently, the company wants to know exactly how many people are riding the rides, what time, which rides are popular, every statistic imaginable. The only thing I see it doing is making customers mad that they have to drop their wrists under a scanner like a robot everytime they want to get on a ride. The new computers they have in the ticket booths are horrible too. You have to push like 13 buttons just to make one ticket sale.

[BP317]

Apparently, the company wants to know exactly how many people are riding the rides, what time, which rides are popular, every statistic imaginable.

Dont know if youve seen them but at Six Flags they have these things called turnstiles. It shows them how many people are riding what attractions at what times and what the throughput is. Theyre fascinating devices and you can find more about the design here:
http://www.turnstiles.com/Products.php
They use this information to plan operational budgets. Industrial engineers take in all of this information in the entire spectrum and collect percise data and make it into plans on how to operate the park.

[FParker185]

Scanners at IB are sort of a pain, though not to bad. Anyone who's been to Mall of America knows about them, it's the same system. The main thing I hear about them though is that the system goes down often, so then people get free rides, and if you have a card, when the system is down you cant use your card in the arcade or food stands, which presents a huge problem.

I think the parks been had with whoever sold them this system. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

[monsterfan99]

if the system works, it is a dream deal for the park depending on how much data is put in the cards. They would know every demographic and how to please their needs with new rides and such. Problem is, it is annoying to the consumer and they don't load any info on the cards.

I remember at Nick Universe this year on their Sally dark ride. They had 1 person running the ride on the floor. Which meant he had to check the bands AND load the ride at the same time. Caused massive delays and basically took around 20 minutes to go through a 50 person line.

[Ilovthevu']

Apparently, the company wants to know exactly how many people are riding the rides, what time, which rides are popular, every statistic imaginable.

Dont know if youve seen them but at Six Flags they have these things called turnstiles. It shows them how many people are riding what attractions at what times and what the throughput is. Theyre fascinating devices and you can find more about the design here:
http://www.turnstiles.com/Products.php
They use this information to plan operational budgets. Industrial engineers take in all of this information in the entire spectrum and collect percise data and make it into plans on how to operate the park.

I think more park presidents walking around the park is a better solution, riding the rides, and determining what are the rides that people don't care for. Yes, you can use the turnstyles but they don't tell you about the people in line, and their waiting times. You can have Iron Wolf have a 10 minute line the whole day while another ride like Superman has a hour most of the day, but Iron Wolf always had a 10 minute line. Can you really tell which one is more popular based on those turnstyles?

Capacities, and people liking certain rides are two different things. Again, Deja Vu got 440 per hour, and they probably compare that to a ride like Hometown Fun Machine so they figure why should they have that ride? Were they measuring the line for Deja Vu vs Hometown Fun Machine, or just worrying about the numbers? With those numbers without looking, you might say hey that roller coaster gets as much as a flat ride, what's the point of keeping it? It's not that the fact that most of the flats are usually walk-ons except for the really bad times of the year while Deja Vu could be a hour and a half.

Do they see the pathetic lines for something like King Chaos, or do they see hey this ride gets almost 40 people every ride with no wait?

[Jerrykoala2112]

Whats the whining? They have this at Mall of America, it works fine.

[rct2wizard360]

I think more park presidents walking around the park is a better solution, riding the rides, and determining what are the rides that people don't care for. Yes, you can use the turnstyles but they don't tell you about the people in line, and their waiting times. You can have Iron Wolf have a 10 minute line the whole day while another ride like Superman has a hour most of the day, but Iron Wolf always had a 10 minute line. Can you really tell which one is more popular based on those turnstyles?

Capacities, and people liking certain rides are two different things. Again, Deja Vu got 440 per hour, and they probably compare that to a ride like Hometown Fun Machine so they figure why should they have that ride? Were they measuring the line for Deja Vu vs Hometown Fun Machine, or just worrying about the numbers? With those numbers without looking, you might say hey that roller coaster gets as much as a flat ride, what's the point of keeping it? It's not that the fact that most of the flats are usually walk-ons except for the really bad times of the year while Deja Vu could be a hour and a half.

Do they see the pathetic lines for something like King Chaos, or do they see hey this ride gets almost 40 people every ride with no wait?

You actually can tell whats more popular based on those turn styles.
Listen.

TDK opens last year, and it's flooded with people everyday. Those turn styles are gonna show some good numbers, but it's un-fair to use those numbers in determining how popular the ride really is, since it just opened and it has an unfair advantage.

Go a few months in, or even this season, and thats when those real numbers will start to show.
Don't leads have to record those numbers every so often too?
If that's the case, then those "constant flow" lines you speak of like Iron Wolf, are gonna show.
The line length doesn't really matter. If you waited two hours for Deja Vu, the capacity would be 440. If you waited FOUR hours for Deja Vu, the capacity would STILL be 440, therefore showing that the ride was hitting capacity for two hours, showing that its pretty damn popular.

I mean you could have Deja Vu hitting 440 in an hour, and Raging Bull hitting 440 in an hour, and Deja Vu would be the more popular one. Because 440 for Raging Bull is low compared to what it should be hitting an hour, therefore it's "less popular."

So we go back to your statement about King Chaos now.
If it's a full load each cycle, with no wait, those numbers will still show. As it will essentially still be hitting capacity.

