I'm doing this as a new post so everyone gets the facts. I was worried that if I attached it to an old post, people would miss it. So here goes...
My wife and I just got back from SFGAm and here’s the deal on their new FastLane process. I’ll give you the details but some of them you may already know. First, they only sell 2000 FastLane tickets a day, which you purchase by the theatre in Hometown Square. Each ticket is $10 for 4 rides. The rides include: Dino Island II 3D, Giant Drop, Iron Wolf, Logger’s Run, Raging Bull, Roaring Rapids, Vertical Velocity (V2), and Whizzer. No other rides are included nor do they plan on adding other rides this year. Each ride has a separate FastLane entrance (in some cases they use part of the exit line) but at some point the FastLane meets up with the regular queue. There’s a park employee waiting where the lines join and they punch your ticket and allow you to then merge with the regular line. Here’s where any problem may arise. For example, on V2 the employee held the regular queue and allowed about 12 people from the FastLane in then allows a similar number of people from the regular queue in. However, for Raging Bull, the employee just had the people from the FastLane merge with the regular queue as each person came through the FastLane. A few people from the regular queue gave us dirty looks as we merged in. The employee made no attempt to hold the regular queue to allow us to merger in smoothly. We feel this could cause problems if the employee doesn’t hold the line and assert some “authority” to keep things calm.
As for saving time, it definitely does that. For our rides on Raging Bull we waited only about 15 minutes for the front seat when the regular line was easily 45 minutes just to get to the station. Our last ride on V2 was by far the best when we only waited about 7-8 minutes while the regular queue was about 1 - 1 ½ hours. We only used our FastLane passes on Bull and V2 so I can’t speak for saving time on other rides but if they’re anything like the coasters, you’ll save a lot.
Overall we feel this is well worth the money and while we did get a couple of dirty looks, people were more curious as to what the FastLane was and how it worked and didn’t seem bothered. In fact, while getting into the V2 FastLane a couple asked us what it was and they left the regular line and bolted to Hometown Square to get passes for themselves. They did this after having already waited 30 minutes in the regular line.
One word of caution to all this, the FastLane is an “at your own risk” deal. Meaning, if you get in line, get your ticket punched but then the ride breaks down – too bad – you lose. A ride op told us that the advantage of the FastLane was just to get you further up in the queue but doesn’t guarantee a ride. And this is stated on the back of the ticket. So beware of this gotcha.
Sorry this was so long but I wanted to state everything as clear as possible.
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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
