Grouper?

[JimPanky]

Going to the park I see way too many empty seats on every train. I really think the park should use groupers and single rider lines. Full trains means shorter waits. Do you guys think sfga should have groupers?

[UWW-10]

They do tend to have the grouper position staffed during the busier times of summer. The Lo-Q people will sometimes do this at rides where the integration point is visible into the station load areas. While it isn't necessarily "grouping", they'll hold people back so that there is some order in the station.

Not that I'm for or against the following statement...but it's a money/staffing issue as well for the park to give the hours/money out for that extra person and position.

[Ilovthevu']

I don't like groupers. I am very picky on certain rides where I sit, and they put you where they want you to go. A ride can be great to dismal to uncomfortable depending on the seat. What gets me a little mad though is that sometimes their are flash pass people that do not send enough regular people into the station, and than you have empty ROWS because their aren't enough people in the station.

Last year for Batman, they were doing that a bunch of times, and than they finally got told by someone to send more. Granted, Batman is a harder ride to keep track of people in station, but yet what the flash pass should be doing is watching when a train goes out, and guestimating 40 people to go through the line. I know the train is usually 32 people (Now, it's up to 28 people), but they are guessing so it's better to send a little bit more. Plus, for Batman, you have people that are going to wait for front line (Again, when the front row line reopens again in middle of July)

[Goku1910]

^I agree and disagree.....Groupers do help, but it's a small difference. Groupers normally try to find people who want to sit right away, they don't force you to sit somewhere you don't want to. Only Disney does that and I hate it....I worked at SFGAm and at Batman I would try my best to group two and two together. Doesn't always work when everyone clogs up the entrance way and no ope realizes the station is empty because of front row.

Groupers are only as efficient when the GP is actually listening to them....which is NEVER.

[PfightingPolish]

Groupers are only as efficient when the GP is actually listening to them....which is NEVER.

Therein lies the rub.

Really, if the GP were smart, they'd either see a line with two or three spots open and fill in accordingly, or someone who gets in a line with that many empty spots behind them would signal, "Hey, room for two for Row Three," and people would adjust accordingly. But if that was routinely happening, we wouldn't even have this discussion, much less people not listening to the grouper.

It's almost a political question: Would you rather let people be stupid, knowing stupid results will happen (no grouper), or would you rather institute a costly solution that might produce somewhat less stupid results but will sometimes work against you personally and might still sometimes fail due to both people in general and the person in charge of the solution being stupid, too (grouper)?

This is why I'm politically a moderate and generally a misanthrope.

[JimPanky]

lol. Yeah the big problem is stupid people. GP just thinks about the exact seat they wana sit in and how they "think" they are going to make only their wait shorter. Waits would be shorter if people were smart.

And in general not listening to sfga team members will always make wait times longer.

[Ilovthevu']

How about they start running 2 trains on all coasters at start time? Today, Sunday they had Whizzer, and Superman at start time with 1 train, but yet management thought it was a great idea in 55 degree weather to not only have the waterpark open, but 3 water rides (Loggers Run, Buccaneer Battle & Roaring Rapids). What a bunch of dummies. I don't understand what is happening to SFGAm. Doing stupid stuff like that, someone should be fired already.

You can be for groupers, but really 4 coasters, the park is not even using all the trains they have such as Whizzer, Demon, Dark Knight, and Raging Bull. I don't know if they use both sides of American Eagle, but when they are only running one side, that's the park reducing capacity for the ride. When you are waiting 1hr for Raging Bull, tell the park that you would like to see another train on Raging Bull. With the way this weather is, I really think they should be focusing more on the ride side (by adding more trains to each ride) than the waterpark because they aren't going to get many people. The warmest I see for a week in Gurnee is 72 as the high, and that's next Sunday. With that weather, the waterpark is very, very empty. It might not be 10 people empty, but it's quite empty.

