Capacity/Wait Times

[JimPanky]

How do you think SFGAm is at maximizing capacity and minimizing wait times?
I would like to see fuller trains that wait less time to be sent.
Spend more effort finding operating procedures that are more efficient to fill trains and get them out quicker.
You could use groupers and single rider lines.
You could update the flash past system to be more efficient.

I will say I have seen a spectrum of ride op ability. Some crews have been good some have been not so good. A good management structure can make operating procedures more uniform ensuring the same production from crew to crew. If you figure out the best way to do things and enforce on your crews to follow the procedures that have been shown to work you wont see the inconsistencies where some crews lag behind. I do realize sfgam does have some employment challenges since they are not year round. Still more re-evalution of procedures, beterr developing of procedures, better implementation of procedures, and better execution of procedures can increase capacity and decrease wait times.

How do you think the park is doing? What are they doing right? What are they doing wrong? How would you improve it?

[DeathbyDinn]

I think our operations are middle of the road when compared to all parks. I've seen a lot better (Cedar Point), but I've also seen a lot worse (SFOT, MT.O).

I think the best thing they could do is just have more workers per ride. Most coasters should have four people checking restraints (I did notice a few times this year that Batman and RB had four checkers, but it was only in the evening and only certain days, so I'm not sure what the deal is) and most flat rides should at-least have two people working as even when the single ride op is moving fast dispatches can still take forever (especially on ERC).

There's also the problem of disability passes. It seems like whenever someone comes up with a pass the whole process grinds to a halt. There have been numerous times where I've had to sit in a checked train because the person who dispatches it was filling out a disability pass. This could easily be solved by having one person solely at the control panel a la Cedar Point, or allowing one of the restraint checkers to dispatch the train.

Some issues however are not related to staffing. For example, AE had SO many problems with lap bars this year that it definitely hurt dispatch times. It seemed like every single train had lap bars stuck open or closed, a problem I have not noticed as often in the past. Crowded exits are also an issue. AE and Viper in particular have tiny exits that are constantly crowded with guests exiting the ride and guests with disability passes. Having to wait to exit the station as well as having to wait to put or retrieve items in/from the bins is definitely hurting capacity. With wider exits people could get out faster or get in their seats faster, which would help tremendously in my opinion. Unfortunately, station modifications wouldn't be the easiest thing to do , so this is not an issue I see ever being addressed.

Long story short: our ride ops our generally pretty good, I just think we need more of them.

[acer711]

Single rider please

[CoasterCale]

Single rider please

I couldn't agree more. I'm not sure how it would work with dispatch times. But every coaster, except the woodies and demon could use a single rider line. The B&Ms have empty seats constantly. On Whizzer, seats go by because people want to be in the same row. (single rider) V2 would probably benefit the most. They can put the line in the exit. I think that would be wide enough.

[acer711]

I can understand not having a single rider line on Whizzer as I wouldn't want some random guy sitting between my legs, or my kid sitting in between a strangers legs but a lot of the other coasters have empty seats that can be filled with a single rider line!

[CoasterCale]

I can understand not having a single rider line on Whizzer as I wouldn't want some random guy sitting between my legs, or my kid sitting in between a strangers legs but a lot of the other coasters have empty seats that can be filled with a single rider line!

I wouldn't either. I was talking about completely empty seats. I would expect that the park wouldn't allow that to happen if they do decide to have a single rider line any ways.

[TwistedSTEEL666]

The exit paths on some coasters are wide enough for a single rider line, on other coasters there is no room for a single rider line.

My suggestion? Guest Relations should offer neon green wristbands to singer riders for free.
These wristbands can say "Single Rider" on them. Or you can just write single rider on your hand with a Sharpie.

[Viper 88]

Our park has some very high capacity rides FF, ERC, Condor, Triple Play, Orbit, but there are also alot of extremely annoying low capacity rides Ricochet, HTFM, JWR, BEB. Overall most of the ride ops are decent, I think it has to do with 1 the individual ride op because in one season I went about 8 times and had many different experiences on the same ride sometimes within the same day. 2 The capacity of the ride itself. 3 How many trains or cars they have runing. 4 THAT GDMN FLASH PASS! Number 3 is especially true on the water rides most noteably RR I once waited 2 hours (but that was during a muslim fest which was taking over the entire park, and took us 1-2 hours just to get into the park). And BITD it was also true on GAR.

