96% uptime at Cedar Point

What I want is a statistic to show total operating capacity (throughput) as a percentage of the manufacturer's max. pph...that would reflect both this downtime number AND a park's ability to load/unload trains and dispatch quickly!
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Off-season coaster blues got you down, stop by the 'buzz and turn your frown upside-down...
Son of Drop Zone - PKI CoasterCamp I Champions!!!

I really have no problems with CP's up time and that is indeed a very good stat.

PKI also has or gets most of their rides going everyday unless they are shorthanded.

Two bad only one Ohio park seems to have problems either getting them running or keeping them running and that is SFWOA,  A great park IMHO but could be much better.

Chuck, who has seen PKI crews replace track overnight on both Beast and Racer.

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Charles Nungester
Park Jockey :)

well when you get half a year to rehab rides so they are top shape for the summer i should hope they work properly. I hear alot of crap talked about Magic Mountains mechanics. But "Winter break" for them is peak-offseason.

Rollergator,

The problem with that calculation is that the park would be "penalized" if they have slow/empty days in the park.

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"It's Deja Vu all over again." - Yogi Berra

Regarding other parks that seem to do it 'right', has anybody mentioned Hersheypark? Last time I was at Hershey I was there for a day and a half, and Ursa Major had a little downtime (but not much) and that was the only ride I saw closed in the time I was there. They even had their Chaos running all day long!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

redman822, that doesn't really happen in seasonal parks, does it?  I know we have SERIOUS dead-time during Feb-April at our parks (save for Spring Break), but everytime I'm up north the parks seem to be pretty full, even though I am a weekday-visitor.  I guess to make the stat meaningful, we'd have to take into account those times when the park is "less than full"...

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PoTP acolyte - remove fear to reply
Son of Drop Zone - PKI CoasterCamp I Champions!!!

This is great, but I wonder if they count the day the power went out! Boy that was something to see a Raptor train suddenly screech to a halt on the midcourse, and the skyride become lifeless. MF did wonderful for its first season regardless of the cable incident. I was there a few times and didn't notice any major setbacks. They even ran both sides on Gemini. What a treat it is to visit this Arrow playplace!
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Don't.....look.....back! The Headless Horseman awaits you in 2002!
Model coasters and rides

Arrow guy.....isn't it great that they run both sides of Gemini.  Some parks never race their racing coasters, but CP always seems to run both sides of Gemini.  I have gone at least once a year for over 20 years, and I don't recall ever seeing it run just one side.
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- Peabody

Yeah the Rideman has a point about Hersheypark. This past season the only ride I seen down (in my 30 something visits there) was the Sooperdooperlooper, and it never last the whole day. They have to be in the 98-99% range. Two seasons ago they had the Conestoga down for a while, and a whole bunch of speculation started(on another site) that they were replacing it with an S&S Spaceshot. They we actually just waiting for the part to fix it. ;)

Wow Peabody, almost every time I went this summer the blue side was down.
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"This Movie spent way to much money on special effects, look they couldnt even afford to buy those little dudes shoes!"

FANTASTIC! Another great example of why we go to the Park Voted BEST in the world, FOUR years in a row! Congrats to everyone at Cedar Point!

Mikey

When I visited in August, Mean streak was down for 75% of the day. Buuuut. I got a ride in and I managed to ride MF twice. It's all good though...I'd much rather have spent my extra time riding MF and Magnum.
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"I'll bet that thing hits 5 Gs going through that loop.....faaar ooouut!"

Interesting, Joey.  I've never seen that in 20+ years.  Of course, I only visit once or twice a season.