[DejaVu2001]

This is why I hardly ever ride Viper anymore. SFGAm used to have a grouper at Viper just about every day because Viper NEEDS to have a grouper or the station becomes the total cluster___ seen here. Sometime in the middle of last year, they decided for some reason to make the totally useless 3rd platform position mandatory and instead of staffing Viper for 4 employees, they just cut grouper entirely

[Ilovthevu']

^I haven't ridden Viper recently, but I thought they had a Flash Pass person stop the line before (Not really a grouper, but a stopper of the line) like they do on so many rides. Though, to me they don't even need a stopper because what they should have done a LONG time ago is put in lines in the station that go back and forth from left to right just like they should have done for Deja Vu which they never did. The station is too big for all these people to pile in.

[DejaVu2001]

^ The Flash Pass person does stop people, but they're too far back to actually see the station, so this still happens.

[BURTONxBLUNT]

Groupers arnt to bad but when you say you wanna sit in a certain spot they make you wait a little and hold up the line(depending on person) so far this year I saw one in viper at Batman thats it.....
if the GP would think where to go before they get into the station and say excuse me and not be shy the line would move. But you have people who stand at the station waiting for the people to move before they go to where they want to!

[PfightingPolish]

This is why I hardly ever ride Viper anymore.

Now this is interesting, because Viper isn't the ride I have a problem with. I very rarely see a car go completely empty in Viper and, with two-across seating, if one seat is empty, eh, so be it. If anything, the craziness in Viper's station allows those of us who are a little sneakier to use it to our advantage and ride sooner.

I get more frustrated on the four-across coasters (not X-Flight because it's really two-across to a side, but Bull, Batman and Superman) where I see rows depart with one or two people in them because a group of four wants to ride together next. It's usually just me and my girlfriend when we're at the park and we're not tremendously picky about seats. We'd love to cut a few minutes off our wait and move into one of those slots where there are two or three empties. But, again, people don't think, which is where my issue lies.

Again, misanthrope. When asked my opinions of people in general, I occasionally point them to this website: http://vhemt.org/. Seems like a worthwhile solution.

[JimPanky]

I agree they should use more trains when they can too.


Granted all of this does come down to $ too. sfga offers alot of great rides at a low price so they have to use some cost cutting measures to keep their entry and season pass rates low.

Mod Note: Please update your post if a new post hasn't been posted or a reasonable amount of time hasn't elapsed yet.

[Ilovthevu']

^ The Flash Pass person does stop people, but they're too far back to actually see the station, so this still happens.

I think part of this problem stems from poorly trained workers. For Batman the Ride, and The Dark Knight, a bunch of times the Flash Pass person will actually walk a little bit, and see how many people are really in line, and come back. Really, that Flash Pass person is doing a bad job for Viper because their job is to make it so that the Flash Pass customers are not waiting a long time at all (1 or 2 trains only for Viper). There were 2 poorly trained workers on Batman at night - Sunday June 2nd that didn't even know that if there is no one in the row, that you could reride again. They sent a train out with 5 people on it only, and wouldn't let me reride. Of course, they were newbies with orange tags. What's so bad about an amusement park is that you could have 50 employees that do everything right, but than 1 employee could not know what they are doing, and just ruin your day.

For another thing, the poorly trained orange tagged workers on Batman didn't even mention to people in line that the ride is not operating, and they just left all the people on the train inside the station for 15 minutes. I think what was happening is that they were retrieving an item, but they didn't even have the spiel about this ride is not operating. We encourage you to go to another line... If the ride is not working, you release the people off of the train. Now, if someone is going to say, but you can't because the circuitry is not working inside the station, than you do it manually!

[DejaVu2001]

Time to break down the name tags again.

Yellow background = 15 year old employee (You will never see these in the Rides Department)
Orange background = 16 or 17 year old employee
White background = 18+ year old employee

Black lettering = Team Member
Red lettering = Lead
Blue lettering = Supervisor

Silver background with black lettering = Full-Time Supervisor

There are no "newbie" name tags.

[Goku1910]

I don't consider Viper's extra position a grouper....That's more like "Okay, the station's emptying out so let people flood in and then stop."

To me, a grouper is someone who actually assigns seating.....Viper almost never did that, and when they did ask me to go to a particular row, I ignored them and went the front as I always do.