[JimPanky]

O yeah. I don't want this taken the wrong way. I do feel the crews do a good job. I just see room for improvement. I feel trains could leave with less empty seats and leave the station quicker.

Great to see the ideas flowing. Keep the brainstorming going this is a fun discussion.

[UWW-10]

Not to say single rider lines are "evil".....but the same FP argument stands with a Single Rider Line. Why wait for 2 hours when I can walk up the exit/designated Single Rider Line and wait a mere 5 minutes because there's a guarantee that each train is going to have a decent amount of empty seats dispersed among the train.

Of course, you have to know that if you went up as a group you aren't sitting as a group and you're "at will" to where the employee directs you to sit....but I'd say that the majority of people probably wouldn't care if they knew they'd have a significant decrease in the amount of wait time.

As for capacity....you can change/modify everything in the book but guest control.....most guests are just oblivious to what's going on and will talk a good "This line takes forever blah blah blah". But those people will then be the token guest(s) to hold everything up for whatever reason under the sun

[KevinM]

In my experience, SFGAm operations are better than most parks in the country. That's faint praise, because ride operations in this country are pretty terrible. Combine corporate penny-pinchers minimally staffing the rides, ever stricter safety regulations, and the weak motivation of this country's paltry minimum wage, you get long waits for the roller coasters.

So why is Great America better than most? It's because every employee is replaceable. I worked at the park in 2010, and HR told me that about 20,000 people apply for jobs there each year, with less than 5000 actually getting hired. Great America can and will terminate employees for minor offenses. (For example, using your mobile phone outside of break areas, or a single no-call-no-show are officially grounds for termination.) SFGAm has the luxury of being picky with who they hire, and as a result many of the hosts take pride in serving guests. I was told by a supervisor that they have a database of the throughput of each ride in the Six Flags chain. This supervisor claimed that Great America had the highest throughput in every single category: Raging Bull led overall, Viper was highest in single-track wood (despite El Toro having three trains), AE was highest in dual-track, our B:TR had the highest of all B:TR's, etc. I can't verify this as I was not a supervisor, but I'm inclined to believe it.

If you want example of parks with much worse operations... look at Six Flags St. Louis where the talent pool is much smaller. Another poster pointed to Cedar Point for good operations. A few years ago, this was true. Nowadays? Still good, but they've definitely declined. About five years ago, Cedar Point was still paying "contract bonuses". When you were hired on at Cedar Point, you gave them a date that you agreed to work until. Your weekly paycheck was minimum wage, but for every hour you worked, a dollar was put into your bonus. If you slipped up and lost your job, or quit, you lost out on hundreds and hundreds of dollars. As the minimum wage increased, Cedar Point's wages did not, and the bonus evaporated. I worked there in 2011, after the bonuses were eliminated, and we had people quitting every other week. Moral of the story: money motivates, and corporate penny-pinching leads to bad employees.

in my opinion, Herschend (SDC and Dollywood only), Universal, and Disney have better operations than SFGAm. But in the SF/CF world, SFGAm is pretty close to the best.

[UWW-10]

Moral of the story: money motivates, and corporate penny-pinching leads to bad employees.

That's pretty much it......I would say that HR does a pretty good job of tying to "weed out" the people only looking for a paycheck at the end of the day versus the people who are actually going to put an effort towards guest service and satisfaction because it takes time, money, and energy if the park has to continually keep hiring because the people are leaving left and right.

As for the penny-pinching, any job is partially what you make of it. If you're in any job only for the sake of getting monetarily compensated at the end of the day, you'll probably be very unhappy with whatever you choose. Not every job can be "fun" all the time. Having had experience working at GAm, I can say that the conceived perception of the joys of how "awesome" it is to work in a theme park is deflated rather quickly. Like any job, you have exciting moments as well as days where you want to punch the next person you see in the face