Park Presidents see the park more than you think, you're just too busy crying in a corner about Deja Vu to notice.

[ttd rox]

Whats the whining? They have this at Mall of America, it works fine.

I suppose it's not bad. As long as more than one or two people are working the whole ride, it's good.

[BP317]

I think more park presidents walking around the park is a better solution, riding the rides, and determining what are the rides that people don't care for. Yes, you can use the turnstyles but they don't tell you about the people in line, and their waiting times. You can have Iron Wolf have a 10 minute line the whole day while another ride like Superman has a hour most of the day, but Iron Wolf always had a 10 minute line. Can you really tell which one is more popular based on those turnstyles?

It depends on how good the park is at it. I dont know if SFGAm has any onsite industrial engineers but the ones ive talked to at DLR know their stuff, way more than any park president would.

[RagingBullFan]

The only engineers that SFGAm has on site are Controls Engineers; I do not know if they have any industrial engineers that do time studies or if that work is farmed out.

[kbrown]

Whats the whining? They have this at Mall of America, it works fine.

I suppose it's not bad. As long as more than one or two people are working the whole ride, it's good.

They would be lucky to have two people working any ride at the park. In fact, they frequently close rides and say they are down for maintenance when in fact they are too cheap to pay money to an employee to run the ride. They frequently have a lot of rides closed on slower days that piss off their customers and then they wonder why they don't come back to the park. It's not like minimum wage is going to hurt them much paying an employee to run a ride. The only rides they ever have two workers on are the roller coasters because they have to push two buttons which requires two people to run the ride. If it wasn't such a law, they would probably only have one person running the coasters too. Back in the 90s when the Spackman's owned the park they would have at least 3 or 4 people on each roller coaster and at least two people on each ride for the most part. They would even have 4 people running the water ride. I think that's one of the main complaints that is going on. A few more people had to be escorted out of the park for being fired for dumb reasons again. A couple ex-Six Flags HR people are ruining the park and it's employee base very quickly. They will soon be force to hire people who won't give a crap about the park for minimum wage (people who would not only care less about the customers).

[kbrown]

I think more park presidents walking around the park is a better solution, riding the rides, and determining what are the rides that people don't care for. Yes, you can use the turnstyles but they don't tell you about the people in line, and their waiting times. You can have Iron Wolf have a 10 minute line the whole day while another ride like Superman has a hour most of the day, but Iron Wolf always had a 10 minute line. Can you really tell which one is more popular based on those turnstyles?

Capacities, and people liking certain rides are two different things. Again, Deja Vu got 440 per hour, and they probably compare that to a ride like Hometown Fun Machine so they figure why should they have that ride? Were they measuring the line for Deja Vu vs Hometown Fun Machine, or just worrying about the numbers? With those numbers without looking, you might say hey that roller coaster gets as much as a flat ride, what's the point of keeping it? It's not that the fact that most of the flats are usually walk-ons except for the really bad times of the year while Deja Vu could be a hour and a half.

Do they see the pathetic lines for something like King Chaos, or do they see hey this ride gets almost 40 people every ride with no wait?

You actually can tell whats more popular based on those turn styles.
Listen.

TDK opens last year, and it's flooded with people everyday. Those turn styles are gonna show some good numbers, but it's un-fair to use those numbers in determining how popular the ride really is, since it just opened and it has an unfair advantage.

Go a few months in, or even this season, and thats when those real numbers will start to show.
Don't leads have to record those numbers every so often too?
If that's the case, then those "constant flow" lines you speak of like Iron Wolf, are gonna show.
The line length doesn't really matter. If you waited two hours for Deja Vu, the capacity would be 440. If you waited FOUR hours for Deja Vu, the capacity would STILL be 440, therefore showing that the ride was hitting capacity for two hours, showing that its pretty damn popular.

I mean you could have Deja Vu hitting 440 in an hour, and Raging Bull hitting 440 in an hour, and Deja Vu would be the more popular one. Because 440 for Raging Bull is low compared to what it should be hitting an hour, therefore it's "less popular."

So we go back to your statement about King Chaos now.
If it's a full load each cycle, with no wait, those numbers will still show. As it will essentially still be hitting capacity.

Park Presidents see the park more than you think, you're just too busy crying in a corner about Deja Vu to notice.

That's also another problem. The people who usually view these statistics are the same people who sit in the office all day and don't see the true outlook on what is popular and what isn't, etc. They are blinded by their own eyes. The people who actually run the rides all the time are the people who know exactly how popular the ride is and during what times of the day they are more busy and things like that. The turnstiles and scanners are more of a hassle than anything else. I can see turnstiles at the entrance of the park, but on rides?? I guess the system works if you are so slow and you want to make the park look busier than it really is, but other than that it's nothing but a burden to not only it's customers but the expense and time it requires to mess with the system to find such little information that the employees could tell you anyways.

[kbrown]

You would think that instead of spending thousands of dollars for scanners at the rides, that they would pay their employees better. Better paid employees = happier workers = friendlier to customers. I love how companies are more worried about stupid things than they are about it's workforce. That's why they destroy their reputation and now IB has a reputation for being a horribly run park and not many people are going to the park when they can go to Holiday World and get free drinks all day and enjoy the #1 water park in the world.