A lot of times this summer, Gemini would open with just the red side and then at 11:30 or so, they would bring up the blue side.  Gemini can be a pain in the butt to get going especially on cooler days when sandbagging is necessary.  I was called over twice from Magnum to help do it, and its not all that much fun.  I don't think I'd want to do it as regularly as the Gemini crew probably has to.  The trains need to be reasonably full and if they had all 6 running before 11:30, that usually wouldn't happen.  Putting two trains on both sides might seem like an obvious solution, but then there is complete downtime while they transfer the third trains on.  Dustin could probably help out with this if I've messed anything up.
I still haven't figured out what was up with the 5 train operation I saw a few times...
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-Matt
2001 Magnum Crew

*** This post was edited by MDOmnis on 1/29/2002. ***

It's not uncommon to run only one side of Gemini for the first hour or so, since it seems to take the crowd a while to get back there.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"

A very impressive statistic, but I’m not surprised, based on my experience. I grew up with CP and just thought all amusement parks ran like it, until I started visiting other parks. I was even more appreciative of CP operations when I was able to compare how the rides ran at some other places. Another example of the way CP runs a first class operation happened a few years ago, when Raptor was down most of the day. After it came back up, they actually keep it open an extra 30 min. after closing time, so that guests could get on the ride a few times to make up for it being down most of the day. I thought that was truly going the extra mile to make the guests happy.

Warning!  Math to be encountered in this post!

If that's 96% for the whole park (meaning just one ride being down counts as park downtime) then the uptime (or availability %) per ride has to be fantastic!  I don't know how many rides CP has, but  you have to multiple individual rides' availability % together to come up with the whole park availability.  If there were 40 rides, and assuming they all had the same uptime, then the individual rides' uptime would need to be 99.9%  (.999^40=.96)  With 7 day/week 12 hour/day operation that's about 5 minutes/week downtime per ride!

If this is really the definition of 'whole park uptime' then I've been to parks that consistently rated as 0% uptime (some ride was always closed).  So perhaps they really mean that on average a particular ride is 'up' 96% of the time.  Or is it that on average 96% of the rides are up (meaning you could expect 1 to 2 out of 40 to be closed on a typical visit)  Kinda makes a difference does it?  Whatever it means, 96% is still an excellent figure, maybe a benchmark in the industry.  

I'd also love to see a comparison between various parks, but I'd imagine that's morely closely guarded info than attendance figures! 

Hey Rideman, does Ken (Martin) work with Cedar Point? If so damn he's doing one hell of a job, but then again Rideman, you know Ken is one of the best, if not the best!
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It's conflict that shows who a person really is!

This is very impressive I must say, I had no idea CP managed 96% uptime with their rides, That is just incredible.

I must say that when I went to Cedar Point in June Last year, I was very impressed with their uptime, I remember that when I attempted to go on Iron Dragon, The Ride was down for Mechanical Problems, the problems sounded quite serious, and I thought I had no hope in hell riding it on that particular day, But what did I happen to witness during this downtime, Only a Welder doing some work to the Brake Run, Of course I was very impressed, At least CP were doing everything possible to get this ride open, And Sure enough at about 1PM Approx, Iron Dragon did open(Sure it was 3hrs Late, but this showed excellent decication into getting the ride open instead of not doing a DAM thing to fix it.
Another Example was Blue Streak, It was down pretty much all day, But once again, With staff in the station trying to work out the problems, It opened at approx 3.30PM, Again this was a late opening, But at least it did eventually open.

Also, throughout the Day, Pretty much all rides were open and running to full capasity, All Towers on Power Tower running, 3 train ops on Raptor,MF,Iron Dragon and Magnum, And 2 Train Ops on all others. Once again, a very impressive result and lets hope CP keep up the good work. Even my Dad was very impressed with the Park as a whole, and he doesnt even like theme parks anymore, he found it an absolute pleasure to visit

Here's an example of how serious they are about keeping stuff open. Day before closing day, the track separated from one of the ties at the bottom of the first drop. They fixed it, temporarily at least overnight, and it opened the next morning. It was a hell of a bump, but people who were there on closing day got to ride, and like every Sunday that season, Dick Kinzel could be seen walking the park, picking up trash and asking people how their day was going. Like I said... all the same, first day, last day, every day in between.

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Jeff - Webmaster/Admin - CoasterBuzz.com, Sillynonsense.com
"As far as I can tell it doesn't matter who you are. If you can believe, there's something worth fighting for..." - Garbage, "Parade"